Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot Index Code Update
One of the most common questions I get is simply "What does the '2 More' mean in the left side menu?" To me it's obvious: it means there are 2 more stories on say, apple.slashdot.org than you have seen on slashdot.org. This is because Slashdot probably already had 15 stories today, and this particular story is only of interest to users who explicitly chose to view Apple stories.
Those little 'N More' snippets clutter up the left hand menu, and confuse people. Our power users know that they can suck all the sectional content into the main page, but very few users actually bother with that kind of customization. And just as important, we have a lot of content that is simply lost because most of you never knew it was there in the first place.
What you'll see now is the interleaving of sectional content with main page content. These articles are displayed in a very abbreviated format, amidst the other stories. This is content we've been posting on Slashdot for years, but most users never knew. I'm pleased with the design of the whole thing. I think it looks really nice and doesn't clutter up the page.
Of course some users will always disagree with me, and for them there are now a plethora of user configurable options. Essentially, each section has a range of options ranging from "All" (Meaning, every story is displayed in full text) to "None" (Meaning I really really really never want to see anything about Apple really no seriously I'm not kidding!)
These options are available on the left hand menu by simply clicking the 'Sections' menu entry. A fancy little window will open with various tools for you do play with allowing you to choose what content on Slashdot you want to read... and perhaps more importantly, to disable the content you don't. The default view of Slashdot has slightly changed today, but you can set your preferences back to make the site look like it did before too.
We are keen on making sure that this works for as many browser platforms as we can. We've tested it on the platforms used by around 96% of you. (that is to say, Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, under Windows, Mac, and Linux) and it works on those platforms. However if your platform doesn't work, you can still change the settings from the user preference page (click the word 'Preferences' on the left hand menu if you are logged in. If your browser doesn't support javascript, clicking the 'Sections' menu item on the left hand menu should take you there.).
We fully expect there to be some bugs with this, so please feel free to contact us... preferably by submitting a bug report to our sourceforge project tracker. We hope to have any major kinks worked out of the system in the next few days, so just hang in there.
All in all I am very pleased with this. This solves a number of long standing problems on Slashdot: That is to say sectional content getting "Lost" in the shuffle, the left hand menu being confusing, and the user preferences to twiddle these settings being buried so deep in the UI that nobody would bother changing them.
Best of all, if any of this bugs you, it takes just seconds to disable this stuff. In fact, it would probably take less time to fix it then to post a comment complaining... not that that will stop some of you ;)
update many people have commented on the design of the abbreviated story. Many make great points about how they visually could be interpreted as being "Footnotes" or "Related" somehow to the content above them. Just a reminder, the site is all nicely CSSified now... modifiy the CSS send it our way. If someone creates a design that works better, we'll use it! We're not married to what we have. Personally I wanted the grey curve on the bottom right side, but we thought we'd need an extra DIV to get it right, so this was the compromise.
updated again the reason we don't update the index 'on the fly' is because it is possible for you to get content that we don't actually have yet. We don't have a full ajax engine yet- so if you made an abbreviated article be a full text article, we'd have missing fields. When we have a real dynamic engine for loading the content, doing it on the fly will be trivial. Today I think it would just look crappy.
That's the thing I've just spent five minutes working out how to switch off, right?
'This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it' - Eeyore
There needs to be a bit more work to get the rough edges that I see out:
I like the layout... it's clean, easy to read, and relatively unobtrusive. Good work.
... elipses...
This is a really, really neat feature.
I've always felt that having to browse separate sections of Slashdot was a little painful, and a way to know if new articles were posted in certain sections of interest would be neat.
This is a really cool feature and a much needed one. Props, folks!
I read that there was "sectional content" and thought finally, news about modular sofas. But, noooo...
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
The whole upward sweeping curve gives the impression that it has something to do with the story above it, which of course isn't true. Not really good design from a user perspective. This is what happens when you focus on 'pretty' and forget to deal with 'works.'
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
I have one request. Can the sections that you choose to be in 'Full' format also be added to the 'older stuff' slashbox? Since the topics end up in the 'older stuff' box now faster than before, I'd like to see if I've missed something.
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
All I want to know is if the new format is Lynx compatible ... because if it isn't there'll be hell to pay!
"Essentially, each section has a range of options ranging from "All" (Meaning, every story is displayed in full text) to "None" (Meaning I really really really never want to see anything about Apple really no seriously I'm not kidding!)"
I only want to see the dupes. Really no seriously I'm not kidding!
In fact, it would probably take less time to fix it then to post a comment complaining... not that that will stop some of you ;)
I have a complaint, why do you say that it probably takes less time to fix it than it does to make this post?
Is my typing not fast enough for you?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Wow! There's so much content that doesn't make the main page. And thank goodness, as I sure wouldn't care to see it. I had no idea that the editors were doing such a good job.
Now maybe we'll have more posts on the stories that wouldn't normally on the front page. I usually read the games section, but alot of the stories hardly get any posts at all...
Han shot first.
It looks good the way it is now. I like it. Now I have to commit fewer clicks to see stories. I don't have to memorize the number on the sidebar and then just compare when I load Slashdot.
About this...
One of the most common questions I get is simply "What does the '2 More' mean in the left side menu?" To me it's obvious: it means there are 2 more stories on say, apple.slashdot.org than you have seen on slashdot.org.
I imagine that much *is* obvious, but what isn't obvious is how that number is determined. If there are "5 more" stories on Apple, and I click on Apple, why do I see more than 5 stores? How is the number "5" factoring in at all? At first I figured it might have been cookied to only show unread stories within a certain timeframe, but that quickly proved to be false. So, the usefulness of the link is apparent, but the descriptor is byzantine.
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
I figured it out when the storyless stories started moving down the page. It's nice, but I have a suggestion.
The verbosity of a story on the main page should be a function of its activity, moderation, and timeliness. In other words, stories appear as a single line, then gradually get more page space as people reply, and less as they fade away, until finally you have a bunch of one-liners at the end. Sort of like the way threaded postings work with but with 'newest first'.
Done right, the code would be simpler.
Or maybe not. As I said, I like the new feature/design.
sigs, as if you care.
The first thing that caught my attention was the grey background (behind the new links) that seemed off. The grey background should be reserved for the right column; it is not present in the left and center column. I find it very distracting and out of place. Perhaps keep the same design, but lose such a dark background in the middle column.
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
More importantly, can we have a page dedicated to the browser stats for /. ? Maybe something that shows trends over the past year or two?
/. re-org, and, more importantly, on the open dialog that you are giving us now.
(Yes, I realise people here are stuck to browse with what's at work, but it's still a extra blip of information)
BTW, Kudos on the
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
How about clicking on the bar makes it fold out to reveal the usual synopsis? J.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
Good idea, though. Thanks!
-Dom
Excellent idea. Nice to see content instead of having to hunt for it and this will force submitters to get creative with their headlines!
I have only one complaint and that's having the stub stories "grafted" onto the bottom of full stories. While I like the curve and it makes for an interesting visual package, I think the stub stories should be in their own individual little capsules, color-coded to the sections they belong in. This will make it easier to see them for one and also indicate that they are not "attached" in any way to the full story above them.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Time to go from "what the heck" to "hey neat": 50ms.
How about some disclosure triangles next to to the stubs so I could check out the description without having to open up a new tab?
My main issue with this is that the articles look associated with the previous article
Obviously now the trick of changing the color on subsection stories by just changing the initial part of the URL doesn't work any more ...
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
I noticed that at least the BSD and Apache sections are missing from the nifty Sections javascript window. Yet, they are there in the Preferences section. Oversight? On purpose? Customizable?
Evolution or ID?
Wow. Digg really has you guys shook up. That's great. That's what competition's all about. This is the exact kind of action Microsoft, the recording industry and the Baby Bells would be forced to make if there were really competition in their worlds.
kudos!
MjM
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
The best of both worlds: small initial page size, dynamic content.
This feature is a welcome addition, since I now no longer have to visit different sections to view the "sectional content".
Here's one suggestion for an improvement: How about automatically "promoting" abbreviated stories to full stories if a certain number of comments are posted on it. In other words if, say 200 comments are posted on one of these abbreviated stories, it becomes one of the main page stories and it's full summary is displayed.
The reason behind this is that if a "sectional" story is particularly popular, it probably deserves the same treatment as the major stories. I am more likely to take interest in a story if a large number of comments have been posted to it. Assuming that a good default is chosen for number of comments before an article is upgraded, this shouldn't affect your 15 stories a day rule much. Of course, registered users should be allowed to select their own minimum comment count.
In effect this would probably be a type of crude article moderation. The sectional stories are moderated up by way of user comments.
Of course, if you have more ambitious changes to story selection in mind, this wouldn't be of much relevance.
There's a lot of talk of adding an upper curve on the related stories, but it makes more sense to me to have them look like the main headlines: White text on a green background. That way they just look like collapsed story boxes, and stand on their own. Using any other coloring will make them look like they are part of the story box above, as footnotes of some sort.
Only put items in the gray area below the post which match the category of the post above it. e.g. 'IT: IE7 Leaked' would have only 'IT' articles below it in the gray area. 'Slashdot Index Code Update' post doesn't have a category so put an EMPTY gray area below it. Uniformity is good. Categorizing this is good.
I've always liked the fact that sectional content was largely missed by the wider readership: this fact acted as a filter of sorts. The problem with Slashdot is that the signal to noise ratio of comments has been getting worse and worse. I like the fact that only a few power users had figured out how to comingle all the content on the main page, or that only people interested in a topic would routinely read the sectional stuff. This meant that those non-frontpage stories generally had better comment quality. I think this will suffer under the new system.
Just want to say, I never use the front page any more. I just use my Firefox live bookmark (i.e. RSS feed). I think other users might be in the same situation.
So, whatever changes you make, I think you should definitely keep in mind that at least some people (probably a lot) rely on the RSS feed as the main means of getting slashdot information.
Thanks for the great site, and especially the recent efforts towards improvements!
"May the days be aimless. Let the seasons drift. Do not advance the action according to a plan."
My first thought would be to have a "virtual" section for the most popular stories. All that section would do is beg/borrow/steal articles from other sections and reformat them to the way desired and in the order desired. That takes care of avoiding the dupe-detector but at the same time retaining stories of exceptional significance.
My second thought is on the code for varying the size of the intro. I've a feeling that that code could get a little messy - but maybe you don't actually have to vary the number of lines... *Evil cackle* For most graphical browsers, you can alter the size of the font, instead. Hey, users who want to read the whole intro can just fire up the magnifying-glass tool. The advantage of the font method is that then you're just setting a variable, rather than parsing a string.
My third thought would go great on its own or in parallel with the above. And that is to allow users, in their preferences, to define a search criteria. (A regular expression and a section, perhaps.) Anything that meets the criteria is set "sticky" and will "stick" on that user's front page for an extra while (say until read, unstuck or the glue wears off).
*Whichever suggestions above sound interesting are mine. The rest were invented by alien space monkeys that were holding my brain hostage.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I don't get the graphic design. Putting the headlines in a rounded grey box make them look like part of the preceding story summary (whose title is in rounded green box going the other direcection). The grey boxes actually look nice-- perhaps they could be used for the "Read More" part of a story summary.
But I would display the "extra" headlines In a different way. Maybe just as a bulleted list? Or round the grey box the full 180 degrees rather than halfway.
The current solution really does make it look like a footer, but if flipped over to mimic the green headers, it would look like yet another story, but a different color and smaller... which intuitively would make more sense. I spent about 2 hours this morning looking at this trying to figure out how you guys were relating the "child" stories to the "main" stories.
Don't anthropomorphize computers: they hate that.
I was thinking much along the same lines. Because the "little stories" have bars that curve the opposite direction from the "big stories," they all look like they're grouped together. I was thinking the new stuff was some sort of broken "related articles" system before I saw this article. Change the bar so it's a gray version of the main story bar, or do what the previous poster suggested. Anything to end the unintentional appearance of "grouping related topics" that is there now.
Slashdot rocks. CmdrTaco rocks. Thanks for all the effort from the Slashdot developers, its fantastic.
;)
I would like to suggest that maybe the small, headline only stories would look better (and look much more like the old slashdot) if they were grouped at the bottom of the page, instead of mixed in between the larger stories. Is the order which those stories were posted with respect to the main stories really that important? The only real difference is to create an impression of 2 seperate sets of stories which are "scrolling" by as they are posted / expire, instead of just one set of stories. (did that make any sense?)
Anyway, the site looks great as it is. And I think we all know that the real strength of Slashdot is the deep, intellectual discussion from its user base