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D2 Updates, Text Message Notifcation
A few quick notes on some recent code updates. The smaller function is that we've added text messaging stuff for phones. If you visit the messages page (you must be logged in) you can define your cell phone's email address, and get notifications sent to it. The more interesting update is for Discussion2 users (turn it on on any article page). There is an option now to restrict page sizes and you will retrieve comments by score. This means you can configure your Slashdot to return smaller, more bandwidth friendly pages that you can expand without loading fresh pages. Anyone still running D1 is a sucker.
you can define your cel [sic] phone's email address, and get notifications sent to it.
Does anyone actually care about their messages beyond "those things I let expire or occasionally delete"?
Please help metamoderate.
The other day my wireless provider sent me a text message saying "It currently costs $0.10 to receive text messages. Would you like to upgrade?" I mean, damn guys, thanks for the message, ya know?
Ah yes, insulting your readership. I see that Slashdot's grasp of the finer points of customer relations remains as firm as ever...
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Things I don't like:
- the floating widget floats over other things. I want to put it in the left margin and it must not float up above the menu, but stay below the Services entries.
- there still is no way to "close" a thread or to easily skip to the next top-level thread. when someone (usually an early poster) posts some flamebait comment it is very difficult to find the next top-level comment. There should be a [+] entry in the title bar of each comment where one can close all replies to that comment.
Is there a URL other than slashdot.org to use when browsing on a phone or handheld device? My phone doesn't seem to handle slashdot very well.
You could try google.com, freerepublic.com, dailykos.com, etc. There are millions more to choose from! ;)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Or anyone that doesn't want to always see the first line of troll posts (did I really need to read the first line of the troll about horses mating? I don't even want to post a link to it.....)
Just remember - if the world didn't suck, we would all fall off.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I await the day soon when slashcode becomes sentient, and the first words out of its mouth will be
"Hallo Wurld"
as it still won't have spellcheck.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Sure am. Only a sucker would give in to the man, and not replace IE with Firefox on his company laptop. What a sucker.
I haven't complained about D2's not working in IE, because I recognize that it's IE's fault. I also recognize that IE will never change as long as everyone panders to its broken-ness, so I can even respect Slashdot's decision to not do so. I'll even continue to subscribe, despite not being able to use the New Shiny most of the time, because I think Slashdot's worth supporting.
But some of us aren't in a position where it's feasible to change our client, and cheap shots at our expense aren't particularly appreciated. If you don't want to put in the time and effort to make D2 work in IE because you don't want to perpetuate the use of broken standards on the client, that's great. But I'd really appreciate not being mocked in the process.
Thanks.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
however, it's kind a lame. "top 5 comments" is all you get
an updated version based on what is mentioned in the story above would be better
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Uhhhggh!! This thing is horrible! What's with the emboldened headings? Comment previews gobbling up space. Re:? The entire page juddering about with every click.
No thanks. Call me a luddite, but I like my pages nice and static if you please. If I need to read a subcomment, I open it in a new tab.
May the Maths Be with you!
Well, I reverted to D1 when you changed the thumb from vertical to horizontal. It took some time fiddling around until I realilzed what had happened.
ID: the nose did not occur naturally, how would we wear glasses otherwise? (apologies to Voltaire)
Last I checked, D2 did not have the "flat" display mode. I want to load up all replies to an article and be able to read them without doing anything else. (I am still annoyed at the change several years ago when the maximum number of replies on a page was limited.)
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Unless it's gotten less buggy or somehow better in other ways, I wasn't impressed with D2 at all. Maybe I'll give it another try. Then again my smartphone handles regular old slashdot fairly well via Opera.
It's not perfect (as evidenced by much of the biatching around here), but at least for the way I like to read /., it's a huge improvement over the old system.
Just wanted to be the odd person who actually comments when they like something, instead of only posting when it's broken.
My English teacher once told me that two positives don't make a negative. Two words for her: Yeah, right.
USB thumb drives are pretty cheap and getting cheaper. Wally World sells 32Meg sticks next to the M&M's
My suggestion is to simply acquire one of these wonderfully useful devices (if you don't already have one) and visit portableapps.com. There is a plethora of applications that you can install on your stick (including Firefox) and use on any machine into which you can plug it (including your company laptop).
I wish I knew why this was limited to 120 characters... If I ever find the guy who did that I'm going to drag him out in
Once all the bugs are worked out in this, the next cool thing would be a nifty ajaxish front page so that nobody ever has to hit "Refresh" anymore. Someone should code up some sort of ajax front page that gets the new stories as they're published. It would be cool if it also had the ability to expand the headline view into stories or collapse some stories that the user doesn't find interesting.
I know you've said that IE is low priority for D2. I don't neccessarily agree, but I know as a web developer that making something cross-browser compatible can be a large pain.
Even so, I ask that a bone be thrown to us IE users- give an option so that our use of D1/D2 is based on our browser. At home I am strictly FireFox except for the smallest subset of sites, so D2 works fine and I use it all the time. At work I am forced into a vanilla IE6 install[1]; reading comments is fine, but if I want to make a comment myself or mod a post I have to log in and deal with the IE-broken D2. I have three options:
1) Log in, do what I want, log out to continue reading (like I'm doing now)
2) Set my profile to not use D2 when at work and turn it on again at home
3) Create an alternate log in to use only while at work (this would require syncing with this account)
All of these are rather annoying and I'd prefer not to deal with them. I imagine I'm not the only one with this problem. The idea I have is that you have three options in your account: no D2, always D2, and D2 based on Browser. For the final option, a quick check is done prior to loading to see if the browser is IE or not, then choose which discussion method to use based on that.
I'm not familiar with Slashcode, so I don't know how trivial it would be to implement, but it's a feature I could really use. It would also be a benefit for those who use other legacy browsers for whatever reason.
[1] Yes, I've tried stuff like Portable Firefox. I made the mistake of showing a page to supervisor while using it, and now they're constantly checking to see if I'm using it. Policies are very strict around here.
To paraphrase: "D1. No chat. Uses more bandwidth than D2. Lame."
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
I'm with AT&T (formerly Cingular) and I've never, ever paid for an incoming message. Ever. The lady uses Verizon and she too never, ever has paid for an incoming text message.
Really? What carrier does this?
D2 can't sort comments by newest first even when set in preferences.
Pass.
Well, that's about enough D2 for me. Half-completed floaty thing in the left side, WTF is that?
// Yuck!
Sorry, I write web code all day long, requirements are that it has to support IE6, IE7, and Firefox. It's a pain, but it's not actually hard. D2 is a piece of crap still.
And Slashcode is still written in PERL? RUfuckingKiddingMe?
D2.Visible=false;
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Anyone still running D1 is a sucker
Or they like their sort pref to be respected? I must be missing the obvious. D2 ignores my preference to have highest rated comments first. How do I get D2 to change the sort order?
Verizon has unlimited 'in' messaging - but otherwise inbound and outbound count towards your limit and once you pass the limit you will be charged for text messages sent and received.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Verizon charges to send or receive text messages. The charges seem to be variable as well. I keep text messages blocked, however, before I did, I saw charges range from 10 - 17 cents. Not sure if the difference is peak/offpeak, data transfer fees, phase of the moon, or what.
Verizon has text messaging plans that give you a couple hundred messages in or out a month for a few dollars (varies greatly depending on when you signed up for it), but without those plans, they definitely charge you for incoming.
What sort of data plan do you have? I am with ex-cingular/att, and they charge me $0.10 for every text message that I receive and send. Some of their data plans include text messages I believe.
Something like $10 for 500 outbound "anythings" (im, txt, pic, etc).
Slightly OT here, but why isnt there a way to recieve messages, such as "new story posted", by jabber?
:\
I would have thought jabber support would have been ahead of aim at least
When leaving a browser open on a particular story for a long time (say, overnight), then returning to it, comments will no longer expand. Clicking a comment header will cause the first few sentences to appear, "loading, please wait" will show in the left panel, but the comment will never load. A quick Wireshark analysis shows that instead of the comment text, the only thing the server seems to give is the character '0'. The only workaround is to refresh the page.
:)
Oh, and I like the x-Bender quotes... too bad nobody can see them
Alas, I thought the headline referred to the incredible Cowon D2 media player, lol!
On Vista, at least, IE7 and D2 now get along a lot better. The scrolling is smooth now, page updates are instant (faster than on Firefox, sometimes, but that probably has to do with what's being updated), and by and large it's fairly usable now.
Problems still in IE7:
1) Clicking on an AJAX link is still likely to scroll your brownser almost all the way to the bottom of the page. I have no idea why this happens but it is by far the most annoying bug.
2) The visibility levels (white, light grey, dark grey) still float to the right of the sliders (and occsionally cover some content near the top of the screen).
3) Expanding a comment occasionally causes the title bar of a different comment to detach from the top of its comment. This can be easily solved by very slightly resizing the window.
Problems in Firefox:
1) Pages still seem to take inordinately long to download (even if I disable ads).
The incredibly annoying bug where expanding a comment wouldn't expand it fully and or show the Reply button thankfully seems to be fixed.
Problems in Konqueror:
1) Render speed is iffy. The page jumps around a bit before settling down to a readable state.
I still like IE7 for its tab management (control-tab cycling through recently visited tabs in order of visiting them) and RSS feed reader. The jump-down-the-page-on-click bug is annoying, but at least the scrolling is now so smooth that it's possible to quickly get back where you were. In Linux I prefer to use Konqueror, but I do wish I could close a tab by middle-clicking it (not Slashdot's fault in any way, just a general browser gripe).
Don't even try using D2 in Links. It will load the page, and then go nowhere until you uncheck the box and refresh. Lack of CSS support, I suppose, or perhaps no XmlHttpRequest or too limited of a JavaScript engine.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Here is an example. So called "short code" text messages are always chargeable on most UK networks including Vodafone, O2, and Virgin. The maximum charge is UKP 1.50 per incoming message. Any business (usually spammers sending invitations to enter prize draws) can ask a network provider to allocate them a short-code which is a 5-digit unreturnable number (it cannot be used to receive replies). The business can then send subscriber-to-pay text messages and the business collects the profit generated by each text message. There is no way for subscribers to block these short-code messages. You can, however, register your telephone number with the Telephone Preference Service; short-code users should consult the register to block short-code messages being sent to registered numbers, but many don't bother and send them anyway even to registered numbers. If you receive a short code message without any contact details (as often happens with spam), the only way to find out who sent it is to contact your network provider who can decode the short code number giving you the name of the company using it and the contact details.
Why oil price increase equals economic trouble (Score: Interesti
I agree. I use dechunker to re-assemble discussions that have been split into multiple pages. It works well, though there can be a significant delay when reading a multi-page discussion because it tries to be nice to /. bandwidth by waiting a few seconds between loading each successive page. There is also D22D1 for converting D2 to D1. It could be an option for people who prefer D1 if /. ever decides to drop support for D1, though it is still a bit buggy. Sorry, I can't seem to find any links for dechunker and D22D1 right now.
Why oil price increase equals economic trouble (Score: Interesti