Slashdot Keybindings, Dynamic Stories

We've been working hard on the new dynamic Slashdot project (logged in users can enable this by enabling the beta index in their user preferences). I just wanted to quickly mention that there are keybindings on the index. The WASD and VI movement keys do stuff that we like, and the faq has the complete list. Also, if you are using Firefox or have Index2 beta enabled, you can click 'More' in the footer at the end of the page to load the next block of stories in-line without a page refresh. We're experimenting now with page sizes to balance load times against the likelihood that you'll click. More features will be coming soon, but the main thing on our agenda now is optimization. The beta index2 is sloooow and that's gotta change. We're aiming for 2 major optimizations this week (CSS Sprites, and removing an old YUI library) that I'm hoping will put the beta page render time into the "Sane" time frame (which, in case you are wondering, is several seconds faster than that "Insane" time frame we're currently seeing).

Comments

Re:Feature request --

[Hatta]

I emailed Malda about this when it was first implemented, here's
what he said:

The feed should contain stories you've tagged. The idea is that this
is a place where you can share content you like with others.. so if I
go to ~hatta I see the slashdot YOU think I should see. But you're
right in that your comments should be in that page as well. There's
technical reasons that they aren't, but we're going to try to fix
them.

Doesn't make any sense to me though. I've always considered my user page to be for my own benefit, not others. Slashdot isn't myspace. I never read anyone else's user page, and I doubt anyone reads mine. But there you have it. His solution for people like us? Bookmark slashdot.org/~username/comments.

Re:Special button

[TheRaven64]

Hey, at least blocking kdawson from the front page works again now. For a few painful months, it didn't work with index2.pl and there was no way of switching back to the original. Fortunately, now you can block idle and kdawson from the front page.

Re:Feature request --

[TheRaven64]

Why not just set it to send you a message when someone replies to one of your comments? That way, the front page tells you how many new messages you have. That said, it would be great if:

1. You could jump directly to the page with the reply from the messages list page, rather than having to go via the message page.
2. Messages indicating replies to the same post could be grouped.
3. The messages system actually let you send messages to other Slashdot readers, so you didn't have to post your email address in a discussion you wanted to take offline.

Re:Slashdot looks weird

[ScuttleMonkey]

The story tag is to distinguish stories from submissions and comments.

Among other datatypes. The firehose is our content delivery tool and pretty much any page is just becoming a filter on the firehose to display whatever data you are asking for. This allows us to do a lot of really cool things (both now and in the near future) and get some performance hits back soon.

Re:Slashdot looks weird

[Red Flayer]

well, then among the many "cool" updates on the way you will appreciate the work that is currently being expended to make low-bandwidth, small screen, iphone, etc, interfaces much less buggy and faster-loading. :)

Not to be cynical/snarky, but is there an expected timeline for this?

I mean, it's not that I don't appreciate the work expended, but I'd appreciate the finished product much more :)

Even a tentative schedule (while probably a bad idea to commit to showing to users) posted somewhere might give us a better idea of where we're heading on slashdot, and why we have to put up with so many strange UI tweaks (like most of us, I prefer to stick with what I know).