Forum Migration

[Mikemk]

My egosearch has been working the entire time.

[flicky1991]

Even after refreshing it?

[Soupspoon]

Thanks for fixing sub/sup! Our footnotes¹ thank you too!

¹and there are a lot of footnotes

And I've just used a couple of feetnete, without thinking. Nice one.

Incidentally, data for the Egosearch debugging:

Spoiler:

My otherwise unspecified Egosearch results now have the thread "1660: Captain Speaking" as the lone listed thread on the page that matches "Search found 1 match • Page 1 of 1", rather than this 'ere Forum Migration one. (Both created post-migration, so it can't just be a pre/post-migration divide.)

"1 day" gives four items ("Are people required to burp?", "xkcd Skyscraper", "Forum Migration" and "1660: Captain Speaking") in a search indicating "Search found 3 matches • Page 1 of 1" (my underline).

Back to "All items" but this time sorted Ascending it says "Search found 1 match • Page 0 of 1" on a full page of the 50 least recent, whilst "1 year" by Sort Descending announces "Search found 9 matches • Page 1 of 1" on a full page of 50 threads that (assuming both sets are complete) reveals I have now participated with 57 threads, the extra 7 most-recent/least-recent thus being silently dropped from the end of either list, without a second (or 0+1th?) page.

...but doubtless there's already more than enough user-provided data, and the fix now relies upon more in-depth debugging details to resolve the frustration.

[Mikemk]

Even after refreshing it?

Yeah

[faubiguy]

I'm getting a SQL error with the advanced search.

Example: search.php?keywords=committee&terms=all&author=&fid%5B%5D=14&sc=0&sf=titleonly&sr=topics&sk=t&sd=d&st=0&ch=300&t=0&submit=Searchhttp://forums.xkcd.com/search.php, which produces the error "ERROR: for SELECT DISTINCT, ORDER BY expressions must appear in select list LINE 6: ORDER BY t.topic_last_post_time DESC ^ []"

[flicky1991]

Same here.

[Mikemk]

I'm getting a SQL error with the advanced search.

Example: search.php?keywords=committee&terms=all&author=&fid%5B%5D=14&sc=0&sf=titleonly&sr=topics&sk=t&sd=d&st=0&ch=300&t=0&submit=Searchhttp://forums.xkcd.com/search.php, which produces the error "ERROR: for SELECT DISTINCT, ORDER BY expressions must appear in select list LINE 6: ORDER BY t.topic_last_post_time DESC ^ []"

Try removing the extra url off the end. It's working for me, though a bit slow
search.php?keywords=test+search&terms=all&author=&sc=1&sf=all&sr=posts&sk=t&sd=a&st=365&ch=300&t=0&submit=Search

[faubiguy]

I think I just accidentally pasted it at the end, it wasn't supposed to be there. The search search.php?keywords=committee&terms=all&author=&fid%5B%5D=14&sc=0&sf=titleonly&sr=topics&sk=t&sd=d&st=0&ch=300&t=0&submit=Search still produces an error, so I'm guessing there's some difference in the search parameters causing that.

[ucim]

I would love it if the default (not-logged-in) theme were full-width instead of limited-width. Perhaps this could be achieved by editing the max-width property of whatever theme is used as the default, letting it be as wide as the screen I'm viewing it on is. I don't know if there's an existing theme that does this; there seems to be a trend towards letterboxing wide displays, at the same time there is a trend towards displays getting wider and less tall.

I also wish I could turn off (and also by default) those ch*rpin' folder list animations that think they're so cute, without disabling all animation. (You know the ones, the scrolly lines or wiggly bells next to active forum threads). But I don't think there's much choice here either. It's what PHPbb gives you, without doing lots of editing of themes and such (and if I'm not willing to do it myself, I am not going to insist that forum staff do it).

Jose

[gmalivuk]

My egosearch has been working the entire time.

Perhaps because you've got less than one page of results?

[Flumble]

I also wish I could turn off (and also by default) those ch*rpin' folder list animations that think they're so cute, without disabling all animation. (You know the ones, the scrolly lines or wiggly bells next to active forum threads). But I don't think there's much choice here either. It's what PHPbb gives you, without doing lots of editing of themes and such (and if I'm not willing to do it myself, I am not going to insist that forum staff do it).

My 'solution' is to block the animated thread icons with adblock. The number of pages give plenty information that a thread is long.

Then again, I solely visit the Unread Posts lists, so I don't need to differentiate between the animated icons. Then again, you can block the read animated icon(s) only, so you'll only be annoyed by threads you haven't updated yet.

[Soupspoon]

I would love it if the default (not-logged-in) theme were full-width instead of limited-width.

I still don't understand this complaint. I'm (logged in but) using the default theme (tried the other available one, but saw no advantages to it) and didn't really appreciate the 'blurred' (perhaps over-antialiased?) typeface it gave me.

Right now, for me, there's a maximum of 55 pixels combined border to the left (40px completely unused at the edge, and a further 15px from that point to the 'individual message unit' edge, ignoring the browser's own Window border and the single-pixel line delineating the various blocks), and similar to the right (plus the width of the user box, which in your case gives 124px to the 55px-to-the-scrollbar point from the RHS of your avatar, and the text below it goes beyond that). And that's proportional enough for my liking.

Annotated image:

Spoiler:

Or, again, maybe it's a different problem on monitors/resolutions set to wider than 1280px in width... But manually resizing the window (reducing width) it seems to happily rescale in that direction, without any obvious problems, so unless it's been hardcoded to assume this 'low' lateral resolution...

[Thesh]

FWIW, this is what it looks like on my monitor:

40% of the width is outside the content area.

[BlitzGirl]

Same here. I have a double monitor setup and on the smaller screen (1366 x 768) it looks like Soupspoon's screenshot and isn't bad, but on the larger screen (1920 x 1080) it looks like Thesh's screenshot with the severe margins. I didn't notice any resolution problems before the migration, when the forum easily expanded to the width of the large screen. So the change is a fairly annoying visual difference for those who were used to browsing on larger monitors.

[Thesh]

I added this to my userContent.css for Firefox, and it fills up the screen... In fact, I'm probably going to reduce it to 1440px or something.

Code: Select all

@-moz-document domain(forums.xkcd.com) {
    div#wrap { max-width:none !important;}
}


EDIT 1440px looks good.

[Neil_Boekend]

The style "Allanstyle-subsilver" fills up the whole 1920 width of my screen with awesomeness.

[Flumble]

What are you guys talking about, this is what it looks like at 1920x1080:

...at a higher DPI setting.

[Tub]

People have been criticizing the default style, and I must agree. I've seen it a thousand times, it lacks individuality.
To be a bit more constructive, I've tried to make some adjustments. While xkcd does not have a corporate identity, I've tried to make the forums look more like xkcd.com.

I've copied some static pages to my own webserver and edited the css, so instead of screenshots, you get actual web pages!

Index page: default style -> xkcd style
In a forum: default style -> xkcd style
A thread: default style -> xkcd style (Note: I've set the same avatar for all posts for bandwidth reasons.)

All my changes are contained in an additional stylesheet for easier review or cherry-picking of the changes.

I'm aware that there are still some minor elements with unfitting colors left, but I wanted to get some feedback first. If you like it, I will spend the time to iron out the details.

[Aiwendil]

When viewing the board index now, the latest posts in each sub-forum are now listed by post subject, rather than thread subject (at least by default). Is there any way to change this? I suspect the answer is 'no', but personally I much prefer threat titles to post titles there. At best, having it display post titles means that there's a lot of unnecessary "Re: " in that column. And in cases where a poster actually uses a post subject line that is different from the thread subject line, it's usually just some bit of jokiness or cleverness.

[gmalivuk]

Do people frequently retitle their posts outside of the Time thread?

[hendusoone]

I've created a userstyle to clean up a lot of the things I don't like. It works with both prosilver and AllanStyle-subsilver. If you want to use it, drop it into the userstyle manager of your choice, and update the URLs to match whatever you typically use to access the forums (though that really shouldn't matter, since they're all valid URLs). Depending on the theme you use, you may also want to replace "AllanStyle-SUBSILVER" in URLs with "prosilver".

Code: Select all

   /* put user info on left, post content on right */
   .postprofile {
      float: left;
      border-width: 0px 1px 0px 0px;
   }
   .postbody {
      float: right;
      padding-left: 5px;
   }
   form#viewprofile .postbody {
      float: left;
      padding: none;
   }
   
   /* fix location of online tag */
   .online>.inner>.postprofile   {
      background-image: url("http://forums.xkcd.com/styles/AllanStyle-SUBSILVER/theme/en/icon_user_online.gif");
      background-position: 100% 0;
      background-repeat: no-repeat;
   }
   .online {
      background-image: none;
   }
   
   /* remove text blur */
   .username, .username-coloured {
      text-shadow: none;
   }   
   a {
      text-shadow: none;
   }
   
   /* fix avatar transparency, remove rounded corners */
   .postprofile .avatar img {
      background-color: transparent;
      border: none;
      box-shadow: none;
      border-radius: 0;
   }
   
   /* fix long titles on user profile page */
   form#viewprofile .left-box {
      width: 20%;
   }
   form#viewprofile .left-box .profile-avatar {
      text-align: center;
   }
   form#viewprofile .left-box.profile-details {
      width: 80%;
   }
   
   /* fix signatures - always fully visible */
   .signature {
      opacity: 1;
   }
   
   /* fix alignment of titles */
   h2 {
      text-align: left;
   }
   
   /* stop stupid animation of icons */
   .topic_read_hot_mine {
      background-image: url("http://forums.xkcd.com/styles/AllanStyle-SUBSILVER/theme/images/topic_read_mine.gif");
   }
   .topic_read_hot {
      background-image: url("http://forums.xkcd.com/styles/AllanStyle-SUBSILVER/theme/images/topic_read.gif");
   }
   .topic_unread_hot_mine {
      background-image: url("http://forums.xkcd.com/styles/AllanStyle-SUBSILVER/theme/images/topic_unread_mine.gif");
   }
   .topic_unread_hot {
      background-image: url("http://forums.xkcd.com/styles/AllanStyle-SUBSILVER/theme/images/topic_unread.gif");
   }
   
   /* remove max width */
   #wrap {
      max-width: none;
   }


Note that there will be some issues on user profile pages with narrow screen widths (like on a phone). I don't care enough to fix them.

[Giant Speck]

Haven't been here for a couple days, but thank you for fixing egosearch.

[gmalivuk]

Haven't been here for a couple days, but thank you for fixing egosearch.

What?

[Giant Speck]

When the forum software was updated, I lost my egosearch. It only showed this thread and one other thread. But now it's working. I assume someone did something and now that they have, it's working. That's why I was giving thanks.

[K-R]

I've created a userstyle to clean up a lot of the things I don't like. It works with both prosilver and AllanStyle-subsilver. If you want to use it, drop it into the userstyle manager of your choice, and update the URLs to match whatever you typically use to access the forums (though that really shouldn't matter, since they're all valid URLs). Depending on the theme you use, you may also want to replace "AllanStyle-SUBSILVER" in URLs with "prosilver".

Cheers, that's much better.

I'm still getting the issue of the 'go to first unread post' button landing me some arbitrary distance above the first unread post. It was just exactly one post the first couple of times, but recently it's just been completely random in terms of both posts and pixels.

[Flumble]

I'm still getting the issue of the 'go to first unread post' button landing me some arbitrary distance above the first unread post. It was just exactly one post the first couple of times, but recently it's just been completely random in terms of both posts and pixels.

This is bugging me too. For some reason images are treated as having zero height when jumping to the anchor and subsequently the images are loaded and the page is moving downwards.

Maybe someone like Xanthir can shed some light on this behaviour?

[edit] it seems the only solutions are to hardcode image sizes (unfeasible due to external image urls), delay the first layout until the images are fetched (unfeasible in terminis) or jump to the anchor with javascript after the page is loaded.

[flicky1991]

When the forum software was updated, I lost my egosearch. It only showed this thread and one other thread. But now it's working. I assume someone did something and now that they have, it's working. That's why I was giving thanks.

Well, it's still broken for me.

[Link]

I'm afraid I'm one of the main reasons people retitle their posts in the Time thread: I've written a user script that does so automatically. I've adjusted said user script to prepend 1990: "Time": to the title, but it may take a while before everyone updates the script (I think most people who use it have downloaded it from mrob27's site, since he made some important adjustments to it -- so he'll need to copy my changes so everyone gets an automatic update).

[gmalivuk]

When the forum software was updated, I lost my egosearch. It only showed this thread and one other thread. But now it's working. I assume someone did something and now that they have, it's working. That's why I was giving thanks.

Does it still work after you refresh the page? When I search your posts and have it display threads, it still only shows the two results, after refreshing the page once.

[Xanthir]

I'm still getting the issue of the 'go to first unread post' button landing me some arbitrary distance above the first unread post. It was just exactly one post the first couple of times, but recently it's just been completely random in terms of both posts and pixels.

This is bugging me too. For some reason images are treated as having zero height when jumping to the anchor and subsequently the images are loaded and the page is moving downwards.

Maybe someone like Xanthir can shed some light on this behaviour?

[edit] it seems the only solutions are to hardcode image sizes (unfeasible due to external image urls), delay the first layout until the images are fetched (unfeasible in terminis) or jump to the anchor with javascript after the page is loaded.

Yeah, the "loading images makes the text jump" issue is an annoying one. If the images are uploaded to our server, you can compute the size and hardcode it in the HTML, but yeah, external ones are a no-go.

We (Chrome) are actually gonna try and experiment with fixing this automatically, so your scroll position is "stable" to changes outside the viewport. Probably sometime this year.

[rmsgrey]

I'm still getting the issue of the 'go to first unread post' button landing me some arbitrary distance above the first unread post. It was just exactly one post the first couple of times, but recently it's just been completely random in terms of both posts and pixels.

This is bugging me too. For some reason images are treated as having zero height when jumping to the anchor and subsequently the images are loaded and the page is moving downwards.

Maybe someone like Xanthir can shed some light on this behaviour?

[edit] it seems the only solutions are to hardcode image sizes (unfeasible due to external image urls), delay the first layout until the images are fetched (unfeasible in terminis) or jump to the anchor with javascript after the page is loaded.

Yeah, the "loading images makes the text jump" issue is an annoying one. If the images are uploaded to our server, you can compute the size and hardcode it in the HTML, but yeah, external ones are a no-go.

We (Chrome) are actually gonna try and experiment with fixing this automatically, so your scroll position is "stable" to changes outside the viewport. Probably sometime this year.

Meanwhile, one standard solution I've seen used widely is to jump to anchor on first layout, and then re-jump after load-completion (unless the viewport has been manually shifted in the meantime).

Making the browser cope automatically would be nice, though I can see why it hasn't been done yet - doing it with a fixed viewport position would be bad enough, but allowing for user-controlled movement while loading is going to cause all sorts of problems (locking the viewport, while an improvement over having it jump up several screens unexpectedly, would be a significant loss of functionality in the cases where the page height doesn't change significantly after first layout)

[Lazy Tommy]

It seems like most of this discussion is about how cramped the new look is on actual computers. I haven't read the whole thread, but I hope I can be forgiven for chiming in anyway, and say that the new look is awful, as in ridiculously cramped, on my iPhone, too.

For people with poor eyesight, this may be an improvement, but for me, it makes the experience much worse than before. You're basically showing less than a quarter of the amount of content per screen than before.

Obligatory xkcd reference: https://xkcd.com/869/

Except that this is even worse, because there's no "give me back the old desktop version" link.

If you're trying to chase off smartphone users, you're doing a great job.

[Izawwlgood]

My ego search is also acting wonky. Suggestions?

[SecondTalon]

Except that this is even worse, because there's no "give me back the old desktop version" link.

Near as I can tell, there is no Mobile Version or Desktop Version. It's the same site, it just renders based on your display.

Or, that's the theory at least.

[Thesh]

Responsive Design is the technical term:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsive_web_design

[Dan H]

Thanks for all your hard work.

+1 on this feature request:

how do I get to the current comic page from the forum? - "xkcd" in the banner doesn't appear to be a link (IE11)

The old forums had a useful clicky link thingy that went to the xkcd front page (with the current comic) if you clicked on the "xkcd" near the top of the forums page.

Yes, "clicky link thingy" is the correct technical term for hyperlink.

[Soupspoon]

Responsive Design is the technical term:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsive_web_design

"The first site to feature a layout that adapts to browser viewport width was Audi.com launched in late 2001..."

So, back in the mid '90s, my (now discouraged) use of <TABLE> elements for positioning (with definition of absolute, relative and 'remainder' sizing, that even disparate browsers usually handled well) and later on similar things with <FRAME>ing and <FRAMESET> elements (now fully deprecated) didn't count as 'viewport adaptable' and thus Responsive?

The Wheel, it seems, Reinvented.

[Giant Speck]

When the forum software was updated, I lost my egosearch. It only showed this thread and one other thread. But now it's working. I assume someone did something and now that they have, it's working. That's why I was giving thanks.

Does it still work after you refresh the page? When I search your posts and have it display threads, it still only shows the two results, after refreshing the page once.

Nope, it just broke again.

[Izawwlgood]

Egosearch is still wonky. Is there some new setting I'm missing?

[gmalivuk]

As you can see from the rest of this thread, egosearch is broken for just about everybody.