OSNews

Does it work ?

Yes, it works just fine. It does take a little getting used to the collapsed appearance though.

I prefer expanded. Does indeed look very nice though, thanks a ton OS New! This site just keeps getting better and better.

Expanded is also more my cup of tea. Slashdot's way of collapsing all but the highest-rated ones is neat, but only really applicable on highly contentious and commented-on articles ...

Is this a bug? I see a 'more' link but the comment_id parameter is blank, which apparently causes it to be redirected to index.php ... possibly the proper variable name isn't being used?

Is there a cvsweb-style viewer for the OSNews source code so I can take a peek?

It's fixed. Sorry about that.

Ah, thanks. Is the "More" link supposed to contain the entire subtree starting from the node that links to it? All I'm seeing is a single comment.

Hope you don't mind my poking holes

Oh, weird; it looks like it was outputting the "More" link when it reached the maximum level of nesting, but that it wasn't putting an ID in because no comments existed below that level. Once I posted the above comment, either the bug was fixed or the code added the proper comment_id to the 'more' link ...

In other words, looks like an off-by-one error.

yes it does

Nvm, looks like a pref that must be set ...

Ditto. Thanks, folks. This threaded view is VERY slick, and I think it will help some of us navigate the site a little more easily.

It's good that folks who like flat mode still have that option, too. :-)

Very nice...

thanks for your work, osnews is great!

testing123

Let's see how far it will indent before auto-collapsing!

Also, let's see if they ever implement LiveJournal-style inline comment boxes (I've been meaning to implement that in my code, as well) ...

Testing

[FreeBSD mindset]
Can we cvsup to 3.1 then?
[/FreeBSD mindset]

;)

It also appears that the nesting goes four deep, then the 'more' link takes you only to the fifth reply and it's parent. The sixth reply shows up back on the main page and we start the nesting again.

The sixth reply is still nested. That was a bug, in which the read_thread page didn't ring up as a reply, but it's changed. It's clear we need a better way to view threads once they get more than four deep.

Perhaps a change to "read_thread" is in order.

You have to select it in your preferences.

Thanks, already found out about it.

I guess I am too used slash.

hmmm. try now.

In expanded view it still doens't work.

And it seems if I go to a specific comment (even my own, see link below) I can then vote up or down on them.

http://www.osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=11684&comment_id=23150

Ok, it should work now, I was able to replicate it.

It does indeed work now.

Awesome!

Threading is very nice indeed!

The more thing is useful: it keeps the comments from being cluttered. Also, I'd suggest to show in some way how many more comments are hidden by this "more".

Ha ha! I fixed that yesterday! I just haven't implemented it. Hovering over a topic should be available very soon.

Edit by AS: Scratch that, I just activated it. It should be available within a few minutes, when the cache next refreshes.

well at 3:30 CEST it still is not active.

Yup, still not working here...

Everyone knows what ++ means. It's a joke. Have a freakin' sense of humor.

I think he was trying to be funny

Someone obviously doesn't understand the concept of operator overloading ;-)

Obviously he was using fixed point not floating point. Who'd use floating point for version numbering? ;-)

Sounds good.

Numbering comments isn't going to work. It might have worked if we designed v3 to work that way, but we didn't, so I don't think it's practical, nor do I think the benefits are worth the time to do it. It would be cool, in hindsight, though.

Rating stories is something I'm all for, but not everyone agrees with me. Perhaps this is good topic for discussion here now. Would you all like to be able to rate ALL stories? And furthermore, would you like to see the ratings on the front page?

>Numbering comments isn't going to work. It might
>have worked if we designed v3 to work that way, but
>we didn't, so I don't think it's practical, nor do I
>think the benefits are worth the time to do it. It
>would be cool, in hindsight, though.

Pity. Maybe during the next big overhaul!

>Rating stories is something I'm all for, but not
>everyone agrees with me. Perhaps this is good topic
>for discussion here now. Would you all like to be
>able to rate ALL stories? And furthermore, would you
>like to see the ratings on the front page?

Well, since I brought it up I *will* vote for it.

Yes, I would very much like to be able to rate all stories and double yes that I'd like to see it on the front page. I hate to say it, but every now and then a dumb story (or factually incorrect one) slips through. It would be great to be able to avoid clicking into the story to find out. Having a "hide stories with score less than X" preference is the next logical step, but unessecary I think. Just showing the current score on the front page would be a boon.

Why not do some AJAX (for the browsers that support it), reload the page continioulsy in the background, on each iteration make new posts stand out. Eclipse has a nice way of marking importnat stuff in/by the scrollbar, it might be possible for to do something similar.

In any case, doing post numbering in javascript shouldn't be hard, isn't comment_id incremented with each post? Just sort them in an array and add the array index to the post.

One more thing:

when I decide to switch to a lower threshold I have an idea of where to look for those missing messages since they are not on their own page any more

Yeah, it's funny how that works. When we used to mod down comments the old way, when they were on their own page, users would flock to the comments to "see what was so bad that it got modded down." But see, the idea is that users mod down comments so people don't have to see the junk. We don't really want it all on a page, we want it out of the conversation, so to speak. You know?

>When we used to mod down comments the old way, when
>they were on their own page, users would flock to
>the comments to "see what was so bad that it got
>modded down." But see, the idea is that users mod
>down comments so people don't have to see the junk.
>We don't really want it all on a page, we want it
>out of the conversation, so to speak. You know?

I understand the concept, but it has the opposite affect sometimes. Maybe I should just set my threshold lower, but items that get -5 would still draw my attention.

I like the fact that modded down comments can be segregated from the primary conversation. But the curiosity to see what was so bad it got modded down is still there.

We can do that if we dispense with indenting. Groklaw isn't confined to some of the rules we impose on ourselves, like the usable screen width. There simply isn't enough room for us to constantly indent without wrapping.

Groklaw is "ehhh" for my tastes, but the indenting here in expanded threaded view is really da-bomb. I vote for keeping indenting.

I just have to ask, has anyone really sent you a gift certificate?

You could be the first!!

I'm going to hold you to that. Expect something in the mail next week.

I can't wait until Threading goes live for registered users.

Uh.... threading *is* live for registered users. Instead of screenshots, navigate to your preferences and turn threading on in the section that says "View."

Yup. It would have a smoother learning curve if there was a dropdown at the top of the page right next to Browse At: [-1 ].

And..... done.

"I don't really see the point in numbering the changes to OSNews. Does anybody really care if it's 3.0 or 3.1? I can't even see anywhere on the site where it gives the version number, besides these types of posts."

Nope. No one cares and it doesn't matter. It's just fun because lots of people use the site and enjoy new features.

Well, you don't have to reply to an IP, if you choose the "reply" to a comment, it will be linked, so you'll see which Anonymous it's directed to.

There are simply too many users who prefer to use the site anonymously for us to disable this access, although I agree that it would very likely raise the quality of the posts around here.

When you start submitting them!

Now when will you focus on accurate & decent news articals?

Name on recent newsitem that was untrue.


--Thom Holwerda

Yes, "friends" is now active in user profiles. I'm going to try and find a better way to allow adding in the comments as well.

(additional comment)
This wouldn't add more database lookups. If the users has post-tracking set, it would be stored in a cookie as well. If there's no cookie, don't do it :-)

Yep, that's a good point.

It's not a good point. Name me one CMS (backend AND frontend) that will *for sure* render well on every browser, no matter how obscure it is. And then I mean PDA browsers, phone browsers, text-based, Net+, the whole shite.

Then we'll talk.

--Thom Holwerda

Your post doesn't make any sense. If they feel like reinventing the wheel, its their right to do so. I am sure they have their own technical and 'political' reasons. You don't pay them to do this do you? So why are complaining? It's newsworthy because it concerns the site. Anyone who regularly visits would be interested in changes, this is especially true considering that one of the new features is threaded views.

Secondly, who are you to decide whats not newsworthy? If you don't like this article, just don't spend your time on it. Simple!

How is this ANY different than someone whining about there being too many Linux distributions? Is it SO incomprehensible that we want to have our own, unique CMS that renders in multiple browsers?

You writing a CMS and updating it when it is closed source and non-distributed isnt exactly what I would call news-worthy.

You grousing about our CMS is what I'd call class A trolling.

Translation: Waaaah, how dare you not use OSS?

The above rant is ridiculous. First off, threading is not just for subscription members, it's for all registered users, paid or not, rendering the entire rant about "lame excuses" completely pointless.

Secondly, this site is not just for "/. kiddies," as described, but, rather, for anyone. We're not catering to just the "News for Nerds" crowd, and we want our site available and understandable to anyone.

Just because you understand threading does not mean most people do; we have done our research, and, not entirely surprisingly, most people do not. This "hogwash," sadly, is your own opinion, one that's founded on principals we've specifically said are not our goals.