Mahz's Dev Journal

[Ellri]

On the chat log, @Mahz...

Right now, browsing it can be a bit tricky, due to the plain text nature.

Suggestion:
Make the logs have "columns".
One column for date, one for time, one for nick speaking, one for message. If message stretches over multiple lines, start second line of it indented to the same distance as the first is.

Coloration. while it might be a bit rainbowey, nicks will be easier to track down if colored same as in the chat itself.
Is it impractical to have the log system tag [@Mentions] of your nick the same way in the log as it does in the chat itself? (i.e. highlit background) Or would that be too cluttered-looking?

[Mahz]

@Ellri Yeah, I'd like the chatlog to emulate chat more closely. Just can't justify the effort right now. For now it's essentially just a textfile dump like you'd get from an IRC client dump.

@Mahz On your VM wall, i can't see the white OP text on the blue corner ribbon of your first post. I'm currently posting from mobile, but can still see the OP text on this thread's post corners. I'll see if I can post a screenshot.

@SilverRain

I actually just left the ribbon blank. Didn't know what to put there. The ribbon is supposed to represent the person who owns the wall that the VM is posted on.

"Wallmaster"?

[Ellri]

indenting the lines would do wonders for browsing it mahz. the other ideas we threw up were for a later evolution.

a bit note up top that all log times are in UTC might also help prevent a lot of confused users.

[SilverRain]

Hehe wallmaster... Sounds nifty if it does get implemented. :)

If I was decorating, I'd probably fill my ribbons with random emoticons to confuse my readers. :p

^ Just had chocolate, so feeling a bit mischievous and random. Do not let near confetti. :P

[SilverRain]

Though interesting, my VMs count on my profile shows as "1", even though I have 3 (one which is my posting, and two others which were also done by me, but in reply to my original one).

Edit: Never mind. Just realised VM count is only of those in the main branch.

The "Click here and begin writing" doesn't auto vanish when I click on it. No that it matters, but just thought I'd note it here.

I like the nested reply structure - it makes it easy to scan through than a mass collection of post-its. :)

[Blizz]

Tyah... Looks like iDevices seem to be annoying in that regard. Looks like you'll need third party software to copy image addresses *properly* - since simply "Copy" ... really does something far too ambiguous to be reliable. Especially if the image also serves as a link or is otherwise not only image. Is it a specific image you're trying to use? Can you link the page it is on? I can short-term just fetch you its location...

@Shienvien

Volcanic salamander mask

Vog cub coat

[Noxious]

I know you've got a lot on your plate all powerful @Mahz, but I was wandering if you could make it so that we could resize images in the bbc code? No rush. It is just so easy to type [ img=200x100 ].

You awesome.

[Mahz]

@Noxious Good idea! I'll try to get that working when I add the [font] tag that people have been requesting.

[Blizz]

@ShienvienI think I got them to work now,some attempts I'm doing just for this post
Drop da bass animated meme

My Hider

knowyourmeme.com/photos/908697-steven-..

And...what ever this is .-.
google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=no+fucks+g..

[LegendBegins]

Would it be possible to add an option that increases the number of posts per page?

[Blizz]

-sees legend- o_o

[Blizz]

Finally the links work,some don't but WOOOOOOOOOOOO

google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=yeaaaahhhh..

OH YEAHHHH

[LegendBegins]

-sees legend- o_o

@Blizz

Yes; I am a very common participant of the Dev Journal.

[Blizz]

Kazuto is better than kakashi hatake,at least he didn't have face issues

google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=shots+fire..

[Melkor]

@Mahz Would it be an eventual possibility to revive email notifications for subscriptions? Unless it is already implemented and I'm just blind.

[Ellri]

It is planned for eventual implementation, @Melkor. When that will happen is not a sure thing yet, though.

[datadogie]

@Mahz, I have a small idea, I dunno if it has been suggested before.

It would be great if there was an option to disallow players from posting in the IC until the GM / Co-GM(s) grant them access. Of course, this would be an option, able to be disabled/enabled. This would be handy for preventing random players popping in RPs, and would also be handy before the RP is to start; I've occasionally seen RPers that can't contain their excitement and just start the IC on their own. It would also be handy for private RPs.

[Ellri]

@datadogie This is planned as a possible feature to add in the extended GM toolkit, but we'll add it to the list for that so its not forgotten by accident.

[Mahz]

I ran out of time this weekend before I could finish any of the other things I wanted to get done.

Finished:

• Visitor Message System (beta)
  As I announced a few pages ago, I did finish and deploy the very basic start of a Visitor Message system.
  
  You can find a "Visitor Messages" tab on everyone's user profile and they'll receive a notification every time they receive a new message or when someone adds a reply to a VM on their page.
  
  However, the system doesn't currently send notifications when someone replies to your VMs on other walls, nor does it notify you when someone replies to a VM that you've replied to, so right now it only helps you stay on top of VM convos that may be happening on your own profile. Once I address some of these basic limitations, I'll make it the basic tab on the user profile.

Unfinished progress:

• Subscription Notifications
  On my development server, I've created a new notification type that notifies you whenever one of your subscribed topics receives new posts. If you already have a notification for a topic/roleplay, then the existing notification just updates to say "This subscribed topic 42 unread replies".
  
  I got that working, but I ran out of time thinking about how to automatically and performantly discard that notification once you read the thread instead of forcing your to manually delete that notification. I really want to avoid "notification blindness", and the crux of it involves making the system delete notifications for you.
  
  However, this feature is 90% finished and I hope to finish it next weekend. This is the feature that I'm going to build email-notifications on top of so you'll be able to opt-in to receive emails when subscriptions have unread messages.
• Mobile-friendliness for chat
  I spent all my time trying to figure out a good way to test my local development site from my iPhone. Sorry @Hank. I have some ideas of how I can address the issues, but I didn't have time to validate them.
• Saving drafts of posts
  This is a feature I got to 90% completion *last* weekend but totally forgot about until last night. Along with subscription notifications, finishing this feature is my goal for this coming weekend. Once finished, I think it will be an amazing experience for people to submit a post, encounter an error (internet dead, server rebooting, etc), visit the thread a few hours later, and find that their post is 100% intact ready to be resubmitted.
• Tracking post edit-history
  I spent an hour on Saturday building a quick system that saved all of a post's edits in the database along with who made the edit and when.
  
  There are a lot of good features I can build on top of this feature, but once I vetted my approach, I abandoned my progress to go back to working on other features.
  
  One feature that derives from this one is the feature that allows GMs and co-GMs to edit a special shared post in each roleplay tab. Being able to browse the post's revision history will make everyone accountable for their edits and allow the GMs/mods to rollback a post after a vandalizing edit is made.

So those are my plans for next weekend. I'm looking forward to these upcoming features!

[Ellri]

Nice progress, @Mahz.