New Talk 1: New "topic" pages | General comments

Hi. We've rolled out some changes to Talk. Right now they are restricted to the "topic" pages—the pages with all the actual messages on them, as opposed to the "Talk" page you get when you hit the "Talk" tab.

PLEASE DO NOT REPORT BUGS HERE. Report them here:

* General bugs: http://www.librarything.com/topic/116770
* Touchstone and about bugs: http://www.librarything.com/topic/116772

Features include:

1. Design has changed but not radically. Things have been centralized and simplified, with only one line of "chrome" per message.

2. Group listed on topic pages, with picture.

3. A new "About" feature on every topic, allowing members to record when the topic really and truly concerns a given book. The "About" feature is designed to make it easier to find conversations about a book rather than just mentioning it.

CAVEAT: The feature has no "outlet" now. It's not showing up on the "Talk" tag. Obviously, we know this!

4. New posts, edits and deletes happen without reloading the page (they "ajax in"). This should SIGNIFICANTLY improve the experience with very long posts. Note that it still "changes page" if you post an entirely new topic.

5. Post area improved by making it adjust to the size of what you're typing as you type.

6. "Preview" option for posts, showing HTML markup and etc.

7. Touchstones working again and better. (Series touchstones coming soon. We dropped them to get it out today.) They should be as updated as the general site-wide search. The result order is tweaked somewhat to prefer exact matches over popular matches.

8. Changing of touchstones happens in a lightbox. Lightbox code has been fixed site-wide so that it should not longer "jumps you up" to the top of the page, especially on Internet Explorer.

9. Posts are always "there" immediately. No "wait for it" messages.

10. If you post something but other people have posted in the meantime, the new posts will also show up when you post your message. (We have declined right now to make an "update this" button that updates WITHOUT posting, but we may do that.)

11. Touchstones remember their work/author without clumsy numbers.

12. Flagging is simplified a bit, although not different underneath.

13. Mark-as-read changes colors and so forth, showing you more clearly where you're marked as reading until.

14. Pages have been slimmed considerably in size. JavaScript and CSS have been trimmed and honed. Pages should be faster, although the primary speed effect will be the end of reloading whole pages every time you post.

I think that's it for now!

I'm still poking and everything, but the first thing I notice is that when I post a response, I get a bright yellow flash, and the page jumps around. First to the top and then back again. It's kind of weird. I'm sure I'll get used to it, but at least for now it's a bit disconcerting.

Also, the new touchstone interface is promising, but the new book I tested that wasn't working with the old one still doesn't show quite right. Probably that needs to go to the touchstone bug thread.

I'm really liking the way the topic pages look! It's going to take some getting used to, but the Add A Message dialogue is nice, and the new shape of the message headers and everything.

ETA: When I posted my reply, it showed "3. keristars" but when I refreshed the page to find the missing "2.", it fixed itself. Does this go to a bug report?

Sweet! I can see if an image will actually load before I post!

1. How do I get to jump to the top of the page if I don't want to add a message to the thread?

2. When I click on "Preview", nothing happens. Why?

4> Preview is working fine for me.

It should show your post below the Add a Message box.

#4 Re jump to top of page, its the little arrow symbol at the far right of the coloured bar.

A reminder: If there are bugs, please put them on the bug threads.

pretty nice so far :)

Looks good so far. My only complaint is the large amount of white space around the reply/more links. It's especially noticeable in shorter messages.

Editing to test.

Testing this out to see if there is a difference between "Reply" and "Add a message" as far as how it looks when I post it.

ETA: I guess there isn't. What's the point of "Reply" then?

10 "What's the point of "Reply" then?" It's available at any post in a long thread not just at the bottom.

>11. Makes sense. I figured it would act more like an actual reply that quotes or automatically adds the >11 part.

There seems to be a good deal more whitespace than there used to be; is that true, or just a perception due to other changes?

Also, on Firefox 3.6.17 (I'm waiting for a few more wrinkles to be ironed out before switching), the colored bars (with the poster's name and time/date) have an incomplete outline; the upper corners, with outline, are rounded and the lower corners, without outline, are sharp. This is very unattractive; bug or feature?

>10-12

It worked that way before too. Jeremy didn't notice it either.

Really liking it so far, ESPECIALLY the preview. Gonna be such a timesaver.

Yes. Compare. Now, obviously we can change it. Should we?

I like the extra space between the message and the reply|more links, but I realized that I kind of liked the little arrows, too. It was kind of a nice visual anchor for the bottom of the post. (or maybe it was the bold "Message #" of the next post)

The options at the bottom of each message ("Reply", "More", etc.) are actions...except for "Link". That should really put the URL into the clipboard rather than doing nothing.

It will take some getting used to, but not too shabby so far. Only thing is it seems to be loading a bit slower for me than it did this morning. Am I the only one seeing this? And/or, is it just a byproduct of it being 4:30, and the entire east coast is checking their e-mail before knocking off?

18>

"Link" doesn't do nothing, it puts the permalink to that particular message into the URL bar, so you can cut&paste it.

Adding my vote to the "There's way too much whitespace" side. Maybe for longer messages it wouldn't be so grating, but on this thread there's more blank space than there is text.

Let's see how it's working on iOS...

...works great!

I've changed where the "X unread" appears, moving it from the left--where it was next to the total number of messages--to the right, next to "Jump to first unread." The latter is also called "jump to bottom" if there are no unread messages.

It will take some getting used to, but not too shabby so far. Only thing is it seems to be loading a bit slower for me than it did this morning. Am I the only one seeing this? And/or, is it just a byproduct of it being 4:30, and the entire east coast is checking their e-mail before knocking off?

I suspect it's because we keep invalidating the JavaScript and CSS cache as we fix bugs. It should get better. The fundamentals are strong—better than before—so it will either settle down or we can tweak it to be faster.

>20: Any hyperlink does that. I think putting it into the clipboard would be a lot friendlier.

>23

Yes. I see your point. The way it worked before involved a Flash script--the only way to put in the clipboard. To get that we needed the lightbox. Shall we reinstitute the lightbox we had before?

23>

I misunderstood, then, I thought you were saying it was broken, not that you thought it was sub-optimal.

>24: Since it's not exactly a major feature, I can live with it either way...but I'd vote "yes" to putting the light box back. Otherwise, I might as well just right-click and grab the URL from the context menu.

ETA: Another thing, if you use a lightbox, you should be able to avoid the jump of the screen as the page is scrolled to that link. It's a somewhat-unexpected visual jump.

Test Reply button. Works.
Test preview. Works.

touchstone.... Can't test, my browser/keyboard issue. (I never noticed before, but I do not have square brackets)

ok, it works for my Droid/phone browser.

Edit: edit test

Okay for me so far.

Is it just me or is everything more..squooshed? Seems like there is a lot of white space on the borders of the pages and the posts themselves seem 'squeezed' in between. Might just be my imagination though.

I'd suggest putting back the link on the message number (you could do this in addition to the one under more). Having it under More only is unnecessarily fiddly. If it bothers you visually, you don't have to underline it or turn it blue. But it's much more handy that way.

Okay, yes, the size of the posts are definitely a lot smaller than before. There is a thread I visit with a picture at the top, and now that I visit it the picture actually gets cut off because the width of the post is so small. I have to stretch my window out further to see it.

I know that the size of the posts adjusts to the size of the user's screen, but the bar on the top-right of the topic page is a lot wider than before, and it's shrinking the size of the actual posts quite a bit.

I don't have a huge monitor or a high screen resolution (1152 x 864) so the posts are quite squooshed, to use my initial word.

But it's much more handy that way.

The same number of clicks though, and now it's in a place on the UI that doesn't require prior knowledge of its existence. No?

I don't have a huge monitor or a high screen resolution (1152 x 864) so the posts are quite squooshed, to use my initial word.


What browser and OS are you on?

I'd like the edited notice to appear prominently in the message itself, like it used to. I generally have no reason to look at the time of posting.

I find it fiddly. Do you think it's important enough to take up the space?

Oh, it's not so much a browser issue as it is merely a sizing problem. My browser uses individual windows instead of tabs, and they're a little small. The top-right bar (the one that lists the books posted on a page, and now has the group picture listed and whatnot) has been widened, so naturally the width of the posts shrinks. *shrug* No big deal, I just have to start increases the size of my browser's windows, I guess.

>35 Maybe suppress it if it's only been a minute or two since posting, but otherwise, I do think it can be important.

>32
I agree - at least (if you are curious) 'more' is there to click to see what other options you have, whereas you had to know to click on the message number for that before!

Luuuuuvvvvvvv the preview - not sure about all the white space, but it is probably only a matter of getting used to it. It is definitely brighter (on my screen) now - LOL! I HAD noticed the reply on every message before - even used it once (once - *sigh*) to immediately reply to a post without reading the rest...I guess we usually read them all or at least the last one.

I do love the fact that this group does not accept members but says directly below it that I am a member - where has the 'watched' bit gone? Can't I see it because I am already doing that?

It is all very nice Tim.

Edit: just trying out an edit...I am not all that fussed about how prominent the edit signal is...

Thanks Zoe for the question about the edit mark. I use it very often and like it to be prominent. Let me try a book that's never touchstoned Be Different: Adventures of a Free-Range Aspergian. Nope, still not there.
No, the sidebar says it's not there, but the preview shows blue. Hm. I do like the preview feature.

Well, I think that edit mark is just as good - I usually look at the time on each message as I am in another time zone though.

That's interesting. The preview showed Be Different: Adventures of a Free-Range Aspergian as blue, but the final post shows only Touchstone error. That won't work. I would still want the title to show, even if not touchstoned.

I'm also not sure what I think about the group link at the top taking us to the top of the list of messages rather than to the top of the whole group page. I think I preferred it the old way.

>42
Not sure what you mean Zoe - both take me to the group page, as before.

That link always went to the top of the topics, rather than to the top of the page - but I agree tyhat top of the page would be better.

I hate the yellow flash.

Oh, that's so strange. I really don't remember it going to the topics before.

Anyway, I think the top would be better regardless of the previous situation :)

I agree!

yeah - not so sure about the yellow flash either.

OK, I see the edit on my posts easily. Well done.

I remember it going to the top of the topics, too - which was a nuisance when what I wanted to do was check on something in the description, or look at the picture!

I don't mind the yellow flash nearly as much as the jumping.

Someone describe to me how they are getting the touchstone error? (The wording is my attempt to put some code in that would trap future problems.)

Incidentally, Chris didn't post about it, but the white space has all but vanished. He's removed 20px of white space.

I remember it going to the top of the topics, too - which was a nuisance when what I wanted to do was check on something in the description, or look at the picture!

What's going on here? I don't understand the reference.

I don't mind the yellow flash nearly as much as the jumping.

We'll work on the "jumping." I think a little jumping is much preferable to reloading the whole page, though.

>32. I had NO IDEA that's how people got permalinks in the past. I never would have known how to do it if the More link wasn't just invented. So I have to say this method is far more intuitive.

>51

Danke.

The distance from the message to the reply/more links is good now, but I still think there's too much white space between the reply/more links and the following message.

What's going on here? I don't understand the reference.

The issue is whether clicking on the group link at the top of a Talk thread should take you to the top of the group page (showing the description) or partway down the group page (where the discussion threads start).

>53

Oh, I can see it both ways. Which is right?

If it goes to the top of the topics new users will never read the group description before posting.

32> The same number of clicks though

No, it's not the same number of clicks. It's an extra click, at least.

Clicking on the message number would be like clicking Link. You can't click Link until you've already clicked More.

and now it's in a place on the UI that doesn't require prior knowledge of its existence. No?

I'm fine with you putting it there to help out the newbies, in addition. But please don't hobble your non-newbies by forcing them to use an interface solely designed for newbies.

>54 I don't know. I think it's probably better to show the group description, to give people a sense of what they're looking at. If people are first encountering the group through Talk, they'd want to see the description. If people are already familiar with the group and just wanted to see the threads, I'm not sure that the best way to get there is through an individual Talk thread anyway.

Regarding white space again, shouldn't all the spaces be the same? From bar to start of message, from message to edit/delete links, and from edit/delete links to next message? Having one of them larger just looks weird.

#58 I agree the larger space after the Reply/More links before next message does look inconsistent; it would be better if it were the same as other spacing.

Like it.

Too much whitespace, but meh - I'll get over that, as I will the repositioning of the edited message.

It all looks an improvement to me. Perhaps a minor aesthetic quibble over the full stop after the post number?

v

Just saw this in a random thread:

This message has been deleted by its author. (show)

I didn't click on the "show", but is this supposed to work like that now? If people delete messages, presumably it's because they'd rather not have them seen.

But please don't hobble your non-newbies by forcing them to use an interface solely designed for newbies.

That's the eternal tension here, and the newbies -- or the perceived needs of the newbies, since they themselves don't actually weigh in -- almost always win out.

I love it. New posts post faster and everything looks cleaner and brighter - I think it's all the white space. (Now I feel like I'm writing copy for a laundry detergent ad).

Anyhow, my only minor (and rather petty) criticism is that I'd rather have the Touchstones box at the top on the right sidebar instead of the Group and About boxes. These are probably useful for lots of people, but I post regularly in very few groups and it's easy to tell them apart (11 in 11 vs. 75 Books for 2011, for example) and I rarely read threads that focus on only one work or author. However, most of the threads I read are in the 11 in 11 and 75 Books groups, where I want to be able to see at a glance what people are reading in comparison to my library.

63> That's the eternal tension here, and the newbies -- or the perceived needs of the newbies, since they themselves don't actually weigh in -- almost always win out.

I hear you, but here's there's no "win", only "lose". Newbies needs don't "win" by having it only buried under More. I'd actually say having it both places is more likely to have a newbie find it (some people just won't click More).

#64

That one says only the usual "message deleted...", but I just saw another one with "show", #17 in this thread: http://www.librarything.com/topic/115430

This time I clicked, it threw me to the top of the thread, when I scrolled down the message was still there, with "hide" this time.

Very nice...

I particularly like the Lightbox fix

ETA: and the Preview

ETA2: and "Edited" being moved out of the message space

45> Actually, there's a difference, and I've no idea how it's set. For most of my groups, clicking the name at the top has put me on the list of topics, but Name that Book has always jumped to the top of the description - that was a deliberate choice, because we want people to read how to title their topics. As I said, I don't know how it was set, though.

>69 but Name that Book has always jumped to the top of the description

It never did for me.

70> OK...I can't remember exactly, it may have been clicking the name on the side on the Groups page that put me at the description instead of the topic list. What I remember is that NTB was different from the rest - now it's not. For all of them (that I tested), clicking the name at the top of a topic puts you at the topic list and clicking the name on the side of the group page puts you at the top of the description. Which makes sense, sort of...if you're already reading a thread in the group, you see the list of threads; if you're changing groups, you see the description. The only problem comes with people who get to a thread (through any of the many ways to do that - a link in a different thread, the Talk page, Conversations, etc) without seeing the group page at all and therefore never see the description. Not a major problem, I don't think, though.

>63. I am not a newbie and I had no idea how to get a permalink, although I knew it was possible because I saw others posting them. Given the various status of help on this website, and how hard it can be to find things out for oneself, these things are not always completely intuitive for newbies _or_ experienced users. If the UI can be made easier, everyone benefits. I am not arguing against having the permalink in two locations, just for having things that are easy to figure out.

I like the minimalism of the More/Less button. Agreed that the white space underneath it is too big; my eyes are drawn to it and away from the messages above and below. (I think my brain is tricked into believing the page is supposed to be white, and the text is just an interruption of the whiteness.)

I love the Preview button. Very clear and quiet.

Now let's see about this dreaded yellow flash...

Edit: That wasn't so bad.

I don't understand the white space complaint. It's maybe 20 px and helps set off the end of the reply with the top of the next message. It's a bit better without the larger gap between message and Reply | More, though I didn't mind that, either.

Anyway, I had a nap and am back to poking around, and I'm pretty excited to see more About Touchstone functionality. Currently it's not quite working right (I posted to the bug thread for it).

I don't really like not seeing the time for the original post when Edited, though. If a thread isn't particularly fast moving and a post gets edited at a later point, it can be useful to know when it was originally posted, you know?

Since others are asking for another edited note - why not include it in a new line like before, and keep the "Edited" in the header as it is, but continue using the original timestamp?

(Also, yeah, yellow flash isn't bad. It'll just take getting used to. And I've found the jumping around that comes with it isn't noticeable once the thread gets longer. It's worse when it's a new thread with only one or two replies. Possibly a cache thing?)

I would love it if there was a "Back to top" link at the bottom of the page, either right above or right below the "Add a message" box. Perhaps it could be like the bar at the top where the "star" and "ignore" options are -- "Back to top | Jump to group page" . . . something like that. I do use the little arrow icon, but I have to take a second to think about where to find it. I will probably do it without thinking after a few days -- but it's definitely not intuitive.

My brain and whitespace, the sequel: The eyes-being-drawn-away-from-the-text effect is less pronounced when messages are marked as read, which leads me to suspect I'm experiencing a problem with too much blue rather than too much white. I also think it's probably fatigue-related (eyes are now saying the Reply & More links are too bright blue in unread posts). Possibly these observations are best left ignored.

About timestamps, perhaps if it only changed to the time edited as long as no new message was posted to the thread, or else when the edit was made within, say, five minutes? And an extra line after either of those.

If we're going back to the "this message was edited at X time" line, perhaps make it the first instead of the last line of the message, preferably to the right, so the edited time is directly underneath the original time of posting?

Oh man! Discovery! I'm excited about this!

If I edit the last post in a thread, not only does it get a new timestamp, but it gets bumped to the top of the threads list as new. I think. I'm not sure if it actually shows new, since the only edits I've seen with this behavior were completely new to me or my own.

PS: I'm super loving almost all the Talk changes.

Just checking in to see what this yellow flash talk is all about.

Edit: Looks good to me.

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH.

Seriously? *probably shouldn't be here right now, so take post with a grain of salt*

First, I really really REALLY agree with the "too much whitespace!". It looks weird, it looks like.... like a site/forum that simply doesn't have enough stuff to show, so there's tons of white space, and it makes it look really bare. Don't like. At all.

So.... touchstones are working again? test: Imaginary Girls ..... YES! Awesome!

One thing I really don't like is the already-there "add a message" box. It's just... I don't know. I guess I'll get used to it, but I don't always *want* to reply to threads I read, and it just seems a little presumptuoous that it's already open (and it's so big! it feels very in-your-face)

Clicking on the message number would be like clicking Link. You can't click Link until you've already clicked More.

No. Clicking on the number wasn't like clicking the link. Rather, it brough up the lightbox. The first of the three options in the lightbox was a field showing the URL, which you could click to put the URL in your clipboard.

I'm fine with you putting it there to help out the newbies, in addition. But please don't hobble your non-newbies by forcing them to use an interface solely designed for newbies.

Look, I'm not totally against putting such a link in two places, but it would only a convenience and crutch for people used to the previous system. Nothing about it is faster than the current way, and it's a good deal less clear. Hoisting the flag of "power users vs. newbies" ("but here's there's no "win", only "lose") in a fight where the two solutions are so closely matched seems quite overdone to me.

From bar to start of message, from message to edit/delete links, and from edit/delete links to next message? Having one of them larger just looks weird.

I dunno. This is standard practice--you separate blocks by larger amounts according to the information hieararchy. If your structure is

Head for A
Content A
Features for A
Head for B
Content B
Features for B
...

you'd expect a larger gap between A and B than between the components of A and B.

As it is now, they're about the same. This post takes up 18 screens now and 17 in the previous format (on my computer set at such-and-such). But the difference is the white space. It's wider left and right areas.

It all looks an improvement to me. Perhaps a minor aesthetic quibble over the full stop after the post number?

I'm going to play with that. I think the current design is drawing your eye to the number, not the name.

Just saw this in a random thread:

This message has been deleted by its author. (show)

Can you tell me where? I believe that the show is coming from the fact that post was flagged into oblivion, and that you'd be showing a blank. But I need to see the situation.

That one says only the usual "message deleted...", but I just saw another one with "show", #17 in this thread: http://www.librarything.com/topic/115430>

That's most weird. I'll look at it.

ETA2: and "Edited" being moved out of the message space

Thanks. It's nice to see someone likes that. I think it's an example of a feature that's an overall win.

Now let's see about this dreaded yellow flash...

If people think it's too much, we can tone it down. The problem is that, when you don't flash the whole page--that is, by reloading it--you need some way to indicate that something has changed, and where. The "yellow fade" is the generally recognized way of doing this.

I do use the little arrow icon, but I have to take a second to think about where to find it.

Yes. I think I'm going to add a line at the bottom with an up-arrow.

PS: I'm super loving almost all the Talk changes.

Thanks.

The more I use this new system, the more I miss having the "return to top" link at the bottom of the page. I find myself constantly having to scroll up to find the hard-to-see arrow on some random post just to get back to the top.

#81> I agree and good to see Tim thinking about putting it back in.

Just popping back in to say that the more I use it, the more I like it. I still find myself trying to click on stuff that's now moved to a different place on the page, but overall I think everything is prettier and easier to use. And honestly, I have the world's worst memory, so by this time next week, I won't even remember what the old Talk pages looked like or if they were in any way better than the new format.

And, just to be different, I like the white space and the yellow "flash." (When people said yellow flash, I was thinking highlighter-yellow, full-screen, seizure-inducing craziness. But this is more butter-colored and just long/bright enough to say "Hey, this has changed." Because new posts show up so quickly that even with the yellow flash, I keep thinking that my post can't have gone through because the page reloaded too quickly.) As for the white space, it makes the text easier to read. I hate crowded webpages with too much content in too little space and too many different colors. Somehow it makes me feel claustrophobic (this may be the wrong phobia, but the way I feel when I go to the mall the day after Thanksgiving or the day before Christmas). Plain and simple works best for me, and this is very minimalist in a good way.

Alas or not, I have tightened up the space a good deal. Casvelyn, tell me if it's too crowded for your taste now...

You'll also notice the periods have vanished after the post number.

I am waiting for ConceptDawg to redesign the icon, to be darker and to add it at the end of every post too. It needs to match the icon visually.

>84 I wasn't quick enough! Do you think the date/time and Edited: (if used) could be moved a teensy bit to the left and a little more "activation space" be put around the 'go to top arrow'?

This would make it easier for the fat-fingered among us to use touch-screen devices!

Small thing, but is it possible to have a small roll-over text attached to the "up" icon? It's not completely apparent what that icon does without clicking on it first to find out... Does it send you up to the very beginning of the thread, to the previous post, to the first-unread post, or what? Having a small "back to top" rollover text would be wonderful.

edit: Wooooah, I definitely see the yellow flash now! That was crazy! It's very very noticable and it's very bright.... Can we at least tone it down a bit? It seems like a camera-flash it's so in-your-face!

Do you think the date/time and Edited: (if used) could be moved a teensy bit to the left and a little more "activation space" be put around the 'go to top arrow'?

Yes. Good idea. Chris?

Having a small "back to top" rollover text would be wonderful.

Maybe. I've tried very hard to remove unnecessary "chrome" or "scaffold." Adding " title='back to top'" would add 1-2% to a given page's size. I know it sounds small, but that's how I cut pages by so much.

Can we at least tone it down a bit?

I've toned it down.

It still works for me. I just like the clarity of it all - black text on white background with clear but unobtrusive headers separating each post. Not that the old format wasn't clear, but various web forums I frequent all seem to use bad text/background color combinations (black on gray, dark blue on light blue, white on black) and have too many different colors in the color scheme. Or they have a background, and each post is in a box with a second background color, and the text is in a third color and it's just too much. So really, I just like it because I find it easy to read and easy to skim through, looking for a specific post.

>90

I looked at various fora. Weirdly, some of the best have the world design. Metafilter's design is a train-wreck as far as I'm concerned--terrible colors, names at the END so you can't contextualize the post until you've finished reading it, ransom-note sizing, etc.

Anyway, I like our clean, uncluttered but dense look. Overall, I think it was improved.

I've changed "Post message" to "Save message" whenever you are editing an old message, not creating a new one.

>91 Also, I spend all day at work using a cheap early-90s CRT monitor with a really horrific burnt-in image of the standard Windows 98 desktop, so once I get home, if I'm going to do anything on the computer, it needs to be something easy to look at, even with my HD LCD monitor and anti-glare glasses.

I've added linking to member names (eg., jbd1).

See http://www.librarything.com/topic/116793

On Windows machines (and others for all I know), hitting the "Home" key in any sensible browser takes you to the top of the page. The nice thing about this is that webmasters can't edit your keyboard. :D

Now, something I would like would be if there was a link back to the group page at the end of each talk thread. Would save me a lot of clicks.

80> No. Clicking on the number wasn't like clicking the link.

I wasn't saying it "was" like clicking a link. I said "would be". I'm making a suggestion. But it's a moot point, as I never used the lightbox anyway.

But let me back up a minute. First off, there are two things that seem to be getting muddled. First off is that you don't have a lightbox or any fancy flash clipboard script today. So comparing what we have today to what we had before when I wanted to copy a URL:

Before:
1. Right-click on message #
2. Click copy to clipboard

Now:
1. Click More link
2. Right-click message Link link
3. Click copy to clipboard

So there you have the extra click.

Okay, so you have two possible changes:

Without lightbox, with Flash:
1. Click More link
2. Click Link and the link is copied to your clipboard with Flash

Great. Except for on the iPad/iPhone (not sure about Android/winphone). Also, it completely breaks normal expectations of web browsing. No one EVER expects clicking on a word that says "Link" will wind up copying anything to the clipboard.

So, another option with lightbox and Flash:
1. Click More link
2. Click Link and up comes a lightbox
3. Click Copy URL button on lightbox

Again, compare to the Before up there. Also, again with the iPad/iPhone problem.

And I haven't even gotten into middle-clicking. I sometimes middle-click specific posts to open them in new tabs. I do this for various reasons, but sometimes it's to compare posts, sometimes it's just because I want to leave a specific post up so I'll notice it when I come back to the computer an hour later, etc. So once again, you've added unnecessary steps to the equation on that one.

Hoisting the flag of "power users vs. newbies" ("but here's there's no "win", only "lose") in a fight where the two solutions are so closely matched seems quite overdone to me.

Actually, I didn't say "power users". I'm talking about anyone who's actually used their web browser very much at all. You think right-clicking a link is a power-user-only feature of a web browser? Maybe on Macs, but not really on windows. Plus I don't really see that making something easier for iPads and iPhones is making it more "power user".

If this doesn't convince you, I'm not sure what will. I feel like you're digging in your heels again.

No, I'll do it--just as a convenience link for now, not he cut-paste thing.

97> Awesome! I think it's just one of those cases where people use the same tools in vastly different ways. Like when I post "can't you just take the Post New Topic link off the left bar" and people come out in droves to say that's the #1 way they post and it would be a travesty to lose it. Damn different strokes.

Thanks for listening.

I'm going to weigh the byte-cost. I've tried SO hard to cut down on structural weight. I mean, I'm using functions with two-letter names, etc. There's no way to do this that doesn't take a lot of characters...

It's all going to end up with us all having to buy new computers and faster Internet connections. It somehow always does.

;)

ETA: more seriously, I'm not warming to the yellow flash. Perhaps if it were even more subdued?

So, about 3-4% more--4k on this post. Is that worth it? Meh.

Just chopped a second of all topic-page loads. How do I know? Because there was an errant sleep(1) in the code.

(Hangs head in shame!)

Chiming in on the Edited bit - I like it being in the header, but I don't like losing the original time of the post. There's a real difference between something that was edited immediately after posting and something that was edited hours/days later! Could the original time be put after the edited time? Something like
Edited: Today, 2:02am (Today, 2:00am)
would carry all the info and wouldn't add much to the size of the post...

And I quite like the yellow flash. It's a nice buttery color, not neon. Bright, but not painfully vivid.

I do like the idea of both original and edit time showing.

101 etc.> Instead of stripping down functionality in order to make really long threads faster, why not paginate the threads so that really long threads don't exist?

I think this belongs in the bug thread and will look for it, but . . . in this post it says "touchstone error" for the author of one book and the title of another. This is extremely unhelpful. I would rather see the author/title even if not touchstoned, so I could try to find the book manually -- or at least know what book/author is being discussed.

I love the preview option.

Because there was an errant sleep(1) in the code.

I know all good engineers pad their estimates so they can come in ahead of schedule, but that's a bit extreme. :-)

Love it all, just a couple suggestions...
•  Incorporate the greasemonkey script (brightcopy's?) that floats the grey boxes (The World/Your World/Post/Search and Group/About/Touchstones) at the side down as you scroll down.
•  My perennial bugbear: Change "Mark as read to here" into "Mark as unread from here" -- as it is, there's no way to mark a whole thread / first message unread, and also "mark as read" is meaningless on the last message. (Not just changing the text, obviously, but changing the functionality too). Semantically it makes more sense to me - if the user does nothing else after opening the thread, the whole thread is marked as read; whether the command is labelled "mark as read" or "mark as unread" it is really changing the state of part of the thread back to unread.

>108

I would like those floating boxes too.

Very much a fan of most of these changes. In particular, I like how the /look/ has changed. Some minor things have made it feel much more up to date.

Especially love:

1. The 'add a message' box.
2. The 'more' at the bottom, although I'm very glad to still be able to middle-click/right-click-copy-link from the post number.
3. The graphical 'back to top'.
4. The rounding of headers.
5. The preview!!
6. I'm sure I'll love the 'about' once I play with it, and probably fixed touchstones too.

A few comments/things I don't like.

1. I too wish to see the original time a post was made in addition to the edited time.

2. Although it probably does not affect very many posts, I wanted to point out that if you have a very long list of touchstoned works, hitting 'preview' does in fact appear to do nothing, because it shows up so far down the page that you have to scroll to see it. If people feel they aren't seeing preview properly, this could be a cause. I dunno that there's a fix other than to be aware of it.

Even if you just have white space at the end of your message, this can be easy to miss. I wonder if making the 'Preview' header a bright, different color (a darker blue, maybe) might make this easier to notice?

3. I love the suggestion upthread that 'reply' do something slightly different from 'add a message', either quoting the text of the post you're replying to or adding the number (and preferably username) of the message. Probably the latter. I'd really love to see something like that.

4. I also would love brightcopy's floating boxes. I use them a lot.

99> I'm going to weigh the byte-cost. I've tried SO hard to cut down on structural weight. I mean, I'm using functions with two-letter names, etc. There's no way to do this that doesn't take a lot of characters...

Well, I think there is such a thing as too much optimization if it's already down to the point of good features having to be chucked out because a page might take 1.1 second to load instead of 1. As jjwilson61 pointed out (hey look, I just added to the size of the page with an @ tag!), where page size becomes a problem is in the long threads. Address that with (configurable) pagination and you'll actually be addressing the problem.

Now, back to your original question:
So, about 3-4% more--4k on this post. Is that worth it? Meh.

If you're that worried about space, just ajax it in. Run through the messages and reparent the first B under each message header into an A using the link in Link.

But if you're that worried, I could point you in several places that would save far more than these links to message numbers added. Just for starters, for some reason under the More links you wrapped all the "—" with <i></i> instead of just doing " — ". That's 7 bytes per message right there. Maybe I'm missing the reason. But even this isn't really necessary, as you could just recode the More section and instead of having:

<a onclick="sm(this)">More</a><span class="h"><i>—</i><a onclick="mf(this)">Add to favorites</a> | <a onclick="mr(this)">Mark as read to here</a> | <a href="#2713766">Link</a> | <a onclick="fm(this)">Flag</a></span></div><div class="f" id="f2713766"></div></div></div><div class="fp" id="fp2713773">

on every single post, you could just have:

<a onclick="mf(this)">More</a>

and have the mf function build the entire expanded More section on the fly. That'd save you 275 bytes per post. That'd save you over 27K on the first 101 posts as opposed to the 4K you mentioned there.

Lots more stuff like that if page size is that high of a priority to you.

81: The return to top link is a nice convenience, but just about every browser I know will return to the top of the page when you press the home key.

I suppose though there's a fair number of laptop keyboards out there that may not have a home key and mobile devices are increasing in popularity and a link might be useful in a long thread.

Some people, like myself, use the mouse and not the keyboard to move through Talk. That's why I prefer a link to go back to the top of the page.

108/109> (floating navigation bar)

Here's a link to the CSS to do it, and some notes on the drawbacks:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/102583

FWIW, I just don't see it being something Tim can toggle on a site-wide basis. There would be howls of protest. It's one of those different strokes things, and there are plenty of people who might actually have a stroke if they were forced to endure seeing a navigation bar that moves with them on the page. ;)

I like the darker blue for the 'return to top' arrow. I use that function frequently (and have almost never used the home key on my keyboard to do the equivalent) so am keen to see it stay, and find its current location fine, especially now it is a little more obvious.

> 113

I'm one of them. I can probably count the times I've used the "home" key on the fingers of one hand. It's just not intuitive or convenient when you're a mouse user. You have to remove your hand from the mouse, drop down to the keyboard, and find the right key. I know that doesn't sound like much, but it interrupts the flow of your movements and becomes an irritant.

> Aerrin99 #110

Your third comment: that 'reply' do something slightly different from 'add a message' ... adding the number (and preferably username) of the message.

Yes!

I really think there's a difference in meaning between "Add a message" and "Reply". The former is just saying something—perhaps apropos of nothing above—reached by hitting End and typing in the box at the bottom. The latter is a response to specific comment by someone.

Is there any reason why "Reply" couldn't insert a small tag at the beginning of the new message with some consensus-derived variant of:

<i>Reply to <a href="http://www.librarything.com/topic/116769#2713898">#18 (TadAD)</a>:</i>

#118 If that were easily achieved, I think it would be a very welcome improvement.

Nice changes overall.

Any chance the positions of the group name and thread topic might be inverted? It's somehow odd to have thread topic above the group name.

I can't distinguish between read and unread messages at a glance. If I look really closely at the headers, the read have pink headers and the unread have blue headers.

Any chance of emphasizing that again? Bold text, brighter colors, something. Also agreeing with the too much whitespace.

108: My perennial bugbear: Change "Mark as read to here" into "Mark as unread from here"

Yes. As you say, there should be a way to mark an entire thread as unread, and "Mark as read to here" first calls to mind what would normally happen, and that what you're going to do won't change that for the message you're marking, but will cause it not to happen to the messages below it, which is what you're really interested in. It's a bit like having to parse a sentence with too many negatives and antonyms.

I actually wouldn't want to see fancier "reply" features; I think they would just encourage clutter.

ETA: and more disjointed posting.

121 > I also have a hard time distinguishing between the colors for the read and unread headers.

122> I agree.
123> I disagree.

Sorry for the short replies but I broke my collarbone yesterday and typing can be painful.

121/124> The main problem with bold is there's just not as much text to bold anymore. Tim's pared it down quite a bit. I wonder if the blue "jump to top" is distracting from the color difference between read/unread. I know this is a fiddly suggestion, but you could make it the original gray jump to top icon for read posts and blue for new posts.

>125 :( I hope you recover quickly.

>123: I don't see how it would lead to more disjointed posting than already exists. It's fairly ubiquitous for people to do something like I just did in this message to refer back to yours.

The big difference is that someone reading this could jump automatically to the statement occasioning my response rather than having to scroll up and look for #123.

>128 The thing is, I didn't actually need to scroll up and look for the message here, because the response came so soon after the post and because you included a fair bit of context.

What I don't want to see is a response to, say, Message #50 where the poster figures there's no need to include any context just because there's a convenient link mechanism.

Maybe it wouldn't be a dramatic change. But it would be a slight shift toward hierarchical-style forums, which I think should be avoided.

(ETA: I apologize to brightcopy for continuing this discussion here, but I couldn't just ignore a direct address.)

I like it.

129> The thing is, I didn't actually need to scroll up and look for the message here, because the response came so soon after the post and because you included a fair bit of context.

Yeah, I thought about leaving the quote out just to prove my point. Maybe I should have. What I'm saying is that we both often just put message#> and don't quote. And then sometimes we do when we know it won't be obvious. But often times we do just the number even when the post is a dozen messages or more up because there's only so much quoting you can do when you're replying to a whole message. It's all a matter of common sense, and such a feature suggested won't change that basic equation. Coding doesn't fix stupid. But coding can help lazy. ;)

>131 Right, so I guess it's just a matter of how much helping lazy encourages stupid. Hard to tell without trying it. I've certainly seen auto-quote go wrong many times, when people just push the button rather than thinking.

>132: Well, I wasn't asking for auto-quote. I was simply asking for auto-reference to make the jump back easier.

>133 Yeah, I know, but I think it could lead to the same sort of outcome: people relying more on the automatic approach rather than thinking about what they actually want to include in their message.

>134: I guess we'll just have to disagree. I don't see it changing behavior in the slightest since the cost of it now is so small anyway (I only had to type 5 characters for this one, as an example). So, it's convenience that saves scrolling from my point of view. I guess we'll see if Tim thinks it's worthwhile or worthwhile-pending-opinion-poll.

133>

I actually had the same thought earlier today and made a suggestion at http://www.librarything.com/topic/116807

It's always kind of bugged me, but now it is even more obvious. The "Add a message" is really nice and always on the bottom now.

Meanwhile, we have "reply" links that don't actually seem to do anything that feels like a reply to me. We might as well just have "up" and "down" arrows on the right hand side and remove the reply all together.

It's already such a convention though it would be nice to take advantage of the fact that posts actually do have links and make it a little easier for folks who are already using a built-in part of the system. (The reply link and using the convention of numeric indicators.

The width of the line seems too short to me. I don't know why "add a message" window appears by default when I read plenty of threads without adding a message. I also miss the "go to top" link.

I'm lukewarm at best about the changes. I'm not sure anything has been gained.

134>

I follow a lot of threads and I already see people post things out of context and out of sequence.

It gets particularly confusing if several people are posting on an active thread. Then your response may be a screen below but you didn't realize someone else had hit a eight paragraphy monster right before you hit send.

I don't see what harm using a) an existing UI element that is already present and b) using an existing convention and just linking them will do.

I'm a bit surprised, given how you usually push for data and statistics. Do you have numbers on the extremely useful use of re-quoting and the like compared to people posting something like 125> I agree? If the former actually does occur with high frequency and there's some indication that it would drop, I might be more convinced that this relatively small change that could add a fair amount of usability is a bad idea.

>138 It would be great if we had some real data about this, but I'm not sure how easily it could be measured. Looking just through this thread, though, there seems to be a strong tendency to use the post number alone only in cases where the post being replied to is relatively recent (within 5 messages or so). The first big jump that I see is brightcopy in #56 mentioning #32 (oops, one before as well; see list below), and there he includes a quote as well. There are only a very few examples of big jumps without quotes: #51 references #32, #69 references #45, #72 references #63, and #112 references #81. On the other hand, there are 30+ instances of the number alone used to refer to one of the previous five messages. I didn't count the number of quotes, but it seems to be somewhere in between.

Basically, the recent number reference without quote is used a lot. The number reference without quote is used only rarely after a long gap. It's this second situation where the link would be really useful, but it's also this second situation that I don't think we want to encourage at all.

Ow, let's see if Tim can fix that for you.

#140 was in reply to Jeff's post in #125 about breaking his collar bone. I thought the reply would be linked somehow. Since it's not, I don't really get the point of the reply feature except that it allows us to comment as soon as we read a message instead of scrolling all the way down to the bottom of the topic to post. It just seems either incomplete or unnecessary.

139>

I'm confused. You say that there's "only a few" without context

So just to clarify, just on this thread alone:

Most where it's in the past five posts no context is included.

Four of the "big jumps" include no context

Then...2 big jumps with quotes/context included?

So far from your own accounts I'm seeing the overwhelming majority not including context and the user would need to do scrolling or something to recenter the screen.

Sorry, I just don't really buy that somehow brightcopy will radically change his quotation style because the convention that brightcopy already uses would also be a link.

I don't always include a quote and the current system certainly doesn't encourage me in any way.

I'm curious if you are concerned about context and quoting why you are not arguing for even more information to be included in a reply? An example could be if you hit reply in the middle of a thread it would include a quoted response already in the body. That would "encourage" the behavior you want, right?

>139. People use post number because it's an awful lot easier than typing in a quote.

I think this method of talk is confusing at best when side-threads and their side-threads get debated, and amidst it all is some semblance of a discussion. I guess I will just have to agree to disagree with people who don't think nested posts are a lot easier to follow.

Fiddling around with the posting system must be occurring because I just posted in the Contemporary Fiction thread and, while the correct post was showing, my original pre-saved post also showed. When I left the thread and then went back to it the pre-saved post was gone and all appeared as it should.

>142 I'll try to reword it:

Most plain number references (without context) refer to the past 5 posts. No scrolling, or very minimal scrolling, is required.

Only 10-13% of the plain number references refer to distant posts, where a link would actually be useful.

I didn't count the number of quotes initially; I get 19 messages with quotes when I do it now.

My concern is with the overall flow of the conversation. The current system does not encourage people to jump back suddenly to an earlier point, at least not without context. The conversation is either moving on, or people are making it clear what they're referring to (I didn't distinguish between these two things because they both allow for straightforward reading of the thread). Adding a feature to jump back to an earlier point would encourage people to make the conversation more, well, jumpy, rather than encouraging it to progress in a fairly linear way. I don't think this would be an improvement. It would be a shift in the direction of hierarchical discussions, which have been deliberately avoided for a reason.

>143 Yeah, I prefer the approach of starting new threads rather than branching out existing ones. There's definitely room for debate there, though.

I suppose referring to a post number can be awkward. But nested posting forces me to look through the entire thread every time I enter the topic to see what's new, doesn't it?

It looks like no one in this thread has taken up nested posting…

>145

In my opinion the fact I can hit reply in the middle of the thread and it generates by default an post without any context encourages a more jumpy conversation, not the presence or lack of a link.

So of those 10% of numbers referring to distant posts, how many of them included context? What would be the goal of including "context"? 80% of that 10%?

Also, why wouldn't it be useful if one post refers to a post 5 removed to have an easier link? Certainly seems like it would make it more accessible to me rather than scrolling up.

If the 10% is too small to worry about, then why would adding the links affect it? If 10% is big enough to worry about, what can we do to make sure people include at least some form of context or way to get to the context to improve the experience?

>148 Yeah, I wouldn't really mind eliminating the "reply" link altogether.

None of the 10% referring to distant posts had context; it was 10% specifically of the non-context references.

Referring to a very recent post, chances are good that you've just read it and remember enough not to bother scrolling, or that it's actually still visible on the screen without scrolling. I don't think a link button is at all necessary in this case. What I want to avoid is encouraging people to link without context to more distant posts. I don't want that 10% to increase, and I think adding a link button would be very likely to increase it.

you're saying 10% of the posts without context were distant, but I'm asking what percentage of the the distant posts had no context.

From my count of what you had earlier there were 6 posts referring to "distant" posts and only two of them had any contextual clues. So about 66% of "distant" posts have no context. So is that acceptable but if it rises to 80% it's not acceptable? How much worse do you think it can get? Compared with the benefit of making it easier to do what several people have already said they do? (Search for it by either scrolling back or hitting control-f).

Or at least those numbers are what I'm getting from 139. Which is why I'm very confused.

>150 I didn't specifically count the number of "distant" posts with and without context, because that would include ones that included quotes but not numbers, making it a lot more trouble to count. There are 19 posts with quotes; if you want to go back and check which posts they were referring to, it would be much appreciated :D

I don't think the reason for not needing to go back is very important, though. If I can just continue reading on, whether because the poster provided context or because I just read the post that they're referring to and still remember it, I'm happy.

But you're arguing against a feature that makes it easier to go back and see a post in context for those of us who may not remember a week later when someone tacks on a >n-5 I agree on to a thread where n-1 is a page long post. So presenting reasons for not needing to go back is kind of a crux of the argument I would think...

I've had plenty of reasons to go back earlier in a thread. I'm glad you have a rocking memory, but I don't.

Ah well, I just don't get your point. If you don't care if people aren't already including context, then even in the worse case and your prediction people will include less context it doesn't seem to be a huge downfall. I'll just agree to remain confused, it's how I go through most of life anyhow.

I think it would be convenient if one hit reply that the message would start with, for example >140. Then if you said, "Oh, I really liked that book too." If anyone wanted to know which book you meant it would be easier to find.

>153 Is there some huge, overriding reason that this can't be? I've wanted something similar since I got here in 2006. I don't care if someone else doesn't want it...then don't use it...but for many of us who are, or have been, in long threads with multiple conversations, this feature would make our lives a lot easier and would, at worst, cause aesthetic distress to the picky and the pernickety. This is a price I am willing, nay eager, to pay.

Also, please may we have a "like" button, again despite any picky, picayune "it's-too-much-like-Facebook" snarks and carps? Don't like it? Don't use it! Others do, and have asked for it for a long time. And the Facebook argument should go right out the window now that we have Twitteresque "@-tagging". Which, for the record, I hate.

>152 I thought I had presented the reasons for not needing to go back: either the post responded to is very recent (within the past 5), or context is included in the reply. What I considered unnecessary was distinguishing between "very recent" and "context included".

My basic point was that only in a small number of cases is it actually necessary to go back.

My concern is that in making it easier to deal with the currently-few cases where we do need to go back, we'll end up significantly increasing the number of cases where going back is necessary. I'd consider this a net negative.

In a high volume topic, such as this one is currently, the post one may want to refer to could be 20 or 30 removed. It would be very convenient if the reply feature would allow automatic reference to the specific post. People may check into LT only one time a day in which case there could be a very great number of posts to read and very few to respond to at one time. I know you think you explained the reasons for not having this, Zoe, perhaps you don't realize that many of us can get quite a bit behind in active threads that interest us.

Everyone's opinion is equal here rd, right?
Here is mine.

I think it would make things easier too..
I do not think it would hurt anyone or anything to have it and it would make it easier
in many cases.

I also think that a like button might cut down in the number of posts in any thread.

There are plenty of times when I want to express agreement with a post that may have occurred several ( or many) posts up a thread. I have to first type

> # whatever ~ to show which post I am commenting on,

then use html to italicize the quote I am referencing

Then comment.

*like* on the post would eliminate all of that for me, and I suspect others?

Well and clearly said, Mckait.

I do like the idea of both original and edit time showing.

It's just MORE. I think we've got an iPhone situation here. Everything you could add to the functionality would improve the iPhone in theory, but everything also detracts. How often would the extra text be useful, really?

why not paginate the threads so that really long threads don't exist

No. I've decided on this. I don't want to paginate. It would encourage never-ending threads, and they discourage people.

touchstone error

Fixed elsewhere.

I know all good engineers pad their estimates so they can come in ahead of schedule, but that's a bit extreme

I know. Look, I just make the page 300% faster!

that floats the grey boxes

I can understand why some people would want that, but don't you think most users would freak at it. It's "motion" on a page that lacks it. It would be felt distracting. Heck *I* think it would be distracting.

perennial bugbear



Just for starters, for some reason under the More links you wrapped all the "—" with instead of just doing " — ". That's 7 bytes per message right there. Maybe I'm missing the reason.

Yes. It was to create space. <i> and <b> are used in creative ways because they add only seven bytes. See the CSS definiton:

span.h i
{
font-style:normal;
margin: 0 8px 0 8px;
}

and have the mf function build the entire expanded

Yes. That was strongly considered. (You'll notice the more/less is built, using a pre-translated string in JS.) I felt, however, that this was likely to save few characters but screw up sometime down the road in a way that wasted more time. But it was considered, and not rejected permanently.

There would be howls of protest

Right. We could, I think, make it a toggle that people could turn on from the Talk page.

Reply to #18 (TadAD):

Hmmm..

I actually wouldn't want to see fancier "reply" features; I think they would just encourage clutter.

Right. That's my worry.

Any chance the positions of the group name and thread topic might be inverted

No, it used to be the way you're thinking--and both group and subject were of equal weight. I think the first thing on the page--the headline--should be the topic, not the group.

I can't distinguish between read and unread messages at a glance. If I look really closely at the headers, the read have pink headers and the unread have blue headers.

Are other people having this problem? They are as bright as day to me.

Sorry for the short replies but I broke my collarbone yesterday and typing can be painful.

Oh, ow! I'm so sorry. That sounds painful and debilitating.

it's just a matter of how much helping lazy encourages stupid

Epigrammatic.

Meanwhile, we have "reply" links that don't actually seem to do anything that feels like a reply to me

Right. So square your circle. We should get rid of it.

What would people say? I think they'd say "bring it back," because they want the convenience of replying to something while looking at it, not when they're down at the bottom of the page. That's how I use it--and I use it all the time.

It looks like no one in this thread has taken up nested posting…

NEVER going to happen. Sorry. We've had it out before, but it really isn't going to happen. I'm against it, and, ultimately, I have final say.

now that we have Twitteresque "@-tagging". Which, for the record, I hate.

We have it, but it doesn't show the @. It's a convenience. Hate seems a strong term.

> 159 (bugbear image)

LOL

:bows

>160 Not showing the @-sign isn't much, when what I find so annoying as to ruin my mood when I see it (better?) is the bolding of someone's name in the message. Why, please, is this not clutter? Already touchstones are bolded. So more bright-blue stuff is good, but a way to link back to a fairly distant message without having to provide, at tedious and error-inducing keystroking time, is?

>163
Testing... richardderus
Your username is linked, not bolded. Bold looks like this. So if a link is showing up in bold, that's more likely a browser issue or a display/setting thing, not a site thing.

159> Yes. It was to create space. <i> and <b> are used in creative ways because they add only seven bytes.

How does doing "<i>—</i>" over " — " save you anything? The first is 8 bytes; the second is 3. And that's not including the CSS, which might be unnecessary.

As far as the other stuff - you are starting to appear very selective in where you care about saving bytes. It's amazing that it lines up almost perfectly with "things I like" being in the "worth the extra bytes" camp, and "things I don't like" being in the "not worth the extra bytes and even if I did it in a way that saves bytes I'm scared of maintaining it" camp.

If you just want to use your veto powers, use them. Just like you did with the pagination. The other arguments just sound a bit contrived.

>156 I think it would be more effective for Tim to restart threads like these after a day, with a summary of what's been said. People thought there was too much white space; it was reduced. Etc. Despite appearances to the contrary, I don't spent quite all my time on LT, and I do know what it's like to get behind ;). It often feels like reading through all the old posts in a fast-moving feature discussion is just a waste of time, and I think the focus should be on helping people get into the discussion more quickly. (I agree that a Like button could help too, by reducing the number of messages.)

I think it's often possible to respond to ideas without jumping back and forth between messages, too. Jumping around breaks up the flow of conversation, and I'd rather encourage posts that can stand on their own. I can say that I'd like a Like button without specifically referencing Richard's or mckait's posts, and I think it's more useful just to say that explicitly rather than adding a link with just "me too" text after 20-30 messages have passed. I think that adding the link functionality would increase dependence on that link; Talk wouldn't be exactly the same as it is now but with convenient links in the few places where they're needed.

159> And by the way, a correction - that's actually an annual bugbear. Many people confuse the two varieties.

166> I would read your message, but it's too much trouble to scroll up and see what the context is of the message you're replying to. ;)

How does doing "—" over " — " save you anything

I wanted more space than a space would provide. A space looks crowded.

If you just want to use your veto powers, use them

I implemented your request almost immediately. Some dictator. Sheesh!

>159 Yeah, I find that "Reply to" link much more annoying and less useful than a quote.

#159

Regarding the 'reply' button - definitely keep it as it is good to not have to keep scrolling backwards and forwards to a post to see what has been said. But like rd said, would be be very difficult to automatically add the post number you are replying to, into the message?

Of course, it's not that much hassle to do it yourself. But it would be nice.

And I'm in favour of a 'like' button as well. It would dramatically reduce post counts on threads and therefore simplify and clarify threads. Especially with things like reviews, when you might not have a specific comment but want to appreciate the post, but the person hasn't added their review to the work's page.

link much more annoying and less useful than a quote

Personally, I usually use quotes. I imagine people have noticed. But I trim the quotes down a lot. I think that's the way to do it that strikes the right balance between the utility of context and the complications of clutter. But there's no way to featurize that.

>167 Yeah, I admittedly wrote that one exceptionally slowly. But still, I think you can understand the content without seeing exactly where it was directed :P

>171 Yeah, I agree with you 100%. That's the best way, and not featurizable.

BTW - I do love most of the changes you have done. Wanted you to know the work is appreciated. Which would be a good argument for a 'like' button as well........I would have simply 'liked' any announcement of changes and you wouldn't have had to waste time reading this!

168> I wanted more space than a space would provide. A space looks crowded.

Important enough to waste 5 bytes per message on a section that isn't expanded 99.9%, though? See what I mean about why I'd get the feeling that the whole "saving bytes" excuse is a little contrived?

I implemented your request almost immediately. Some dictator. Sheesh!

Hey, I said veto! That's not dictatorial. I was giving you credit, there. :D Plus, you phrased it in such a way as "I'm putting it in now, but I may take it out when I need my bytes back because I think it's useless." Sounded kinda like a looming veto to me.

172> 167? Did I write that? Not sure. I'd have to scroll up and find out. :P

This is a subject that has been at least touched on before, but now that I've experienced it I have an opinion. Tim fixed a touchstone problem of which one of my messages was an example. To have a closer look at it, I opened the message, had a look at it, then saved it without making any additions or other changes. Now the message is near the top of my Your Posts and near the top of the messages in the 75 Book Challenge, for no good reason. I would like previous behavior to return, and that, I suppose also relates to the various time stamps that have been debated.

Robert

Yes.. agreed your changes are great... they usually are.

But I said that in #8

Then the discussion got me to thinking.

Truth? I couldn't care less about the changes I mention.. because I am pretty sure that not having it my way is not likely to lessen my appreciation of my life in general, OR of LT. But it was sort of
~ now that you mention it ~

I will live without Like
I will live with or without a reply that links..

LT is a great place. Imperfect, like all of life, but great.

I can live without an auto-linked message number on Reply, as I've already decided to write a greasemonkey script to implement it. ;)

176: saved it without making any additions or other changes

That's unnecessary. Closing the page, reloading the page, or using your browser's "back" button won't make your original message disappear.

Let me see if there's a "cancel" button when you open a post for editing...

Edit: Yup, there is, and it works too.

To have a closer look at it, I opened the message, had a look at it, then saved it without making any additions or other changes.

If you save it, you saved it. While we could in theory not update the timestamp if the text were identical, we'd also have to load all the changes you made to touchstones and compare them. It's not something I'm into doing. I think if you don't want to save edits, don't save them.

Well, once upon a time we didn't have cancel and saving would not move the message up the list; it would only change the time of the last edit. If I notice I want a comma that I hadn't thought about first time through, I don't especially want to move my message to the top, but I do want to save the message. But if you can live with it, I guess I can.

Robert

> 178

I'd like to pretend I'd get around to writing a greasemonkey script as well, but since I know the likelihood of that happening is vanishingly small, let me suggest another tweak.

add in a Reply w/ quote to the right of the Reply button (or even shove it in the More if that isn't too tricky)

that automatically wraps in the text of the message being replied to in blockquote or italics.

I'll be one of the first to install the script and I see no way it could make my posting habits worse. (Of course, I already am a lazy and ...less than clever poster ;) ).

add in a Reply w/ quote to the right of the Reply button (or even shove it in the More if that isn't too tricky)

that automatically wraps in the text of the message being replied to in blockquote or italics.

Ugh, please don't! Excessive, thoughtless quotations are even worse than no quotations at all. So much noise.

It's just MORE. I think we've got an iPhone situation here. Everything you could add to the functionality would improve the iPhone in theory, but everything also detracts. How often would the extra text be useful, really?

I hesitate to use the word "useful" wrt LT :p , but generally I want to know both the original time and the edit time whenever I look at the timestamp of an edited post. Just showing one of them strikes me as rather pointless.

---

Regarding the quoting issue, I'd be happiest if we had an automatic quote feature. Too much context is better than too little, and besides it's how I'm used to online fora working.

One thing about Reply - when you save your message, you're down at the bottom of the page with your new message (at least I am - FF4/W7) with all the messages marked Read. If you reply to something in the middle of a long thread, that makes it complicated to get back to where you were and go on reading.

108/109/114> I love the floating bar, and I'd scream - actually, the bar is great but in combination with the (even more useful) groups list it's problematic. It's absolutely wonderful on my oldfashioned square screen at 1024 pixels high; on my nice new widescreen laptop at 768 pixels high (max), I can see 3-4 groups and the rest are always off the screen. I now don't use the floating bar on my laptop so that I can use the groups list.

125> Oww, get better soon (bones always take so long!)

121/124/159> The colors are very vivid to me. There was something else - the green box on the right, I think - that I couldn't see at all on one computer (and complained about) but it was perfectly visible on another.

various posts about linking> I'd love it; as you can see, I don't quote (or very seldom), though I try to include at least some context in my messages. But I would love to be able to bounce up to what a message was talking about (though then we'd need a way to get back - back button sends you back a link?). But if it doesn't happen, I'll survive.

#116: lilithcat "You have to remove your hand from the mouse, drop down to the keyboard, and find the right key."

You should do as I long ago did: switch to using the mouse in your left hand. You then have your right hand free to use navigation keys, eat, drink, etc.

185> But I would love to be able to bounce up to what a message was talking about (though then we'd need a way to get back - back button sends you back a link?).

Yup, unless you have a screwed up browser. Clicking on links that are to just a different anchor (#2716919 and the like) and hitting back doesn't cause a reload of the page but just jumps you to that point.

159> What would people say? I think they'd say "bring it back," because they want the convenience of replying to something while looking at it, not when they're down at the bottom of the page. That's how I use it--and I use it all the time.

Then what you really want is a jump to end icon, to go with your jump to top icon, or just use the End key. The problem with responding to a message in the middle of a long thread using either Reply or the End key is that you lose where you were in the long thread. I'd rather read through the thread anyway before replying because someone else might have already said what I was going to say.

I also dislike the idea of editing a post in the middle of a thread updating the position of that thread on the Talk page.

I also very much dislike automatic quoting. I've seen far too many cases on other fora where people don't edit down the quote and end up quoting the entire previous message to respond to one small thing.

191 I agree with that... wholeheartedly..

"You have to remove your hand from the mouse, drop down to the keyboard, and find the right key."

In IE, mousers like lilithcat could always right-click on the right-hand scroll bar and select "Top"

193> In IE, mousers like lilithcat could always right-click on the right-hand scroll bar and select "Top"

What are you talking about? Is this a browser or OS-specific thing? That's not a feature in XP/Firefox.

It is, I gather, a feature in Explorer. (Which I refuse to use if I can avoid it.)

> 178 I can live without an auto-linked message number on Reply, as I've already decided to write a greasemonkey script to implement it. ;)

You are my hero, sir.

Also in response to Tim's earlier comment about the 'floating' navigation box, if I remember correctly (I have it installed on my work computer but not apparently at home yet) it doesn't really appear to 'move' as some sticky nav boxes on other sites do. It just appears to not scroll with the rest of the page - almost like frames. So there's no distracting motion sickness.

re: all the stuff about how "reply" should work

on another forum i'm on (and many others i'm sure) "reply" inserts a quote AND the membername of the person who originally posted. like this (insert square brackets instead of curly ones):

{quote=timspalding}link much more annoying and less useful than a quote

Personally, I usually use quotes. I imagine people have noticed. But I trim the quotes down a lot. I think that's the way to do it that strikes the right balance between the utility of context and the complications of clutter. But there's no way to featurize that.{/quote}

which is then displayed a bit indented in a grey box and says

"timspalding wrote:
link much more annoying and less useful than a quote

Personally, I usually use quotes. I imagine people have noticed. But I trim the quotes down a lot. I think that's the way to do it that strikes the right balance between the utility of context and the complications of clutter. But there's no way to featurize that."

naturally, you can edit whatever parts of the quoted bits you want, but you don't have to go through the extra steps of copying and pasting and THEN editing or, god forbid, retyping what you want to quote.

obviously using the HTML shortcut {quote} won't work on this site since brackets are used to denote touchstones, but i'm not sure what the actual code is for quotes or if that's useful to whoever would have to code this thing anyway.

i'm fairly ambivalent about the whole thing though. i appreciate the way reply works on that site, but i do see people who just quote huge blocks of text instead of whittling it down to essentials and people who reply to a post mid-thread without bothering to read further down the page. IDEALLY, you'd be able to institute this kind of quote system AND get everyone to adhear to simple rules to keep everything tidy, but the internet is a far from ideal place.

It just appears to not scroll with the rest of the page - almost like frames. So there's no distracting motion sickness.
Yup. It just sits there at the left, rock solid. No more distracting than the browser toolbar at the top, or status bar at the bottom. As implemented in the script, it even maintains its distance from the top of the window as the LibraryThing banner scrolls off the top. It's the middle bit that moves up and down in a most disconcerting fashion, but what can you do?

bugbear
Looks like he's coming to do some serious hacking.

What are you talking about? Is this a browser or OS-specific thing?

Sorry, I forgot to include the necessary verbiage to squash the inevitable side discussion on browser merit.

Let's try again:

For those who hope to avoid using the keyboard for browser navigation and who count themselves among the minions who have been forced to use Internet Explorer (IE) against their will or wishes (as well as those poor souls who naively prefer to use the browser pushed and produced by the evil empire), there is indeed a way to move to the top of the page using the mouse. Simply right-click on the scroll-bar to the right and then select "Top" from the pop-up menu.

This feature, since it uses a right-click menu, is not likely to exist in very many other browsers, since they were designed to work conveniently on systems that use a one-button mouse. Only the braintrust of the evil empire can count on their users having a two-button mouse.

Whew!

(I guess my "mousers like lilithcat" pun got lost in the shuffle as the browser-loyalty hormones began to kick in...oh well, I tried).

I just noticed that when I post a message it jumps so that my new message is at the top of the screen. This means that I have to scroll up to see if someone posted while I was composing. I'm not sure what it did before, but I know that I could at least see the message before my new one.

I just noticed that red flags now show in the message header, rather than at the bottom. This is probably a practical choice, since the flag option is hidden under "more", but I really like the change! It's small, but nice.

i just wanted to say 'thanks' for all the work you've put in on the topics pages. they look very sleek and streamlined and for me at least, they're much easier to manage visually.

i also appreciate having the link right to the bottom of the page. it's some thing i've wished we had ever since i joined 2 years ago.

in sum, i appreciate all the behind-the-scenes effort and try not to take anything for granted.

thanks again!

I still think there is just WAY too much white space. It's distracting! It's not neater or more tidy or anything, it's just distracting and glaring and an eye-sore.

My eyes think the lay out is just fine, and the yellow flash, very very subdued. I too very much like the link to the bottom of the page. It works well with my phone.

Ah, okay. I'll look at that. I was under the impression it changed both, but I may be wrong. The logic here is new, so it may be different.

I can't change it right now. $!@# Amtrak doesn't let me use the required protocol.

I just noticed that red flags now show in the message header, rather than at the bottom. This is probably a practical choice, since the flag option is hidden under "more", but I really like the change! It's small, but nice.

Thanks.

Tim, jumping to the correct unread message in a thread with images seems to be working A LOT better on iOS devices. So, thanks for that!

Just thought I'd remind folks who might be so inclined to lend a hand when new features roll out that there is a HelpThing and WikiThing group devoted to trying to keep Help and wiki pages up to date.

Come talk about work on the Topic HelpThing page here!

Message to Tim & Colleagues.

I'm not about to read all 207 comments above before I comment.

Just a message to say, "I like the new features that I've tried. Thank you!"

I had been thinking of sending in a suggestion about putting buttons/tabs at the bottom of threads to save people having to go all the way to the top, and then, hey presto, a little up-arrow appears to speed this up. Well done!

You could always get to the top from the header of each message. We are missing the link we used to have after the last message.

After using it for a while, I have to say I absolutely hate the fact that editing a comment jumps it to the top of the unread list.

I see things jump to the top of my Home page but I have no way, other than scanning the entire thread, to see what has been changed. It's just a teaser at this point.

>210 Amen.

I still agree.

I'm troubled by the fact that the "delete" link in my posts is in the same place as the "more" link in other people's. I have a feeling I'm going to end up deleting something by mistake.

How do I find the information to create a hyperlink to a post? When I hit "Link" nothing happens except I'm taken to the top of the post.

214:

Two ways:

Click on the link and copy what is in the address bar. Then put it in like you would normally put in a link.

Right-click and choose "copy link location" (instructions may vary a bit by OS and browser)

There's no easy way to do it like for user names or touchstones, although brightcopy had a rsi for it recently.

At that point the URL will be in the address field, Richard.

Alternatively, right-click on the Link button and grab the URL that way.

You need to copy the link from the address bar after clicking on "link". (You could also right-click/ctrl+click/middle-click on the message number or on "link" to copy the link location.)

You're supposed to use right click/copy link, or the equivalent for your system/browser, to get the link into the clipboard. In this respect, it behaves like the link icon in a review, for example.

214> Until Tim recodes it so that it handles it a bit different (and if you use a browser and operating system that supports it), it will not automatically copy the link to the clipboard for you. What should happen when you click on Link is that you see the url change from something like:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/116769
to
http://www.librarything.com/topic/116769#2718907

That extra #2718907 added onto the URL makes it a link directly to that post. Now, if there aren't many posts on a thread, it's likely there isn't a long enough page to make that actually at the top of the browser window. Your browser tries to position that spot at the top but if there isn't any more to scroll it won't.

Does that make sense?

So if you want to copy that link, you'll need to go into the URL bar and copy it yourself. Or you can copy the link in various ways depending on your browser/operating system. In most you can right click on the Link link and choose "Copy Link Location" or "Copy shortcut" or "Copy link address", etc. On the iPhone/iPad you would press and hold the link for a while until a menu pops up and you choose "Copy".

ETA: Well, that's what I get for taking so long to check what the actual wording is in the menus!

Many thanks, helpful peoples, but I stated my bleat of dissatisfaction poorly: In the address bar, I do not see the message number, only the "#"...then nothing. I'll try the right click solution and see if there's something for me there.

Again, thanks for helping!

ETA: Right-click worked a treat! *whew*

220> Huh. That would be a bug. Do you mind logging a bug report?

#219 Thank you for that info.. I had no idea :)

You are one smart and helpful cookie!

>221 I take my cojones in my hands to protect them when I come over *here* and the bug collectors just flat-out scarify me too much to even think of going there. They speak geek, and I don't, and then they ask questions that I don't even know the words in, and get all grumbly when I don't understand and I hated junior high the first time so no, I wo't be doing anything like that *flees*

Adding my vote for not changing the time stamp with edits. I typically edit only to fix typos, unclear phrasing, and such, not to make substantive changes to content. An exception is challenge lists, and occasional placeholders for book reviews. I want to know when I created the message, and when I updated it. I dislike that the first message in my challenge thread is dated May 23, and the second message is dated December 16.

Amen qebo

Thirding qebo/224

224> Gotta agree, too. I understand Tim's argument about "sometimes more is less", but the previous Talk implementation understood that both are important pieces of information.

I also agree.

If the edit is only a few minutes, ti doesn't really matter, but in other cases both original posting and most recent edit are signigicant.

I have just noticed another change which has taken place. It is probably a matter of taste, but I don't like it. It used to be that clicking on a touchstone to the right of the message box opened a new tab. Now it brings up the work or author in the same window. It scares me because the life of an unsaved message in LibraryThing is delicate, and I want it at hand until I have pushed 'post message.' Sometimes I actually want to refer from one tab to the other.

Yes, I can do a control-click, but as in many places, I often neglect to do that, and I believe that the more I say, "Oh, bother!" and smack my forehead with the heel of my hand the shorter my life will be.

Robert

225-228: And it's disconcerting that the first message in this thread was edited, so it's not immediately clear when the thread was created. With the old talk system, I wasn't wild about the clutter of the "edited" announcement if I'd done nothing more than fix a typo within moments of posting, but I'd still prefer this (or some other way of displaying both dates). Unfortunately there's no clear line between what duration between creating and editing does and does not matter.

229> No good at all! I have to admit I never clicked on the titles in the old system but always middle-clicked to open in a new tab, mainly because I feared such a thing. At least with the way the new message box is now there's more of a chance your browser will preserve the text in it when you hit the back button. But it's surely something that could stand to be fixed.

229> I would call that a bug, although some programmers might characterize it as an...ahem...unintentional change of spec.

Incidentally, the same thing happens when you click on any link in the Preview (not only on Talk pages, but also in the Wiki).

I haven't yet read the bug thread--has this been discussed?

ETA: I reported this in two separate messages (for the Preview and the Touchstones) on the bug thread.

232> I'd call it a bug if it was an unintentional change. I haven't heard Tim saying they meant it to be this way, so that's going to be my assumption.

I just noticed something that I don't know if is intentional but I do find it interesting. I deleted a post and it was replaced with the deletion text. Then I clicked Edit on it and it presented me with blank text. I clicked save and the deletion note was gone and the new text in its place.

I actually like this, as sometimes I delete a post immediately if I realize I totally screwed something up or left something out and I want to scrub the post ASAP before people read it. Then I sometimes post a new post with my corrected version if applicable.

Overall I like or am indifferent to the changes but have a minor quibble.

It used to be when I wanted to quickly find a post I had made, I could scroll and watch for the little pencil. Now, there is only a minor difference (Edit link) between mine and other posts. Not sure what the answer is. Maybe a different color name when it's your own post?

#235 - Already an RSI request. topic 116873 Maybe Timspalding will see it.

>236 Thanks. I don't read RSI.

Here's a thought that I don't think has been brought up before, although I'm willing to be corrected.*

Sometimes in a busy thread I will start to compose a message and during that time someone else will post something. That new post may impact on what I wish to say in my still unposted message but I won't know that until I hit 'Post message'.

Would it be possible for the 'Preview' button, as well as parsing my post and showing it to me, also check for and display any posts that have beaten me to the punch?

*Keep it clean, please!

238> oh, good idea. I like! I like!

238, 238> look at item 10 from the first msg.

>240 Well spotted!

From 1.10 We have declined right now to make an "update this" button that updates WITHOUT posting, but we may do that.

I propose (although I refuse to post a poll) that the 'Preview' button do just that. With the same subtle yellow fade in of the intermediate posts.

I have a suggested feature change (shocking, I know):

I love the preview. However, it's speediness can be a deterrent sometimes. I click the preview button and there's no feedback that it has just updated a preview. Considering that things happen, buttons break, internets go down, etc. etc., this throws me off.

What I'd suggest is that over to the far right of the word "Preview" at the header of the preview, it have a little graphic or something that shows up then disappears. Like maybe a spinner or something. It could be left up just long enough to give the brain a visual cue that something just happened.

Of course, I just thought of something cooler that'd probably be far too hard to implement. You could have all the text that has changed between one preview to the next quickly fade from some color like dark blue to black. Yeah, probably way too much trouble but maybe something to play with and see if it'd work when you're bored and don't want to work on bugs.

Three quick notes:

The changing of time on edit is a bug. It's on my list to fix. I'd fix it now, but Amtrak prohibits the protocol I need.

I'll change touchstones to open in a new window/tab.

I'll add a yellow-fade to the preview.

Don't care for the constantly open "Add a message" box. Or maybe it just needs to be smaller. And I'd like a little more contrast between the colors of the read and unread messages. I don't know why, but these two soft tones just don't immediately distinguish themselves for me.

"Amtrak prohibits the protocol I need"

Wow, Homeland Security gets more strict every day. ;-)

My eyes have gotten used to looking at the difference in shade between read and unread messages and I don't have a problem with it anymore. I don't know how new users are going to figure it out though.

Any chance we could get an edit option for Subjects, timspalding? (My fingers/brain fail me often enough these days.) Even one with a limited time window (like 12 hours) would please me.

How about 1 minute? I really dislike the unexpectedness possible here. It's jarring to change something like that.

5?
:oS

The thing *I* want is a way to switch a post from one group to another.

In fact, I do that. I screw up. I post something in the group group. So I just go into the database. And I do it WAAAY too much. But I don't think anyone else can do that.

clamairy needs more than 1 minute to figure out she called "Memorial Day" "Labor Day" :)

:o( Exactly...

248> I think a minute would solve most of the problems, and would help the unexpectedness you want to avoid. I think the actual place where not changing the subject is a problem is usually right after you post you notice you misspelled something, or put in the wrong word.

If you notice the mistake within a minute, though, you can just delete the post (and hence the thread) and try again.

Exactly! Once someone posts (in my case, to point out my glaring error) then it's too late.

256 by brightcopy> Yup, that's what often happens. I think the minute thing would take care of the majority, but they're still going to be cases where you know in five minutes, twenty minutes, an hour, etc. If a minute gets Tim on board and comfortable with the idea, maybe we can get him to extend it after seen that users are (hopefully) using it in a non-confusing way.

I'm not sure it would be worth the effort for a minute alone.

What if there were some restriction on how different the new subject line could be from the old one?

I didn't realize that the thread would go away if you deleted the only post on it. Still, I'd like a tiny window to correct those Brain-Fails too.

#254 by _Zoe_>

If you notice the mistake within a minute, though, you can just delete the post (and hence the thread) and try again.

I didn't know this, and I'm willing to bet a lot of others don't either!

I'd like to see 5, but 1 is better than none.

It suddenly occurs to me that I dreamt about LT last night, and the "Edited at" timestamp was moved to the bottom of the post—but somehow, in doing so, the header bar was reduced in height and thus made the header text impossible to read. Weird.

In the past I've dreamed that I'm trying to write an LT post with a pen right onto the monitor screen.

#262 WANT!!

>262-3
Sometimes I've daydreamed that I could use LT telepathically. Like when I'm in a bookstore*.

-------
*I don't have a cell-phone, and generally keep the wifi on my iPod off. So I don't use the mobile version.

You now have five minutes to change the subject.

In the past I've dreamed that I'm trying to write an LT post with a pen right onto the monitor screen.

I dream about user-interface design regularly.

#265 by timspalding> Awesome. Thanks again for listening and being willing to give things a shot even when you aren't sure about them.

ETA: Just read you posted in another thread that it's 10 minutes. So even more thanks. :)

Also, I have far too often had dreams about coding. This is very very bad, because one feature about dreams is that text doesn't remain stable but moves around and rearranges itself randomly. That's one of the keys to lucid dreaming - paying attention to any text you see and watching for changes. Anyway, I've been in a half-asleep state before where I'd wake up enough to realize I was dream-coding but then fall back into sleep and start doing it again. Those dreams are tiring.

So, I'm trying to figure out the best way to mark YOUR post—to replace the unintentional side-effect we use to have, namely the pencil icon. How about just green for any post you make?

#267 by timspalding> I'm thinking that may be too many colors. The dichotomy between the blue and the salmon make it easier to figure out "posts before this are all pink, so they must be the ones I've read before" and vice versa. I think throwing a third color in the mix might make a certain percentage of the users unable to figure this out.

So I have two ideas: Just change the shade of the header. Bluer or pinker. Sure, you have the drawback that colorblind people will probably miss this. But it's not a core usability feature, just a nice hint. So it may just be one of those things they'll have to suck up.

The second idea is to put the pencil in the header (I think I saw someone else suggest this already). A good place might be next to the timestamp. This would also satisfy the request others have had to be able to edit a post from the top or the bottom of the post, because for longish posts one may be a lot handier than the other. The pencil in your headers would be a visual clue to it being your post, just like it used to be.

It might also be useful to do BOTH of the above.

What do you think about the way it is now?



I rather like your pencil idea, though.

I had to look a few times to see the difference, but it's a bit more obvious when I scroll to the top of this thread and see it in action.

I do like the suggestion for an edit button at the top. I was just lamenting the fact that it moved when I went to edit my 75 Books thread just now, though I do also like the edit at the bottom. I guess I just want it both ways...

(also, I freaked out a bit when I went to reply but no links or add a message box were available. turns out my log-in cookie had expired, somehow. oops.)

I like that a lot. It has all the visual advantage of the pencil plus it is on an edge where it can be scanned for when scrolling.

I'm like Keristars, I want the edit button at the top to be able to edit the post when I am at the top of it.

>269 I like it. It's obvious enough that I can catch it while scanning.

I'm not sure the current system is any more noticeable than just looking at the names.

I agree that it would be nice to have the pencil back, for various reasons.

I like the new way of indicating my posts.

But I agree with others about missing having the edit function at the top of the posts. I keep going to hit the up arrow because that is where the edit pencil used to be. I guess I will soon get used to it, but with longer posts there is a certain amount of scrolling necessary to find the edit button (though I guess there always was, depending on whether you were starting from the top or bottom of a post).

How can it not be 'any more noticeable' when it's a whole ten shades darker and uses a chunk of the title bar that isn't used for anything else?

Fair dinkum, there's being the 'Loyal Opposition' and there's being contentious.

>276 Because there's already something noticeable when I'm focusing on that corner: the names. The contrast between the text and the header is greater than the contrast between the similarly-coloured rectangle and the header.

If we were looking in the right corner at the pencil, and Tim added a second pencil, it wouldn't have made it any clearer even though it would contrast even more strongly with the surrounding whitespace that wasn't being used for anything else.

To me a pencil is automatically associated with writing and so is easier to associate something I wrote than a darker section on a bar. This helps when I am scrolling and multitasking. By multitasking I mean not paying full attention to what I am doing.

Actually the message number is closer to that corner than the name. I like it this way, obviously you don't. I'll just stop now though. No doubt you won't.

>279 I have nothing against it, I just don't think it particularly helps. I have to scroll more slowly to see it than I did to see the pencil.

ETA: And when I'm scrolling that slowly, I might as well just look at the names.

What about this:

1st:
At the top and the bottom of the thread two icons/symbols each to jump to the first/last of your own posts, if available.

2nd:
At the end of each post-title (left or right of the date) two icons/symbols to jump direct to the previous or next of your own posts, if available.

3rd:
Left and right of the posters name a small icon/symbol each, to jump to the previous (left) or next (right) post of the author of the current post.

I like the 2nd and 3rd, there is certainly plenty of room in the post title bar for such icons.

I'm not sure I understand how the 1st proposal would work though. From the top it seems like it would only find the first of your own posts; from the bottom, the last. What if you had more than two posts in a thread?

>282

I would like to be able to jump from top (1st topic) OR bottom (last topic) of the thread to the first or the last of my own topics.

I see that idea, but if you had more than two posts in a thread, perhaps when you go from the top to your first post (or from the bottom to your last post), there could then be a 'Next' (or 'Previous') link so you could access anything between your first and last posts?

As I said, I can see this working, there is certainly plenty of available real estate on each post's title bar.

>269 Noticed it this morning, and like it a lot. Thank you!

Once you were at the first post, you could presumably click the link found there to get to the next one.

#269 by timspalding> I think that'd help a bit, probably enough. It's a subtle "problem", so it's hard to say "aha, this will totally fix it!"

Now if you REALLY wanted your posts to stand out, you could extend that left line down along the left edge of your own posts, keeping the same color. That'd be sure to make them pop out. Possibly overkill, though.

> 267

Why not just bring back the pencil icon?

> 269

I'm not seeing any difference there?

>288, 289

Now look at 288 and 289. You should see a block of darker 'LT salmon' on the left edge of the title bars.

#289 by lilithcat> That's odd. You mean you're not seeing the little stripe on the header of your posts? Sounds like a bug. What browser/OS?

BTW, here's a mockup of what I suggested (somewhat seriously, but mostly brainstorming) above:

bc, if it's going to drop down the left hand edge like that, there should be no need for the different shade. Again, just brainstorming.

I think it's funny that by hiding functional elements that served a dual purpose, we're now forced to add less-functional elements to replace what was lost.

It might be useful to revisit the whole issue. Start from the basic principles of what we're trying to accomplish, then figure out the best way to get there, instead of adding features ad-hoc as ideas crop up.

>269
It is better than before. Thank you Tim

But I would like to have it more highlighted.
At least the darker brown going to the end of the postnumber.
But I would prefer the whole title in a darker brown.

>291 Or even better brightcopy's proposal.

I just scanned through this thread for my posts and had no trouble finding them. So as far as I'm concerned that part of the problem is solved. Although it would be nice to be able to access the edit function from either the top or bottom or a long post, and having links to navigate between my posts would be good too.

…adding features ad-hoc as ideas crop up.

I'm not a developer on this site, but if I was, I would find that very insulting.

> 290

Okay, now that you point it out and I look for it, I see it. It wasn't immediately obvious, though.

293> I think you're off base here. Tim never intended the pencil icon to have the purpose of making your own threads easy to find and I can understand his reluctance to put it back just the way it was. First of all having an icon in the header and words at the bottom for the same thing is confusing but if you changed it into an icon on the bottom then you'd be mixing icons and words on the same line which just isn't right.

294> Please don't change the color of the whole bar, as someone said previously, you already have two colors and I don't think another would be helpful.

#293 by _Zoe_> I think it's funny that by hiding functional elements that served a dual purpose, we're now forced to add less-functional elements to replace what was lost.

I'm not sure where this is coming from. For me, personally, the edit pencil never helped me find my posts. The stripe Tim added is more likely to, on the other hand. Different strokes for different folks.

I think the stripe needs more contrast. Unless I scroll through the thread very slowly, I miss it. Why not make it black?

>296 I'm sorry, but the post-release changes just don't seem very systematic to me. The first point in this thread mentions simplifying the design. So it's simplified by hiding the edit pencil, but then a new element is added to compensate for that. I'm not seeing the net gain.

I can understand the desire to clean up the UI by hiding various elements, even though obvious-ness for new users is a bit decreased. (Incidentally, I think the delete button should also be hidden under More.) But when less-functional complexity is introduced immediately afterward, I'm not longer quite convinced.

Then we have features like the name-linking that seem minimally useful at best. There was no real explanation given for when we would want this, but I was initially undecided because it seemed harmless. After seeing it in use a bit, it just seems like noise, going against the simplicity principle yet again.

I'm not just opposing all changes for the sake of it, as you suggested in #276. I'm trying to get at the motivation behind each one and considering whether it can be done better or is even justified at all.

>299 Honestly, I'm not sure where the whole thing is coming from anymore. I said I wasn't sure about the colour marker on the left and could see value in the edit pencil for various reasons. It wasn't meant as an attack on the whole process. It seemed perfectly reasonable to think that we might consider various options for arriving at a particular goal, rather than assuming that the first suggestion was best.

I'm very happy with all of it! Though I think the older a user is the more edit time they should be allotted for their subject lines. ;o)

>303 Age of LT account or age in real life? ;)

#304 - Real life.

Also, Tim, can you set it up so LT can detect if I'm either a) too fatigued or stressed to type correctly or b) I've been consuming a beverage that might impair my typing skills? And, if so, can LT either a) give me a longer edit window or b) correct my mistakes for me? Maybe I should stick to the cat orgy thread...

…detect if I'm either a) too fatigued or stressed to type correctly or b) I've been consuming a beverage that might impair my typing skills?

Tim, if you can code that, you will win the internet.

>291 To my eyes, that is overkill. Just having the browny-salmon bar turn its tip a milk-chocolate-and-shrimp-pate color is enough for me to cue on my own posts.

YMMV, of course.

But what about the poor people with seafood allergies? And those innocent little children running with sharp pencils?

(The only advantage of the danged pencil icon is that it forced your post to indent slightly. I think a lot of people were visually cuing on that rather than the icon itself. I'm pretty sure I was.)

(And I'll bet someone else said that already, but it's a long, long thread...)

I want the edit button at the top to be able to edit the post when I am at the top of it.

But the box is still going to open at the bottom of the post. Then, if we do that people will complain about the "jump." Maybe let's just leave well-enough alone?

How can it not be 'any more noticeable' when it's a whole ten shades darker and uses a chunk of the title bar that isn't used for anything else?

I agree. But you just plucked "ten shades" out of your hat :)

I'll just stop now though. No doubt you won't.

Let's all get along. Focus on the real danger, me.

I like the 2nd and 3rd, there is certainly plenty of room in the post title bar for such icons.

There is room, but we're getting into the standard user interface paradox again. Each thing you add makes the user interface easier to use and more powerful. And everything you add makes it harder to use and therefore less powerful.

Someone on Twitter pointed me to the best known expression of this, Jason Fried's "Every time you add something you take something away" ( http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/every_time_you_add_something_you_take_somethi... ). Fried's design is MUCH sparser than mine. If we were doing orthodox Fried, we'd have 1/3 as many links...

I would like to be able to jump from bottom (last topic) of the thread to the first or the last of my own topics.

I think that's gilding the lilly. But we need a "back to top" button on the bottom.

BTW, here's a mockup of what I suggested (somewhat seriously, but mostly brainstorming) above

I find it fussy, although it's the least fussy way to add fussiness. It's clean fussy.

But I'm not at all convinced that the current solution has real-life, real-world defects. It solves the problem--making it easy to see at a glance (ie., without reading) when you zip by a post of yours.

It might be useful to revisit the whole issue. Start from the basic principles of what we're trying to accomplish, then figure out the best way to get there, instead of adding features ad-hoc as ideas crop up.

No. The current interface is simple and direct. It isn't cluttered with icons and doo-dads. It has one place to do things on every post not--as before--four, one of them hidden.

…adding features ad-hoc as ideas crop up.

I'm not a developer on this site, but if I was, I would find that very insulting.

Don't worry. It isn't. Because I'm not doing it. I recognize that the pencil icon before had a side-effect that the "Edit" vs. "Reply" does not. So, although that wasn't intended, it was a good side-effect. Note, however, that the side-effect was a very lamely executed one, because it required you to be looking at the left AND the right of each message to keep track of what was going on. You will note that all the action happens on the left side of the message now, which I think is a big improvement.

Incidentally, I think the delete button should also be hidden under More.

Good suggestion. Implemented.

Then we have features like the name-linking that seem minimally useful at best. There was no real explanation given for when we would want this, but I was initially undecided because it seemed harmless. After seeing it in use a bit, it just seems like noise, going against the simplicity principle yet again.

I hear you. Althoguh requested for years, I've been waffling on it. But let's see how this works once it's available to see from the Talk page.

Though I think the older a user is the more edit time they should be allotted for their subject lines

Yeah, I'm not buying that one from you. Young people who wail about how old they are ought to be imprisoned.

No. The current interface is simple and direct.

Wait, but this is what I was talking about. You're saying that simplicity is a guiding principle. So we should look at suggestions in that light.

People have said that they want a quick way to skim past and find their posts. How important is it to them? Does the importance outweigh the loss of simplicity? I don't know the answers, but we can at least ask the questions.

My impression is that the added colour doesn't help much, because it's not noticeable at the fastest skimming, and when I'm skimming more slowly I can just look at the name. Other people may (and do) disagree. I still think it's worth raising the point, even if just to consider and dismiss it.

I'm happy to wait and see about the name-linking. I'm just giving my preliminary impressions, which are that the way it's being used (largely to address responses occurring shortly after the post itself) isn't very interesting. It would be useful if it were mainly drawing my attention toward threads I wasn't yet following. Maybe that will turn out to be the case eventually. But for the moment, it's just noise.

We'll see what happens with the additional insertion of names and numbers in replies too. Again, it seems like a lot of noise for a few instances of real value.

…plucked "ten shades" out of your hat…

Shows what you know, I wasn't even wearing a hat!

We'll see what happens with the additional insertion of names and numbers in replies too. Again, it seems like a lot of noise for a few instances of real value.

I'm wavering on that. Anyway, I'm going to go code now--the Talk tab, not the topic pages.

Shows what you know, I wasn't even wearing a hat!

I don't know want to know what else you're not wearing!

>312 Happy coding! I hope you'll add in a Started by LT link while you're at it. ;)

Yeah, I'm not buying that one from you. Young people who wail about how old they are ought to be imprisoned.

Hey, I have at least 10 years on you... maybe more.

So, just how ancient is Tim? I want to know if I can complain about being old safely here!

I'm 40. And I'm complaining about it!

Hah! I was just hitting my peak at 40...

>316 Forty. *snort* I have *socks* that're forty.

#318 by richardderus> And they smell better than Tim!

Oooooooooo.

#320 by timspalding> You have only yourself (and the stinky cheese) to blame.

Thanks Tim. Sounds like I better shut up ...

The Stinky Cheese Man?

>75

Yes repeating the 'top' line with the addition of a 'jump to top' function sounds good.

I'm guessing the way the page is coded won't (easily) allow it, but what about something like this?

My post #200 was never addressed. It was:

I just noticed that when I post a message it jumps so that my new message is at the top of the screen. This means that I have to scroll up to see if someone posted while I was composing. I'm not sure what it did before, but I know that I could at least see the message before my new one.

I guess I'll create a bug report for it.

I remember that one! I think, but I'm not sure, that if someone else posts while you are composing, when you click 'Post message' the other posts also do the 'yellow fade in' and you go to the top of the first 'new' message.

I mentioned somewhere that I'd like the 'Preview' button to preview my new message below the 'Add a message' box but also 'yellow fade in' any posts that have been 'Posted' (not 'Previewed') in the meantime.

going to complain here because i CAN'T get the the other page to complain. since the interface change i can not click on Your Groups under Your World. This has been happening for over 12 hours now, on multiple computers. frustrating...

here's what i get:

"Some sort of error just happened. The error was logged and Tim has been alerted. If problems persist, email timspaldingAT SIGNlibrarything.com

In most cases, the problem can be fixed by using this link.

The reported error was:

Problem with the concurrent query manager in the LibraryThing Bureau of Garbage Collections.

We have an entire room of trained monkeys working to solve the problem.."

where it says "fixed by using this link" it actually takes me to my catalog view, which is no help at all.

ETA: i can now click on the "member" button and get to talk, but still not "Your Groups" or "Watching."

ETA2: well, it sort of works. i can only get "Your Groups" to show "member" and "watching" if i click on "Your Posts" first. and then, "member" only works some of the time.

if it makes a difference, i'm running FF 4.0.1

A small suggestion that was touched on before: bolding the date for messages that aren't read yet. I have to admit that a few times I've caught myself staring a minute and having to think before the gears catch and it all makes sense (read vs unread). I wonder if that's only slightly because the old one used to have bolded dates with "(unread)" beside it. I think getting rid of "(unread)" makes it look nicer, but bolding the date still might be the way to go.

Wasn't all the text on the whole bar bolded for unread messages before? I agree that was much easier to see that distinction.

#330 by jjwilson61> Can't remember for sure. I know that the left message part was always bolded (e.g. Message 330). My gut feeling, though, is that usernames didn't used to be bold in either read or unread (just like now).

I'm just not convinced it adds much. The colors are quite distinct. I think I'd rather add "unread" than fiddle with font-weights.

332> But you already fiddled with font-weights. You used to bold it. Then you didn't. So... I don't understand what the "fiddling" is that you aren't already doing...

ETA: If you don't like the look of the bolding anymore, I get that. It's just a confusing statement that seems to inflate putting a bold tag around something to some sort of tedious process of experimentation with varying degrees of boldness. It's not. It's one of the simplest things you can possibly do on a web page.

>333

No, I'm trying to to have less fiddling. The old design was fiddly.

#334 by timspalding>

.mh div { font-weight: bold }
.mR div { font-weight: normal }

There, I fixed it. ;)

Argh! Please bring back the work numbers for specifying touchstones! It used to be easy to copy a whole list of books, with touchstones, from one of my posts to a new one (something that I do regularly in challenge threads). The touchstones stayed the same because they were specified by the work numbers. Now I need to re-check them all every time. Blech.

New books that don't show up in the touchstone list can't be forced without them. I want them back too.

Robert

I would still like to be able to ignore posts.

Reposting from the wrong thread: After editing a post, I'd really like to end up looking at the post I just edited. It's weird and disorienting to end up several messages down the thread after editing a long post.

Argh! Please bring back the work numbers for specifying touchstones!

Yes! I've mentioned it before, but even though it was a band-aid for the old ones, it ended up being really useful, especially with books that had long lists to scroll through to find the right touchstone. ~please!~

Did Favourite Messages always show up all yellow, not just with a yellow heading? I think it makes them harder to read.

#341 by _Zoe_> Your memory is right, they used to just make the headers yellow:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/84547

I'm torn on which I think is best. I'm sure the yellow looks different on different displays, hence it not really being a problem with being able to read the test on mine.

Thanks for finding that evidence.

I think it's not so much harder in terms of sheer legibility as just distracting, making it harder to focus.

It's irritating that staff only pay attention to a new feature for a short time after it's released....

344: I agree.

After using it for a while, I don't like the message box being open at the bottom of the page all the time, or maybe it's the huge amount of white space below the message box. In either case on the occasion when browser doesn't position me at the last unread message properly (usually when there are pictures in the thread) or when I'm jumping around in the thread, like when someone responds to a post 50 posts ago, then when I use the end key to jump to the bottom I have to page up from there to find the last message. I know this won't be a top priority but it is pretty annoying.

I'm doing an awful lot more scrolling than I used to.
1) After posting to check that noone else posted in the meantime.
2) When I need to open a longer post for editing.
3) After editing a long post to check it.
4) At the end of the last post to get back to the top of the page.

I also agree with jjwilson61 about the constant open message. It irritates.

I just wanted to mention, now that we've had it for a bit, how much I LOVE the 'about' markers. I've used it to read several book-based discussions, and I've noticed in several cases that older threads about books have picked up new activity.

I feel like I've really seen book-specific discussion pick up, which is awesome!

I hope we're still going to be able to customize the Your Books view by adding and excluding particular works/authors, as was originally proposed. This was a key selling point of the feature for me; the list would be much more interesting if I could remove Rowling, Meyer, Austen, and Tolstoy.

*ahem* So..... The "About" was eventually going to actually do something, right? Show up on work pages or something? Anything?

Is this still being worked on?

It needs to do more, but the primary thing it was for is implemented. You can see what conversations are going on about books. And you can see what conversations are going on about your books.

Okay, maybe I'm just dense, but where can you see that?

Do I need to go through every single book in my catalogue trying to find one that has About info? I went to a Book Talk topic that had an Emily Dickinson book "About"ed, and clicked the link to go to that work page. I couldn't find any reference to the About topic on the work page. Does this only show up for books already in your catalogue?

If you click "Your books" in the lefthand Talk menu, you get a list of threads where your books, authors, etc, are abouted.

Tangentially, there appears to be a little bug here: below the "Your books" menu choice there are subchoices for books (only), authors, etc, but these show only very briefly after clicking the main choice. Firefox 5.0 on Windows 7.

Oh. Huh. I could've sworn the goal here was to get a list on the work-page of threads that are about that book.

Yeah, I thought the primary purpose was for work-page links too. Sigh. Big LT features never seem to turn out nearly as good as expected.

Not to mention that we were supposed to be able to modify the list of books that count as "ours" without actually adding/deleting from our catalogue.

Meanwhile my basic LT use is still crippled by the elimination of work numbers to specify touchstones.

Basically, the feature as it stands does nothing to meet the need for a discussion forum (i.e., group) for every work.

If you click "Your books" in the lefthand Talk menu, you get a list of threads where your books, authors, etc, are abouted.

Oh, I see. I just assumed those were touchstones because of the titles of some threads, but now I see they did "about" those works.

Still, how would I find, in that huge long list, a conversation about a particular book? Is there any way to sort or filter that beyond all books vs. my books? I have a lot of books cataloged, so that filter doesn't really help much if I'm trying to track down a particular discussion.

Yeah, this feature is *really* a letdown.

I could've *sworn* the main focus here was to make an easier way to track topics that are actually focused on a specific book. If the only "tracking" going on here is a lost of *all* topics about *all* my books... That's useless to me.

I thought we would be able to go to a work page and find a list of conversations about that book. Isn't that what touchstones were supposed to be in the first place, before all the game-type threads muddied it up? Maybe my memory is shot, but this feature is nothing like I hoped for.

*siiiiiigh*

>358 I thought we would be able to go to a work page and find a list of conversations about that book

But we already have this... Go to the work page and click on the number in the last column in the table (Conversations). It will lead you to http://www.librarything.com/work/18319/conversations for example.

This feature here is just accumulating data -- the per work tracking is here already

#359 Yes we have the 'conversations' function - but usually only very few of the mentions of a book are truly 'about' the book - many of them are simply where the title of the book is mentioned in a game or a list.

OK - I see what you and Heather mean - I guess I never expected this feature to do that... It's a good idea though -- in addition to Conversation, to have a separate list for the About section :)

Although in most cases you can figure it out from the snippets.

Yes, one of the chief justifications for Abouts to begin with was that it could accomplish what Conversations fails to do when most touchstones are only for glancing mentions. I would not give up on that happening eventually. The About data is already probably at the point where Abouts on Work pages would start to pay off nicely.

I'd rather keep asking for that, than complain about the catastrophic disappointment of it not having happened yet.

Meh. We can only get so far by requesting the same things over and over again, when there's such significant failure in basic communication. There comes a point when it's not even worth trying.

It's on the agenda - sorry, lots going on right now; we know there are many plates still up in the air.

Thanks. I know there's always a lot going on; what I'm more concerned about is how the primary purpose of Abouts turned out to be the Talk link rather than work-page links. I followed all the discussions, and I just don't see how anyone could get the idea that that was the main interest.

Thank you, Zoe, for putting so nicely what I would've said angrily.

365> I suspect because Tim was doing a Talk redo and both Abouts themselves and the related options on the Talk page are both Talk features. Tim seems to work by making changes in one area of LT at a time, no matter how trivial the change would seem to be, so I suspect adding Abouts to Work pages will have to wait for a Work page redo.

367: Which would royally suck, because who knows when that will happen, and in the meantime this feature is a lot less useful then it could be. *rolls eyes*

>367 I can understand the reasoning behind that approach, but not how it manages to twist the whole purpose of the feature into becoming whatever's convenient to do. It's one thing to go step by step as convenient, and something else to say that the first convenient step was actually the main goal all along.

I feel like I was tricked into voting for the Talk redo over Lists, because the feature was presented as one thing and turned out to be something else entirely.