In the spirit of the now off-topic wish list [goats.com], I thought I would do a quick post with some of the stuff that I've fixed and/or cleaned up since the move to the new design and code base. My hope is that this will make you find a whole new slew of bugs that I can then decide aren't worth dealing with, and I'll have much better excuses to be at the pub on Thursday. So here goes:

• Search [goats.com] now supports ordering by most columns. Hopefully that will make it somewhat more useful. If you click on the categories of the homepage news posts, you'll see that search is what is being used to keep track of them now, instead of the outdated specialized news section.
• You should no longer be able to moderate in locked/archived discussions. This should stop the 1 or 2 people who were taking out their grudges in hiding from doing so quite as obliquely.
• An issue where the "Have you Meta Moderated Today? [goats.com]" text would show up during/after Meta Moderation [goats.com] has been resolved.
• Some weird ass stuff you wouldn't see unless you were watching the logs with bogus URLs returning legit pages has been modified to return redirects instead. Search engines keep hitting these bogus URLs that are generated when people post bad URLs in their comments. bad URLs!
• And pseudo-nightly comic mailings, which were not going out [goats.com] should resume shortly. That code was completely rewritten over the weekend. They will resume as soon as the template is tweaked to match the redesign.

Plenty more to do, but I think that this is close to the last of the outstanding bugs that I remembered. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to find the new bugs.

In the spirit of the now off-topic wish list...

I thought a couple of those items would get Jon's attention, but he's obviously been a busy boy [goats.com] lately.

Anyway, I presume your tinkering is why I had to log in this morning, for the first time in many months.

You should no longer be able to moderate in locked/archived discussions.

Good work, that was a long overdue change. The conspiracy [goats.com] endeth.

In Response to mkinyon (#33032):

Anyway, I presume your tinkering is why I had to log in this morning, for the first time in many months.

Nope. That was just because the login cookie is set to last for a year, and you're celebrating your "one year of goats registration"-iversary today.

In Response to phillip (#33033):

I am? Woo hoo! Mettwurst and Hefeweizen for all!

And yet, you still didn't implement rewriting to change http://goats.com/ to http://www.goats.com/ so you could normalize your cookie handling, and not have things get a little tweaked when some lazy typist's browser mis-fills in their intended destination.

In Response to zamphir (#33038):

both are legit URLs, and cookies should work across both.

In Response to phillip (#33043):

cookies should work across both.

It does appear this way now - with inadequate testing. So if you changed something in this regard - then rest assured that it is a smidge less likely to be buggy than it was.

OH, there is one thing... what is with how a post you've just submitted comes up as unread in the forums? I find it irritating, because then I have to click on the thread link again to register it as read.

In Response to snipergirl (#33089):

the reason that shouldn't happen is that after submitting a post, you're redirected to it, which means that it should get marked as read at that point.

does this happen for you on every post, or just sometimes? Also, what view are you using? flat, nested?

In Response to phillip (#33090):

I get the same thing - nested view.

Also, if I look at just one post (like after clicking on #33090 in your post), the 'in response to' button does not work.

In Response to deerboy (#33094):

ok...I have the "In Reply To" thing isolated, I'm just deciding what the best option for fixing it is.

Still tracking the unread after posting thing.

In Response to phillip (#33104):

How's work going on the "new comics aren't posted by 5 am PST" thing?

Or is that just me - somehow three days in a row?

In Response to deerboy (#33094):

Tentative fixes in place for both of these now.

If you (or anyone else) notices anything funky with those links, let me know.

So I'm using Safari on a Mac with OS 10, and I'm still having some problems. Been away from the forums for a bit, so apologies if this has already been discussed.

The biggest is that in the strip info, as well as the summaries of the forums and people's personal stats (which I sometimes check when determining to whom to give mod points), it seems that most text that isn't a link is white on white background. So it's illegible unless I highlight it. I've been highlighting it, but that's honestly pretty annoying, and still not that easy to read.

I've cleared my cache a few times, so that doesn't seem to be the problem.

Any thoughts?

In Response to Llamarama (#33146):

he might need to know Mac OS 10.?? and what version of safari...

In Response to AsphaltBuffet (#33148):

A good point. It's OS 10.4.5 and Safari 2.0.3. It's pretty new--I just got this computer in the Fall after using shared machines in my co-op for the past few years (after the LCD on my old laptop cracked).

In Response to phillip (#33104):

Um, I don't know what you did, but it most certainly is much worse. That's my best explanation.

In Response to Llamarama (#33149):

Hi Hi Llama, i hope this isn't a pointless detour on your Boojum Hunt, but here's an idea. I'm also using OS X 10.4.5 with Safari 2.0.3 (and with Camino 1.0.0 which does the best job with the Goats.com site). I had the same problems you described, (white-on-white text, improper formatting below buttons).

As soon as i emptied the cache in each browser and forced a reload of the style sheets my problems cleared up. But if you are still having an issue despite these actions, have you checked your browser's optional style-sheet preferences?

If you go to the menu for
Safari >> Preferences >>
then open the Advanced pane and look at the Style Sheet drop-down selection, you could verify that you're not using any custom CSS, (or, as in my case, a custom style sheet is being used to change the default page colors, but it can be de-selected on the fly).

I hope you can solve your issue easily-- i found the problems were totally on my end, and the revisions at Goats.com were actually working perfectly as soon as i got rid of the old cached style sheets from last month.

In Response to Teledildonix (#33152):

i've had my most luck with Firefox on 10.4.5+ and have never tried camino. any good? i realized that i hated opera about 5 minutes after i started using it.

In Response to Teledildonix (#33152):

Thanks, Tele*! But I went to the advanced preferences, and found that there was no style sheet selected. Which isn't too surprising, I guess, as that was the first time I'd opened that pane!

Tried emptying my cache againafter that, just to be sure. Did it with all windows closed, and then quit Safari. But when I opened it up again, the problems were still there.

Alas.

In Response to Llamarama (#33158):

Can you do me a favor and email me some screenshots with accompanying URLs of the problem pages? I'll see if it's a CSS bug.

In Response to jon (#33159):

No prob--thanks! I'm rushing to catch a train now (shouldn't be on the forums, for that matter), but will try to do so in the next few days.

Actually, the train is to NYC. Maybe I'll swing by Bleecker Street. Though i doubt that my friend in Astoria will want to...

What is the optimal way of reading the forums, flat or nested?

I used to have it nested but this new site design seems to have it backwards so the replies get wider. I looked at flat but there's no sense of back and forth with it, just a column of replies.

And when replying to a message I have my comment box below the last Google ad on the left.

I'm on XP-SP2 with IE 6.0.2xxx. Thanks.

In Response to AsphaltBuffet (#33156):

Are you using OS X for PowerPC computers? If not, i can't comment. My experience with Firefox in OS X 10.3 and 10.4 is that it felt slow and bloated compared to Camino [caminobrowser.org], which is the very lean "stripped-down" version (hence the automobile metaphor). Camino handles Goats.com far better than my other browsers; but it's not ideal for some sites, particularly those with lots of java applets, so i continue to keep Safari as my default browser.

If you're not using an Apple Macintosh from 1998-2006 with OS X 10.2 or newer, then this discussion is irrelevant.

In Response to Rich (#33161):

I designed them with flat in kind, but nested should technically still work the same way it did before, with replies getting narrower.

I will hopefully get around to fixing all of these things at some point soon, I apologize for the general bugginess of things.

Personally I prefer (and recommend) the flat view, I feel it's more conversational and an easier read.

In Response to Teledildonix (#33162):

What computer are you using? On mine Firefox is nice and fast, like a pony.