Right now, I feel, the boards' scripts are lacking. Looking at things over the past while, we've got some things that need addressing. Many of our viewers don't see the pages how they should. Things are not very efficient, or constructed to work easily with each other. I'm now calling on the help of 4-ch'ers to help try to make a board script that meets our demands; both yours as you view and use them, and mine and the moderators so that we can efficiently moderate and operate the boards.
The list so far of things that need to be done:
I've also come to the conclusion that taking some of Kareha's code and then building our own might be the best approach. I can't do this all myself : I'm a lousy programmer, and without your contribution I don't know what to add. Many hands also make light work. In terms of getting it all done, I personally would like a replacement for Kareha inplace before our 1st birthday (November 1st).
If you can help in anyway, Perl, HTML, CSS, ideas, criticism, thoughts, anything else I may have missed, then feel free to contribute to this thread. I am willing to provide whatever services are required to get the job done. Asking our resident technician to put inplace a CVS/SVN server is not a problem and if we need it, I'll have it in.
A little CSS bug I just noticed: (only affects Pseud0ch) futher down this board there's a permasaged thread, but its "■ ▲ ▼" icons are floating in the top-right corner, near Admin/Manage.
The table of contents near the top of each board could use some improvement. I see 4 main problems with the way it's presented right now:
> Pretty much the whole thing is crammed onto one line, which makes it hard to pick apart threads at a glance.
Actually, I like that the way it is. The way Shiichan does this, with one line for each thread listed makes the list longer but not really more useful.
> The everything-on-one-line approach looks weird in Opera when a long thread title must wrap onto the next line.
How does it look weird?
> It's not obvious that clicking on the numeric portion of a topic (that is, the "1. " in "1. [REQUEST] - Project 4-ch: Building a better website. (2)") produces a different result than clicking on the text portion of the same title, but only for the first THREADS_DISPLAYED threads.
Well, you could either learn that just by experience (it's also the same way at 2channel (more or less)) or we could add it to the wiki.
> There's no way to quickly skip down to the Reply box.
Well, you could skim to the beginning of the next thread and then just scroll up a bit....
And personally, I think all "look and feel" questions that aim at optimal results should be subject for special browsers or firefox extensions. The default design by the board itself should just simply go for the best possible result that can be had by regarding the major browsers in use while not cramming everything full with stuff that could easily break.
> Actually, I like that the way it is. The way Shiichan does this, with one line for each thread listed makes the list longer but not really more useful.
I wasn't asking for each thread title to be placed on its own line. I was asking for general opinions about clearer thread separation. Thanks for pointing out that Shiichan does it differently, though.
> How does it look weird?
Like this: http://paracelsus.hollosite.com/src/1122929217998.jpg
> Well, you could skim to the beginning of the next thread and then just scroll up a bit....
True, but that's a learned habit, and one that I certainly haven't learned. Although no user interface is intrinsically intuitive, we could try to make ours less intrinsically hostile.
AFAIK, most of that list, other than the admin controls and stats, can be achieved by either modifying the CSS or Kareha's templates. Something really has to be done about Pseudo0ch; all the others work fine in Opera and IE.
As for the speed bit... egads, man.
> As for the speed bit... egads, man.
There aint nothing wrong with being quick and efficient.
> either modifying the CSS or Kareha's templates
Well no. I want to create a better way for moderation to be done that is a bit more involved. For starters, NONE of the admin features are public. So the CSS option is out as "display: none;" is something I would like to see, well, none of if I can help. Currently either making a Perl script/another template that does it serverside or a Firefox plugin or something are two ideas for a solution. The current setup of Kareha is far from the best option I feel if 4-ch ever plans to actually grow.
while I'm at it, I might as well show some of you what I have created and have done nothing but aimlessly show off:
http://4-ch.net/template/ <- Currently that is my very basic mock-up of what I would like to see the boards look like with pseud0ch. There is room in there for other styles no doubt however I that's something else to be desired. The HTML also is w3c compliant, as should be the CSS, something of which Kareha doesn't do. And somehow the page looks near the same in Netscape 4.7, Firefox 1, IE 5.5 for Mac, Safari etc.
Also, 8 replies and no one is willing to actually help, just criticise about the current problems. sigh
I am master of criticism! Hear me squeakroar!
The main problem, as I see it, is that coding up a decent bug-free board is an undertaking that will eat a few weekends. All that effort to change something that already works. No, it's not ideal, but most things in life aren't.
If you want to change things, I suspect it'd be simplest to do this:
This can all be done in one day, by one person. The only complicated part is:
If you're slick, you can even rip off most of Kareha's code to do the last part. You don't even need a good perl coder, you just need a monkey good at pattern-matching (witness me and Wakaba). This may take two or three days.
A hack? Yeah, absolutely, but it's lot less effort. You're not going to get much faster than this either.
>>10
I like the look, it's a little neater than the current kareha style. You're still left with the problem of the number links' differing function not being obvious. Maybe with a space in between?
And the date really should be yyyy-mm-dd :3.
> no one is willing to actually help, just criticise about the current problems.
Criticism can be actually helpful, no?
>>11
Sounds a lot easier, yes. I'd rather fix both the HTML and CSS at the same time. Sure it means loosing the existing styles etc, but we can always make our own new ones, right?
That's the idea behind the templating. If you don't like the standard HTML generation, you change the template.
However, I'm curious about what is wrong with the HTML? As far as I can see, the validation errors are caused purely by trying to accommodate IE stupidity. If it's size you're referring to, enabling mod_deflate or mod_gzip is easier.
>>8
Opera with any board look breaks like the screenshot in >>7, but it's most obvious in Pseud0ch. Adding to Pseud0ch's problems is that most or all Delete links are unclickable in Opera. Some of the unclickable links are clickable when in a detailed thread view (i.e. Entire Thread), but which ones become clickable seem like a crap shoot.
>And the date really should be yyyy-mm-dd :3.
Hear, hear!
>Make a seperate perl (or PHP) program that admins can use
You'll probably want to be able to view posts within the separate admin program so you know exactly which message(s) you're operating on.
So if the messages are presented in a message-board-like fashion, people might wonder if or why it isn't possible to post using that interface as well. "(Admin)" posting might be a function that's transferred over to the dedicated admin interface.
The Admin interface might want to implement its own automatic name/trip database as well.
>toss a caching proxy in front of kareha (black magic not included)
In order to accomplish what?
I can confirm that it's only a couple of IE workarounds that cause the validator to complain, due to usage of <nobr> tags.
As for >>1, changing the HTML template might be something you want to do (or might not, depending - the current one is designed to degrade fairly gracefully, and forcing it to look the same in major browsers might break the minor ones more instead). But I don't see what's wrong with the script itself - believe me, if there was a way to do things more efficiently, I would have done it already. You're going to have to point out some actual inefficiencies before you can do anything about them.
>> toss a caching proxy in front of kareha (black magic not included)
> In order to accomplish what?
It's faster to grab something from cache than it is to run a script, even one coded to take full advantage of mod_perl. Even with a C + FastCGI combination, you're quite unlikely to beat a decent cache.
>>18
I'm actually a bit curious why everything isn't just static HTML.
I've requested Anonymous the Sysadmin to setup a sub-domain so I/we can mess about and create a better websight without messing this one up. Everything we have here will be looked at, and changed if need-be. Then, if it good, it'll get transplanted here. Or something. mod_perl will probably get setup, as will other bits n pieces and hopefully when this bloody cold of mine goes away, I can sit down and work on things, so expect a lot of help questions, unless of course someone wants to do it for me >.>
Honestly, I didn't mean to sage that.
Can't we just use 2channel's cgi-script? x)
