Is this working?

I updated my comments handling to limit the amount of useless spam that I was getting but I feel that I've inadvertantly managed to make things more difficult for everybody else. I suppose that's one of the problems with custom-developing your own backend: functionality hasn't been tested by hundreds or thousands of people to find bugs.

I've added (hopefully) more helpful error messaging and made it more prominent than it was. Along with that, it now retains your message if an error does occur so that your hard work isn't lost. At least, that's what it should do.

To help those Camino users, the page does not do live preview by default anymore. You have to click on the preview button. However, to make the preview area easier to find, I set it up using fixed positioning. Although, that in itself seems to be giving me grief. It works in Firefox and IE7 but not in Safari. Maybe I should ditch live preview altogether.

On the plus side, I added a print stylesheet. Print stylesheets are often neglected and I did so for far too long. I set up the print stylesheet to be very clean and, well...print-friendly. One fun thing I did was make sure a page break always occurred before the comments. This way, if you want to keep the article but don't care about the comments, you can just toss those pages aside (or opt not to print them). Anyways, try it out and let me know what you think.

Also, just a quick note to say thank you to everybody that responded to my frenetic article. The dust has settled and I'm soldiering on. I still enjoy the freelance but I do need to reprioritize and rethink my long term strategy. I still haven't decided what that is yet.

Anyways, enough gibberish...

Published November 07, 2006
Categorized as Other
Short URL: https://snook.ca/s/715

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14 Comments · RSS feed
Tim McCormack said on November 06, 2006

Comment test using Firefox 2.0 on Ubuntu Edgy Eft, cookies and javascript enabled.

Yannick said on November 06, 2006

Took a look at the print preview in FF on Win XP and the print stylesheet does what it's supposed to.

Unfortunately I can't check the comment form/preview in Camino or Safari since I'm on a PC but it definitely works like a charm in FF on Win XP. Nicely done Jonathan.

Keep up the good work.

Yannick said on November 06, 2006

hehe okay I actually did get an error. I did a preview and then hit Post and it gave an error but then afterwards hit Post again and it went through.

Yannick said on November 06, 2006

hmm...sorry for all the rapid comments, it seems it was just a rare occurrence as my last comment went through okay.

steve said on November 07, 2006

Is it just a Firefox text pattern thing? All the comments with this configuration flow over the right column. It's really annoying esp if the is a background colour on the right and it hides the content.

Alexander Berglund said on November 07, 2006

Trying to give you something from Firefox 1.5.0.7 (WinXP) and it seems like the preview is doing it's thing. But as Steve points out it is really annoying that the preview hides the content while you need it.

As for the look on the thing it's looking good, maybe make it so that it expands from the start with the text?

Jonathan Snook said on November 07, 2006

steve/alexander: can either of you send me a screenshot of what you're seeing?

I've tweaked the backend a little which will hopefully help resolve the lost comments. With the problem being random, there's no way to know for sure. :)

Alexander Berglund said on November 07, 2006

Jonathan: Here is how I view it:
http://hem.passagen.se/xcross/preview-problem.png

It overlaps quite fine so I don't know if it even is a bug but it is really annoying anyway...

Jonathan Snook said on November 07, 2006

Alexander: thanks for that. The preview is doing what it's supposed to but obviously not a welcome solution. So, I've disabled the preview for now until I can come up with something useful. As much as I like the fixed comments, it certainly has its downfalls.

Fredrik Wärnsberg said on November 07, 2006

testing testing :)

Montoya said on November 07, 2006

Wouldn't it be possible to integrate Akismet with this site? That would be really cool.

Jonathan Snook said on November 07, 2006

Montoya: yes, I've been contemplating using Akismet. I have the library sitting on my desktop as it has been for about a month. I was concerned about performance so I haven't integrated it yet but it could find its way in one day.

Binny V A said on November 07, 2006

If you see this, comments are working with Firefox 2.0 on Fedora Core 3

Cole Mickens said on November 08, 2006

You should allow for temporary comment editing. Just a thought ;)

Sorry, comments are closed for this post. If you have any further questions or comments, feel free to send them to me directly.