On this page you can share and discuss your thoughts about SL's technical features.
An index for discussions on other topics is at the Library Lobby.
Table of contents |
(Hicham) I have a strange trouble with The Random page function. When I use " http://senseis.xmp.net/?random=1", I get a page by my internet provider. I have changed the 1 into a 2 (random=2), and this solved the problem. But only with my bookmark. When I click Random page on the site, I get sent to my provider start page. A couple of days ago I went over my downloading limit and got punished with a lower spedd for the rest of December, but now everything i back to normal except this. Any ideas ?
Arno: sorry, can't help you with this one. The logs show you using the random function until 23rd December and then again starting today using random=2. So your provider's proxy blocks the URL for some unknown reason. What does the page of your provider say? About "random page on the site": I assume you mean the link in the yellow bar? If so, go to UserPreferences and change the value there to random=2 as well.
Dave: As a result of the flurry of name changes, I became interested in the errata pages. When I checked Magic Of Go/Errata I found that the problems on it are linked to Magic of Go/Problem 1 Wrong Solution, Magic of Go/Problem 1 Solution, Magic of Go/Problem 2 Wrong Solution, etc. The problem is that none of the toplevel pages exist: Magic of Go, Magic of Go Problem 1?, Magic of Go Problem 2?, and Magic of Go Problem 3?. The page that describes the newspaper column is The Magic of Go. I do not know whether this is really a problem with renaming (at least the Magic of Go/Errata is) or with the original creation of the pages but I think that we need to consider how to limit this type of mistake. What do others think?
mAsterdam: I changed a few more names. Is it QC acceptable now?
Dave: My reason for posting on "Guinea Pigs" was not the page as such but to raise the more general issue of how to control this sort of thing better. For one thing, I was a little surprised that it is seemingly possible to create subpages for main pages that do not exist. Is it possible to create a warning when this is about to happen? Also the "subpage" header in the upper right corner of the page shows the non-existent main page as a real link rather than as a non-existent ("page name?") link. Should this be corrected?
unkx80: I have a similar comment for the Discuss Page link on the top as well.
axd: sometimes, I need to jump to the page I am currently editing to check for original content: is it possible to add a link on the edit page (of that page)?
Arno: done. The version information (right to the title) is now a link back to the page. axd: thanks.
uxs: Using opera 7.60 (some preview), I can't see the red line on the RecentChanges page anymore.
Arno: maybe that's because you didn't visit SL in the past 5 days and the red line is past what is shown in RecentChanges?
uxs: No, don't be silly. I can see where the red line should be, because there's a gap between two entries. There was this one time when Opera was still in the middle of rendering the page and I saw a red line, but then it disappeared. That was when I noticed the gap between the two entries where the red line made its brief appearance. (I realize this could very well be a bug in Opera; I just don't know.)
Arno: it is a bug in Opera. I changed the HTML for the red line, so Opera should be able to display it as well.
uxs: Yup, fixed. Thanks.
SGBailey: Is there a way of listing the pages that I have edited? A bit like the recent changes page, but of (say) the most recent 100 edits I've done (with next link for edits 101-200 etc).
Morten Using the Advanced Search features, you can find those where you were the last contributor. For all your edits, that is less easy although there is an admin/librarian function which is really meant to track vandals... I found 46 edits which match 'bailey' over the last year, 54 since your first edit 30 September 2003. I can send them to you as a X-mas present....? ;-)
SGBailey: No thanks. It is just a nice feature to easily pickup where you had got too on some thread you were following and /or to see what has happened to edits you have done. Compare with the wikipedia function http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=SGBailey Happy Christmas.
axd: I'd also like to be able to search in the deltas. Is there a (probably technical) reason why this is not desirable for the general public? Maybe too time-consuming, I guess?
boblatorm?: hey, it's working fine for me now... maybe a computer reset did the trick as well as cache clearing and so forth? ah well! looking nice!
uxs: I agree with Bill below that a possibility to change the font in the menu on the left independantly would be very nice.
Arno: ok, I have added an option. Not to decrease the font-size of the left bar, but to increase the font-size of the page content.
uxs: Allright, looking better now. Using the left bar as the "default" font and the page content font as the derivative font feels kinda counter-intuitive, but it will do. I still liked the old layout better, but whatever. I'll get used to it I guess.
Arno: I know that it is counter-intuitive, but it is the easiest solution considering the actual HTML structure of the pages.
wms: All my problems (jumpy scrolling, overlapping text, etc.) fixed. I like the new system better than the old one. Thanks Arno, for seeing through these bugs & getting the new system working well!
Morten: Under Win XP, both Opera 7.23 and 7.54 work ok. Bobulatorm, what exactly is it that is not working?
bobulatorm: not working in opera 7 yet.
Arno: I have tested it with Opera7.23/Linux everything works ok.
Christoph Gerlach Menus work now. Windows 2000/IE 6.0. Also the workaround using spaces in long favorite helped.
Arno: I tested the menus at the top with IE5/Wine and IE6/WinXP. IE users need Javascript enabled for this to work. Apparently there is a problem under WinNT & Win2000. Can someone IE/Win guru help debug this?
Christoph Gerlach: My layout is broken too. I have "EuropeanGoTournamentCalendar" in my favorites and this forces the left side to overlap the content. Also the new menus on Top "Tools" and "Personal" don't work. When I move my mouse over them, they open but the mouse changes to "select text" and when I try to move it down to an menu item the menu us closed when I leave the headline of the menu. Windows 2000/IE 6.0.
Arno: ad favorites: add spaces in the name, then the link goes over two lines.
grauniad: FWIW, the new layout works correctly for me in both Safari 1.2.4 and Firefox 1.0 under Mac OS X 10.3.7, though the default font size seems smaller in Safari.
Benjamin Geiger: I have the same problem wms has, with regard to the left pane overlapping the content of the page. (Firefox 1.0, Mac OS 10.3.6) The workaround is to increase the font size in your browser. A better solution, as I understand it, is to specify the sidebar width in absolute units (pixels, centimeters, et cetera).
The current stylesheet has the width of the left pane specified in terms of the 'em', which is dependent on text size. Specifically, the left pane 11em. However, it autoexpands to fit whatever is inside it. If 11em in your chosen font size is less than the width of the images in the left pane, the content will be hidden by the expansion.
Of course, in an odd misbug, the left pane does not expand in Safari (1.2.4), leaving the images hanging out.
geno: The changes have fixed the "jumpiness" problem, everything looks great!
unkx80: Fixed here too (Firefox 1.0, WinXP SP2). Thanks. =)
wms: Clearing cache got the bar where it belongs (left side), but now I have the "uneven scrolling" problem (very annoying, and my system is not slow!), plus now the left bar pushes past the margin of the text on the right! Look at this screen shot: - this is on linux+firefox 1.0.
Fwiffo: I finally got a chance to look at the new layout on my faster computer, and the jerky scrolling isn't any faster, so it's still pretty annoying (other than that I really like the new layout). I've got Linux and Firefox 1.0, but I do not have any other problems. I notice your fonts are different - have you tried installing the free MS fonts?
froese?: The new layout is extremely slow under Firefox 1.0 and shows some strange effects (i.e. the toolbar is transparent, edit box uses prop-font, ...). Under Netscape 4.7 the layout is totally broken, the same with W3M and eLinks. The former layout was fine with all the mentioned browsers. It seems that CSS is now a requirement :-((
(Hicham) I have to say, that the problem with the differnce in scrolling speed is rather irritating. For the rest I like the new layout. The section edit is a nice option.
Bill: If you are going to be playing with the layout, I have a request. I use a large font to avoid eyestrain, but then the lefthand section seems too large. Since I rarely use it, I would like to be able to set it to a smaller font size than the main page. Thanks. :-)
wms: On Dec. 19, 18:18 GMT, the new layout is broken for me. firefox 1.0. Whne I view a page, the actual page is first, with the links (the "yellow bar") down below it instead of to the left.
maruseru: The new layout does not work with Safari on OS X, unfortunately. The sidebar appears below the main content.
Arno: strange. Konqueror and Safari both use KHTML as rendering engine. Are there any other Safari users out there who are knowledgeable with HTML & CSS and help me debug this?
maruseru: Works & looks fine now, thank you!
Arno: maybe it had to do with your browser's cache.
JoelR: I had the same problem with Mozilla on OS X, and yes, clearing the cache fixed it for me.
geno: Arno, any chance I could talk you into adding an option to lock down the left-side menu bar? The scrolling at slightly different times from the main page is making my head swim! :-)
Arno: I don't experience this in any of my browsers. What OS/browser are you using?
geno: slackware-current, 2.6.9 kernel, Firefox 1.0. The left panel and the main panel scroll at slightly different times, in little jumps. The left panel moves first by a fraction of a second.
unkx80: I get that in Firefox 1.0 on WinXP SP2 too, although I don't really mind. =)
Fwiffo: It's caused by the line in the css file "#leftbg { position: fixed; ..." Fixed position backgrounds cause jerky scrolling like that. Removing the "position: fixed" part would fix it, but the consequence is that the yellow bar on the left only extends as far down as the content of the left menu instead of to the bottom of the page. I think that's superior to the slow jerky scrolling (which is unpleasant on a slower computer), but there should be a way to make the background extend all the way down in a less hacky way...
geno: (re: "slower computer") Hmmm... I hate to go off slackware-current for something as core as video, but maybe it's time to download those official nvidia drivers.... :-/
LukeNine45: For me, (firefox, Win2k?) the text doesn't line up with the diagrams always-- see 44PointOneSpaceLowPincerOnePointJump. Scroll down a little and note that the explanitory text is all lumped beside the first diagram in a sequence and the others have no text. :( Hope that makes sense. I'm off to bed now... Oh yeah, I did clear my cache and it's still that way.
Arno: should be fixed now. Force a hard reload (shift+reload) to see it work.
Benjamin: With the new "edit section" feature it could be possible to have different people work at sections of the same page simultaniously. But I think it's not yet supported - will it become implmented?
Arno: I don't think so. Right now, the code is very simplistic. Furthermore I'd have to change the locking mechanisms and much other stuff as well to allow concurrent editing.
Hu: New layout is broken for me. Netscape 7.2 (Mozilla engine), the area that used to be at the left is now at the bottom and therefore normally invisible until scrolled up. 2004-12-20/09:43UTC.
Arno: did it work yesterday? Did you clear your cache or force a hard reload (shift+reload/shift+ctrl+reload)? Netscape 7 should work - it works in Mozilla on Win&Linux. Don't see why Netscape should fail.
Hu: Works now that I forced reload. I did not expect to have to do that since it had the same behavior on pages at SL that I hadn't visited with this computer. Might be an idea to put a temporary note at the top of the main page suggesting the force reload or clear cache technique (note to be explicitly time limited in the note).
Hu: I like the new way one can edit subsections of a page, a la Wikipedia. Good improvement.
unkx80: Some slightly off-topic comment. Yesterday, I downloaded Firefox 1.0 on my WinXP computer for the very first time. The new layout looked great. But soon, as I was clicking around with the new browser, I realised that Firefox seems to have difficulty handling relative URLs sometimes. I repeatedly ran into error messages like: "/xxxxxxxx/xxxxxxxx/xxxxxxxx.html could not be found. Please check the name and try again." Also strangely, the background of the English version of a particular website did not load, but the Chinese version of the same website loaded, although I used very similar ASP codes for both versions (the background appeared on IE6 when I viewed it on the same time). I have not researched on this Firefox "bug" (and whether this "bug" affects other Mozilla related browsers), but since all the positioning info for SL is stored in /templates/main.css, and if /templates/main.css could not be loaded, then the yellow bar would appear at the bottom rather than at the side. One thing though, I do not yet know how to reproduce this "bug".
Cheyenne: Dec 20th -- Mozilla-firefox 1.0 (cleaned out cache, etc.) -- text overflowing it's boundries. Up in the upper left panel -- right under Stones (the SL mascott), long text is overflowing it's boundry slightly
axd: I wish I would be able to add pages I sometimes come across to some kind of Favorites/Bookmarks space (similar to the watched pages list), so that later I can come back. This is especially interesting because I browse SL from different places, so apart from editing the limited links on the left side, there is no other option than to edit my homepage and add the link, or e-mail the URL to the other computer.
Gronk: Has there been discussion or consideration of the possibility of a pattern match search on SL? A few days back I had wanted to find discussion of a certain corner position. I knew I had seen it on SL but I could not recall the page name or enough about it to do a sensible search. But, were there a pattern match search I could have searched for the position (much like on GoBase).
Dieter: Yes we have debated it. Arno would see if he had time/desire to implement.
Another search gripe: Searching for "seki" brings up many pages on "joseki". This is annoying. Is there a way to exclude joseki when one is interested just in seki?
Dieter: enter "seki -joseki -fuseki -inseki"
axd: Often, a page will contain several places where a word is used that is also the page title (example:Semedori). How about automatically format instances of the word in bold, or put in a different color?
(Sebastian:) If this were automatic it would be pretty annoying. Editors can alread do this manually where they see fit, but I don't think it would be appropriate in most cases. It would make sense, however, to automatically highlight terms from a search, if a page was found through a search.
Karl Knechtel: It appears that I frequently am a bit hasty with submitting my edits, and wish to change things - but end up being stumped by the Edit Conflict Warning page, since apparently a conflict is detected with my own edit somehow. I would have thought that submitting your changes would cancel the edit warning anyway. Could something be done about this?
Bob McGuigan: I've noticed this, too. Apparently the system is a little slow in recognizing when edits have been submitted. I discovered that when I submit a second edit under these circumstances there is actually no conflict.
Arno: are you really clicking "Edit page" again and don't use the back button? I have never experienced this. The moment the final page with the "thank you"-message appears the page is in the database and therefor a new edit should not produce a warning.
Bill: I have noticed it, too, without clicking the back button.
What irks me is when I abide by the warning, wait for up to 10 minutes, and then see no edit. Now maybe that is because somebody has changed his mind, but, since I sometimes see the warning for myself when I have made no changes, I wonder what is going on.
DJ: Happens to me too. Only, when I'm editing my own hastiness, as Karl above, I just click the "Save" button when I'm finished and the edit's edits are saved despit the warning... which is fine enough for me.
(Sebastian:) Allow entering a ? on an intersection in a diagram so it can be used for undetermined intersections, such as in Introduction to the 'press' tactic / Discussion.
(later:) This has become unneccessary now for the intended purpose, since we agreed to use underscores to express undetermined intersections. However, it would still be nice to have if we could enter any character into a diagram, e.g. by "escaping" it with a "/" in place of the preceding space.
(Sebastian:) Can we please have an automatic feature that removes entries from the Recent Changes list when they have been identified as vandalism? It is really annoying and a huge loss of time if every well-meaning deshi has to
This could be implemented by just hiding all changes by a IP address that has been blocked from the Recent Changes list.
Robert Pauli: The TOC shouldn't show footnote links: it's ugly and for no use.
Robert Pauli: Now let me ask for something really crazy:
A diagram's titel should be above it.
This would go way more natural with the text at the right-hand side, especially if it's short.
rubilia: KGSWishlist probably is about to get split into several main pages (for details, see KGSWishlist/discussion). Thinking about how to encourage users to look for already filed wishes, first: Would it be possible to get a pruned advanced search implemented at the entry page to that future page structure, showing just the "full text search" line, but restricted by default to all pages containing a particular identifier (KGSWish..., e. g.)?
Arno: I don't think I implement something like that. The next wish is to have the functionality of AdvancedFindPage and I don't want to implement that. I am going to improve sub-pages one of these days, so that is your best guess (i.e. a TOC directive that spans all sub-pages, a directive for the order of sub-pages within the TOC, and maybe as well a search restricted to the sub-pages)
(Sebastian:) Should we offer a way to save text files as-is? E.g. when someone posts an SGF file such as KGSTeaching Ladder Games List? it displays awfully, and it clutters the UndefinedPages list.
The problem of page width exceeding the browser limits is somehow related to the combination of small text, using space indents, and titles, using exclamation marks. --Dieter
Bildstein: The "Random Page" option generally seems to take you to an element of a long list - a BQM, a go problem, a glossary item, etc. I find this slightly frustrating, because generally what I want to see is a new idea. I was thinking that it was inevitable, but now I'm not so sure. I assume that "Random Page" is implemented as randomly choosing one page, giving each page an equal likelihood. But what if it was implemented by traversing the tree of pages, giving pages a lower probability of being chosen if their parent has many children? I know this is only a half baked idea, but perhaps someone else will pick it up and run with it.
rubilia: Sometimes it would be useful to have (read-only) access to the source text of earlier page versions. E. g., right now I'd like to re-include some recently deleted diagrams to a particular page in a changed manner. Maybe in the "view version" view there could be a "show source" link instead of the regular "edit" link in current pages?
rubilia: Arno, I didn't want to bother you with this marginal stuff while you were dealing with the structural change of SL pages. Maybe now it's the time: The shortcut keys 1 to 9 in diff-in-page views don't really work the way they should, yet. Also, it would be nice if there was either a link or a hotkey to jump immediatly back to RecentChanges after reading a series of diffs. Right now, one has to ask the browser history, which is a little awkward.
axd: I often want to watch pages as well as some of their subpages; (un)toggling the watch status requires a lot of clicking around. So I wondered if it would be possible to list not only the page, but also the subpages on a page's watch status page; each (sub)page would be a line with the current watch status, hyperlinked to toggle that status (similar as in the current "To undo, ..."). This would avoid one having to go to all subpages and (un)toggle there.
Bill: I would find material about subpages and how to use them helpful. :-)
Hu: About Sub Pages? should be a sub-page of SL Conventions.
Blake: This is a very minor feature request, but I was wondering if "small stones" notation could be extended to W20/B20. There seem to be a decent number of "W11"/"B11" references, especially.
axd: Not unexpected, but surprising was the use of the random page function of SL: if you want to go back to a previously visited random page, you just get another random page - LOL. It's weird when you try to go back to a page that did look interesting by using the browser history: does anyone see a way to solve this (small) problem?
axd: (BTW - I still think we could use a SLWishlist? page)
I perceive the "diff in page" view as a remarkable enhancement to the "standard diff" view, because the context of changes is shown entirely and correctly. However, thereīs a disadvantage: in big pages, itīs a little awkward to find relatively small changes - although highlighted -, and even harder in cases the changes are spread over the whole diff. Wouldn't it be possible to add floating "jump to next/previous change" buttons, or (supposingly more realistic to be implemented ever :)) make two SL Shortcut Keys working that way?
Arno: Unless I add Javascript this function will not work - and I am not too keen about that. Maybe I can think of something else.
axd: Is it possible to search in the page histories? This is interesting, for example when I want to know about every contribution someone made, not only the most recent one; and also, if for example a link gets deleted, creating an orphan, to know where the orphan was last referenced before it got deleted.
mAsterdam: I copied this from the sandbox:
Why don't
![]()
![]()
become graphics here in diagram titles?
bojo: Is there a way to track searches that have zero hits, and rank them? It would be nice to grab the higher ranking negative hits and create aliases to real pages for them, so people searching have a better chance of finding what they were after (hopefully).
This page has been pruned and master edited several times. Old versions: