Weekly Update: 21 September 2009

[denise]

Oops! I usually write the introductions to these last, and forgot to do that this time ... which means you guys got an uncut news post for the first 15 minutes. Mea culpa. (And it did have to happen on a week where the update was long...)

Let's try this again:

1. Slow Like Turtle...

Many people noticed that the site was intermittently slow or failed to load earlier today (starting at around 6PM EDT). This was a connectivity problem with our upstream hosting provider. It was only about 10 minutes of network issues, and our hosting provider seems to be on top of things, but if the site gets wonky after I post this, we're keeping an eye out. Thanks for your patience!

2. The Week in Code

yvi was the host for this week's code tour: 26 bugs resolved FIXED, with thanks to this week's contributors pauamma, superluminal, cesy, kareila, yvi, wyntarvox, afuna, ninetydegrees, and exor674. (Also, szabgab deserves thanks for all of his code cleanup and work on our test suites -- all of his assigned bugs are major ongoing meta-bugs, so he hasn't appeared in a code tour yet, but he's been diligently working on fixing up a lot of old and crufty code to conform to modern coding standards.)

This week was a nice mixture of bugfixes, enhancements, styles/layout stuff, and minor enhancements. Two patches out of that 26 came from dw_suggestions suggestions.

The big things this week: nearly all pages now have a ?style=light implementation (available now on all pages that can show the navstrip), adding an extra set of "mark all read" and "delete all" buttons to the top of the inbox as well as the bottom, a bugfix that would prevent the Manage Access Filters page from loading if you had more than 30 access filters, and, the big one:

3. Crossposting from Clients

Beginning with the next code push, which should be either this upcoming weekend or next weekend, all entries posted via desktop client, including post-by-email, will obey your default crosspost settings. This means that if you've got your account configured to crosspost your entries, they will begin crossposting after the next code push if you have your account configured to crosspost by default, even if you make them via desktop client or by email.

superluminal gets props for this patch, and for sticking with it through all the revisions.

4. Vacation

sarah and I are on vacation from Wednesday morning on, which means that any check or money order payment that comes in from 9/23-10/2 will be delayed slightly until we get back into the state. (Don't worry, your paid time will start from when we enter the payment, not from when you send the check.)

Sorry about the inconvenience!

5. Reading Filters

By now, everyone's probably had the chance to play around some with subscription filters and try out some of their features. We've already implemented a few fixes (that will be live with the next code push), and have taken suggestions for a few more.

As a reminder, this is the alpha version -- not even ready for the title of 'beta' yet -- and so they're not necessarily pretty! But we hope you're finding them useful. You can read over others' suggestions for improving them in dw_suggestions, and suggest your own if it's not already listed.

6. Styles

We've seen an awesome increase in the number of people submitting layouts and color themes since zvi posted her Quick & Dirty Guide to Creating a Color Theme, but I wanted to remind everyone: if you've got a pretty color variant of any of our official styles, please see dreamscapes and submit it (the submission guidelines explain how -- with zvi's tutorial, you don't need to know any programming language at all, and all you have to do is cut and paste).

Our next code push will include a number of new color themes, including new themes by sky, wizard101, dancingserpent, and twtd. Thanks to wyntarvox for all his work to get them ready for prime time.

In particular, we'd like to point out that the next code push is going to include light-text-on-dark-background options for all of our system layouts, thanks to suggestions by nonniemous and the hard work of cesy -- so people who are susceptible to glare headaches will be able to pick a pre-made light-on-dark theme without having to dink around with the customization wizard.

7. User Scripts

Styles aren't the only thing you can customize, though. If you're using the Firefox web browser (and if you're not, why not?), you can use the Greasemonkey and User Scripts browser extensions to customize your browsing experience far beyond what our style system can offer.

There are a bunch of user-submitted scripts to improve/enhance the Dreamwidth experience posted to dw_nifty, including scripts to collapse specific entries on your reading page, tweak the site scheme layout to make it look different, or always add ?style=mine or ?style=light to every link. qilin has also posted a basic guide to user scripts and styles that will show you what you can do with these powerful extensions.

(And if you come up with anything nifty on your own, dw_nifty would absolutely love to see it; posting is moderated, but anyone can submit an entry to the moderation queue. This doesn't just go for user scripts: if you have any particular useful trick that not many people know about, it's a good candidate for a dw_nifty article.)

8. Feed Maintenance

Support would like me to mention that if you're subscribed to a feed from another site that seems to have stopped updating, you can open a support request about the issue. Sometimes we can't help -- if the issue is on the other site's end, or the feed isn't updating on their side -- but if it's a case of the feed being too large for DW to handle, or the feed's URL has changed, there are steps we can take to fix it.

We can't delete a feed once it's been created, and the function to merge duplicate feeds into a single feed is currently broken and we haven't gotten a chance to fix it yet, but we can deal with a few common issues. If you're ever in doubt about whether or not we can help you with your feed issues, just ask. Support is standing by.

9. Hey, Look, It's Us!

Just published: Mentoring in Open Source Communities: What Works? What Doesn't? by Esther Schindler, in which I got a chance to speak about the awesomeness of Dreamwidth's project teams. Esther and I had a great conversation about the techniques that Dreamwidth has evolved to nurture our contributors, and she's also planning on writing some more about our project's lessons learned in the future.

I can't stress enough that the reason we're able to make these updates every week, full of interesting things we've done and useful things we've added, is because of the time and effort of all our developers, advocates, and volunteers -- and even the work of you guys, the people who are using the site and constantly telling us how to make it better. So, from the bottom of my heart: thank you for coming to play in our sandbox. We're having a ton of fun building it.

10. Developer on the Loose

And, speaking of building the sandbox, starting October 3, we'll have mark working full-time on Dreamwidth. This means that by the end of next week, we'll have 100% of Mark's attention. (Well, okay, probably about 50%, after his wife janinedog and their puppies.)

What does this mean for you guys? It means that starting in 10 days, Mark is going to become a lean mean coding machine. We're already plotting ways in which we can sit down and blaze through some of our pending enhancements, and we've got a lot of exciting features on tap, including full-site search (with accompanying respect for your privacy choices, of course), photo hosting, scheduled posts, draft posts, and more.

This is a pretty daring gamble, and we're hoping that it will pay off for us -- and for you. The best way that you can make sure that both mark and I can afford to work on Dreamwidth full-time is to buy a paid account, or make a paid time gift to a random user. We're doing this 'on spec' -- right now, our monthly income only covers our technical costs, not the costs necessary to also be able to support ourselves.

Both mark and I are fabulously lucky to have partners who are 100% supportive of us pursuing our dreams and I wanted to take a moment to give public thanks to sarah and janinedog, who have been the most incredible Other Halves ever throughout this whole enterprise. Mark and I bicker sometimes about which one of us got more lucky in our choice of partner. ;)

*

Sappy stuff aside -- I should not be allowed to have a Jack and Diet Coke just before I start writing the weekly update -- that's it for us this week. As always, if you're having problems with Dreamwidth, Support can help you; for notices of site problems and downtime, check the Twitter status page; if you just want to come and hang out with us, join us in irc at irc.dwscoalition.org, channel #dw. (Warning: studies have shown that participating in #dw may result in blacking out and discovering, when you come to, that you've agreed to lead a DW project team.)

We'll see you next week for our next update.

Comments

[foxfirefey]

If you're using the Firefox web browser (and if you're not, why not?)

Oh dear, you just threw down browser war bait!

[lacey]

popcorn.gif

[zarhooie]

We could have an adorable icon war instead. All in favor?

[boosette]

Because it doesn't let us resize textareas like Safari does?

[angelikitten]

Because if I tried to use it on my phone, it would explode.

[jld]

If you're using the Firefox web browser (and if you're not, why not?)

Ooh! Ooh! I know the answer to this one:

Because I'm using Opera. I have an Iceweasel around for broken websites, but Dreamwidth isn't broken.

[princessofgeeks]

you guys rock. and sappy is good. thanks for the update.

[denise]

Sappy is only good until the girl catches me being sappy in front of 38,000 people. ;)

[ldybastet]

going to include light-text-on-dark-background options for all of our system layouts

OMG! Yay! Thank you so much! I'm one of those people who get almost crippling headaches from staring too long into a bright screen, so I'm very happy with this! :) Awesome!

[denise]

I never used to be myself, but I've been getting more sensitive lately, so I hear you! (It's actually the main reason why the Tropo site scheme uses a very light grey for bg, instead of pure white.)

Thank cesy, she did the work! And nonniemous was the one who brought it up. :)

[dancing_serpent]

Want me to create one for you all in purple and black?

[lina_00]

Have fun in your vacation!

[denise]

Thank you! (We're going to Disney World! That joke will never get old.)

[norabombay]

I will give you a cute Panda. Butterstick, our one true ruler!

[ranunculus]

I love your updates!
Viewing this on Konqueror because firefox isn't playing nice with Kunbuntu today, and wondering where my pic of the two kittens -in- the washer (no water) is.

[yvi]

\o/ News post

Warning: studies have shown that participating in #dw may result in blacking out and discovering, when you come to, that you've agreed to lead a DW project team

Ha! That has not yet happened to me!

*realizes that she spent a few hours yesterday just deleting and re-arranging code, something no user will ever notice*

*looks at assigned bugs*

Okay, so my soul is lost to you anyway. But I like that :)

[afuna]

*giggles*

(They'll notice when we get them the next good feature faster, because we don't have to go through five(!!) different .pm files to basically duplicate code.

Oh actually, they won't, but I will <3)

[cesy]

The comparison between the comments in today's updates from LJ and DW is amusing me.

[angelikitten]

I was just thinking this.

(Well, no, that's a lie - I was actually thinking about the possibility of breakfast. And before that I was wondering when the sun got so bright, which led to me thinking about the possibility of breakfast. But I did think about the comment-differences before that, honest.)

[ex_rising236]

PineKirk. Okay, not quite the same type of cute as the kittens but still,

[trinity_clare]

adding an extra set of "mark all read" and "delete all" buttons to the top of the inbox

EPIC WIN. You have no idea how much that was bothering me. (Okay, clearly you do, since you fixed it, but still.)

[ninetydegrees]

This week was a nice mixture of bugfixes, enhancements, styles/layout stuff, and minor enhancements.

Very, very nice. We all like the 'big' things but smaller things are what makes a difference in every day usage.

Have fun on your vacation!

[siljamus]

Enjoy your vacation, hon! It's well earned \o/

[alianora]

i am very excited about the crossposting by client! that's what ive been waiting for! thanks!

[ex_axel184]

Crossposting appears to be down again but maybe I'm just dumb and it's supposed to be? It was working okay earlier in the week.

[ex_axel184]

Ah-- crossposting to lj I mean.