Dreamwidth News: 9 January

[denise]

Hello, Dreamwidth! Welcome to 2013. Now that we're done with losing tons of time to the holidays, we are back and better than ever, and we're kicking off 2013 in style.

Behind the cut:

* Development
* More in the Family
* JQuery Beta
* Icon Page in Your Journal Style
* Charitable Giving
* Community Promotion

Development

Monday night's code push brought us a plethora of new stuff. You can look over the list of what was included in the push in the code tours for the appropriate time period:

Code Tour, 2 December - 5 Jan
Supplemental Code Tour, 6 Jan - 8 Jan

I'll get into the big stuff that was included in this push in a bit, but the littler things include:

* Making it possible for you to customize the colors of the navstrip across your journal in all layouts, including layouts that style the navstrip as part of their design. You can pick your navstrip colors on the Display tab of Customize Journal Style: to set custom colors, check the "Use custom colors on this journal" box and pick the colors you'd like to use, then save your changes.

* Make your light/dark preference for navstrip colors follow you as a viewing preference, not follow the journal you're looking at. So, if you've set the navstrip to light or dark gradients, the navstrip will always appear to you in those colors, no matter what journal you're looking at. (I originally said that custom colors would follow you, too, but I was corrected!)

* Making the new beta icon browser remember your preferences for how you'd like to see your icons, so you only have to tell it once that you want to see small icons vs full-size icons, or meta text/no meta text.

* Fixing a problem that was letting tags get put into the database with a trailing space on the end, so if you accidentally hit the spacebar when typing your tag, "cats" could be "cats " instead. (We're still pondering how to best clean up anything that got saved that way, but if one of your tags has that problem, rename it to the version without the space.)

And, of course, the usual slew of backend fixes, tiny improvements, documentation updates, new themes, and tweaks to existing themes for better display.

One thing of note: With this push, we fixed a bug with the Edit Profile page that caused some security settings to be showing incorrectly: when selecting "everyone" as the "who can see this" security for your Location, then saving the page, visiting the page again caused the drop-down setting to show "Access List Only". Nothing was exposed that shouldn't have been exposed -- if you'd selected Access List Only as your location's security, the system respected that, and if you'd selected Everyone as your location's security, it was displayed to everyone even though the Edit Profile page showed 'Access list only' in the dropdown. (And the fix didn't change anyone's settings, just how those settings were showing.) But since there's a chance someone with their location's visibility set to 'everyone' wanted to change it to 'access list only', visited the page, saw 'access list only' in the dropdown, and thought they'd already made the change, we are recommending that everybody take a second and go doublecheck all your profile's security settings to make sure they're set to what you're comfortable with.

More in the Family

Our big non-development news this week is an addition to the Dreamwidth family. zarhooie, who's been working as one of our volunteer support team leads since the days of open beta, is joining us part-time as technical support staff, troubleshooter, and wrangler of broken things. You may have already seen her official-journal persona, misskat, kicking ass and taking names around the support board and taking care of updating people about problems in dw_maintenance.

Kat joins fu, our frontend engineer/release manager/dev community liaison/general handler-of-tech-stuff, along with our as-needed contractors alierak, our backup sysadmin and Fixer of Broken Stuff and jennifer, who handles Terms of Service stuff. (And, of course, mark and I.)

We're really thrilled to have Kat on staff, and I'm personally really excited about having Somebody Else on whom to pawn off troubleshooting busted stuff so I don't have to do it. (Kidding! Really!)

JQuery Beta

As we've mentioned a few times before, we're in the process of updating all the Javascript we use, site-wide, to use the more-modern (and better-supported) JQuery library. This gives us a number of major wins: accessibility, device portability, cross-browser support, and (most importantly) a well-tested library used by a ton of people everywhere who are all catching and reporting bugs, giving us the benefit of a lot of Internet-wide troubleshooting and development.

We've been this damn close to taking the update out of beta a few times, only to be stymied by minor but irritating problems each time. fu has done a bunch of work with the reported bugs and glitches, though, and even though we've called "last call" a few times already, we really mean it this time.

So, if you've reported a problem before (or even if you just want to confirm that things will be OK when we switch over): go to the Beta Features page and enable the first of the three beta tests, labelled "New JS on Journals". If you run into any problems, report them in the dw-beta roundup.

Icon Page in Your Journal Style

YOU GUYS NO REALLY THIS IS SO AWESOME.

With this code push we were able to enable something we've been working on for a really long time: you can now view your icon page (http://denise.dreamwidth.org/icons for instance) in your journal style, not only in the site skin.

To enable this, go to the Display tab of the Manage Settings page. Checking the "Journal Icons Style" checkbox will set your own icon page to journal-style unless a logged-in viewer has overridden it. The "Icons View Style" setting will let you pick how you want to see others' icon pages: in the site skin, in your own style, in the journal owner's style, or in "light mode".

This will work in all of the official Dreamwidth layouts. Turning it on for journals that are using custom Dreamwidth layouts that override the layout's style sheet will work, but may look odd. (You'll need to add in the CSS styling for the icon page to make it work.) Turning it on for journals that are using custom imported layouts or layouts based on the core1 version of the S2 templating language won't work: the icon page will continue to show in site skin. (You'll need to switch to a Dreamwidth-native layout to have it work, or add in support for the icon page in the imported layout.)

Massive, massive credit for this goes to exor674 for her work on the backend support, to ninetydegrees for her work on frontend styling for our initial system styles (with a massive 59 patches), and to momijizukamori for her work on additional styles that were submitted in between the time we started the work and the time we finished it.

Charitable Giving

Last month we announced our December charitable giving program, tied to our December income: 5% of our gross income from December would be donated to the Ada Initiative, and 5% would be divided among other nonprofit organizations doing awesome work.

Results are in, and we will be donating $2380 to the Ada Initiative, and another $2380 how y'all see fit. We've picked four nonprofit organizations we'd like to donate to -- two technical, and two non-technical. We'll let the poll run for at least until Wed 16 Jan, and then divide up the donations. Each organization will get at least a $100 donation, and the remaining $1980 will be divided based on voting percentages. (So, if one organization gets 10% of the vote, they'll get $298: the $100 each organization gets, plus $198 as 10% of the remaining pool of money.)

In their own words, the four organizations we've chosen are:

Doctors Without Borders / Médecins Sans Frontières: "Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) works in nearly 70 countries providing medical aid to those most in need regardless of their race, religion, or political affiliation."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation: "EFF [...] continues to confront cutting-edge issues defending free speech, privacy, innovation, and consumer rights today. From the beginning, EFF has championed the public interest in every critical battle affecting digital rights."

Heifer International: "Heifer International's mission is to work with communities to end hunger and poverty and care for the Earth. [...] By giving families a hand-up, not just a handout, we empower them to turn hunger and poverty into hope and prosperity."

The Wikimedia Foundation: "Wikimedia is a global movement whose mission is to bring free educational content to the world. [...] Wikimedia strives to bring about a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge."

Choosing just one from the list is tough, I know! (Which is why we're kicking the final disposition to y'all.) But give it some thought, and then cast your vote:

Poll #12535

This poll is closed.
This poll is anonymous.
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: Just the Poll Creator, participants: 927

Which charity would you like to vote for?

Doctors Without Borders / Médecins Sans Frontières
412 (44.4%)

The Electronic Frontier Foundation
254 (27.4%)

Heifer International
177 (19.1%)

The Wikimedia Foundation
84 (9.1%)

Community Promotion

It's been a while since we've done a round of this! There are a ton of awesome, interesting, active communities on DW. If you've got a favorite that you think people would enjoy -- whether you're an admin or a community member -- tell us about it in the comments: what it is, why it's special, what you enjoy about it, why others should join it, etc.

We love seeing all the amazing things people use DW for, and we think a new year is a great time to celebrate all the wonderful things going on.

*

That's it from us for another update! 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've got an idea to make the site better, you can make a suggestion.

We'll see you soon for our next update!

Comments

Community Promo~

[kalloway]

fandomgaragesale - Exactly what it says on the tin - a place to buy/sell/trade fannish merchandise. Got a whole bookshelf of zines from your last fandom? Want to pick up older games for your new fandom? How about filling in that one trading card you've been missing since 1997? Or just finding all the others a new home entirely?

Sell your awesome fannish stuff to get new fannish stuff, that's always how it works...!

[3rdofjune]

As a long-time supporter of DW, I'm troubled by their decision to give to Heifer International. Heifer is the wrong choice in terms of animal ethics, ecology, food security, and cultural sensitivity.

See:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/What-s-Wrong-With-the-Heif-by-Rev-Gary-Kowalski-091204-421.html

http://www.animalpeoplenews.org/07/1/livestockgiftcharities1_07.html

http://awellfedworld.org/heifer

http://www.veganideal.org/content/heifer-international-more-hype-hope

Additionally, Johanna @ Vegans Of Color writes:

It’s not just about the environmental toll of meat, and the inefficiency of meat-based agriculture in addressing hunger, but also about the fact that many people of color (such as those in countries the Heifer Project focuses on) are lactose-intolerant. So pushing dairy cows on them is a stupid thing to do.

In Heifer's place, please consider giving to organizations like Sustainable Harvest, VegFam, Plenty International, or A Well Fed World that fight hunger and food insecurity without using animals.

[chaobell]

Crap, sorry, I missed and hit the wrong "reply" thingy.

[storyfan]

I'm not a vegan or a vegetarian, but my problem with Heifer is this: Many people think they can purchase, say, a flock of chickens. What they don't realize is that the money they send for that flock can be spent on whatever Heifer deems necessary. Now, that information is fully available on the website under FAQs, but it's in teeny, tiny print in the magazines I've seen in recent years. When I informed a friend who regularly buys "flocks" about this setup she was shocked to learn she wasn't purchasing an actual flock of chickens, but that her money could be used for something else entirely.

Heifer leads donors to believe they are buying cows, sheep, goats, ducks or whatever — and they are, but perhaps not in a way they intended. Donors just need to be aware that they're really putting their money in a kitty that might or might not be used for its intended purpose.

I'm not saying Heifer us a fraudulent organization. I think it essentially does what it says it's going to do. But it's yet another charity that should be a lot more up front with its donors.

[alltoseek]

There are lots of organizations that work to end hunger and poverty, and improve health, education, and opportunities around the world. I would prefer to support an organization that employs a variety of methods, tailored for the individual communities' needs, rather than Heifer's 'one-solution-solves-all' approach. Thanks.

[starlady]

That is an excellent group of charity choices. And thanks for all the hard work!

Community Promo

[chaobell]

Do you like fighting? Do you like teamwork? Do you like hats?

Then boy oh boy do I have a community for you.



Welcome to teamfortress2. Pull up a Mann Co. crate. Brag about your favorite servers, show off your amusing screenshots and fan things, offer your in-game loot for trade, show us that sweet frag video you made, and generally enjoy babbling about Valve's ridiculously popular free-to-play battle-themed hat collecting game.

Community Promo

[brightflower]

femmefest is starting up again! We're an annual Harry Potter anonymous exchange fest with a focus on femmeslash. Sign ups are open until January 18, and submissions will be due on March 18. I've loved this fest since before I took it over last year, because we always get such an amazing set of submissions that are super interesting to read/view (fic and art is welcome)! I hope to see you join us!

[kore]

Hooray for the news post! I actually love reading these.

Mad, impetuous, props

[babysprite]

Mad, impetuous, props to misskat and zarhooie for joining our DW Dream team.

Likewise to our denise for keeping us up-to-date on DW happenings.

/\__/\
(='.'=)
(")_(")

MUSIC: The Golden Palominos - Little Suicides

Re: Mad, impetuous, props

[ranunculus]

This, this, absolutely.

[dickgrayson]

(We're still pondering how to best clean up anything that got saved that way, but if one of your tags has that problem, rename it to the version without the space.)
<3 I love this ability.

The icon page view is great! :D

Thank you!!!! :D

community promotion

[archersangel]

i have a hard time picking just one or two things. all are nice in their own ways.
archaeology_weekly has interesting stuff on archaeology.
isurrendered is about that meme thing that goes around about making up TV shows.
shoes is about just that, shoes. even if you're not really into them like i am, it's still interesting. (BTW they're looking for a co-mod if anyone is interested)

basically nearly everything that i subscribe to needs a little attention;
http://archersangel.dreamwidth.org/profile

[ranunculus]

OMG the decision between organizations is really, really painful. ALL of them deserve funding.

Community promo

[liv]

c25k A bunch of us are doing the Couch to 5K programme in various ways, and we log our runs and support eachother. Several of us have physical limitations and we're not into being tremendously competitive, just keeping eachother accountable.

We're pretty flexible about the C25K regime itself. Some people are following it pretty much to the letter, others are varying it to fit around their lives and bodies, others are just following the general principle of starting out with intervals, running as regularly as they can, and gradually building up to longer runs.

[luthienberen]

Just wanted to say thank you for all the hard work that goes on here. I've been lurking around DW the last few months, more as LJ has problems, growing impressed by how you handle the site and are responsive.

Most of all thank you to whoever designed the Celerity site skin. At last a site skin that doesn't cause me headaches! It is awesome: real contrast and large text. :) I know it seems a bit silly to gush about, but I simply wanted to put it out there that the ability to select site skins which are easy on the eye is extremey terrific.

Now I have to check finances & get a paid journal.

[iosonochesono]

(Not staff but:)

LOL for some reason I feel completely validated now that someone else has talked about how much better Celerity is on their eyes. When people make issue of the site layout I feel like I'm the only person who ever asks people if they've considered Celerity.

I'm all, "THERE ARE SKINS, HAVE YOU TRIED THEM? GO TRY CELERITY. IT MADE MY LIFE BETTER" because I know the default one was problematic for me. Though I need to figure out how to make it so it never goes to the red theme on my computer, it really is wonderful to have that option.

*Hugs Celerity*

[lacerta]

Hey denise, do you maybe have a quick update on the status of the scrapbook project for us? Thank you :)

[denise]

You can email photos in to your journal using post-by-email -- we haven't written the documentation yet! But it's described in this news post from when it was released and there is information on how to set up post-by-email. Attaching a photo to an email post will make the photo post to your journal (you can see my handsome kitty as an example).

In-browser photo upload (rather than email attachment upload) and better gallery management is still definitely on our list, but we haven't been able to get the next steps finished yet; we've been trying to finish a few other long-outstanding projects first and then we'll be turning our attention to that.

[primwood]

Thank you.

Is there a way I can have my tweets from twitter posted in my DW journal? I looked in the faqs page, but I couldn't locate anything about it.

Oh and another thing, is there a way to hide on my profile page who I am friended to and who is friended to me?

[denise]

There used to be a bunch of different third-party applications you could use to do that, but unfortunately Twitter has changed their policies lately and considers anything that archives tweets offsite to be a violation of their acceptable usage policy, so many of them have stopped working as Twitter shuts them down.

I know of a few people who have grimly managed to hack their way into keeping it working come hell or high water, but none of it's official. We were working on the prerequisites for a "daily archive of all your tweets" type system, but as it stands now, we've had to shelve that because of Twitter's AUP changes.

It's not possible to hide the list of people who are in your circle from your profile, because those lists are completely under your control (so if there's someone you don't want to appear on the list you can just not add them to your circle), and because knowing who else potentially has access to read or comment in a journal can also be a security and privacy issue. (For instance, let's say I have a restraining order against Alice and every time Bob sees me commenting in a journal that isn't mine (and that I can't ban someone from) he starts making death threats: I would want to know before commenting in Carol's journal whether Alice or Bob could see that comment.)

You can go to the Edit Profile page and change your profile to not display the people who have subscribed to you or granted access to you, since those relationships aren't under your control.

Still fledgling (because I never have time to seriously update it), but..

[marahmarie]

If ya'll are looking for help with your DW styles you could try css_code in addition to style_system. I had really great ambitions for this comm (still do) but in the meantime, while I work up the time and nearly-vanishing ability to get anything there done, it's still a help community for people having any issues with their CSS.

[ptahrrific]

There's HTML in one of my icon descriptions (a credit link the Sarah Jane one) that isn't showing up on the custom icon page. Can that be fixed?

[denise]

I'm not sure which one you mean, but can you open a support request for that? (And include what's actually in the description box.) The cleaner that strips out malicious code is possibly firing when it shouldn't, but it'll need some extra troubleshooting.

Community Promo~! :-)

[al28894]

I know that this comm. is known by almost everyone in Dreamwidth, but I'm going to add this just for the sake of the few stragglers who didn't or hadn't know of it yet.

If you have a secret pertaining to your fandom but you can't spit it out, well here's a place that you can!

Fandomsecrets is a place where secrets can be posted and forbidden discussions allowed! To elaborate, all a person needs to do is write your secret onto a related image, whether it be your fandom or just a photo, then send it via link to the comm! The community will then post your secret anonymously for everyone else to discuss. It updates everyday so there is never a shortage of new secrets to be read and forbidden fandom thoughts to be discussed!

[jewelfox]

The new icon thing is awesome. :) Are there any plans to make the profile page use journal styling?

[denise]

Further down the road, yes! (It's a harder problem, because reasons. But it's on the list.)

[alionheartedgirl]

Love being able to have my icons viewed in my journal style! Keep up the great work! I'm so glad to be a part of a community where those who run it care about the people who use it!

[meloukhia]

I wanted to note that Heifer International's approach has some substantial issues, and it might not be a good choice of charities to donate to. Their focus on European cattle breeds to the exclusion of hardier, well-adapted African cattle breeds puts a heavy burden on the communities/families they 'gift' with donations, while pushing out traditional hardy African cattle breeds. Imposing Western farming practices on the Global South is part of their mission and it has serious consequences.

Here's some more information on problems with gifts of livestock programmes.

Open Graph Support

[mahesh]

How about open graph snippet support? You can check the opengraph specification for perl and ruby at http://opengraph.me and see if it is possible to use rich snippet like that for dreamwidth :)

Re: Open Graph Support

[denise]

we have a bug open for that already! nobody's been interested in implementing it, though.

[notabutterfly]

Hi, I didn't know where else to ask this as it seems to me to be a very simple question, buuuuut...

Okay, so if I had a Premium Paid Account and had (for example) 120 icons, what would happen to the extra 20 icons if I switched to a Paid Account after the Premium expired?

[denise]

20 of the icons are marked inactive until/unless you renew the premium paid :)