Recent Posts

1

Site Support / Re: Last post link

« Last post by Jason Knight on Today at 08:26:36 am »

I've removed the previous/next THREAD links as being of dubious usefulness since under the hood it's not providing any text to say where they actually go. They were confusing as to what they were for, and not all that useful, meaning IMHO they and the DIV they were in were nothing more than a waste of bandwidth.

I'm also probably going to tweak the pagination code when I get a chance to be a hair more useful.

2

Site Support / Re: Last post link

« Last post by Jason Knight on Today at 07:36:25 am »

Yeah, those are poorly labelled, they're for the previous and next THREAD, not post.

Hmm... maybe just label them better? I don't think the software extracts the next/previous thread names, not sure I want to waste the overhead of adding extra queries, but it would clarify what they're for.

Since there's perfectly good pagination right there, maybe just remove them entirely? It's not something I've ever used or found useful as user.

3

Site Support / Re: Last post link

« Last post by qwikad.com on Today at 07:22:15 am »

What are those Previous Next links for?



I expect them to take me to previous / next PAGE in the same thread, not to a whole new thread.

4

Websites / Re: Gold standard websites

« Last post by Jason Knight on 18 Nov 2019, 10:19:42 pm »

I told mmerlinn a few months back on DP that there was an issue with his computer. I believe some essential javascripts were either disabled or deleted from his browser / OS.

I don't think it's JS -- he often browses with JS disabled and the parts they're using "JS for nothing" to accomplish are not mission-critical to the site working.

... and certainly wouldn't cause the "timeouts or unavailable" he's claiming. The site is too simple for that.

5

Site Support / Re: Last post link

« Last post by Jason Knight on 18 Nov 2019, 10:15:51 pm »

You really need to fix this one.

Which one? The Op's complaint has been fixed for about two weeks, it was actually caused by the default skin not having proper float clearing, and was why the #new links weren't working either.

At least disable the Next link if it's the last page of a thread. It goes from thread to thread. New users will think the forum is broken.

The what now? Which links are you referring to?

Also, put the AdSense ad back. It makes the site look happier.

Sadly due to the "shocking" increase in traffic on the ccd domain, Google has limited the number of ads they will serve me in a month. Because of course showing "that many ads" might result in them actually having to pay me money,

Which is why I'm considering either saying "screw advertising sleaze" altogether since I don't trust a single one of the dirtbags in said industry, or looking for an alternative to adsense that won't jerk me around every time there's a change in my traffic patterns.

They keep moving the damned goalpost so they don't have to pay out... at which point to hell with them. It's not like I "need' their pittance to keep something as simple as a forums afloat given how cheap modern VPS are.

You've got time to post long posts on DP

I still find it disturbing what people consider to be a "long post" in this day and age. Literacy folks, try it.

6

Websites / Re: Gold standard websites

« Last post by qwikad.com on 18 Nov 2019, 09:23:45 pm »

I told mmerlinn a few months back on DP that there was an issue with his computer. I believe some essential javascripts were either disabled or deleted from his browser / OS.

7

Site Support / Re: Last post link

« Last post by qwikad.com on 18 Nov 2019, 09:12:57 pm »

You really need to fix this one. At least disable the Next link if it's the last page of a thread. It goes from thread to thread. New users will think the forum is broken.

Also, put the AdSense ad back. It makes the site look happier.

PS And don't say "whenever I've got time". You've got time to post long posts on DP. You could've fixed this thing a month ago.

8

HTML / CSS / Re: CSS selector order: what is the best practice?

« Last post by Jason Knight on 18 Nov 2019, 05:12:54 am »

In terms of the various stages of CSS being applied, the difference is so negligible as to be unmeasurable unless you do something stupid like make a 2 megabyte HTML file with hundreds of thousands of tags.

Hence I place them in the "most useful order" for me. The order I find most useful?

webfonts > reset > source order, with like elements hoisted > media queries.

@font first as some older browsers ignored them if they weren't first in the file. Doesn't matter really on modern browsers but it's an old habit.

Any "reset" or global properties next because they set your baseline.

Then source order because

1) it's the order in which I build my stylesheet, top down, since I use progressive enhancement. That means content FIRST, markup second, CSS third.

2) Later on when debugging sections, it's just easier to navigate if things are in the same order in the stylesheet that they would be in the markup.

The exception to source order being when multiple sections receive the same style, since rather than derping pointless code-bloat classes into the markup to say what things look like, I say what things are and then hook it from the stylesheet.

Source order first also makes "specificity" hell less common, since things further down the page can easily override earlier ones.

... and media queries last because they have to be applied OVER the starting layout to make changes.

In general that's just always been what's made the most sense to me. The attempts to group by "purpose" or "size of selector" or anything else other people do feels -- to me at least -- harder to work with as it doesn't match my workflow.

9

HTML / CSS / CSS selector order: what is the best practice?

« Last post by Gary-SC on 18 Nov 2019, 02:57:46 am »

I have been wondering about this article which I came across a while ago:

https://meiert.com/en/blog/how-to-order-css-selectors/

What is the best practice for ordering CSS selectors? What do you suggest?  In general, I've been following this article's advice; going from global to more specifics.

10

Websites / Re: Gold standard websites

« Last post by Jason Knight on 17 Nov 2019, 04:59:20 pm »

Sqlite seems to always be too busy or temporarily unavailable and therefore never loads.

Ok, that's the point there HAS to be something wrong on your end. It has no graceful degradation issues since it's not reliant on JS, it's well under 80k for ALL eight of the files on the home page, and I've never once seen it down.

There's nothing there to even indicate it would cause problems for anyone. In terms of file-counts and sizes, it gets a massive thumbs up from me.

It's a shame it's got accessibility issues galore from the gibberish markup. Nonsensical use of numbered headings, missing headings, broken keyboard navigation, missing tags that haven't been optional since 1997, failure to separate presentation from content, JavaScript for nothing we've needed scripting for since 2008, presentational images in the markup, no logical document structure, static scripting slopped into the markup...

Or even just simple failures like a lack of max-width to make long paragraphs less of a pain the ass on larger displays.

It's a relic of the worst of transitional practices, even if it does have a HTML 5 doctype on it.  Hence it wasting 8k of HTML on doing around 5k of HTML's job. Particularly bad with the "JS for nothing" on the "consortium members" section.

It's by no means a horrible site, but it does need some loving to drag it kicking and screaming into THIS century... preferably before the century is out. Oh... wait... yeah, that's probably not gonna happen.

It's very hard for me to pick a gold standard website given that 99.99% of what is out there is built on twenty year old practices and a complete ignorance of accessibility norms. The reek of ignorance amongst those building websites right now rarely to be found outside of cult-like radical extremism.