Partial Code Tour: November 11 - 21, 2011

[delladea]

Hello Dreamwidth, it's time for another code tour! This is part of a solid month of theme-adding and bug-smashing that will all be live as of the next code push.

In this tour, we have patches by rb, ninetydegrees, sophie, denise, and laitaine. New themes were contributed by asenathwaite, rising, dancing_serpent, bindingthreads, timeasmymeasure, and nornoriel. Thank you to all who contributed!

Some of these are already live on the site (mostly the documentation related categories).

Bug 3785: Add check for system time being GMT to checkconfig
Category: Site Administration
Patch by: rb
Description: You know how the saying goes about assumptions. The DW code was assuming the server time would always be GMT and if it wasn't, weird things would happen. A site configuration check was added that would give a helpful error message if the server's time zone was set to something other than GMT.

Bug 4047: Comment hierarchy indicators count screened comments
Category: Journal contents
Patch by: fu
Description: While the comment hierarchy indicators were being tabulated for viewing, no check was happening to determine if whoever was viewing the entry had permission to view certain screened comments on that entry. This would cause the comment indicator numbers to be off, and allow anyone using comment indicators to see how many screened comments existed in particular comment threads. fu swiftly whacked the problem into submission, and now the comment hierarchy indicators are behaving nicely again.

Bug 4019: Check for Test::More version unnecessary on production servers
Category: Site Administration
Patch by: fu
Description: I'm not certain what Test::More does, but when the system is doing all its pre-run Checking Of All The Things, if Test::More had an older version number than what was expected, execution would die. (Err, 'die' sounds a bit harsh, instead lets say the code refused to run unless it had its 1/3 decaf soy no foam hazelnut latte in its favorite red travel mug beforehand. While some would argue that caffeine is a requirement, fancy coffee drinks are not.) Now the code will instead display a helpful message if the Test::More module was out of date and continue on about its business.

Bug 4042: Screened comment: potentially confusing confirm message when comment is from admin
Category: Misc UI/Frontend
Patch by: ninetydegrees
Description: If a community admin was posting a comment on an entry where comments were screened, a strangely worded and potentially misleading confirmation message would appear after the comment was posted. Admins will now get a much clearer comment confirmation (can you say that three times fast?) message instead.

Bug 4026: vCard: add Twitter
Category: Unknown
Patch by: ninetydegrees
Description: vCard is a file format standard for electronic business cards, and is widely used by many different email programs. The vCard specification now has a special field to attach a user's Twitter account, and now DW is utilizing this field like it already does for other chat services (AIM, Google Talk, ICQ, Jabber, MSN, Skype, and Yahoo).

Bug 4049: worker-manager tries to kill workers with SIGHUP instead of SIGTERM
Category: Misc Backend
Patch by: sophie
Description: Imagine trying to get invited guests to leave by telling them something like "I can't talk anymore, I have to bathe my cat" instead of "I enjoyed your company, but I really must call it an evening since I have an early day tomorrow." They both may eventually accomplish your goal, but the latter is much more effective in getting your point across. The worker-manager now speaks much more politely and directly to workers when requesting they stop what they're doing, and thus the workers no longer give the worker-manager WTF looks and stop as they should.

Bug 3882: change suggestions generator tags
Category: Frontend
Patch by: denise
Description: The suggestions generator automatically tags entries going into the dw_suggestions queue so denise can easily pick out new suggestions versus older suggestions that have already been filed as a bug or rejected. These initial tags were changed to make more logical sense in suggestions posts going forward.

Bug 3909: Paletteable: 5 themes by asenathwaite & rising
Category: Style System
Patch by: ninetydegrees
Description: Five new themes for Paletteable: Coloured Glass by rising, and Blues, Grey Days, Homebrew, and Thunderhead by asenathwaite.

Bug 3809: Nouveau Oleanders: 4 themes by dancing_serpent
Category: Style System
Patch by: ninetydegrees
Description: dancing_serpent gives us four new themes for Nouveau Oleanders: Pigeon Blue, Rosewood, Sleeping Warrior, and Toxicity.

Bug 4048: external sites combo bug
Category: Misc UI/Frontend
Patch by: denise
Description: More external sites were added to the <user name="..." site="sitename.com"> tag, meaning you'll be able to see the website's actual icon next to the user name instead of the generic link icon (). The new sites added are:

• Blogspot (blogspot.com)
• Delicious (delicious.com)
• DeviantArt (deviantart.com)
• LastFM (last.fm)
• Ravelry (ravelry.com)
• Wordpress (wordpress.com)
• Plurk (plurk.com)

Also, the badge image for Diigo users was all wonky and was fixed. Yay!

Bug 3933: Revise mention of ?view parameter in FAQ 42
Category: User documentation
Patch by: denise
Description: Alternate ways to view large numbers of comments on an entry were added recently, however there was nothing in the FAQ explaining the differences between each one. Now there is.

Bug 3978: FAQ #135: erroneous sentence
Category: User documentation
Patch by: denise
Description: The FAQ previously proclaimed the Navigation Strip could be displayed in your journal colors, regardless of what style you were using. This is true for some styles, but not all of them. The FAQ wording was corrected to reflect this.

Bug 4006: FAQ #10: + switching themes won't make you lose your customizations
Category: User documentation
Patch by: denise
Description: Any time you customize a theme, the settings are saved for that theme. This important tidbit of information was not previously mentioned in the FAQ, but now it is.

Bug 4007: FAQ #138 on available journal styles needs to be updated
Category: User documentation
Patch by: denise
Description: Instead of having a redundant list available of styles in the FAQ someone would have to remember to update any time a new style is added, the FAQ was changed to link to the actual list of available styles on the Customize Journal page that is automatically updated every time a new style is added. Some other out of date information on that particular page was also changed/removed.

Bug 3382: Account Settings: Journal Statistics setting unclear?
Category: User documentation
Patch by: denise
Description: In the Display section of the Account Settings page, there's a setting labeled "Journal Statistics" which has a ticky box labeled "Do not include me in my own statistics". This setting only has an effect on journals using Google Analytics, and has no effect on the statistics DW makes available on the profile page of each journal/community (# of entries, memories, tags, comments, etc.). The label of this setting was changed to "Google Analytics Self-Exclusion" for clarity.

Bug 4039: ColorSide: 3 themes by bindingthreads
Category: Style System
Patch by: ninetydegrees
Description: Three new themes for ColorSide with soothing muted/pastel colors by bindingthreads: Faded Blues, Pale Gold, and Water Rose.

Bug 4054: Convert site skin & theme preview images to color-indexed PNGs
Category: Style System
Patch by: ninetydegrees
Description: Wow, this one was huge! The 600+ image files used for theme and site-scheme previews all saved in PNG format in the standard way. However, if a PNG image is saved using palette indexing, it often makes the size of the resulting image file half of what it would have been otherwise while retaining image quality. This means slightly faster load times when doing things like browsing themes, and reduces a bit of the load on the DW servers. All good things! ninetydegress seriously needs some cookies or chocolate after this one.

Bug 4041: Practicality: 3 themes by timeasmymeasure
Category: Style System
Patch by: ninetydegrees
Description: Three new warm, firey themes for Practicality by timeasmymeasure: About Time, Again & Again, and A Little Fire. ninetydegrees also caught a naming discrepancy in the Sweet BerryGolds theme for Practicality and fixed it.

Bug 4040: Negatives: 4 themes by rising
Category: Style System
Patch by: ninetydegrees
Description: Four new varied themes for Negatives by rising: Hesperides Dark, Raspberry Kiss, Wonderland, and Valkyrie.

Bug 3910: Misc.: 8 themes by nornoriel, rising & dancing_serpent
Category: Style System
Patch by: ninetydegrees
Description: New themes for multiple styles were added in this bug:

• Two themes for Refried Tablet by dancing_serpent: Nightfall and Sea Serpent.
• Three themes for Basic Boxes by nornoriel: Sanguine, Lavender, and Dance in the Dark.
• Three themes for Compartmentalize: Underworld by nornoriel, and El mar and Coloured Glass by rising.

Bug 3945: Stepping Stones: 8 themes by rising
Category: Style System
Patch by: ninetydegrees
Description: Eight new themes were created for Stepping Stones by rising: Coloured Glass, El mar, Full Sky, Ice chic, Innocence, Myrtilles, Paisaje, and Valkyrie.

Bug 3808: Transmo: 7 themes by dancing_serpent & rising
Category: Style System
Patch by: ninetydegrees
Description: Seven new themes for Transmogrified: El mar by rising, and Nightfall, Pigeon Blue, Rosewood, Sea Serpent, Sleeping Warrior, and Toxicity by dancing_serpent.

Bug 4033: Comment pages: Pagination looks odd in Firefox in specific circumstances
Category: Misc UI/Frontend
Patch by: ninetydegrees
Description: If an entry had over 10 comment pages but less than 18, the [10] in the page # box was all alone on one line instead of being displayed right after [9]. This had been quietly driving Firefox users bonkers, and has now been fixed.

Bug 4052: intermittent error while previewing custom-locked entry with new update page
Category: Journal contents
Patch by: fu
Description: Sometimes when previewing an entry on an access filter, a nasty looking "Error: Can't use BML..." message would display. Since BML is slowly being removed from the DW codebase anyway in favor of better things, the offending BML functions were replaced with non-BML functions that do a better job of generating an entry preview.

Bug 3914: Modular: 5 themes by timeasmymeasure
Category: Style System
Patch by: ninetydegrees
Description: Five new themes for Modular by timeasmymeasure: Cherie, Fresh Earth, Labors Won, Realization, and Subliminal.

Bug 4056: JS broken in new update page on Opera
Category: Journal contents
Patch by: fu
Description: Tag selection was not working for folks using Opera who opted-in to the new update page beta. Turns out part of the code needed to use a JavaScript keyword (not like a safe-word, more like a special-word) as a non-keyword, and was not formatted correctly to tell the browser "no this isn't a keyword, move along". The code was reformatted in the proper way, and all browsers were happy once more.

Bug 4046: Does the DW homepage text need tweaking?
Category: Frontend
Patch by: denise
Description: The text you see on the front page of DW when logged out under "What is Dreamwidth Studios?" was an initial draft which needed review. The wording was updated ever so slightly.

Bug 3894: Include entry subject line in Take a look at this Dreamwidth entry
Category: Inbox/Notifications
Suggested by: katherine
Patch by: fu
Description: The "Tell a Friend!" page that appears when you click on a "Share this Entry" link or this symbol , was not including the subject of the entry at all when the email was sent. This means if someone happened to receive more than one "Take a look at this Dreamwidth entry" email, they wouldn't be able to tell which entry each email was for without first opening the email. Now the entry subject is included in the email subject if it exists.

Bug 3918: Fluid Measure: new themes
Category: Style System
Patch by: ninetydegrees and laitaine
Description: Lots of new themes for Fluid Measure in this bug. rising brings us Aging Copper, Aqualicious, Blue Lights, Citrusy, Dependable, Full Sky, Hollow Silence, Lavender Mist, Lemonade, Orange Lights, Raspberry Kiss and Wonderland. dancing_serpent gives us Dried Flowers, Fire Elemental, Nightfall, Prophecy, Sea Serpent, Surf, and Vintage Christmas.

Bug 4058: Fluid Measure: text in search module hardly visible in certain themes
Category: Style System
Patch by: ninetydegrees
Description: No specific text color was being specified for the search module in Fluid Measure, so depending on what other colors were in a particular theme, sometimes the search module text was visible and sometimes it wasn't. Now the style uses the entry text color specified in each theme to ensure the text is always visible.

The next code push is scheduled for tomorrow (Friday). Keep an eye on dw_maintenance for more information.

And thus this part of the tour is concluded. Stay tuned for the next part of what will go live in the next code push!

Comments

[deborah]

Bug 4056: JS broken in new update page on Opera

Oh, thank goodness! I mean, thank fu. (I use different browsers for different accounts, and it was driving me nuts that I had the awesome new page for one account and not for the other.)

[silverflight8]

Whooo, documentation! :D

Thanks for the code tour; seatbelts were definitely needed - that's a lot of bugs!

[denise]

There's still another 30-some bugs needing a driver, if you're interested! (15 at a time.) Check out dw_volunteers :)

[silverflight8]

Ooh, I thought they'd all been taken! Grabbing one.

[msilverstar]

Yay for dynamically displaying theme names in the FAQ -- much better than someone having to remember.

[fu]

I love your descriptions!

" 'die' sounds a bit harsh, instead lets say the code refused to run unless it had its 1/3 decaf soy no foam hazelnut latte in its favorite red travel mug beforehand. While some would argue that caffeine is a requirement, fancy coffee drinks are not." is so very true ;-)