Huge great Code Tour of hugeness

[swaldman]

Good evening, shiny happy Dreamwidth people!
This is my first code tour (eek) and a rather large one. Either we've been busy, or it's been a while...

This time around there are 55 new fixes. There is a new style, and many new themes for old styles. Many of the rest of the changes are to do with two beta tests that are running at present: the new update page, and the new version of the entry + comments page. This is good news, since finding lots of bugs is exactly what beta tests are for :-)

A few of the items mentioned here are already live, because they were hotfixed quickly to deal with important bugs. The rest will come with this weekend's code push.


Bug 4612: Make /styles and /styles/commons folders in /img
Category: Style System
Patch by: ninetyd
Description: Sometimes, themes in different styles use the same images as one another. In the past, we have had to hold a seperate copy of the image files on the server for each style. ninetyd has fixed things so that the same image file can be shared between multiple styles.

Bug 4211: Librarian's Dream: new themes
Category: Style System
Patch by: momijizukamori
Description: Many new themes for the ever-alluring Librarian's Dream style. These are by dancing_serpent, rising and timeasmymeasure.

Bug 4662: Can't delete entries from the new edit entries page
Category: Journal contents
Patch by: fu
Description: The ever-observant ninetyd had noticed that the new Edit Entry page that is in beta test didn't have a "delete" button. On the basis that not everybody wants to keep everything they ever write forever, fu added one.

Bug 2936: Make reverse_sortorder options work for archive pages
Category: Style System
Patch by: ninetyd
Description: There should now be an option, somewhere in Customize Journal, to sort archive pages in reverse order.

Bug 4664: staff page busted with nooverlays
Category: Frontend
Patch by: exor674
Description: A little while ago some of the layout of the code was changed on the back end ("nooverlays"), and this broke the staff page. exor674 fixed it.

Bug 4624: Serving up of static files using Perlbal doesn't work very well with no overlays
Category: Configuration
Patch by: mark
Description: More fixing of things that were broken by the nooverlays change - in this case related to how the web servers find the files to show to us.

Bug 4638: Contextual hover menu too sticky
Category: Misc UI/Frontend
Patch by: fu
Description: This is the popup menu that we see when we hover over users. Sometimes it was too sticky, and sometimes it was not sticky enough, especially in Firefox. fu probably applied some glue, or scraped some off, and now it is just sticky enough.

Bug 4654: Let supporthelps get a dump of any user's icon data
Category: Icons
Patch by: fu
Description: Senior support people can now get information about a user's icons to help in diagnosing problems.

Bug 4656: Add newtheme.pl script to bin/dev
Category: Style System
Patch by: rb
Description: This script by rb and momijizukamori makes it easier to add new themes to the backend. This will leave people with more time to create new themes instead!

Bug 4666: Issues with captcha and anonymous comments
Category: Journal contents
Patch by: fu
Description: Something in the last code push stopped CAPTCHAs from working under some circumstances. fu fixed it speedily.

Bug 4670: Use ?skin=... instead of ?usescheme=...
Category: Site Layout/Navigation
Patch by: fu
Description: Previously, you could add "?usescheme=foo" to a URL to show a page with a different skin. Now, you can use "?skin=foo" as well.

Bug 4675: Issues logging in from https + front page
Category: Unknown
Patch by: fu
Description: As I understand it, using the login form on the https front page sent you to the http when it shouldn't have. Now it doesn't!

Bug 4668: Librarian's Dream: unclosed div in profile module when opts are hidden
Category: Style System
Patch by: ninetyd
Description: ninetyd fixed some oddness in the Librarian's Dream style to make it even dreamier. If you had trouble with the Profile module going weird, it's now safe to try again.

Bug 4557: directories without trailing slashes not working in development
Category: Site Layout/Navigation
Patch by: fu
Description: Normally, typing "http://www.dreamwidth.org/foo" in the address bar should take you to "http://www.dreamwidth.org/foo/" (note the slash at the end). This works on the main Dreamwidth site, but it wasn't working on development servers. It's been fixed.

Bug 4686: New update page can cause comm posts to have incorrect default security
Category: Journal contents
Patch by: fu
Description: This fixes a problem with the new (beta) update page that could result in unexpected security settings being applied to community posts. We like security, but surprise security is usually unwelcome!

Bug 4646: t/post.t failing: no $r
Category: Misc Backend
Patch by: fu
Description: This is to do with the automated tests that are carried out on new releases. That's about as much as I understand...

Bug 4627: Recent Comments admin tool uses old style URL formation
Category: Site Administration
Patch by: yvi
Description: We now represent users' journals as foo.dreamwidth.org. But back in the mists of time, LJ used to use livejournal.com/users/foo, and this still works in Dreamwidth. One of the admin tools was still using the old way, and now it has been updated.

Bug 4585: poll display not properly accounting for plural/singular
Category: Journal contents
Patch by: yvi
Description: Here we see yvi start a (very) short rampage though minor poll-related bugs, making sure that the poll system understands singulars and plurals and does not tell you "You must choose exactly 1 responses" any more.

Bug 4661: Polls offer an option to "change your vote" even when you haven't voted
Category: Misc UI/Frontend
Patch by: yvi
Description: yvi's short but delightfull poll-fixing spree concludes by preventing the poll system from asking you to "change your vote" when you haven't voted yet. Instead, it now says "Fill out poll".

Bug 4660: Journal rename/swap error text is very unhelpful
Category: Misc UI/Frontend
Patch by: yvi
Description: An unhelpful error that was shown in some circumstances when renaming an account has been given a good talking to and persuaded to be more clear and helpful in future.

Bug 4705: Theme/layout names need stricter cleaning
Category: Style System
Patch by: fu
Description: It had been possible to create new themes or layouts with names that didn't work properly. The system should now spot these and protest.

Bug 4577: don't show deleted & purged accounts on profile unless ?mode=full is selected
Category: Misc UI/Frontend
Patch by: yvi
Description: Does exactly what it says on the tin :-) This was already true for personal profiles, but yvi has made community profiles behave the same way.

Bug 4701: URL cuts off after apostrophe when using style links in nav bar
Category: Misc UI/Frontend
Patch by: fu
Description: The "reload page as style" option didn't work if you were browsing a tag that contained an apostrophe. Now it does!

Bug 4659: landing page inaccurate after editing community entry
Category: Communities
Patch by: swaldman
Description: If you edited an entry on a community, the page afterwards would offer options such as "View your journal entries" where what it really meant was "View community". This page now checks to see whether it was a personal or community post that was edited, and uses the appropriate text.

Bug 4298: "Advanced Customization" link only showing up with custom layouts
Category: Style System
Patch by: kimira
Description: The "Advanced Customization" link was only showing up when you were using custom layouts. Since the Advanced Customization link must be clicked to start using custom layouts, this was a problem. kimira made the link less shy.

Bug 4704: Poll error messages reference the lj-* form
Category: Unknown
Patch by: kimira
Description: When DW forked from LJ, the names of some tags were changed. For instance, "lj-poll" became just "poll". Some error messages were still referring to the old form, and this has been fixed.

Bug 4690: Librarian's Dream: module heading links not changing color in original design
Category: Style System
Patch by: ninetyd
Description: dancing_serpent noticed a problem in the way that some module titles were displaying in Librarian's Dream. ninetyd fixed it.

Bug 4718: undo icon import override
Category: Importer
Patch by: denise
Description: In the past, Dreamwidth had ignored its limit on the number of icons that a user can have when importing from LJ. This was in order to prevent some problems with the import. However, this resulted in a significant number of people deliberately exploiting this loophole to get more icons on DW than they were paying for, so denise decided to enforce the limit when importing again.

Bug 844: "+" in tag name renders tag unusable
Category: Tags
Patch by: swaldman
Description: For historical reasons, when LJ and DW encounter + signs in the first part of a URL, they treat them as representing spaces. This causes a problem for people who have tags with + signs in them, because links such as
user.dreamwidth.org/tag/foo+bar/ don't work. This patch changes things so that if there is a + sign in the tag, then when the site generates links the form
user.dreamwidth.org/?tag=foo+bar is used instead.

Bug 4722: Contextual hover menu not triggering on icons
Category: Misc UI/Frontend
Patch by: fu
Description: Another problem related to the pop-up menu that appears when you mouse over somebody's name. fu fixed it.

Bug 4688: Core2 cleanup: remove obsolete code
Category: Style System
Patch by: ninetyd
Description: Good housekeeping: Removing some obselete code that is no longer used by the site.

Bug 4724: Searching FAQ for "rss" does not bring up info on how to create/subscribe to feeds
Category: User documentation
Patch by: zarhooie
Description: The FAQ page about adding feeds to DW simply called them "feeds" and did not mention the term "RSS". This meant that searching for "RSS" didn't return this otherwise-useful page. zarhooie changed the text on the page to include "RSS" and "Atom", which should make it more easily findable.

Bug 4564: Double quotes breaks new icon browser
Category: Unknown
Patch by: fu
Description: The icon browser on the new (beta) update page didn't work if there were double quotes in an icon description. Now it does.

Bug 4671: misc core2 tweaks for better comment display
Category: Style System
Patch by: momijizukamori
Description: Minor tweaks to labels.

Bug 4737: Icon comments that look like numbers break the new icon browser
Category: Icons
Patch by: fu
Description: This was another issue with the new beta update page. If an icon comment had only numbers and no letters in it, the new icon browser went wrong. The icon browser has been taught some numeracy skills, and this no longer happens.

Bug 4696: Database: update style and fix link colors
Category: Style System
Patch by: ninetyd
Description: The Database style had not kept up with some changes that had been made to other styles. ninetyd brought it up to date!

Bug 4331: Customize Journal: display correct options in Text section for communities
Category: Style System
Suggested by: timeasmymeasure
Patch by: yvi
Description: There were some options in Customize Journal that didn't make sense if you were customizing a community, and some that only made sense if you were customizing a community. Now only the appropriate ones will be shown.

Bug 4708: Add/Cancel buttons issues when adding a new user to circles
Category: Misc UI/Frontend
Patch by: kimira
Description: A particular set of circumstances could cause the "Add" and "Cancel" buttons to be displayed twice when adding a user to your circle. kimira fixed this!

Bug 4717: Core2: use get_plural_phrase for visible count and expose visible/screened props
Category: Style System
Patch by: ninetyd
Description: This makes the styles system understand singular and plurals better when it's giving the number of visible and screened comments.

Bug 4702: (S2 CSS beta) multiple page nav spreads out over entire length of page rather than staying in a box
Category: Journal contents
Patch by: momijizukamori
Description: This bug refers to the project (currently in beta) to change the main post-readingentry page from being a "special" page to being one that is rendered by the styles system. On pages with many comments, the list of page numbers was displaying weirdly. It's been fixed!

Bug 2192: Retitle button & window on Edit Reply screen
Category: Misc UI/Frontend
Suggested by: jesse_the_k
Patch by: swaldman
Description: jesse_the_k pointed out that when you edit a comment that you've made, the title of the page says "Reply" - as it would if you were writing a new comment. swaldman changed things so that the title reflects what you're doing.

Bug 4695: filename of preview image for Librarian's Dream theme seems illegal on Mac OS X
Category: Style System
Patch by: momijizukamori
Description: The filename for this image had some accented characters in,and these caused problems on some OSes. They were changed to boring unaccented equivalents.

Bug 4636: New Style: Fantaisie by ninetydegrees
Category: Style System
Patch by: ninetyd
Description: A shiny new style from ninetyd!

Bug 4731: Line Up: new themes
Category: Style System
Patch by: momijizukamori
Description: Twelve new themes for the "Line Up" style - ten by momijizukamori and two by timeasmymeasure.

Bug 2852: Separate "Edit Profile: Success" message for communities
Category: Misc UI/Frontend
Suggested by: azurelunatic
Patch by: swaldman
Description: If you edited the profile of a community that you controlled, the site would say "Your profile has been revised". This was confusing, because it was not "your profile" that you had revised, but a community's one. It was even more alarming if you deleted a community and were told "your account has been deleted"! swaldman trawled through the site and tried to find and correct all the places where there is misleading text when working on a community. He probably missed a few...

Bug 4501: Order subscription filters by name
Category: Circle/Relationships
Suggested by: cesy
Patch by: foxfirefey
Description: The list of subscription filters at http://www.dreamwidth.org/manage/subscriptions/filters will now be sorted alphabetically by default, rather than by the order in which the filters were created.

Bug 2174: Subscription filters: allow subscription filters to be public
Category: Journal contents
Suggested by: ninetydegrees
Patch by: foxfirefey
Description: Users can now set their subscription filters to be public if they wish.

Bug 4720: site search produces unhelpful error if tab is left open too long
Category: Search
Patch by: denise
Description: Dreamwidth uses an authentication system to make sure that requests for searches and similar come from Dreamwidth and not elsewhere. These place a time limit on searches - if you leave a tab open and take more than 24 hours to enter a search term, the search will fail. This makes it fail with a much more helpful error message!

Bug 3837: Separate out the different account types on the stats page
Category: Misc UI/Frontend
Patch by: hotlevel4
Description: The stats page will now show the 10 most recently created accounts of each type (personal/community/feed) rather than the 10 most recently created of any type.

Bug 4734: Increase the character limit on font fields
Category: Style System
Patch by: momijizukamori
Description: The fields in Customize Journal that allow you to specify fonts for your journal had a limit of 50 characters. If you wanted to specify two or three fallback fonts to use (in case the viewer's computer did not have the first choice), it was easy to hit this limit. So this limit has been doubled to 100 characters.

Bug 4677: Expose font_sources setting in wizard UI
Category: Style System
Patch by: momijizukamori
Description: This patch allows users to use third party webfonts (such as Google Webfonts) on their journals. I'm looking forward to this one!

Bug 4738: JS beta icon browser is taking the Tropo colors instead of the selected site scheme colors
Category: Misc UI/Frontend
Patch by: fu
Description: The icon browser on the beta update page had been using the wrong colours. Now it doesn't!

Bug 4689: (s2 sitescheme entrypage beta) hitting bottom "post a new comment" link makes quickreply box weird
Category: Browser Issues
Patch by: momijizukamori
Description: Another bug relating to the beta of the new entry page, this time involving the Quick Reply box.

Bug 4732: Librarian's Dream: new themes
Category: Style System
Patch by: momijizukamori
Description: Even more new themes! Another ten for Librarian's Dream by momijizukamori.

Bug 647: Replace talkread/talkpost with a S2 style that's wrapped in site scheme.
Category: S2 Backend
Patch by: momijizukamori
Description: A number of bugs above have referred to the beta test of the new entry-and-comment-readingentry page. This bug was the one to develop beta itself. momijizukamori has put in a huge amount of work to make the new page look exactly like the old page - but it will be a big improvement for the future :-)

Comments

[denise]

swaldman trawled through the site and tried to find and correct all the places where there is misleading text when working on a community. He probably missed a few...

That pesky swaldman! Somebody ought to give that guy a talking to.

(Awesome code tour is awesome! Thank you for doing it. <3)

[(Anonymous)]

Nice code tour, swaldman!

-jlb

[ninetydegrees]

Yay! Awesome tour!

[qem_chibati]

so many bug fixes. \o/

[musyc]

Such awesome stuff in here! Great tour! XD

[marahmarie]

Bug 2936 is made of win, as are Bugs 4661, 2192, 2852, 4501, and 2174.

Bug 4638 is still not behaving correctly for me in Firefox, and this really blows my mellow because fu (and some others here, I think) and I went around and around with it a while back just to figure out what the bug was and how to resolve it on my end (and part of that was changing my CSS, if I recall correctly, but I did, and still).

On my custom icon page in particular (the very page that gave me the most trouble in the first place) I can still get two hover menus in a row to stick on top of each other for a little under five seconds altogether before they both disappear. On my journal entries, the first time I hover over my big user icon the menu holds for a full three seconds before fading; the second and subsequent times it flashes on and off in under a full second. Pulling away from it for a while and going back doesn't fix that issue, either; the behavior simply repeats. *makes sad face*

Also, I need someone to kindly explain "Bug 4577: don't show deleted & purged accounts on profile unless ?mode=full is selected" to me because I'm not getting it; is "?mode=full" the equivalent of "View extended profile"? Because I'm seeing deleted usernames on my Profile, in my Other Subscriptions list, whether I'm logged in or out on both my Mini and Extended Profiles.

[denise]

Things from this code tour are not yet live.

[zarhooie]

Yay code tour! This was a heroic effort, and you rocked it. :)

[swaldman]

Thank you. I love your userpic!

[azurelunatic]

So many glorious little bits!

[turlough]

As someone who uses a lot of subscription filters bug 4501 makes me very happy!

[sophie]

A slight correction in the description for the last bug, bug 647:

A number of bugs above have referred to the beta test of the new reading page.

It's not the reading page that's in beta; that's not changing - it's the site skin commenting page. The same thing goes for bug 4702:

This bug refers to the project (currently in beta) to change the main post-reading page...

Thanks for doing the code tour :D

[swaldman]

It *is* the post-reading page. I couldn't think of a better name for it! (talkread is not meaningful to non-developers)
Feel free to suggest, I'm probably missing an obvious name...

Corrected the bit that called it a reading page, thanks.

[musyc]

Entry page or comment page is what I most often see that as. When I see "reading page", that's the /read list, to me.

[swaldman]

Oh, that's much better - thanks. I've updated the post.