Code tour to August 25, 2012

[metawidget]

Since the July 13th code tour, there have been 37 bugs dispatched by members of the Dreamwidth developer community. We have documentation, clarity and usability in the interface, new and improved styles, and groundwork for infrastructure improvements. We have bugs triggered by problems people noticed, and bugs that were just shiny or the right thing to do. We have bugs resolved under the new GitHub setup and bugs resolved the old fashioned way. Without further ado, here is what happened:

Bug 4511: Support: widen the 'Reference FAQ' drop-down menu
Category: Site Administration
Suggested by: ninetydegrees
Patch by: ninetyd
Description: The support request FAQ menu had some code to keep questions from getting too long. ninetyd made the definition of “too long” more relaxed, allowing more descriptive questions.

Bug 4206: uninitialized value errors in Poll.pm
Category: Misc Backend
Patch by: denise
Description: What are the extreme values in your ordinal poll question? Perl and Edie Brickell say “don’t tell me nothing”; denise told Perl that in the absence of a value, they are empty strings, which are not quite nothing, which keeps you from seeing an error message. mark upgraded the code to use the //= operator. $a //= $b means “if $a is undefined, set it to $b, otherwise leave $a alone” (well, technically set it to $a). For SQL users, this is a little like “coalesce”, and is pretty handy.

Bug 4254: make a more direct link to support request from feed profile page
Category: Misc UI/Frontend
Suggested by: deborah
Patch by: denise
Description: This saves a click and a bunch of scrolling for users wanting to update a feed URL. Saving clicks and scrolling is an accessibility change that everyone benefits from!

Bug 4441: Bases -- Rocket has invalid color value
Category: Style System
Patch by: ninetyd
Description: White is not a four-letter word in hex. In fact, there are no four-letter words in hex colour codes. foxfirefey caught this while adding some themes, and ninetyd made it a three-letter word.

Bug 4536: Need a MogileFS::Client higher then 1.08 [ 1.12 works ]
Category: Misc Backend
Patch by: exor674
Description: Dreamwidth was accepting an older version of MogileFS than actually worked for its load-balancing file storage needs. Now it requires a somewhat newer version that has been verified to work by exor674.

Bug 4454: Routing controller doesn't set domain cookie
Category: Routing/TT
Patch by: allen
Description: Domain cookies are used to carry session information around with you as you browse the site. Dreamwidth has lots of subdomains, and this bug is about information getting from one domain to the next. The site will be moving to a fancy new routing system (involving less magic and BML, according to allen), and it needed a little bit of fixing to toss the cookie between domains.

Bug 4286: poll responder list sorts by userid, not chronological by response order
Category: Journal contents
Patch by: swaldman
Description: Not fixing this bug might have resulted in more people posting comments on polls just to say “first!”

Bug 4548: FAQ #136 doesn't mention Google Analytics is reserved to paid users
Category: User documentation
Patch by: denise
Description: Now it does.

Bug 4448: Fix obsolete email address(es) in LJ::Console::Command::MakeInvites
Category: Misc UI/Frontend
Patch by: pauamma
Description: If you were trying to reach fu or pauamma through this page, current e-mail addresses in this code will help.

Bug 4437: Have ssldocs mirror htdocs instead of being a seperate directory.
Category: Modernization
Patch by: exor674
Description: This one’s a bit crypric, but it looks like it was resolved by deciding not to patch it.

Bug 4551: add a README for dw-nonfree
Category: Server documentation
Patch by: denise
Description: Most of Dreamwidth's code is free (as in beer, speech, etc.), but trademarks, branding and the like are not. Adding the README file to dw-nonfree makes this clear and points developers to the awesome free part of the code (which is all you need to run a Dreamwidth-like site).

Bug 4438: Use global default scheme / default language settings instead of ones from _config.bml
Category: Modernization
Patch by: exor674
Description: There is a big meta-bug called “Eliminate BML;” this is one of its children. Vive la révolution!

Bug 4542: document userpic add ons
Category: User documentation
Patch by: denise
Description: One of the recent much-requested upgrades to Dreamwidth was the ability for users who want lots of icons to buy more icon slots. Givrn that “How can I buy extra icon spaces for my account?” was a frequently-asked question before there was a good answer, it is nice to have a concrete answer added to the FAQ.

Bug 4570: add activate_userpics call in a few more places
Category: Icons
Patch by: mark
Description: The most important thing about this fix is that on importing, users will have until the nightly cron job runs to prune their userpics down to the allowable number before the site checks their quota and deactivates some arbitrarily if necessary.

Bug 4520: rename process uses old username length
Category: Misc Backend
Patch by: denise
Description: The renaming process used a legacy username length internally, this fix brings it into line with the current limit.

Bug 4515: Misc: a little cleaning regarding browser-specific prefixes in CSS
Category: Style System
Patch by: ninetyd
Description: Eventually, browser developers agree on how a CSS selector or property should work, and then Dreamwidth may as well ditch browser-specific prefixes in its CSS code to make it more readable and easier to maintain.

Bug 4252: "Currently working as" on every "work as" page
Category: Misc UI/Frontend
Suggested by: azurelunatic
Patch by: ninetyd
Description: If you manage communities, then some parts of the site can be used to manage your journal or those communities. This fix lets you clearly see what you are working on, and switch easily if you want to work on a different journal or community.

Bug 4506: Profile: Circle: link 'Edit' link to corresponding section at Manage Circle
Category: Circle/Relationships
Suggested by: ninetydegrees
Patch by: ninetyd
Description: Clicking on one of the “Edit” links in your own profile will now jump you to the appropriate part of your Manage Circle page, rather than the top.

Bug 4498: Include a copy of entry with all moderation queue messages
Category: Communities
Suggested by: azurelunatic
Patch by: ninetyd
Description: Before this patch, if your post to a moderated community was rejected, then you got the content of the post in the message, but if it was accepted, then you didn’t. Now, frequent or forgetful community posters won't have to open the post in a browser to figure out what it was: it will be included in the message.

Bug 4497: Editable Module Headers
Category: Style System
Suggested by: roximonoxide
Patch by: ninetyd
Description: Before, module headers were not modifiable by the journal owner: they could be hidden with CSS, but aside from the Custom Text module, they were stuck with the headers supplied (like “Profile” and “Expand Cut Tags”). Now, all module headers are properties that users can change.

Bug 4077: emails not stripped in htdocs/community/moderate.bml
Category: English-Stripping
Patch by: ninetyd
Description: This isn’t a privacy thing, rather it's moving hardcoded e-mail text to a separate file so that some future user of the code can do all their translation in one place. “Stripping” is the process of replacing chunks of text with variables in a way that there is no English left in the code, and the chunks aren’t assembled with any assumptions about grammar that might be English-specific.

Bug 4014: link manage/settings/?authas=foo on community/settings?authas=foo
Category: Communities
Patch by: denise
Description: For now, community settings are spread across a posting page and a journal page; it makes sense to link from the posting page to the journal page. This may be an interim fix — there is a bug open (and available at this writing) to merge the two eventually.

Bug 4326: Link /support/history from the Support homepage
Category: Misc UI/Frontend
Patch by: ninetyd
Description: There was already a page where you can see what support requests you have made and what happened to them; now there will be a link to it so you can find it!

Bug 4473: EasyRead: entry title isn't clickable in smaller font sizes
Category: Style System
Patch by: ninetyd
Description: The clickable entry title got stuck behind some other content at smaller font sizes; this patch moves it up to the front where it will always be clickable as intended.

Bug 3618: Nouveau Oleanders: don't override font settings
Category: Style System
Patch by: ninetyd
Description: The font size parameter given by the user in the wizard was being waylaid by some hard-coding. ninetyd removed the waylaying hard-coded bits like so many goblins in the forest, and now font sizes may wander the woods to the grandmother’s place and the generated page source.

Bug 1393: Maintainers cannot determine whether an entry is marked explicit content/adult concepts in queue
Category: Communities
Patch by: ninetyd
Description: The community moderation queue will now have little icons for adult and explicit content where applicable, making moderators’ job a little bit easier.

Bug 4251: Wording fix when creating a feed
Category: Circle/Relationships
Suggested by: aedifica
Patch by: denise
Description: Some wording from the add-to-circle page got loose on the add-a-feed page; the wording-catchers have caught the stray wording and dragged it back to the pound.

Bug 4517: Strata: icons in journal style is mistakenly turned on
Category: Style System
Patch by: ninetyd
Description: Some testing code and tabs got loose in the Strata style; back to the pound with them, too.

Bug 4601: /community/* urls don't work anymore
Category: Communities
Patch by: fu
Description: More shiny-new-routing-system tweaking, this one changing just when the system tries to find special community-management pages in a user domain.

Bug 4436: Eliminate vcv / cvsreport.pl
Category: Modernization
Patch by: exor674
Description: Still more shiny-new-routing-system tweaking and cleaning up after things that have moved on the Internet.

Bug 4608: document login problems with use of certain cookie management/cookie prevention browser extensions
Category: User documentation
Patch by: denise
Description: denise added a FAQ entry about certain cookie-tossing browser extensions that can make it hard to stay logged in, with a workaround.

Bug 4416: Standardize/Clean/Reformat themes.s2 files + minor fixes
Category: Style System
Patch by: ninetyd
Description: It’s almost spring in the southern hemisphere, as we are pretty good at remembering in DW news posts, so this must be a massive spring cleaning of things like comments, ordering of properties and formatting inconsistencies over eight different styles.

Bug 4385: provide half-size option for icon browser
Category: Icons
Patch by: dunvi
Description: More options for icon browsing, to work better with your eyes and your device! Also, first patch for dunvi!

Bug 4479: Ext_XX displays when deleting comment left by OpenID
Category: OpenID
Patch by: dunvi
Description: Look, your back-end username is showing! Now, OpenID users who you would like to ban have their OpenID username displayed rather than the internal one used by Dreamwidth.

Bug 4512: Privacy-lock icon by contact info on profile
Category: Journal contents
Suggested by: ciaan
Patch by: swaldman
Description: For your comfort and because it’s the right thing to do, there are now lock indicators on your profile contact info at the same granularity as they are set and stored internally.

Bug 4529: For the Bold: add props for userpic border colors
Category: Style System
Patch by: ninetyd
Description: The For the Bold style now has modifiable userpic border colours!

Bug 4457: Nouveau Oleanders: new themes
Category: Style System
Patch by: ninetyd
Description: Three new themes submitted by dancing_serpent.

Comments

[brainwane]

Congrats, dunvi!

[ninetydegrees]

I loved this tour (thank you!!!) and yay, Dunvi!

[denise]

I giggled a lot when reading this code tour -- interesting AND informative AND funny is always hard to do, so well-done, you!

Also, YAY DUNVI YAY FIRST PATCH YAY WELCOME.

[azurelunatic]

Hooray code tour! Hooray dunvi! And I see ninetydegrees has been busy on my suggestions! :D

[musyc]

Huzzah code tour! And congratulations, dunvi! First patches are exciting to see. XD

[dunvi]

Huh. I'm not sure it really counts as a first patch given that that one up there was an extended version of a previous patch I submitted (see last code tour :P). Oh well.

Thanks everyone!