Code tour for 2019-09-30 to 2019-12-12

[ilyena_sylph]

Hi, y'all! I'm Yena, and I haven't done one of these in a very long time. Matter of fact, I would have thrown up my hands after about ten minutes trying if roadrunnertwice hadn't said 'I can help sort some of this stuff into categories that go together instead of it being all over the place' and answered about 5 million questions. I swear this has gotten harder since the last time I did it.

But anyway! Here's the stuff that's been going on in the Eldritch Depths of the codebase that should hopefully make things even better than they already are around here!

I'm not sure when it's going to get pushed live, but this's what's on its way!

Department of 'Zoom Zoom'

Issue 2587: The Squash, Part Two (expand content images w/ JS)
Pull request 2595: [#2587] Add click-to-zoom for images in entry/comment content
Nonfree Pull request 131: [#2587] Remove image shrinking CSS from nonfree journal layouts
Category: Images!
Patch by: nfagerlund
Description: So in the eternal quest to make images behave themselves and look good on DW on mobile or desktop, and not have things take over reading pages or be so small they can't be really seen, roadrunnertwice and mark have been trying to create a site-wide 'expand/shrink' widget.

I am looking forward to this so much I can't even express it.

Department of 'Misc Bugs'

Issue 2494: Add encoding checks to comment importer (pull request)
Category: Importer!
Patch by: rshatch
Description: So sometimes LJ lies about how things on it are encoded. When that happens and it lies to the importer, the poor importer goes boom!

This creates a check so that if LJ lies, the importer knows and compensates rather than just going boom. YAY! We like it when the importer works!

Issue 2567: Keywordless icons broken: beta new entry & s2 icons-by-keyword
Pull request 2580: Three minor bug fixes (Aug19 megamix 3: safe bugfixes)
Category: Icons
Reported by: nfagerlund
Description: So there was this thing, wherein keywordless icons were not coming up correctly in some spots, and had placeholder keywords in others, and weren't showing up in the dropdown for the create entry page. This fixes that nonsense so things behave properly.

Issue 2536: On gradation site scheme, fancyselect dropdowns don't have background color
Pull request 2583: [#2536] Fix background color for "fancy-select" menus on Windows
Category: Menus
Patch by: nfagerlund
Description: Really the category for this one should be Yena-Annoying-Nonsense, and I harrassed the discord mercilessly until roadrunnertwice figured. out. how. to. fix. it. I blow kisses in his direction because this is going to make my personal life much better! (And my partner's, who also uses gradation and growls a lot.)

Trying to read white text on a white background is, ah, difficult at best. And having sudden boxes of white on my dark background was giving me headaches every time I wanted to post an entry. Now the background will be the right color so that the text shows up and sudden white doesn't attack me.

I wave pompoms happily at this fix.

Pull request 2584: Experimental fix for RTE bustage on Chrome
Category: The RTE
Patch by: nfagerlund
Description: Chrome changed some things, and it broke the RTE in new and intriguing ways! (If you haven't heard the list of ways the RTE is... difficult, it's an extensive list!)

This is an attempt at making the silly thing work again, at least for a while longer.

Issue 2542: Talkform: Tune up the no-js flow
Pull request 2597: Aug19 megamix 6: safe, complex frontend
Category: Comments!
Reported by: nfagerlund
Description: So this one was "fun"! Where by fun I mean it sounded like it was no fun at all.

There was a thing where if somebody tried to comment as a different user than the one they were currently logged in as, it failed in a really odd way. This fix should make the entire thing Just Work again, which I think we can all appreciate!


Department of the Quick Reply form

Pull request 2581: Quick-reply design updates: identity and button tidying (Aug19 megamix 4: safe frontend qr)
Issue 2521: QR: Bring back username indicator and move "more options" up top
Issue 2522: QR: Link preview to icons page if no browse; move random into drop-down and spawn re-roll button
Category: Comments!
Patch by: nfagerlund
Description: So last code push there were changes to the quick reply form. Those are discussed Over here. This pile of fixes for things is all about improving it more!

Some highlights I think should be out here in the code tour, even though they're sorta in the names of the links above:

• There's only one "browse" button now, and it's on the icon preview. It's clearly labeled when the form first loads; the label fades after an icon is selected, but reappears on hover.


• If you can't use the icon browser, the icon preview links to your icons page (just like most icons do).


• The random icon feature has moved to the icons menu. Easily accessible if you want it, tidily out of the way if you don't. After the first use, it reveals a dedicated "random" button (for re-rolls).


• Username indicator is back.


• "More options" is by the identity controls, still a button but in a different spot.

I have been playing with this re-design over on a hack journal, and I really appreciate it. I hope you do, too!!

Issue 1484: entered text lost when switching from Reading Page QuickReply to full comment form
Pull request 2581: Quick-reply design updates: identity and button tidying (Aug19 megamix 4: safe frontend qr)
Category: Comments!
Patch by: nfagerlund
Reported by: rahaeli
Description: Again the Quicker/Quick reply form.

So there was this thing where if you started a reply from on your reading page, but decided you wanted more options, everything you'd typed disappeared.

That's not optimal for a blogging site, obviously! A lot of people worked on this one before a solution was found, but now that they've done all the work, this should keep the text loss from happening any more, yay!

Issue 2571: Reply forms: Submit buttons sometimes still disabled on back button
Pull request 2580: Three minor bug fixes (Aug19 megamix 3: safe bugfixes)
Category: Comments!
Reported by: nfagerlund
Description: Still the comment forms!

This one deals with that thing where sometimes if you previewed a comment and then went back via back button instead of hitting 'post', the buttons quit working altogether.

Issue 2472: Consider `-webkit-overflow-scrolling` on large textareas
Category: Comments!
Reported by: nfagerlund
Description: This makes scrolling in big textareas a bit nicer on iOS devices. Apparently eventually it won't be needed, but for now this tweak should make things 'glide' instead of 'thud' scrolling in the comment form.


Department of 'The "Updated _Stuff_" Beta'

Issue 2427: Make S2 site scheme pages responsive/Foundation-ized
Issue 2570: S2 journal-styled pages call `res_includes` super early
Pull request 2586: Enable Foundation in S2 pages (Aug19 megamix 5: risky core)
Pull request 2597: Aug19 megamix 6: safe, complex frontend
Pull request 2588: [#2427] Site skins: Add equivalent styles for legacy markup (.action-box)
Pull request 2598: Update text strings for s2foundation beta
Nonfree Pull request 128: Tropospherical: Support `s2foundation` beta
Category: Beta Features
Patch by: nfagerlund
Description: This whole bunch of things, and stuff below, are going to be a new beta feature people can use and bang on, in the name of eventually making all of DW more mobile-friendly. It's a big thing, so it's going into a separate beta feature to test.

Here's the gist of this part: all of these long and complicated things are to make it so journal pages can take advantage of the same improvements we’ve been making to various other pages on the site. This mostly means we can update the visual style of the site-skinned comment pages, but also makes it possible to bring some newer components into journal-styled pages.

Issue 2411: Icon browser / `iconselector` pop-up is useless on mobile
Pull request 2586: Enable Foundation in S2 pages (Aug19 megamix 5: risky core)
Pull request 2597: Aug19 megamix 6: safe, complex frontend
Category: Icon Browser!
Reported by: nfagerlund
Description: The icon browser currently has three separate versions, all of which are shibboleths. This one is modernized and hopefully will make everyone (or at least all paid account users) happier, especially mobile users.

Issue 2480: Redesign the talkform
Pull request 2597: Aug19 megamix 6: safe, complex frontend
Category: Comments again!
Reported by: nfagerlund
Description: Making the whole talkform (the thing behind comments) behave itself better.

From roadrunnertwice again, the highlights for all of the above:

• Site-skinned comment pages use the newer style of site skin.


• The "show all icons" page uses the newer style of site skin.


• The icon browser (for paid users) is New and Improved.


• The "more options" comment form is New and Improved. (Looks more like the quick-reply, finally.)

So that's going to be fun to play with!

Department of Fun with @-mentions!

Pull request 2540: Better Markdown, maybe
Category: Markdown
Patch by: zorkian
Description: Most people know, I think, that mark wrote us a useful thing that lets the @ sign turn text that starts with it into links to dw-accounts.

The problem is that it's sort of... overachieving, at the moment. Really badly overachieving in the case of places where people share CSS for journals, among other stuff. This will hopefully coax it into calming down a little without breaking the intended useful behavior!

Speaking of that intended behavior, here it is, with hat tip again to roadrunnertwice:

• @-mentions are disabled inside < textarea>, < code>, < pre>, and < raw-code> tags. So if you're sharing CSS, use one of those!


• @-mentions are disabled within embedded Tweets.


• You can prevent a single @-mention from being converted by putting a backslash ( \ ) in front of the @ sign.


• If you completely disable autoformatting for a comment or post, @-mentions are disabled too.

Issue 2601: Broken Markdown processing in html cleaner
Pull request 2604: Markdown/HTMLCleaner fixes
Category: Markdown
Patch by: nfagerlund
Description: So trying to fix some of the Markdown stuff broke other stuff, this helps fix that, again.

Department of "Backend stuff"

Pull request 2600: TaskQueue: to replace TheSchwartz
Category: Eldritch Horrors
Patch by: zorkian
Description: Hat tip roadrunnertwice: "Basically, some things on DW (notifications, emails, etc.) need to happen asynchronously, and we use a "job queue" for that. This thing partially replaced our weird, non-standard LJ heritage queue implementation with a more modern, off-the-shelf thing."


Department of Code Machete

Pull request 2599: Aug19 megamix 8: risky noops
Category: Code Machete!
Patch by: nfagerlund
Description: This gets rid of a problem where not having a default icon made the beta create entry page freak out. I approve of bug-stomping!

Pull request 2596: Maint: Remove statusvis_message.js
Category: Code Machete!
Patch by: nfagerlund
Description: Removed some already-nonfunctional javascript before it could break anything else.

Pull request 2579: Cleanups and groundwork for upcoming features (Aug19 megamix 2: middlin noops)
Category: Code Machete!
Patch by: nfagerlund
Description: More dead code from the LJ days being removed with prejudice!


Department of Modernization

Pull request 2589: Add highlight-box styling back to Foundationized site schemes
Pull request 2590: Move new default colors to a better place and make them actually default
Nonfree Pull request 129: Add highlight box colors back to Foundationized Tropo
Nonfree Pull request 130: Fix SCSS typos
Category: Fixing Things
Patch by: rshatch
Description: A bunch of small tweaks to make things look better and shinier in Foundation-ized pages and make Tropo look better.

Issue 2555: Upgrade Foundation to 5.5.3
Pull request 2556: [#2555] Upgrade Foundation to 5.5.3
Nonfree Pull request 127: [#2555] Foundation usage: topbar-height has to be in rems now
Category: Nouveau Eldritch Horrors
Patch by: nfagerlund
Description: So some of the third-party frameworks that DW relies on sorta needed y to be upgraded to newer versions so that they continued to work without being slow and inconvenient for everyone. These do that upgrading.

There may be some glitches in the new-style site skins that have to be worked out, but the team thinks they caught them all.

And that's... a wrap, I think?

My hat's off to the devs for all of this, honestly.

If you run into new problems after it does go live, please, please let us know!

35 total issues resolved
Contributors: kareila, nfagerlund, rshatch, zorkian

Comments

[sporky_rat]

If you want a list of how the RTE is failing in Many Interesting and Unique Ways, find a support volunteer. (we may cry a bit, though)

[ilyena_sylph]

+quiet snicker while offering booze+

[sporky_rat]

The RTE causes more day drinking....

[azurelunatic]

Yup.

[siderea]

Pull request 2600: TaskQueue: to replace TheSchwartz
Category: Eldritch Horrors
Patch by: [github.com profile] zorkian
Description: Hat tip [personal profile] roadrunnertwice: "Basically, some things on DW (notifications, emails, etc.) need to happen asynchronously, and we use a "job queue" for that. This thing partially replaced our weird, non-standard LJ heritage queue implementation with a more modern, off-the-shelf thing."

Oh, hey! Cool. What did you guys go with?

[roadrunnertwice]

AWS SQS, which both mark and momijizukamori have experience with from other projects.

[siderea]

Thanks! Does that mean DW as a whole is on AWS?

[mark]

Yup, that’s correct.

Edit: since 2016 actually!

[siderea]

How's it been for you? Are you liking it?

[mark]

There are pros and cons. Certainly I've been able to delete huge swaths of DW code and reduce the operational work required by using "the cloud." We no longer run our own databases, memcache, MogileeFS, and soon I think I can kill TheSchwartz/Gearman...

It's nice to be able to just have someone else worry about making those things work and just being able to focus on actually making the site better. (Well, once I'm through applying machetes to things...)

On the other hand, it is more expensive than running it ourselves, but we're making it work!

[roadrunnertwice]

More about that "text lost when jumping from reading page to 'more options'" bug: huge props to kareila and alierak for figuring out what the entire problem was and writing it all down.

They actually had this bug's number way back in 2015, including a theory for what ended up being the fix; the problem was, web browsers wouldn't allow that fix at the time! Basically, our JavaScript needed to request A Thing (didn't matter what) from the target journal before sending the partial comment over, and cross-domain requests via JS were verboten. But in the time since then, web browsers have added safe ways to do that, so the bug is now fixable without any weird hacks.

Of course, since we're using a contemporary web feature for that, that means the bug is still unfixed for you if you're using a web browser from 2015. *Makes face at IE11.*

[ilyena_sylph]

Thanks for the extended explanation!

Also oooooooops I thought I posted that days ago!

[jducoeur]

You can prevent a single _mention from being converted by putting a backslash ( \ ) in front of the @ sign.

Oh, excellent -- that should be a good workaround for the problem I've been having for a while, that I can't link to my Medium account from within a Markdown-formatted entry. (Because individual Mediums have `@` in the URL.) Thanks!

[ilyena_sylph]

Yay! I am glad it will help!