NEW YEAR NEW CODE TOUR (2021/01/30 - 2021/12/31)

[kareila]

Most of these are live as of tonight, we think?

Issue 1118: Make the redirect from http -> https permanent
Category: HTTPS Everywhere v2, Cleaning house
Description: The sitewide change from HTTP to HTTPS has been permanent since, like, 2018, but we missed closing this issue from three years prior, reminding us to do it someday. Someday came, and went, and is now a fond memory.

Issue 1822: '0000-00-00' is no longer a valid default value for MySQL DATETIME fields as of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
Category: Cleaning house, Appeasing the elder gods of open source
Description: This hasn't entirely been fixed yet for reals, but we opened #2856 for general discussion of this and other related problems on more recent versions of Ubuntu, so we're retiring this particular discussion thread.

Issue 2129: two minor issues with mod hat HTML (pull request) (nonfree pull request)
Category: Site beautification, Fancy hats
Patch by: momijizukamori
Description: Some CSS tweaks to adjust the display of mod hats on comments that use them! This is the tiny icon that appears next to your username if you post a comment with the "Admin Post" tickybox checked under More Options.

Issue 2380: Typos in https://www.dreamwidth.org/manage/settings/?cat=shortcuts
Category: Cleaning house, Devs tpye gud
Description: This separately annoyed two people enough to open an issue, but it's only broken once, so the duplicate got closed. It can now be found in #2891 if anyone wants to actually do the thing!

Issue 2563: Advanced:Layers doesn't show the names of custom layers in the create theme drop down (pull request)
Category: Bug-squashing, Find the missing string
Patch by: momijizukamori
Description: When the advanced style customization pages were converted away from BML, one of the dropdown menus couldn't figure out who moved its cheese. The cheese is now properly located.

Issue 2627: update AO3 user links to use HTTPS (pull request)
Category: Modernization, other sites use HTTPS too
Patch by: woggy
Description: This updates the boilerplate code that generates userhead links for all non-DW sites to use HTTPS.

Issue 2817: move some functions from ljlib into an LJ::Utils module (pull request)
Category: Code tidying, Making devs' lives easier
Patch by: martindemello
Description: The ljlib.pl file is the beating heart of the legacy LiveJournal code, and as such contains a ton of both absolutely vital site functions and poorly organized cruft. This moves some ljlib utility functions into a new, separate module named LJ::Utils.

Issue 2825: Icon browser: save some space on mobile, re-fix message body focus (pull request)
Category: Site beautification, Small screens deserve love too
Patch by: nfagerlund
Description: Nick says: "Two small fixes for the icon browser. 1. Save a bit of space on mobile by stashing the display options behind a handy toggle button. 2. In comment forms, focus the message body after dismissing the icon browser."

Issue 2852: convert /support/see_request (pull request)
Category: Modernization, BML MUST DIE
Patch by: kareila
Description: The code underlying the support/see_request page has now been converted to our more modern page format, but all the functionality should be the same.

Issue 2857: Admin rename override tools are busted
Category: Cleaning house, How do computers even work any way
Description: We thought we broke something, but we didn't. Nothing to see here.

Issue 2859: Reconcile icon select component with beta entry page (pull request)
Category: Bug-squashing, Enforcing consistency with an iron fist
Patch by: nfagerlund
Description: Nick says: "Fixed a bug where the beta create entries page wasn't properly saving the icon you chose. We recently started handling the icon menu more consistently, and one place that used it still really wanted to do things differently."

Issue 2861: converted profile page breaks with >1000 subscriptions? (pull request)
Category: Bug-squashing, Template Toolkit is finicky
Patch by: kareila
Description: An infinite loop with a vaguely defined exit condition was being terminated prematurely by the Template Toolkit interpreter, so we now use a very large finite loop instead.

Issue 2862: Fix non-integer comparison warning in icon components (pull request)
Category: Code tidying, Template Toolkit is finicky
Patch by: nfagerlund
Description: Nick says: "Something internal didn't like the way some of our code was arranged, so it started complaining and annoying the devs. (It was still doing the correct thing for users, we think, but it didn't like it.)"

Issue 2863: Fixes for S2 pagination (pull request) (nonfree pull request)
Category: Site beautification, Modernization
Patch by: momijizukamori
Description: Display fixes for pagination links in site views, which looked particularly wonky on pages converted to use the more modern display code.

Issue 2867: Keep gap after entry/comment content consistent (pull request)
Category: Site beautification, Enforcing consistency with an iron fist
Patch by: nfagerlund
Description: Nick says: "Comments and entries that were written in Markdown had an extra little gap at the bottom when compared to content that was written in casual HTML. Now fixed in most places... but since this is a CSS thing and each journal style has its own CSS, some journal styles might still have the extra gap."

Issue 2868: Chrome (and Firefox) changed default Referrer-Policy, made login/out redirects glitchy (pull request)
Category: Modernization, How do computers even work any way
Patch by: rshatch
Description: Ruth says: "When we switched to more modern site pages, we started using the HTTP Referer header to redirect users back to the page they were originally on when they made the login/logout request. Recent updates in both Chrome and Firefox have started placing restrictions on reading the Referer header, for security reasons, with the result that users weren't getting sent back to the page they had come from properly. After some back-and-forth, we decided the nicest solution was to explicitly set the return location (which, incidentally, is more or less what the older BML pages did)."

Issue 2871: Have /data/edges return an error if accessed without first logging in (pull request)
Category: Obscure backend voodoo, Papers Please
Patch by: kareila
Description: This is a rarely used API endpoint with the potential to slow down the site for everyone if a badly behaved program accesses it repeatedly. To reduce the likelihood of abuse, only return the requested data if the user is logged in.

Issue 2872: run tidyall on master (pull request)
Category: Code tidying, Mark is developing in prod again
Patch by: kareila
Description: Fix minor whitespace issues that cause the tidy CI tests to fail. Nothing here that affects users on the site.

Issue 2873: Add PR template explaining the CODE TOUR: line (pull request)
Category: Making devs' lives easier, Document your changes
Patch by: nfagerlund
Description: Nick says: "Meta: encourage devs to leave hints for whoever writes the next code tour post! When devs submit code, they include a description of what they did... but it's intended for other developers on the same project, so it can often be opaque even to devs that work on other code. This just adds a reminder to also include a brief summary for non-devs in there." In other words, this adds helpful boilerplate text to the form that devs see when they submit a pull request on Github.

Issue 2874: remove paragraph tags from explanatory CSS comments (pull request)
Category: Bug-squashing, the CSS parser is finicky
Patch by: kareila
Description: The fix from #2867 included some CSS comments that contained a paragraph tag, to explain the impact of the change. Unfortunately, our less-than-ideal CSS parser choked on rendering CSS that appeared to contain HTML tags. This rewrites the comments to avoid the problem.

Issue 2875: fix styleinfo_privs usage for varying argument types in different contexts (pull request)
Category: Bug-squashing, Obscure backend voodoo
Patch by: kareila
Description: The /admin/styleinfo page was inaccessible due to a code glitch, which this fixes.

Issue 2877: cleanup from latest changes (pull request)
Category: Bug-squashing, Mark is developing in prod again
Patch by: kareila
Description: Two small backend fixes. Nothing here that affects users on the site.

Issue 2878: Possible issues from antique modernizr (pull request)
Category: Bug-squashing, Modernization
Patch by: nfagerlund
Description: Nick says: "Some Chrome users saw weird behavior with the interface for adding tags, in the beta "create entries" page -- the "x" button for removing a tag was replaced with a text label. This was because some browsers are now TOO MODERN for the javascript library we were using to test whether your browser was modern enough to show certain things." So we are now using a newer version of the library.

Issue 2879: Knock it off with the Foundation table styles (pull request)
Category: Site beautification, Modernization
Patch by: nfagerlund
Description: Nick says: "The new site skins were adding too much style juice to tables in entries and comments. (Messing with font/background colors, adding unexpected amounts of padding, etc.) Now they're not. Hopefully."

Issue 2881: Fix some random invalid CSS (pull request)
Category: Code tidying, Making devs' lives easier
Patch by: nfagerlund
Description: Nick says: "Some very old CSS files had invalid junk code left in them." Referring to other files that don't actually exist is not generally helpful.

Issue 2885: Add errors for bad markup to beta create page (pull request)
Category: NEW FEATURES, Know before you post
Patch by: momijizukamori
Description: Momiji says: "Previously, if you had bad markup in an entry, you wouldn't find out until after you had already posted the entry and said bad markup was potentially on display for the world to see. Now the beta create page will give you the error before the post is saved, so you can preemptively fix it (note: this doesn't catch all bad markup - but it gets the most common cases)."

Issue 2908: Search by multiple interests no longer works
Category: Cleaning house, How do computers even work any way
Description: We thought we broke something, but we didn't. Nothing to see here.


27 total issues resolved
Contributors: kareila, martindemello, momijizukamori, nfagerlund, rshatch, woggy

Comments

[ilyena_sylph]

Your category labels made me frighten the cats -- and my partner -- I was laughing so hard.

[kareila]

My work here is done.

[brooksmoses]

They are excellent labels indeed.

[azurelunatic]

Hooray tour!

[sporky_rat]

mark no live in prod yo.

[mark]

Gotta keep life interesting! That's my excuse.

[sporky_rat]

I think we could use less interesting in life right now.

[mark]

You're not wrong. ;_;

[yuuago]

Thanks so much to everyone for all the hard work. <3

[vass]

Ruth says: "When we switched to more modern site pages, we started using the HTTP Referer header to redirect users back to the page they were originally on when they made the login/logout request. Recent updates in both Chrome and Firefox have started placing restrictions on reading the Referer header, for security reasons, with the result that users weren't getting sent back to the page they had come from properly. After some back-and-forth, we decided the nicest solution was to explicitly set the return location (which, incidentally, is more or less what the older BML pages did)."

Oh, cool. I'd noticed that problem myself but assumed it was my security settings being too paranoid again. Thank you, Ruth!

[hlagol]

I just ran into 2563 last month and bam! it's fixed. :)

Thanks for all the improvements an work, y'all. 🎉

[muccamukk]

OMG! Thank you all for the HTTPS on the AO3 links! I really appreciate that.

Ran into the "you have bad mark up" thing last night and was so confused (it turns out the post I was trying to edit had unclosed tags, and had had unclosed tags for years. Oh dear.) It's a really helpful tool!

Very glad to see all these improvements.

[jesse_the_k]

Notice you mention Github pull requests. Is this a path for bug reports from ordinary users, or is it limited to DW support folks? (Not that I'd know how to create a PR.)

70 days ago, I used the standard support flow to report a security-related bug where stranger's site contents are leaking into my style=mine

https://www.dreamwidth.org/support/see_request?id=42387

and it's still happening.

Re: Very glad to see all these improvements.

[kareila]

Sorry that you haven’t received a reply to your support request yet! From a developer standpoint, I’m pretty sure this falls into the category of problems we know about, but haven’t figured out how to fix yet.

To answer your question, though, only developers use the Github system, and site users are definitely encouraged to report issues like this via support request. Support volunteers can then determine if it’s a developer issue or not.

Re: Very glad to see all these improvements.

[jesse_the_k]

Thanks for the reassurance!

(Your icon is delicious)

[runpunkrun]

A delightful read, as always, and I'm particularly excited about this fix: This updates the boilerplate code that generates userhead links for all non-DW sites to use HTTPS.

Those AO3 heads were always sending me to the bad place (HTTP) and now they don't!

Thanks for all the hard work, everyone!

[sixbeforelunch]

Thank you for all the hard work!

[bemused_writer]

I always love reading these. Thanks!

[lassarina]

Thank you very much! I got the "hey you didn't close a tag" the other day and was startled but pleased.

[brainwane]

Congrats on closing 1118 ✨!

[mark]

Thank you!

[sheliak]

I'm getting an "Unclosed tag(s) in entry:" error that isn't letting me save entries—is this on purpose?

(I got in the habit of purposefully leaving certain tags unclosed because it displayed better, so this is rather frustrating.)

[kareila]

Yes, this is a new feature as described in 2885 above.

If you'll let us know which tags you're leaving unclosed and why, we'll see if we can take your use case into account?

[sheliak]

Looking at examples, it's almost always the li tag, mostly for formatting reasons—in html, closing the tag leaves large gaps between lines in a bullet list. (Markdown format does alleviate this.)

... I've also got some saved template posts that used unclosed li and now have approximately a hundred instances of the same tag that need to be closed before I can save any changes to the post, which is frustrating. And if I type li at the end of a line when I meant /li, I end up having to go through all hundred instances of the tag to find the one with the error.

(I did sometimes leave center unclosed, but only once a post, so it's not really much of a hassle to have to close that.)

Thank you for the prompt response!

[momijizukamori]

It's *supposed* to only trigger that message when there's an error that would cause the 'invalid markup, user must manually fix' message to print in an entry, but the HTML parser is a hornets nest so I'm not terribly surprised it's doing something slightly weird.

I'll go digging, but as a temporary workaround, you can switch off the beta 'create entry' page - the check only runs on that, not on the old one.

[sheliak]

Thank you for the tip, that hadn't occurred to me!

[momijizukamori]

I mean, I try to think about the old entry page as little as possible myself, so I don't blame you, lol

Also a fix for the the issue on the new entry page went in yesterday, so it'll be live whenever we next do a code push!