patrick.net

thanks for your helpful suggestions.

I've been gone quite a while.

My friend is buying a house and I just recommended today that he read "The Housing Trap" to understand the less glamorous side of real estate.

Made me drop in on Patrick.net this evening to see what's going on. I really liked this site for the real estate forum.

Anyone know what happened?

I saw three new posters today and one guy that hasn't posted since 2013.

...if it ain't broken, why fix it?

I have no suggestions. This is horrible, my question would be - why did you change it?? Did people complain? It took me 2 mouse clicks to get to my threads. Now I have to scroll for pages and still seem to have lost track of them. One of them is on page 14 and one on page 2 and another one on page 5. Before all in one page under investing.

I don't get it.

There used to be a time when it was great a long time ago but you decided to change that too. All the great discussions have gone missing in that transition.

oh well...

I appreciate the ongoing efforts at improvement, but miss being able to see the last comment.

SubOink says:"All the great discussions.."

What's this "great" you talk about, when patnetters are incapable of greatness? lol

There is an old saying," Do not look a gift horse in the mouth." LOl!!!

SubOink says

Before all in one page under investing.

you can still go directly there by bookmarking this: http://patrick.net/?s=investing

it's just that that link isn't in the header anymore, to save space.

ok, i added those links back, but to the footer.

Innovation and change are good for our minds. Otherwise, we start following dietary advice like there are still no refrigerators around.

@patrick, the root page has a lot of nested tables. I take it this is unintentional.

wow, what browser is that on? doesn't look like that for me.

thanks for pointing it out.

rando says

wow, what browser is that on?

Seems to be a Firefox-only issue. There are no nested tables on Chrome or IE. Haven't checked Safari or Edge.

A cursory look suggests that your BootStrap code is generated nested div elements with border styles in FireFox, but is only creating a linear stack (siblings) of div elements with border styles in the other browsers. I haven't learned BootStrap yet, so I cannot say why.

How do you get more pages if you are looking at the active on the main page. You can pick a category, but not continue on to the next active page. Am I missing something?

Dan8267 says

the root page has a lot of nested tables. I take it this is unintentional.

@Dan8267 is it still showing nested divs for you?

bob2356 says

How do you get more pages if you are looking at the active on the main page.

ah, need to fix that. thanks!

Software engineers are not user-interface designers. They don't think that way.

The classic examples are the VCR flashing "12:00" forever, or most menu structures in consumer electronics.

I was once in a design meeting where we could not force the lead developer to consider what functions a consumer would actually want to use, what buttons they'd want to push, and what names on the buttons would make sense to the end user.

Every time a site run by a lone developer is designed or re-designed, this will happen. It usually irons itself out.

rando says

@Dan8267 is it still showing nested divs for you?

Yes, but not as many. Now there is only one extraneous bordered div.

Doing a bit of debugging -- hell, that's all I do every day it seems -- the problem is, not surprisingly, the fact that I had a bunch of trolls on ignore. When a troll T is ignored by user U, PatNet does not include posts and threads in the server-side dynamic HTML it produces for user U. This needless complication is causing the nested div problem. You could fix the dynamic HTML generating code. However, a better fix would be to replace the server-side dynamic HTML with client-side dynamic HTML as follows.

1. Set a css class like so.
.ignore
{
display: none;
}

2. Set the div elements of posts by ignored users to this class. This can be done many ways. I prefer setting it through JavaScript, typically using a binding mechanism like the KnockoutJS framework, but even using a little JQuery will do the trick. Just get all content containers flagged with ignored user IDs and call JQuery addClass function. The JQuery selector you use is dependent on your DOM structure. It's not as clean as using a model and binding in my opinion, but it requires little code.

A second suggestion would be to add a second css class like so
.ignoreLight
{
color: #303030;
}

And then put a link to remove this class and make the post easier to read. You can have a user preference regarding if troll content is completely ignored, i.e. invisible, or mostly ignored, i.e. light unless clicked on.

As a bonus to either of these approaches, other bugs on PatNet will be fixed including the ability to go to the first unignored post when an ignored post is the next unread post. Currently PatNet puts you at the top of the thread because the tag with the ID it's trying to jump to simply does not exist if the corresponding post is ignored. Making the post invisible but still present will allow this jump to function correctly.

Also, another suggestion. PatNet should support the code pre tag. Add a css class like so.

And then allow the code pre tag in posts. Here's the JSFiddle example of what it would look like.

Damn code tag doesn't respect newlines and requires adding line-break tags. The pre tag does not have this silly requirement.

You might want to put a max-width constraint on pre tags using css though to prevent layout problems.

those are good suggestions, thanks very much!

i agree ignored users should just be suppressed with css, and perhaps ignored comments could be replaced with a marker which you can mouse over to see a pop up of the ignored content.

HydroCabron says

Software engineers are not user-interface designers.

Depends on the software engineer.

UI design or human factors has two parts: the objective and the subjective. Some engineers, including myself, are damn good at the objective parts of UI design. This part includes measurable things like mechanical load, memory load, and conceptual load. Mechanical load are things like how many clicks does it take and how far does the user have to move the mouse. Memory load is how much information the user has to remember because it's not on the screen. Conceptual load is how much does the user have to think or filter because there's too much on the screen or the interaction is too complicated. This things are objective and precisely measurable. A good software engineer will always do a better job than an artsy-fartsy person on all these things.

Unfortunately the subjective part is all bullshit and personal preferences. As such there is no right or wrong, just what's popular. For example, back in the early 1990s Gateway made curvy white computers. It was different from the boxy and beige, silver, and black themes used at the time. Few people like them and thought the difference was silly and impractical. A decade later Apple does the exact same thing and millions of people wet themselves like an excited puppy whose owner just came home. Why? Because Apple did it. A lot of what's fashionable is determined by who is promoting the arbitrary preference. Human beings are shallow manipulative creatures. They want to mimic people considered cool in order to be considered cool themselves. And that is why the subjective part of UI design is basically bullshit fashion that arbitrarily changes. As such, it is unreasonable to admire people for "having good taste" and to call such people experts. It's just arbitrary.

rando says

perhaps ignored comments could be replaced with a marker which you can mouse over to see a pop up of the ignored content

Mouse-over is very inconvenient because it triggers when a user is simply trying to move the mouse pointer from point A to point B. One of the biggest mistakes in web-based UI is making menu systems trigger on mouse-over rather than click. Mouse-over does have a purpose, but it should not be used as a replacement for click because click is disambiguous in many situations where mouse-over is not.

Also, mouse-over does not work on touch-screen systems like tablets and smartphones. As such, no website should rely on mouse-over lest it be non-mobile friendly.

Instead, have a user setting with the options
- hide ignored posts
- gray out ignored posts until clicked
- display ignored posts as regular posts

Then set the css class based on that setting. If either of the first two options are selected, also display a link to remove the css class. I would always have the link there, but change its css class based on the setting.

Another interesting effect. Just re-ignored CIC and got the following reply.

These two statements are incompatible based on your vast posting history.

Dan8267 says

Conceptual load is how much does the user have to think or filter because there's too much on the screen or the interaction is too complicated.

Dan8267 says

Some engineers, including myself, are damn good at the objective parts of UI design. This part includes measurable things like mechanical load, memory load, and conceptual load.

@Patrick

Can I suggest a user option for turning off pictures on the front page?

IMO, the pictures make it a tough read on a mobile device.

Also, since users can post whatever they want, there are some distasteful pictures popping up on the front page.

Maybe there should be a limit on the height of the front page images, too. Maybe they should scale by the user's screen resolution. I think that the front page pictures is generally a good move, but it may benefit from some tweaking.

YesYNot says

Can I suggest a user option for turning off pictures on the front page?

+1.

There's another site I frequent which is NSFW, which has a "safe browsing" toggle
which disables the images.

Yea fuck the images.

A picture is worth a thousand words.
Why do you hate photoshop?

Xanthidae says

These two statements are incompatible based on your vast posting history.

And stupid troll comments like that is why you are on ignore.

Being on "ignore" and "being ignored" are two different animals as witnessed by your reply.
Hehehe...

Dan8267 says

Xanthidae says

These two statements are incompatible based on your vast posting history.

And stupid troll comments like that is why you are on ignore.

Xanthidae says

Being on "ignore" and "being ignored" are two different animals as witnessed by your reply.

Hehehe...

A point I mentioned many times to Patrick and others. I don't need an ignore function to hide troll comments. I want a ban function to prevent trolls from posting on my threads. It just so happens that the only mechanism Patrick implemented to do this is what he labeled "ignore". If you look at my suggestions above, you'll see they are clearly for using ignore for banning purposes, not ignoring purposes.

I am happy to exposed idiots like you for what you are, Shrek. Every time you open your mouth you unequivocally demonstrate that conservatives are dumb shits who are not to be respected in any way. If you were smarter, you'd pretend to be a liberal and say dumb shit, but you're not even smart enough to be a planted faux advocate.

errc says

Yea fuck the images.

@errc there is an option in "edit profile" at the bottom of every page to suppress images in lists of posts (home page, search results, user page).

The text of the thread is now, the original post, not the latest comment. This is an improvement: ignore-listed users never appear to exist, period.

YesYNot says

Can I suggest a user option for turning off pictures on the front page?

...

Maybe there should be a limit on the height of the front page images, too. Maybe they should scale by the user's screen resolution. I think that the front page pictures is generally a good move, but it may benefit from some tweaking.

@YesYNot there is an option to turn off images. edit your profile.

i have reduced the height of images in posts lists to 200px. looks good on my android and my wife's iphone, but i can understand that not all phones display the same.

wish i knew more about responsive design. learning.

Dan8267 says

Another interesting effect. Just re-ignored CIC and got the following reply.

woah, maybe i've been coding stoned and don't remember it...

Dan8267 says

Mouse-over does have a purpose, but it should not be used as a replacement for click because click is disambiguous in many situations where mouse-over is not.

yes, i agree mouse-over is too ambiguous.

now i'm thinking of just putting in a tiny icon of the ignored user in place of their comment. click on it, and the style of that comment will change to display the comment.

rando says

now i'm thinking of just putting in a tiny icon of the ignored user in place of their comment. click on it, and the style of that comment will change to display the comment.

Yes, it should be a tiny icon of shriveled up dick, the perfect icon to represent trolls.

Changes in website design can threaten those used to routines. This is especially true regarding the many elderly posters on Patnet. Perhaps their caretakers can help with the changes.