Open tech thread: what do you want to see fixed at OpenLeft?

by: Adam Bink

Thu Nov 19, 2009 at 19:00


Part of the money you've given to support OpenLeft will be used to hire on a new technical consultant who will be working for all of us to make the site better.

We have a list of things we think will help improve the site in terms of design and tech, but since you're our readers and you paid for it, we want to ask you what you like, don't like, and want to see fixed, in terms of technical work.

Spacing? Ways to improve Quick Hits? Formatting in different browsers? Anything you've got, leave it in the comments.
Adam Bink :: Open tech thread: what do you want to see fixed at OpenLeft?

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Open tech thread: what do you want to see fixed at OpenLeft? | 26 comments
Private messaging (4.00 / 1)
Is there any way to write and send messages, public and/or private, to other users?  If not that'd be great.
I would like new diaries near top of front page... (0.00 / 0)
maybe the header lines of 4 latest diaries could be placed above quick hits, with a link to more diaries in between.

There is no such thing as a free market.
[ Parent ]
the formatting and layout could be a little cleaner (0.00 / 0)
everything to the right of this line -->

I pretty much ignore... although sometimes i try to glance through the quick hits.

Honestly, there's no shame in checking out dailykos's layout.

Maybe have diaries and quick hits listed in the same column. But let people click a tab to filter it, so it shows only diaries, or only quick hits.

Everything is kind of a mess.

... nothing radical though (0.00 / 0)
really. just find a cleaner way to arrange what you already have.  
[ Parent ]
one little gripe (0.00 / 0)
When I load any page on OpenLeft, the main frame loads first, with the whole width of the page. Then the stuff in the right hand side loads, twice. As it does, it re-wraps (is that the right word?) the text of the main frame, twice. It usually takes about a second or so, but sometimes I'm trying to quickly scan down and forget to wait for the text to re-wrap. Minor annoyance. I noticed myleftnutmeg, which also uses soapblox, doesn't have this issue.

"I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that."
-Lawrence Summers
[ Parent ]
especially as it affects threads (0.00 / 0)
in some of the more... eventful discussions, you end up with this long snake of words squeezed up against the right, like:

i
say
you
did
not
read
what
i
wrote
when
i
said

and so on.

the inadvertant haikus are interesting sometimes but it's difficult to follow as prose.

not everything worth doing is profitable. not everything profitable is worth doing.

[ Parent ]
Although the good part about thread "trail -off haikuing" - is it tells us, (0.00 / 0)
sooner than we might like perhaps, to just let up - it might be becoming a near flame-like back and forth. Or it gives a clue that maybe a full diary is in order instead.

If you think the narrowing thread is just fantastic and worthwhile to everyone, start a new thread, with the words "I'm going to start a new thread at the page bottom, come along and we can expand this discussion." (or some such less formal verbiage, or possibly some new popular acronym)

Off topic, the slide in card slots for network cards and the like, used to be called PCMCIA slots. Some clever duck suggested it stood for People Cant Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms. But they have been replaced by the easily snapped off USB dongles.

Change
"We must break up the banks and never again let them get so big that they distort our politics and take down the economy.

[ Parent ]
Perfect (4.00 / 2)
Guys, I like you the way you are.  Don't do to much changing.  How can you fix awesome?
It's perfect (4.00 / 1)
I love OpenLeft - Quick Hits is the fastest and best headline amalgamator I've found, and OL's progressive sanity check to protect against noise machinations is absolutely essential.
Community Rankings (4.00 / 2)
After the Stupak amendment passed Paul basically asked who should we target. That question seemed to me perfect for a ranked choice poll. To gather the sense of the community.

A set of persistent polls with linked discussion threads, especially if re-voting is allowed could give a continual reading of the community's judgments.

Expand/contract post (0.00 / 0)
Excuse me if someone's mentioned this already, but I really like how "There's More" and "Contract Post" work at FiveThirtyEight.com.  
Additional content (0.00 / 0)
I would like to see some "educational" content. Some basics about what it means to be a democrat, a progressive, a liberal, conservative ..... who supports "choice" and unions and education etc etc ..... and what core values are not compromised? Does the "planks" really mean anything?

I would also like to see more correlation on who takes what money from who and not kid ourselves that these contributions actually make a big difference in votes.

I have been a supporter of Gov. Dean but now I wonder if the 50 state strategy was not selective enough .... and is that why we are having trouble getting anything done? or is this the new normal? Somehow I don't think if the roles were reversed we would see the same "normal" play out. I am all for making the other side defend their turf but there could be a downside.

the voting records analyzed and charted would be helpful. Seems all the conservative dems relish being THE critical vote so they can extort as much power/money/favor as possible ... knowing they have voted for something in the past that they say the would NEVER do would be great to know. Like the OK guy who is holding up the veterans bill.

OT, but in response to your comment (0.00 / 0)
You couldn't be more wrong about Howard Dean.  Rahm Emmanuel's DCCC is (one of) the reasons we're not getting anything done now.  The corporate-owned Blue Dog Dems that Rahm supported are obstructing the agenda we voted for last November.  (Notice I didn't say "the President's agenda.")  
[ Parent ]
I Agree. (4.00 / 1)
Emanuel needs to go.  He has destroyed everything, and his petty meanness has kept out good people from the administration, like Howard Dean.  If it were not for Dean, Obama would not have won. Emanuel is the one who brought in all of the Conserva-Dems who are ruining things for us now.  
[ Parent ]
I'm still waiting for comments made in Quick Hits (4.00 / 6)
to be listed in the "Your Comments" section of our individual account page. There's a lot going on at OL, and this would make it so much easier to keep track of multiple discussions.
A long time ago someone here said y'all were working on that, but as far as I know, we're still waiting.

Also, why did y'all take away the "link" button for comments? It used to be there a long time ago. It's so bothersome and time consuming having to do the long hand html code to post a link.  

Bracket link insertion works (4.00 / 1)
[Text you want to have an embedded link. link url]

That formatting will embed a link in text here at OL.

"Don't take much, does it, elected Democrats, to get your balls tucked up." Cf.

[ Parent ]
testarino (0.00 / 0)

But you have to use the square brackets, the ones in line with 'i' 'o' 'p' on most keyboards, and not shift '9' and shift '0'

Here's with square brackets:
Text you want to have an embedded link.

Here's what it looks like with parentheses (ie shift 9+0)
(Text you want to have an embedded link. http://linktonowhere.com/fake)

Change
"We must break up the banks and never again let them get so big that they distort our politics and take down the economy.

[ Parent ]
That's really helpful. (4.00 / 1)
Perhaps info like this could be put into a site FAQ (which I've noticed doesn't exist)

Decarbonize, Deglobalize, Demilitarize
[ Parent ]
Thanks,HOP. I'll look into this. (0.00 / 0)
Would still prefer a damn button, though!
[ Parent ]
The javascript on the site really needs a revamp... (0.00 / 0)
It's become convoluted spaghetti code, which results in sometimes agonizingly slow browser performance.  I understand that it's a result of adding new features over time, but it may be a good time to start from scratch with a whole new interface.  

REID: Voting against us was never part of our arrangement!
SPECTER: I am altering the deal! Pray I don't alter it any further!
REID: This deal keeps getting worse all the time!
Next thread/ Prev thread buttons (4.00 / 2)
Once I'm in a thread, I have to go back to the main page to read another thread.  Greenwald's Salon page now has a really elegant way to do this; FDL has a different approach.  Either is what I'm used to, and would be preferable to finding my way back to the front page and then working my way down to the next threads.

Otherwise, all good.  I like your fonts, colors and the soft background (Ff, MaxOSX)

Oh, and.... (4.00 / 3)
Thanks for asking!
I also would like comments in quickhits to be "comments" just like on diaries. (4.00 / 1)
Maybe not simple to do, but included in the list of comments, with rec and (rarely used) troll points.

I would like to click on a quick hit comments tag (if a quickhit has a few comments it becomes a link) and be taken to the quickhit with its story and comments, but to the list of quickhits, if I click on the subject line, as it is now.

Change
"We must break up the banks and never again let them get so big that they distort our politics and take down the economy.

Policy pages. (4.00 / 1)
Divide them up under the main topics of Health Care, Labor, Campaign Finance Reform, Defense, Election Reform, Politics, Organizing, Local action in major cities throughout the country, Tax reform. Change them up. And if you want to drive the right absolutely nuts, do something for ACORN! every.single.freaking.day!

Voter registration is the key to electing progressive candidates. Have a contest.
Support ACORN!

These need not be updated every day. Plus, That you will not feature and link articles to digby, Greenwald, Alternet, TPM, DK, NYT, etc., within such a structure is an anachronism.

If you're worried what will happen to OpenLeft amid such chaos, don't. Your position is clear as a bell, and your featured opinion writers are excellent.

They only call it class war when we fight back.

user diaries should be more visible (4.00 / 1)
I don't know what the best layout would be, but I would like user diaries to be higher up on the page.

Join the Iowa progressive community at Bleeding Heartland.
How about a mobile version? (0.00 / 0)
It sure would make it a lot easier to read on my iPhone. And it would probably load a lot faster that way. Thanks.  
Open tech thread: what do you want to see fixed at OpenLeft? | 26 comments
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