Feedback wanted: new homepage

[momijizukamori]

Hey all! I just finished converting the index/homepage, both logged out and logged in, to Foundation/Template Toolkit. It's live on the canary server (see here for how to access that).

The changes aren't really big enough to warrant a full beta setting, but I wanted to get more more feedback on it before we merge it, and logged in users may be bypassing it, usually (I just have my reading list bookmarked, for instance).

Comments

[ilyena_sylph]

Oops, posted on the wrong one first.

It looks so good!!!

My only question is... when I'm on the create entries page, the security level is set to my journal default (access locked).

When I'm on the homepage, it's defaulting to public?

[momijizukamori]

Yeah I think that's an issue common to the existing homepage implementation too, though I will see if I can figure it out now that I've spent some time not looking at the code, lol

[ilyena_sylph]

I am on that page so rarely that I wasn't sure if it matched the previous or was a new thing!

[bluedreaming]

I love it!

Does this affect entry/comment pages when viewed in site skin, or is that just my imagination? Because they feel different (somehow “better”) but I’m not sure how and maybe it’s also my imagination.

[denise]

None of the changes should affect site-skinned entry/comment pages to the best of my knowledge, but this code base is fucking haunted and it's possible that it might, lolsob.

[satsuma]

I'm getting some text overlaps between the username and dates in the birthdays widget (I'm using celeriac, if that turns out to be relevant & running firefox. I almost included a screenshot but posting lists of other peoples birthdays randomly seemed a bit weird lol)

Generally I could also do with a bit less whitespace in the vertical padding but otherwise it looks good!

[nataraj]

First comment on https://www.dreamwidth.org/beta : There is no explanation there, where I should go to see the result, and what kind of result I should expect. I do not use homepage, and even do not know where it is. Guess it is https://www.dreamwidth.org/ but not sure.

And what changes I should check?

What I should turn on to see changes? "Site-Wide Canary"?

[denise]

It's described in the link in the entry: opting into the "site-wide canary" cookie gives you access to the most recent version of the code, including things that we haven't fully tested yet across all browser/operating system/configurations that our users use. Using Canary may fix that bug that's been bothering you for ages a few weeks before the fix is shipped to the site as a whole, or it may mean things are broken in entertaining and inventive ways!

If you want to test the homepage conversion, go to Beta Features, enable "Site-Wide Canary", and then visit www.dreamwidth.org while logged in to your account. You can compare it to the old version by visiting www.dreamwidth.org (while logged in to your account) without setting the canary cookie first. If you don't want to keep using the version that may break without warning, go back to Beta Features and disable "Site-Wide Canary" after.

[vriddy]

Oh, this looks great!! :D :D Exciting!

[horse_spirit]

Hopefully I’m posting to the right page/it’s OK to comment here. I didn’t sign up to be a beta tester, yet DW alerted me that I am when I went to post an entry on my personal DW. But then when I go to the “beta features” page as instructed, I’m guessing the options to turn things on or off are a toggle switch…and mine says “turn beta settings on” for every option. Please help!!

[denise]

When you say "DW alerted you that you were when you went to post an entry", can you give a screenshot of what you mean?

[horse_spirit]

I’m blind and don’t know how to do screen shots as a screen reader user.

[momijizukamori]

Hmm. Would you be able to copy and paste the address of the page you're on where you're getting the message?

[denise]

Ah, okay, I'm sorry for the assumption! If you can't copy and paste the address of the page you're on when you're getting the message like momijizukamori suggests, I'll try to think of a way to do some troubleshooting. Can you let me know what screenreader you use (name of the program plus version number) and what browser/OS?

[horse_spirit]

https://www.dreamwidth.org/entry/new
No problem, I appreciate you all’s help with this. I’m currently using an iPhone 13 Mini, running iOS 16.6. VoiceOver is the name of the iPhone’s screen reader. If I’ve left out anything else, please let me know.

[momijizukamori]

Okay, that's the new entry page, so the message you're getting makes sense! The question then is how you're getting to that page without having the beta turned on.

Do you use the update form on the main homepage (https://dreamwidth.org)? It used to go to the old update page if you clicked 'more options' but now goes to the new one - as we're very close to the new one being the update page for everyone, it didn't make sense to try to have two different versions of the homepage form that used each of the backends.

[horse_spirit]

Oh OK. Yeah, I usually use the ‘more options’ tab so that I can put moods and stuff in my posts. So I guess that is why I’m seeing this different page? Am I understanding you correctly?

[momijizukamori]

Augh I thought I had replied to this, and then discovered I hadn't. Apologies!

Yes, that'd be why you're getting the new page. You can continue getting the old one by going directly to https://www.dreamwidth.org/update but the new page is going to be the default for everyone in the next few months, hopefully.

[denise]

Okay, that's weird. I checked your account and you're not in the beta update page test, so you shouldn't be seeing that URL at all -- you should still be seeing https://www.dreamwidth.org/update instead. I'll poke at this and see if I can figure out what's going on.

If I need to, can I have permission to log into your account as you and see what exactly is happening in the process? I will use it only for trying to solve this for you and not anything else, and "no" is a perfectly okay answer -- there are a few things I could try that wouldn't involve actually logging in as you -- but it will probably be a lot easier than asking you ten thousand questions back and forth.

EDIT: ha, momijizukamori beat me to it! Yeah, let us know what workflow you're using to update first, I forgot to ask that part.

[horse_spirit]

Sure, you have my permission to log in as me, that’s no problem. I’m also experiencing a weird look on the official DW homepage…though LMK if it’d be easier to tackle one thing at a time. Also, would you please clarify what ‘workflow?’

[denise]

What steps you take in order to post an entry!

Cosmetic bug: Mood indent

[technoshaman]

The Mood misindents when using the dropdowns.

Steps to repro:
1) New post using beta interface
2) Set a Mood using the dropdown menu
3) Post
4) Note that it says "Mood:         silly" instead of "Mood: silly"

It does NOT misbehave if I do a Custom Mood.

Other than that, Zarro Boogs Found on the new interface; I frobbed all the widgets, rearranged things, checked the preview (it's accurate INCLUDING repro'ing this bug), and I *love* the custom URL thingy... that's *chefs-kiss*... Way to go devs!

[lisaow82]

I'm having an issue with the post entry page. I get a message that says "continue with saved draft" when I go back the the post entry page. If I click ok then my previous post is there and I have to erase everything. I have to click cancel to get a blank page.

[momijizukamori]

That one's a known issue - we've got a fix for it in, but it hasn't been deployed yet (soon, hopefully).

[lisaow82]

Ok cool! Thank you!

[innumerablewounds]

Is this what the home page is supposed to look like? I feel like it's not so I wanted to point it out in case it's a bug (I do see the instruction to customize the page but... I don't know where to do that?)
https://images.squidge.org/images/2023/11/15/image.png

Thank you for your work by the way!!

[momijizukamori]

That one's in the 'known bug' category - there are two different versions of the homepage, one generic one for anyone using the codebase, and one specific to DW. The DW one is supposed to override the generic one, but it turns out that it is... not, after we converted both of them. It'll be fixed next code push!

[kaishin108]

It looks great thank you. What I notice though is that the page looks so huge that I cannot see what page I am on in the comment feed. I have a Chromebook. I will log out and log back in and see if that helps. But it happens a lot.
Thank you so much, you all are great!!

[kalloway]

Is it okay if I drop an interesting entry bug here? I went to edit a post, wrote half a sentence, and then decided I'd rather delete the whole thing. I had an unclosed html tag and I couldn't delete the entry until I closed the tag. Then I was able to successfully delete the entry. (I kept getting the 'unclosed tag' error ribbon, which is generally my very good very smarter-than-me friend.) I'm guessing this is unintended behavior!