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No charge for this re RedHot 3.0, scrolling and carpel tunnel (Open RedHot Thread)

And my aversion to change, generally, has nothing to do with this

By: Mike gamecock DeVine (Diary)  |  July 19th, 2008 at 04:13 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

We, the unwashed masses that mob this site, want to comment on anything and everything that gets said, and especially now that the 3.0 front page is a two column tunnel vision (instead of the clear view of all that mattered 3 column 2.0), same includes RedHots.

Neil, it would be news if Obama and the Der Speigle MSM ran a truthful headline on the Iraq War. But yes, lets call them out for the lies 24/7. (See, I couldn’t wait for a directorgod to state what I know!, hence, this open REDHOT thread)

The main problem with 3.0 is that it requires more scrolling. And folks, the Book was an improvement over scrolls!


The tracker was better on 2.0. We have no way to know of new posts on blogs, other than ones to our comments, unless we memorize the number of comments and click.

CLICK.SCROLL FOREVER.

My hand hurts. I’m tired. I think I’ll do something else. Something not Redstate.

The big improvement some cite here is that its easier to post a blog. Fine. But the bulk of our TIME (something you can’t get back once its gone) is on responding to comments, and with 2.0 it was such a luxury to be able to know of same and get to them.

I miss my old friend.

Moreover, the list of comments is so short.

Also, wondering why so many blogs are being written that get no comments and fall off the page so fast? The answer was in the question.

Rant over.

But really, I know this version 5 of my job application for Redstate will go unheeded, and that we aren’t going back to Eden, BUT you really should have a way for us non-directors to respond to your, now, presumptuous Oracle-like (see also NRO Corner) RedHots.

Especially when you have havetoberedhotallthetimetoservicethehenhouse rooster commenter on the ready.

God Bless, and I appreciate all the hard work by Neil and everyone else.

But I love Me and my time more.

No charge.

COMMENTS

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  • bs

    A) Re: scrolling – when I go to the home page, on my 1440×900 screen, I see about six lines of the first front-page diary. The vast majority of what I see is the top header ad, the masthead, and the links. Here is what I see on my browser – and the window is maximized, height-wise. So, I agree with your assertion about scrolling. Fortunately, my MacBook Pro touchpad makes it easy… If I had designed the site on my old 1600×1200 Thinkpad, I may have designed it that way myself, as that had a lot more “vertical viewing space”. But I think that 1440×900 may be the new 1024×768 – I see a LOT of widescreen laptops with that resolution…not many higher than that.

    B) The Tracker is a huge, enormous issue. The rudimentary 3.0 “tracker” makes it impossible to track discussions. I think that may be the single biggest reason that there are so few comments (I noticed the same thing) – people don’t know what there is to comment on!

    I like a web site with whitespace, but there seems to be too much here. Things need to be compressed a bit more.

    I do like the lack of the skinny, skinny discussion threads. That’s a definite improvement. And, I like how if you click on a person’s profile, you can see their posts…easier than RS 2.

    Performance is still rather poor, especially during the weekdays…it was almost unusable on Thursday. But at least the 500 errors are almost totally gone (I think I got one in the last couple of days)

  • Neil_Stevens

    I know the tracker’s buggy. It doesn’t see replies to replies when it sorts the most recent new comments. I was going to try to fix it before launch but more critical issues came up.

    As for new comments, I miss that tracking as much as you do, I promise. But it just can’t happen anytime soon. New comments tracking is entirely incompatible with the caching system we have up, and without that caching system, RS’s server would go down in flames.

  • Neil_Stevens

    The official way to reply to a Red Hot is to write a diary, just like this!

  • Neil_Stevens

    I’ve run into a few people today who are getting very pessimistic as a result of this Spiegel lie being presented. It’s easy to see how the press will make a lot of people believe the lie, just as they’ve made a lot of people believe every other lie.

    My hope with the Red Hots is that people will take these directions in fighting back against the lie. Now is the time to fight harder, not to get sad.

  • bs

    so we can actually differentiate which comments are new ones? Scrolling the entire thread trying to eyeball for new content is awkward at best. Of course this will require USENET-style quoting to follow a discussion. But apparently there is no alternative. I’m sure you realize this, but … this is not just a “nice to have”. It is a “must have”. The inability to track discussions has taken away much of the value of the community.

    Was this failure of the caching an unanticipated problem? If so, I assume there was no kind of load testing done that would have pointed to the problem. Is it really load-related? I still see issues with it, although it has definitely improved.

  • speciallist

    Faith…Money knows Faith.

    Redstate will be back…but it will take much Precious time.

    I used to sit and hover over the keyboard…now a days I can go do some chores, wash the car, go visit Powerline….just kidding…keep the Faith

  • Rod_Patrick
  • simpson316

    would be The Minority Report. You’ll recognize a few friendly faces.

  • Neil_Stevens

    And switching the whole site to require quoting and all that would fail badly I expect, because it’s such a different way of posting that it’d be difficult to adapt.

    As for keeping up in discussions, just use My Profile and see when you get replies to your comments.

  • Neil_Stevens
  • Neil_Stevens

    They have different purposes. They both have their merits, heh.

    And I say this as someone who has identical positions in both sites, so you know I’m perfectly unbiased!

  • speciallist

    Be careful what you ask for simpson..ha

  • simpson316

    I was referring to him going to Powerline.

    Also, just trying to help Steve pimp the blog.

  • Neil_Stevens

    Good call, heh.

  • simpson316

    but I’m really starting to dislike it.

  • Neil_Stevens
  • simpson316

    I have Powerline in my Google Reader subscription list, but RS and TMR are the only two blogs that I post and contribute to (other than the odd comment here or there at The Next Right)

  • speciallist

    n/t

  • simpson316

    I have “blamming” privileges over there.

    ;)

    Note: I’ve only used them twice. I had the proud distinction of tossing two individuals that had also been tossed here at RS. Idiots didn’t even bother changing their screen names all that much.

  • Rod_Patrick

    I love my “Reply to Kowalski” button!

    Bring it baccccckk!

    RAFLMAO!

  • Rod_Patrick

    I love my “Reply to Kowalski” button!

    Bring it baccccckk!

    ROFLMAO!

  • bs

    because it gets complicated pretty fast.

    Redstate, like many other sites, is a dynamic content site. A lot of the lists (Recent Comments, for example) are generated out of a database. That generation requires that programs run on the server – and those programs* put a lot of load on the server.

    A plain ol’ web server spits out flat HTML documents with no dynamic content. A caching system basically saves back (caches) the generated content and serves it multiple times so it doesn’t have to run that program EVERY TIME someone accesses the page. Caching works well if the content doesn’t change very often, but when you try to cache highly dynamic content, it doesn’t work well at all because people see “versions” of the page that don’t align with the content of the database on the back end.

    So… if I submit a comment, it gets stuffed into a database. The RS “engine” then must pull that comment out of the database and render it into a flat document page that can be sent to your browser. But if the page that contains the comment is cached and its refresh frequency isn’t frequent enough, you may see an old version of the page without my comment on it. And (my guess is) that’s what’s happening here at RS.

    • From Neil’s past postings, I believe the programming language used on RS is Python, which is not the most efficient language in the world, but it’s easy to develop and is very common in the web application world…but I’m not sure how common it is for high-volume web sites. I probably would have recommended PHP or Java, but I’m biased…
  • gamecock

    of whites have a favorable view of Obama and 81% when asked what they know about him say Rev Wright.

    He is toast

  • gamecock

    that the underpaid stevens says much of what we had at 2.0 “can’t happen” at 3.0, or if it can, it would be other generations that it happens for.

    btw, I still have my stapler from the 80s! why? It works.

  • Rod_Patrick

    cache like in cpu memory and the reason why my button’s gone is purely technical in nature?

    I’m a moron, but not an idiot (LOL!)

    Can you do something, pls.? I know you can, Neil. Would you bring my button back to life, pls.

  • Neil_Stevens

    I just posted a diary on this very matter.

  • gamecock

    Dems are on serve for over 600 days before elections. They have the msm as their shills while the GOP is off the msm air. That is why the 31% and 80% upthread combined with the carter80-mondale-dukakis numbers in Julys past are so significant.

    We are on serve now and will be increasingly as voters get attentive till the DAY that matters.

    Obama is toast.

  • Neil_Stevens

    But since we launched, every idea I’ve had to optimize our site software so far hasn’t worked. My last idea that worked was pre-launch, though I did manage to remove from the site the one function that was slowing down the site the most (yes, it was much slower before we went live guys :-)

  • Rod_Patrick

    Bring back my button. It makes RS3.0 so special. I still remember a lecture: Users are the King.

    Or it’s really that serious that you can’t bring it back. In such case, I’ll shut up. (He! He!)

  • Neil_Stevens

    It’s sorta like CPU caching, only at a program level instead of the CPU level.

  • Rod_Patrick

    I can wait for my button’s return at RS3.0. No pressure from my end.

    My thanks to RS3.0 and its staff have never been stronger and deeper.

  • Neil_Stevens
  • Neil_Stevens

    I’m just levelling with you guys.

  • RottDawg

    That’s what it sounds like to me… LOL

  • gamecock

    cum lauded and phibetakappa’d college, got a ticket to take bar exam, passed said bar and have worked for ME ever since.

    Case closed re principals for a rooster that lives on his priciples.

  • David_Hinz

    While writing a piece today for The Minority Report (cheap plug) I remembered a supporting blog here at RedState. It has dropped from the front page, so I used the SEARCH funtion at the top of the RS page.

    Imagine my surprise when, NO MATTER WHAT WORDS I INPUT into the search field, I get a listing of TODAYS most recent posts.

    frustrating to say the least…

  • David_Hinz

    I have never known you to pass a bar. ;-)

  • gamecock

    close by

  • David_Hinz

    But if the page that contains the comment is cached and its refresh frequency isn’t frequent enough, you may see an old version of the page without my comment on it. And (my guess is) that’s what’s happening here at RS.

    Heck, that used to happen every now and then with RS 2.0. Every now and then I would hit refresh, and all of a sudden all of the diaries would be different. Closer examination would reveal that it was a page from six months ago.

    Another refresh and it would be all up to date.

    Lately, the gremlins make posts appear and disappear through refresh — sometimes comments appear, then disappear, only to reappear again before or after the first appearance.

    It certainly makes it interesting…

  • David_Hinz

    I ONLY punched the POST COMMENT button once — and it posted up here twice…

    hehe

    gremlins are a bit–

  • gamecock

    Lets go braves, I mean

    2.0

  • GaryCook

    …and therefore won’t join the complaining corps lobbying for a return to 2.0

    But…

    …if anybody here can tell me how to “Preview” a new diary entry before hitting the “Save” button – I would be eternally grateful and forever in your debt.

  • David_Hinz

    then we’d have to kill you.

    sorry

  • Neil_Stevens

    I never even noticed that was there.

    We all use ask.com or google to search

    site:www.redstate.com

  • Neil_Stevens

    Huh. Never even noticed that was there.

    We all just use ask.com or google.com to search:

    [search terms] site:www.redstate.com

  • speciallist

    Here is a great article for Caching Newbies..It doesn’t get too Technical..you can find it at style="cursor:pointer">Caching in on Blogsites

  • Neil_Stevens
  • GaryCook

    Dave,

    Death is ok.

    But running the risk of embarrassing myself by looking like an illiterate, half-brained twit among a crowd of polished, articulate commentators is not.

    Thanks anyway.

  • Raven

    …And launched anyway?

  • Raven

    It’s called “scrapping the mission.”

    The plan, the equipment, or the personnel has an insurmountable problem. You cancel or delay the mission and hope you get another chance.

    The sort of things you’re talking about as problems, well, I was going to say on this thread, but pretty much since launch are what some of us call “insurmountable problems”.

  • speciallist

    n/t

  • gamecock

    Are you just trying to be an ass?

    SMILE

    unless you actually are

    I asked that “pulling a gamecock” be unrecco’ed to MAKE ROOM ON THE RECCO LIST

    that is the point

  • speciallist

    n/t

  • David_Hinz

    But running the risk of embarrassing myself by looking like an illiterate, half-brained twit among a crowd of polished, articulate commentators is not.

    That sounds like a great website, can you provide a link?

  • blooch

    that it was written for ’80′s technology.

  • gamecock

    YOU COOL