Léán n' Mean Update: Funky Characters

[Virgil Showlion]

See Reply #21 for an Update


Posters and lurkers who have used Lean n' Mean mode in the past or who are interested in a leaner, more minimal look to the board, take heed.

Lean n' Mean mode has been redesigned to further reduce board clutter while improving accessibility to certain commands/info that weren't available with the original.

As I'm presently sleepy, I'll leave the full overview for later and suffice it here to say:

• Lean n' Mean is not a skin but it alters the layout of threads to reduce clutter and the amount of scrolling required. In most cases, Lean n' Mean will reduce the length of a page by half. In tightly-cramped environments, the new Lean n' Mean will reduce page length even more. Several other upgrades to the original have also been included.
  
  
• Lean n' Mean can be turned on (and off) by clicking on "Lean n' Mean" on the main menu bar. The setting is per-browser, but should now be resistant to cache wipes (i.e. clearing your cache and deleting your cookies should not affect your settings).
  
  
• The first time you active Lean n' Mean, it will remind you that you can access all of the "hidden" commands for a post by clicking on it. You can hide the commands for a post by moving the mouse off of it or by clicking on it again.
  
  
• All of the information in a user's miniprofile (the pane to the left of a post in Classic mode) can be accessed by placing the mouse over a user's profile link.
  
  
• Lean n' Mean works with the ignore and VKarma hacks, but in the latter case, clicking on Exalt will not hide "Exalt" until you reload the page. Clicking on "Exalt" multiple times will appear to increment the counter but will have no actual effect after the first click. This is a known bug and I'll fix it sometime over the next few days.
  
  
• I've tested the code in IE 9, FF 6, and Chrome 1. As always, if you come across any bugs or weird behaviour, let me know in this thread or via PM. Also, if you think of a way that the interface might be improved, all suggestions are welcome.

Hopefully this will help enhance your NMSNM experience.

- Virgil the Code Monkey

[wyouser]

man ,Virgil...do you ever get to sleep? Thanks for all you do here

[Virgil Showlion]

Not last night.

Did you try it out?

[moon/Laura]

i'm trying it.. getting used to clicking the arrow to the right of the screen name to view the quote, edit, etc took a bit...

[lynda in iowa]

Thank you SO much! I love this!

[wyouser]

#thumbsup#

[TD2K]

By lean and mean, I thought Virgil meant

[Virgil Showlion]

i'm trying it.. getting used to clicking the arrow to the right of the screen name to view the quote, edit, etc took a bit...

Actually, you can click anywhere on the post to get the menu.

And TD2K, you're thinking "Hideous n' sidious".

[moon/Laura]

hmm.. for some reason it wasn't doing that for me.. i'll try again

[Virgil Showlion]

I also noticed that. I'll take a look at it.

I see that a few people have complained about the smileys not working, but I can't recreate the error in FF, Chrome, or IE...

[moon/Laura]

i am wondering if it's a specific version of IE that's the problem.

i don't have the problem, either.

[Virgil Showlion]

Testing...

[Befferz]

I think it's IE 7 (and maybe older)...that's what I have at work where my smileys don't work, but it's fine at home. I know, I know... But I'm not sure my tech helpdesk would be very amenable to an upgrade if I tell them the reason is because my smileys on a message board don't show up.

Incidentally, the only smileys that don't work seem to be the ones named #somethingorother#, not the ones that are just symbols/letters. If that does anything for you.

[Virgil Showlion]

I think that got it.

The two problems could be one and the same. Javascript has the oh-so-delightful property that if a script file (such as the board global footer) throws an error, it ignores all additional code in that module. Hence a simple typo on line 57 of an ignore feature, say, will prevent smileys from showing up in a totally unrelated module on line 2,315.

[Befferz]

Oct 6, 2011 18:50:07 GMT -5 Virgil Showlion said:

I think that got it.

The two problems could be one and the same. Javascript has the oh-so-delightful property that if a script file (such as the board global footer) throws an error, it ignores all additional code in that module. Hence a simple typo on line 57 of an ignore feature, say, will prevent smileys from showing up in a totally unrelated module on line 2,315.

So in other words, it's your fault.

[moon/Laura]

LOL.... glad you know that sort of stuff because i don't!

[moon/Laura]

and *because* you do, i'm going to give you 10 of my karma (putting me at 421) which will give you 416

[Virgil Showlion]

Wow! A karmic instant bank transfer. And tax free!

Muy Gracias.

[moon/Laura]

de nada, amigo!

[ՏՇԾԵԵʅՏɧ_LԹՏՏʅҼ]

You know we love you for all your hard work, Virgil - now get some rest, you little Code Monkey.

[Befferz]

Oct 6, 2011 18:50:07 GMT -5 Virgil Showlion said:

I think that got it.

The two problems could be one and the same. Javascript has the oh-so-delightful property that if a script file (such as the board global footer) throws an error, it ignores all additional code in that module. Hence a simple typo on line 57 of an ignore feature, say, will prevent smileys from showing up in a totally unrelated module on line 2,315.

If you meant you got the smiley thing fixed...well, you didn't.

If you just meant you fixed the lean 'n' mean thingy, I wouldn't know because I'm neither lean nor mean, so I haven't tried that, so never mind.

[Virgil Showlion]

Befferz, when did your smileys stop working?

[mmhmm]

Virgil, the Lean 'n' Mean version is wreaking havoc with special characters. Take a look (while in Lean 'n' Mean mode, at the title of the chat thread on P&M. ;D

Ack! Never mind. Now, the glitch is evident in the Classic mode, as well.

[Virgil Showlion]

Reposted from THE BREAK ROOM™ thread:

Actually, Alex Jones might be behind it after all.

The symbols going wonky just happened to coincide with the re-release of LnM, but the two aren't related. And highly perceptive readers will note that this is perhaps the fourth or fifth time that symbols have gone wonky on the board.

The reason... Proboards. I use special characters (letters with accents) to encode information about extended thread icons (such as the bat, etc.). For some unknown reason, Proboards occasionally loses its mind and reports these characters as gibberish. It happens with other extended characters too, such as the Euro symbol, the trademark symbol (in the 'THE BREAK ROOM (tm)') and a few others.

Unfortunately I can't prevent this from happening. It is entirely on Proboards' end of things. However, what I can do is replace symbols with their DTD markup equivalents—which is possible for shorter thread titles.

I will do so now in the break room to "repair" the title.

Other threads with "damaged" titles can be repaired by the thread owner simply by modifying the OP, retyping in the title, selecting the correct icon, and submitting. I'll send off a bug report to Proboards, although they're undoubtedly already aware of the problem.

ETA: Since the symbol wonkiness seems to be chronic but intermittent (relapsing remitting?), I'll point out that if you notice wonky symbols, simply hit "Refresh" and they should disappear. One of Proboards' servers apparently has a damaged database. When you hit refresh, chances are your request will be shuttled to one of the undamaged servers.

ETA (x2): This problem seems to be Proboards-wide. The support forum is full of complaints.

[moon/Laura]

Virgil, the non-political chat thread in P & M doesn't use any strange characters though.. i hand typed it and the oddest thing it has is a hyphen. But yet, from time to time, it will render as this.

Attachments:

[tiredturkey]

I am so grateful for this thread. For awhile there I thought I was going to have to give up alcohol because one minute I saw bizarre characters and then I didn't The wine industry thanks you for clarifying the problem

[Virgil Showlion]

Moon,

The various icons that can be attached to the threads are part of a module I coded called VDICX (V-DIaCritiX encoding). Put simply, it replaces vowels with accented characters (diacritics) to encode a number in the thread subject line without introducing extra characters. Hence, any thread that uses a special icon will have accented characters in the subject line.

Normally the accents are "stripped out" when the page is loaded and hence are invisible to board viewers. But this problem with Proboards messing up extended characters is causing the accented characters to appear as gibberish and the thread icons (which attempt to extract information from them) to show up as random icons.

I'm hoping that Proboards will have their server issues sorted out in the next few days. Otherwise I'll have to disable VDICX and we'll be stuck with the standard icon.

[cme1201]

Virgil for your hard work.

[Virgil Showlion]

Problem seems to have cleared up. If anyone else has seen "the symbols" recently, let me know. Otherwise I'll move this thread out of the announcements.