MetaChat - hang on to your hats...

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06 March 2007

hang on to your hats... I'm getting ready to upload several small changes here at the same time, so if things go boing, don't worry - I'm working on it. If it goes boing badbad ickybad, I'll just backpedal and then try making the changes one by one. Ready? Me too. Let's go. (update: Okay, done did it. Please let me know if anything looks ucky, but do try refreshing/reloading first!)

post by: taz at: 11:37 | 63 comments

OMG, the captions are out of control! The collages, however, are great!

posted by pieisexactlythree 06 March | 11:40

:( the captions aren't working? Can you try refreshing? ... and what browser are you using? They're working for me in IE and FF. damn.

posted by taz 06 March | 11:44

They were crazy for a second, taz, but a refresh here made everything fall into place.

Hey, I'm artified! :)

posted by BoringPostcards 06 March | 11:46

wheee! I better add a note for people to let me know if things look wonky to them. I'm holding my breath!

posted by taz 06 March | 11:49

Very cool, taz! I've always loved that photo of the Fris.

posted by gaspode 06 March | 11:53

Yay, everything looks nice and shiny again. I was scared there for a bit.

posted by casarkos 06 March | 11:54

I have my fingers crossed! So, these are the changes: a little bit more margin, making the top logo/navigation bar "floaty" with css rounded corners, css tool tips for the art captions (with no javascript - yay!), and, of course, new art. Was there something else? I'm forgetting now.

posted by taz 06 March | 11:58

I'm so using "boing badbad ickybad" on my next failure report.

Looks good from here.

posted by eriko 06 March | 11:59

The captions are running into the words for me, FF and mac.

posted by ethylene 06 March | 12:02

Are you seeing them only when you hover over the images, eth?

posted by taz 06 March | 12:04

Actually now I'm seeing art captions in double, once in bluish for css and once in the usual mouseover yellow. I'm using Firefox.
Personally I like the bigger margins, not quite so much the floaty title bar, but I'll get used to it.

posted by casarkos 06 March | 12:08

No, they are there without me having to do anything.

posted by ethylene 06 March | 12:08

Hm... they are only supposed to show up when you hover.

Can you try a hard refresh (hold shift and refresh at the same time)?

posted by taz 06 March | 12:10

No change so far.
i'm gonna check on another machine in a bit.

posted by ethylene 06 March | 12:13

casarkos, that's okay - right now I still have the regular html "title" tags in, and that's why you see two if you hover for more than just a couple of seconds. If it turns out the tooltips work, I'll remove the title tags.

posted by taz 06 March | 12:13

Thanks, eth. Not good news, though - if they are visible without doing anything, that just badbad ickybad. Let's see if anyone else has the same problem, and then I'll try one or two things to see if I can fix it.

posted by taz 06 March | 12:16

Mac/Safari is doing the same captions running over the words. Okay in Camino.

posted by typewriter 06 March | 12:22

Oh, and right-hand column completely absent in Safari.

posted by typewriter 06 March | 12:24

typewriter, are you seeing captions without doing anything - without putting your mouse over the images?

posted by taz 06 March | 12:24

typewriter, the right side doesn't show up on comment pages, only on the front page; are you not seeing the right sidebar on the front page?

posted by taz 06 March | 12:26

Did a couple of hard refreshes and it sorted itself out. Hoverable now. Looks great. No right-hand column though.

posted by typewriter 06 March | 12:26

No right column on the front page (as opposed to the comment pages)?

posted by taz 06 March | 12:27

Oops. Why have I never noticed that before????
Thanks!

posted by typewriter 06 March | 12:28

posted by taz 06 March | 12:29

just so everyone knows, it should be looking something like this:

≡ Click to see image ≡

(click for larger)

You should not be seeing captions unless you hover your mouse over the images... If you do see them without hovering, try a hard refresh (shift and refresh at the same time), and if that doesn't fix it, please let me know!

posted by taz 06 March | 12:54

I like the black bar with rounded corners up there! That looks great.

posted by iconomy 06 March | 12:56

I just hope Doohickie likes it.

posted by iconomy 06 March | 12:59

heehee! Poor Doo!

posted by taz 06 March | 13:04

Captions were all crazy in Safari 'til I emptied the cache.
Now they show up on hover, but they're sort of cut off and half-visible.

posted by chococat 06 March | 13:05

chococat, can you send me a screenshot (of a hover state) when you have a minute?

posted by taz 06 March | 13:11

I just hope Frisbee Girl likes it.

posted by box 06 March | 13:25

taz: The captions show up differently in Safari depending on what order you mouse-over them:
mecha_captions.mov

posted by chrismear 06 March | 13:26

Oh, thanks, chrismear! Let me just fiddle with something then...

posted by taz 06 March | 13:33

i was just about to send you a screenshot before you asked, but now i see chrismear's movie, which shows it much better. same thing happens for me.
it happens with the stuff on the right sidebar, too.

posted by chococat 06 March | 13:37

Chris, chococat, is it better now? (You may or may not need to refresh again...)

posted by taz 06 March | 13:53

btw, it's fine now on my end on this computer. i think i looked in on the wrong tab before because i had to open a new window to respond.

posted by ethylene 06 March | 14:13

yay, eth!

posted by taz 06 March | 14:15

it's nicely centered vertically now, but it's still getting cut off a bit at the right.

posted by chococat 06 March | 14:19

thanks, chococat! That should be fixed now. (refresh or hard refresh if you don't see it shorter!)

posted by taz 06 March | 14:22

way better.
but if you could narrow it maybe a pixel or two more, it would be perfect.
right now i can see all the text, but the nice clean black border appears on the top, bottom and left, but not on the right of the text box. almost there.

posted by chococat 06 March | 14:26

and... now?

posted by taz 06 March | 14:32

perfect.
you don't want the text box to be exactly the width of the images, right?
because now it's a few pixels smaller than the images, but perfectly centered.
looks great.

posted by chococat 06 March | 14:34

and keep in mind for future captions that it looks like if you write more than two lines, you risk overlapping the "Home" part of the sidebar menu. nice job!

posted by chococat 06 March | 14:36

It looks great from here - shortening the width also helps it look less like ass in IE, where it appears over the top of the images... two lines is sweet. I won't write long captions!

posted by taz 06 March | 14:39

Those captions DO look nice and centered.

posted by BoringPostcards 06 March | 14:40

test commentlink to metafilter.

posted by taz 06 March | 15:17

heh. Well, what do you know. :)

posted by taz 06 March | 15:18

Rockpaper scissors

Hmm, is span thing supposed to work for us mortals?

posted by danostuporstar 06 March | 15:26

Oh, I missed the class on the anchor.

Rockpaper scissors

Hey!

posted by danostuporstar 06 March | 15:28

Hee! Of course, because it has some positioning stuff set up for the images, it will be too weird to be really useful in text - and once you go over one line, you end up covering up your text. If people really want it, I could set up another one for text tooltips, but I doubt anyone has much of a use for it.

posted by taz 06 March | 15:32

I'm a little surprised we are allowed to use classes at all.

posted by danostuporstar 06 March | 15:38

yeah... me too. I think we had a set-up disallowed list in the initial install that got tweaked a bit, but it apparently didn't include class, and we didn't add it either. I guess seanyboy can decide how he feels about that.

posted by taz 06 March | 15:42

I got a stupid question with an answer that's either obvious or been given before: why can't I post here from my BlackBerry? I don't know much about site architecture and whatnot; I'd love to be able to participate more often, is all.

posted by Hugh Janus 06 March | 16:31

not a stupid question at all... and I have no idea! You are logged in on your Blackberry, right? What happens when you try to post?

posted by taz 06 March | 16:34

It just doesn't work. It doesn't take me to a separate page or anything, it just clears out any text I've put in the box and resets whatever page I'm looking at.

posted by Hugh Janus 06 March | 16:42

hm... I know less than nothing of Blackberries and their ilk. Maybe one of our geekypants bunnies can help us to understand what's happening, if there's some general reason why it won't work. Are you able to post to metafilter? Any other sites you've tried and either failed or succeeded in posting at?

posted by taz 06 March | 16:47

Do you know whether the Blackberry browser supports Javascript, Hugh? (Note: I'm a big ignoramus, and totally guessing here.)

posted by box 06 March | 16:49

No, I don't think it does. It has a way of getting around certain scripts, but it doesn't support Java.

There might be some app I can buy for it that'll make java work. I dunno.

posted by Hugh Janus 06 March | 16:57

See, like now, I'm heading home from work, and since my BB is my only internet connection, I'll only be able to read any suggestions (unless someone suggests a fix) until tomorrow.

posted by Hugh Janus 06 March | 17:01

Well, I don't know the ins and outs, but I know we definitely use javascript (different from Java). If you have preferences where you can enable and disable things, look to see what's disabled.

posted by taz 06 March | 17:04

I like little changes that make a big difference and that is what you have achieved. Excellent work, taz!

posted by dg 06 March | 17:51

It looks lovely, taz!

posted by deborah 06 March | 18:34

I am really digging the changes to the menu at the top. Nice work!

posted by safetyfork 07 March | 07:34

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