We’re under a massive attack at the moment. I’m having to switch us to a different design and turn a bunch of stuff off while I deal with it.
Apologies!
JB
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We’re under a massive attack at the moment. I’m having to switch us to a different design and turn a bunch of stuff off while I deal with it.
Apologies!
JB
Comments are closed.
test comment
Nice design, though I recommend taking the position:fixed off the top menu, and making this comment box’s border and text thicker/darker.
There was me thinking the headline was about a working site for a railway investment project.
For some reason, on my Windows 10 + Chrome 57, the site is completely unreadable.. The light grey on white text can only be read by the trick of using ctrl+A to select it to invert it to a readable white on black.
The boxes are a bit difficult to see but I have no problem with the grey on white on Chrome 57. (It updated to 58 while I was checking the version)
(Using chrome on an iPad).
On the right side, I see “recent comments”, eg Greg at 0814 today on Kent 3. But when I click through to the comments on that piece, no such comment is visible…..
Island Dweller,
Actually this is an ongoing problem. I don’t think it is any secret that for some individuals (very few) we vet comment before publishing. These pending comments unfortunately appear on “recent comments”. You might think it ought to be easy to remove them but actually it requires a lot of computer processing (still expensive even today) to identify them and ignore them – that is what I am told anyway.
For those individuals comments that sometimes get, ahem, “carried away” on occasions we generally try to approve or reject as soon as possible. In this case it was simply that the comment basically linked to a report only the link was missing rendering the comment fairly pointless. I have written to the individual concerned requesting he resubmit (and explain why another comment have been rejected).
Note that there can be very innocuous reasons why messages on the watch list get deleted. Often it is simply that the comment really does not added anything. This sort of “Have you seen this? I wonder what the repercussions are!” kind of thing.
Yes, Pedantic is right as to why you’ll occasionally see a ‘ghost’ comment in the activity column.
When I first rolled that out, I did look at what the impact was of cross-referencing against approval, but it was surprisingly high. Given the low instances of it happening, I decided it wasn’t worth the effort.
Now that things have settled down a bit, I’m going to do some further tweaks. The grey text in the comment box is too light, for example, and I want to restore the “jump to the end” links for those who wish to go straight to the bottom of comments. I also want to add ‘reading time’ to article metadata.
@JB: Some notes on the new design (on Google Chrome):
– The comments box is in a very light grey that some users (like myself) will struggle with in low light conditions
– The message to say a comment has been posted is red, not the best colour to indicate all is well!
– The message is also obscured by the banner across the top which means that all I can see is “been posted”, with no indication of success or failure
– “Name” and “Mail” do not default as they used to.
Navigation improvements (especially for those of us using padules), that would be nice:
– First/Last comment quick navigation buttons
“Name” and “Mail” do not default as they used to.
I’ve noticed this come up a few times. This actually isn’t something the site did. People’s browsers may have been auto-populating it, but not the site itself.
My suspicion is that the shift to HTTPS means that those same browsers are now being a bit more security-conscious and thus not doing it.
another test
repositioning test
I’m going to agree with SOUTHERN HEIGHTS (LIGHT RAILWAY) and provide a link to useit.,com explaining the problem with low contrast text.
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/low-contrast/
Some of the posts have comments that go across the edge of the screen on both my tablet and phone. This is the case whether they are in portrait or landscape. This one is fine but the bus garages post and the Croxley post have unreadable comments.
I’ve noticed I can read the message now! It says it has failed… But it has posted all the same.
The colour is much better now… Many thanks!
Luckily Chrome remembers what I have set for “Name” and “Mail” so it’s easy, but let me see if I can get it to do it automatically…
Some of the posts have comments that go across the edge of the screen on both my tablet and phone. This is the case whether they are in portrait or landscape. This one is fine but the bus garages post and the Croxley post have unreadable comments.
That’s technically a user issue – it’s when someone posts a link so long that it won’t fit on a single line.
I did have some code in to force them to break, but the problem is that on some browsers that would ALSO then break mid-word with regular words as well.
I’m going to agree with SOUTHERN HEIGHTS (LIGHT RAILWAY) and provide a link to useit.,com explaining the problem with low contrast text.
…which is why none of our body or title text is low contrast. Only meta text (categories, read time, sidebar on occasion) etc. The exception was the comment box whilst typing, but that was just an oversight.
I’ll probably also restore the invert option when I get a chance as well.
Ultimately, whilst we’re not perfect, we go a helluvah lot further towards maintaining accessibility and usability than most – not least because I know it has an impact on a number of LR readers directly. Worth remembering that designing reading-focused online spaces and sites is my background (of twenty years). There’s thus plenty of knowledge and thought that goes into what we do here. So if something is done a particular way there’s probably a reason for it, or at least a reason why a compromise has been made (and it’s very rarely, if ever, ‘because it looked prettier’).
It’s why LR redesigns are such a large exercise when they happen – because it’s not something we take lightly (pun sort-of intended!).
@PoP – I have noticed the “recent comments” discrepancy many times. You have indicated that very few individuals are subject to the “pre-approval” process. It seems to me that this mostly applies to one!
Polite request.
A “preview” button, if possible?
[ Hint – I’ve just noticed an annoying typo in a recent post of mine! ]
@Nameless
Indeed, it’s a daily battle, plus the spam attacks. Would we could find more time for writing somewhere…
Nameless,
One, in particular, got very upset about not being allowed freeflow of his crayonista ideas. So he went away. Others seem to have simply lost enthusiasm.
There are a few on the list (around a dozen I guess, I don’t see it) but some are 100% malicious in intent such as hackers.
Another group is moderators. In our case, the system caters for the possibility of impersonation so if we are not logged on and forget to subsequently log on and approve our own comments they remain in limbo waiting to be vetted.
Black text on white background is the easiest text to read and is recommended by the RNIB. If you want your text to be accessible and read, this is what you should have.
@JOHN BULL
Thanks for the response. In the spirit of hopeful helpfulness, here is a screengrab of your comment as it currently appears to me.
https://ukfree.tv/styles/images/2017/2017-04-28.png
Still getting the problem with Chrome on my Android phone where the comments go over the right side and I cannot scroll or resize to see them. Thus when mobile, comments are effectively unreadable. The articles themselves always seem to be alright though. Another minor thing I just found (on my PC). Due to lack of contrast of the outline, I couldn’t identify easily where the text boxes were for typing a comment. Had to click around a bit to find the comment box.
I’ll make the same observation as Mark T about the comments box. It needs a stronger outline so I can see where it is!!
I also just had an error message about a post not being made, tried again and got the “you’ve already posted that” message. The post hasn’t appeared though under the article – suspect it may be in the “sin bin” temporarily pending release into the wild. Not a moan, just a comment in case it highlights some issue for you.
I had the post not made message on my PC. I immediately checked on my phone and it was actually there, not that I could read it all properly though!
Still getting the problem with Chrome on my Android phone where the comments go over the right side and I cannot scroll or resize to see them. Thus when mobile, comments are effectively unreadable. The articles themselves always seem to be alright though
As mentioned above, it’s a ‘user’ issue in that it happens when someone pastes a link in a comment that’s too long. Unfortunately there’s no universal css fix for it – they all result in unexpected behaviour in one browser or another (mostly random breaking of OTHER words at the end of lines).
I still haven’t been to post successfully since the rejig. Every single time it comes with the red failure box, only to have posted it anyway…
The red failure message being the one I couldn’t read earlier, due to its positioning!
Quite likely not news but comments seem unreadable atm on mobile even in landscape orientation – no wrap and no ability to pinch in either landscape or portrait view for me
Also ditto Southern Heights that the comment posting message never disappeared or resolved for me on mobile
@JOHN BULL 5 May 2017 at 13:41
“As mentioned above, it’s a ‘user’ issue in that it happens when someone pastes a link in a comment that’s too long. Unfortunately there’s no universal css fix for it – they all result in unexpected behaviour in one browser or another (mostly random breaking of OTHER words at the end of lines).”
OK understood, but I never had the issue with the old layout on Android/Chrome and I’m sure people have often posted long links before in comments.
And “diving into the fleet” is doing it in Chrome on Windows 10 Laptop as well.
@ Purley Dweller – same here and same set up as you. I haven’t touched any settings and most articles align fine but the Fleet Line one did not. I had to shrink the page size by half to read the text of comments as the page would not scroll right at normal size. I think there is something in the redesign that’s causing this.
@PD & WW: Same on an iPad….
I’m seeing the same as Mark T and others on my Chrome / Android phone. Comments are falling off to the right of the screen – not just links or other unbroken lines of text, but ‘normal’ lines. Also, is the intention to reinstate direct links to comments? I personally found that feature invaluable when navigating the site.
I use an iPad which means I use Safari. Generally I have not experienced problems but I have noticed that the Fleet Line article presents problems. It displays the comment text in such a manner that the right hand side of the text us cropped. All attempts to resize it don’t work and I have tried both portrait and landscape views to no avail. I am not sure there is much I can do to change setting on Safari especially as everything else seems to work okay.
All of these were due to the link length thing I talked about up thread. There’s simply no way to deal with it natively in html right now.
I’ve now written some custom code to auto-crop long link text when people post it. I’ve also added the preview box back in and darkened up the borders on comment boxes again.
@JOHN BULL
I’m sorry to say that I still can’t see anything in the Raleway font. I’m having to use Digg Reader to use the site by RSS.
I’m using Chrome 58.0.3029.110 (64-bit), Windows 10.0.15063 with a Radition R9 200 HD 7900 (software is 17.1..1).
Looking at the Network Debug tab in Chrome shows that the onts.gstatic.com/s/raleway/v11 is being downloaded.
@John Bull
I could see that – long url’s not wrapping round. Unfortunately there was no way to fix them – even though one of them was mine. Looks like you’ve found a fix now.
Not sure what you did – did you just delete the offending links?
Your font problem isn’t really a site issue – it’s a known (and ongoing) Chrome / windows 10 thing unfortunately. See:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/37301132/chrome-overall-font-rendering-issue-2016
Re: long links – I’ve written a script that rewrites the link text on the fly if it’s over 50 continuous characters. When it is, it shortens the text and adds an ellipsis.
Shock horror – the site now remembers my details for making posts and updates the page when a post has been accepted. Thanks to JB for whatever he’s done for this step back to normality.
I may be looking in the wrong place, but I can’t seem to find the “who we are”/”contact us”/”story tips”/”contribute” pages any more?