Nick Sabalausky Wrote:

> Maybe it's just because it's beta, but when I was there, attempting to vote on anything resulted in a "you must log in to vote" message

To post messages and replies does not require a logon but voting does.

I suspect the login is required to vote to so that they can ensure you only vote once for any one topic.

On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 4:55 PM, Don <nospam@nospam.com.au> wrote:
> Bill Baxter wrote:
>>
>> I just noticed there are a bunch of these: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/hidden-features
>>
>> Someone should start a hidden features of D.
>> It should be free stack overflow rep for anyone who wants it.
>> I'll get around to doing it eventually if no one else does.
>
> http://prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?EasterEggs

Here's the topic if anyone feels inclined to add their 2c, or pluck some of the gems from Don's list above.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/125008/hidden-features-of-d

--bb

Reply to Bill,


> After having used StackOverflow for bit now, I think the biggest
> problem standing in the way of it achieving its goal of being the
> definitive place to find excellent answers to tech questions is the
> lack of editability.  You can't edit other people's good answers to
> make them great answers. 

That's because you need a few K rep to edit other peoples stuff.

Reply to Nick,

> and disabling javascript resulted in a "This site requires javascript"
> header strip.
> 

I think it says, "Site intended for use with JavaScript" or somthing like that. It Does work without it, just not near as nicely

"Bill Baxter" <wbaxter@gmail.com> wrote in message news:mailman.239.1222221233.19733.digitalmars-d@puremagic.com...
> On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 10:00 AM, Nick Sabalausky <a@a.a> wrote:
>> "BCS" <ao@pathlink.com> wrote in message news:78ccfa2d327f38caeb130eba3eae@news.digitalmars.com...
>>> Reply to Nick,
>>>
>>>
>>>> Meh, stack overflow needs to die a swift death. OpenID-only login,
>>>> modal dhtml "dialog boxes" (WTF were people thinking when they first
>>>> created these?!?!), and complety Ajax (I *HATE* Ajax).
>>>>
>>>
>>> you don't even need to log in and it works without JavaScript at all.
>>> (or
>>> it's suposed to do that, havent tried it my self)
>>>
>>
>> Maybe it's just because it's beta, but when I was there, attempting to
>> vote
>> on anything resulted in a "you must log in to vote" message, and
>> disabling
>> javascript resulted in a "This site requires javascript" header strip.
>
> I think you do need to log in to vote.  Otherwise the "reputation" score would become pretty meaningless.  It would be too trivial to just vote yourself up.
>
> I agree that Ajax sucks, but in my opinion about the only thing worse than a web app using Ajax is one *not* using Ajax, requiring 23 pages of slow click-and-reload options just to do the simplest thing.
>

I guess I overstated my point a little bit. Ajax (as well as non-Ajaxy-JS/DHTML) is great for simple things like voting on posts (Provided that Ajax/JS isn't required for the feature, because there's really no reason for these things not to have graceful non-JS fallbacks. Or at least there wouldn't be any reason if it weren't for the fact that (X)HTML/CSS has certain appallingly-ridiculous limitations that will never get fixed just because everyone's fearful of changing HTML anymore and has gotten used to using JS-based workarounds - and that *is* what they are - workarounds).

But these days, web or not, you can pretty much guarantee: if there's a way to screw up the design of something, it will get screwed up *and* millions of developers will then run around all copying the same screwup after either not noticing it, or mistaking it for a good idea.

Examples:
- Breaking the "Back" button
- Breaking the bookmarking ability
- Flash intro pages / Intro pages, period / Flash intros on the homepage
(Ie, the animating GIFs/blink tags of the 21st century) / Flash sites
- Loads of invisible text on any system that uses a non-default color
scheme.
- Crapping all over established design standards (in general).
- Menus that expand upon mouseover instead of click.
- "Close" buttons that minimize instead of close (typically a non-web
issue).
- Adding the "feature" of modal dialog boxes to something (ie, a web page)
that has no technical or design justification for such modality.
- Forcing a custom skin upon users of an app instead of at least *allowing*
the user to use *their own system settings* (another typically non-web
issue).
- Screwing up the ability to work with two instances at the same time
(*cough* Adobe LiveDocs *cough*).
- Inadvertently preventing full archival for offline reference (*cough*
Adobe LiveDocs *cough*).
- Insanely slow page loading and navigation (*cough* Adobe LiveDocs and
Joystiq/Engadget *cough*).
- Using PDF instead of HTML for anything except printing.
- Eliminating the user's ability to make their own decisions of when to open
something in a new tab/window or the same tab/window.

Ajax/JS/DHTML is what enables many of those problems to occur (not all of them, though, I kinda got carried away). Disable JS and many of those problems go away. Or at least they *would* go away if everyone wasn't so keen on throwing away the whole idea of non-JS-fallbacks.

I mean really, there is absolutely no useful functionality that JS/Ajax/DHTML provide that can't be accomplished in a non-JS/Ajax/DHTML way, either right now or with a few minor improvements to XHTML/CSS (such as allowing the "action" and "method" attributes to be associated with an "input/submit" tag instead of the "form" tag, or allowing link tags to perform a form submission - actually these things are the exact examples I had in mind when I said above that JS is sometimes used as a workaround for (X)HTML's limitations).

The only *real* use of JS/Ajax/DHTML is that they allow for fewer full-page-loads. That's really all it comes down to. And that's not a bad thing, but for some people, like myself, the benefit of having fewer full-page-loads just isn't worth the cost of having to deal with all that crap design that JS/Ajax/DHTML end up allowing. But unfortunately, I don't have the option of actually *making* that choice thanks to all of those yahoos that have jumped onto the "JS is now a standard feature that we can safely require" bandwagon. Jackasses.

> After having used StackOverflow for bit now, I think the biggest problem standing in the way of it achieving its goal of being the definitive place to find excellent answers to tech questions is the lack of editability.  You can't edit other people's good answers to make them great answers.  And I find I just can't bring myself to copy someone's good answer and edit it myself to make it great.  I tried it once and I still feel scummy for having "stolen" that guy's answer like that.  Stealing answers and making them better is the way it's supposed to work from what I understand, but I think most people are too polite for that to feel like the proper thing to do.  Plus doing that flagrantly violates the DRY principle which will make most programmers cringe.
>
> I think what they need to do is for each question add one definitive "community answer" that works Wiki-style.  Anyone can edit that answer and it should ideally reflect the union of the best individual answers given by folks.
>
> --bb

Reply to Nick,

> - Using PDF instead of HTML for anything except printing.

I'll grant you everything but the thing about PDFs. PDF's are good as stand alone long docs or anything where layout is important.

"BCS" <ao@pathlink.com> wrote in message news:78ccfa2d329078caebd27dc738e6@news.digitalmars.com...
> Reply to Nick,
>
>> and disabling javascript resulted in a "This site requires javascript" header strip.
>>
>
> I think it says, "Site intended for use with JavaScript" or somthing like that. It Does work without it, just not near as nicely
>

Hmm, yea I guess so. But, either way, it's obnoxious and at least a little bit patronizing. "Yea, I know most websites are designed with non-JS as nothing more than a fallback. But I disabled it for a reason, so STFU and get out of my way."

"BCS" <ao@pathlink.com> wrote in message news:78ccfa2d3290a8caebd75c21451a@news.digitalmars.com...
> Reply to Nick,
>
>> - Using PDF instead of HTML for anything except printing.
>
> I'll grant you everything but the thing about PDFs. PDF's are good as stand alone long docs or anything where layout is important.
>

Ehh, I truely hate PDFs (except for highly accurate printing, of course). Anything that can't be read on a screen without a bunch of zooming and 2D-scrolling is just not suitable for being read on a screen. And that describes the vast majority of PDF's I've seen (For example, a common occurrence is a single page with multiple columns of text where the text is too small to be readable zoomed-out, but if you zoom in, then every time you finish reading a column you have to scroll *up* to the top of the page and then over to the right - which is just a really stupid thing to have to do). Plus, vertical page margins really have no business being in a screen-viewed document either.

XHTML/CSS (despite it's flaws) is far better suited for screen-viewed layouts since, unlike PDF, it doesn't force the reader to use navigation that's, by comparison, incredibly awkward just for the sake of preserving the locations of linebreaks within a paragraph, which frankly is *rarely* important outside of printing (also true of any other detail where PDF provides more accuracy).

I might be mistaken, but I don't think editing a PDF can't really be done with typical text editing / word processing software. You need to either use the expensive Adobe Acrobat (full version), or some obscure 3rd party program from an obscure developer. Not that editing a PDF is needed nearly as commonly as reading one, but it is a problem that has bitten me more than once.

Plus, the format itself is a bit of a kitchen-sink design. It's impossible for a program to fully support PDF loading without also supporting damn near every file format under the sun. And for something that's primarily a page layout format, I really see no reason for the added complexity that such flexibility entails.

Reply to Nick,

> "BCS" <ao@pathlink.com> wrote in message
> news:78ccfa2d3290a8caebd75c21451a@news.digitalmars.com...
> 
>> Reply to Nick,
>> 
>>> - Using PDF instead of HTML for anything except printing.
>>> 
>> I'll grant you everything but the thing about PDFs. PDF's are good as
>> stand alone long docs or anything where layout is important.
>> 
> Ehh, I truely hate PDFs (except for highly accurate printing, of
> course). Anything that can't be read on a screen without a bunch of
> zooming and 2D-scrolling is just not suitable for being read on a
> screen.

I'd go the other way, PDF's are suitable for anything you'd like in hardcopy but are to cheap to actually print off.

> And that describes the vast majority of PDF's I've seen (For
> example, a common occurrence is a single page with multiple columns of
> text where the text is too small to be readable zoomed-out, but if you
> zoom in, then every time you finish reading a column you have to
> scroll *up* to the top of the page and then over to the right - which
> is just a really stupid thing to have to do).

OK so you can make a crappy layout, same goes for HTML.

> Plus, vertical page
> margins really have no business being in a screen-viewed document
> either.
>

OK point to you

> XHTML/CSS (despite it's flaws) is far better suited for screen-viewed
> layouts since, unlike PDF, it doesn't force the reader to use
> navigation that's, by comparison, incredibly awkward just for the sake
> of preserving the locations of linebreaks within a paragraph, which
> frankly is *rarely* important outside of printing (also true of any
> other detail where PDF provides more accuracy).
> 

PDF does zoom better than HTML. With web pages, you as often as not get the tiny font wrapped to 1/2 the width of the screen or lines that are about a paragraph wide. With PDF you can zoom in without things going woonky.

> I might be mistaken, but I don't think editing a PDF can't really be
> done with typical text editing / word processing software. You need to
> either use the expensive Adobe Acrobat (full version), or some obscure
> 3rd party program from an obscure developer. Not that editing a PDF is
> needed nearly as commonly as reading one, but it is a problem that has
> bitten me more than once.

I've maybe once wanted to edit a PDF. (HTML for things people might want to edit, docs and other book like things... Nope)

> 
> Plus, the format itself is a bit of a kitchen-sink design. It's
> impossible for a program to fully support PDF loading without also
> supporting damn near every file format under the sun. And for
> something that's primarily a page layout format, I really see no
> reason for the added complexity that such flexibility entails.
> 

Host Adobe and you don't need to bother.

On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 1:56 PM, Nick Sabalausky <a@a.a> wrote:
> I might be mistaken, but I don't think editing a PDF can't really be done with typical text editing / word processing software. You need to either use the expensive Adobe Acrobat (full version),

Acrobat can only do very trivial edits.  Change a word here or there.
Crop the margins.  Add/remove pages.
If you have big edits to do, it's basically useless.

Adobe Illustrator is the app you need if you really want to edit PDF.

Doesn't change your argument.  Just a point of info.

> or some obscure 3rd party
> program from an obscure developer. Not that editing a PDF is needed nearly
> as commonly as reading one, but it is a problem that has bitten me more than
> once.

> Plus, the format itself is a bit of a kitchen-sink design. It's impossible for a program to fully support PDF loading without also supporting damn near every file format under the sun. And for something that's primarily a page layout format, I really see no reason for the added complexity that such flexibility entails.

There are free libs that do a decent job.  Probably they don't support every ridiculous extension that Adobe has thought up, but they do pretty good at rendering the majority of PDFs out there.

--bb