500 luftballoons

[Morganite]

Tapatalk is so much teh sux that two threads isn't really adequate to properly explore the theme, yet since we've already decided to jump ship it's pointless to have any threads.

So as a compromise, we've got two threads, because two is how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie pop, or something like that.

I'm not seeing a strong case for having open attachment posting, although having it available for known users might have some value (per BA). I don't imagine most people will need it here though. Should definitely require more than just being regged, I think.

With Ankhani's scrape bogging down, should someone else try from a different angle?

-Morgan.

[Black Aeronaut]

Out of curiosity, will there be any way to 'mute' specific threads in the new forums?  No offense to Batzulger, but it's getting pretty tiring having to go into the OPFF forum just to mark the Batzulger thread as read.

[Matrix Dragon]

He doesn't stop, he never stops! I feel quite a bit of envy about it actually

[Bob Schroeck]

BA, I'll look into it.  Also, if you want to do your own research, the new forums will be running on MyBB and gods know there's a lot about it out there.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Bob Schroeck]

Oh, btw, is anyone else seeing bizarre and counterintuitive page movements in response to PgUp and PgDn after opening a thread to new posts?
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Black Aeronaut]

It's the text input field at the bottom.  It's active the moment the page loads and anytime you hit PgUp, PgDn, or the arrow keys it cause the page to jump all the way down until the cursor is visible in the field.

I have no idea how to circumvent that except to just click on any empty space on the thread to deactivate the input field.

[Bob Schroeck]

Now that you point that out, it's obvious.  <sigh>  Thanks.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Black Aeronaut]

He doesn't stop, he never stops! I feel quite a bit of envy about it actually

In regards to this, I get he doesn't stop.  Everyone knows this.  Rarely a week goes by where he doesn't update something at least two or three times.  I just wish certain people on the board would realize this.  It'd be one thing if there was relevant discussion going on, but I know for a fact that TtHM has an email notification system for this sort of thing, and (I think) an RSS feed as well.

(I've never had much use for RSS feeds myself.  Most of what I'd use it for has regular update schedules, so I just pop the bookmarks open on the relevant days.)

[Inquisitive Raven]

It's the text input field at the bottom.  It's active the moment the page loads and anytime you hit PgUp, PgDn, or the arrow keys it cause the page to jump all the way down until the cursor is visible in the field.

This looks suspiciously like what's happening when I click the "go to first unread" link on a thread. It seems to load the page, pause on the first unread message for a couple of seconds then jump to the bottom of the page although it does end up on the last post  and not the reply box.

[Labster]

I have a backup of all of the text content of the forums now. Excluding this post, obviously. I'll do another pass on just the latest threads when it gets closer to moving time.

We have a total of 155244 posts on 11511 threads. The total size of the database holding all of the HTML post content is 178MB. The size of the code I wrote to grab this content and store it in a sqlite database is only 225 lines.

(TL;DR A programmer bashes Tapatalk I didn't save the entire HTML of the site, because on testing, all of the stuff around the threads makes a page 5-10x bigger. That's not even including the 33 external stylesheets or 18 external JS files. Tapatalk promotes itself as a mobile first company, yet it inflates the size of the content by at least 5 times. This is what is wrong with the internet today. Doing conversions with software always gives me a sense of how terrible it is (TVT-pmwiki: terrible; Mediawiki: generally not terrible). Tapatalk is "mostly terrible", simply because of how sloppy the conversion is -- hiding post titles in comment tags, hiding elements they don't like under .clutter {display: none}. Thankfully this also means that I could still recover most of the missing elements.-- ?×V

[Morganite]

(TL;DR A programmer bashes Tapatalk I didn't save the entire HTML of the site, because on testing, all of the stuff around the threads makes a page 5-10x bigger.  That's not even including the 33 external stylesheets or 18 external JS files.  Tapatalk promotes itself as a mobile first company, yet it inflates the size of the content by at least 5 times.  This is what is wrong with the internet today.  Doing conversions with software always gives me a sense of how terrible it is (TVT-pmwiki: terrible; Mediawiki: generally not terrible).  Tapatalk is "mostly terrible", simply because of how sloppy the conversion is -- hiding post titles in comment tags, hiding elements they don't like under .clutter {display: none}.  Thankfully this also means that I could still recover most of the missing elements.

Relevant comic.

Got any examples of what's in "clutter"? Because that sounds pretty bizarre.

I noticed in some thread or other where someone had linked to twitter that it seemed to be trying to do an embed (that wasn't working). Have you run into/taken care of that?

-Morgan.

[Labster]

I do indeed know what's in class="clutter", because I had to parse it. What I've seen so far is just the user's registered date. Why they hid this with a special class, rather than putting a rule on .profile-joined is beyond me. Maybe the name is supposed to be ironic.

But rather than the polyfills mentioned in the comic, I'm pretty sure that half of this junk is for advertising. The other half is just questionable development practices.

I really don't know what you're talking about with the twitter thing. I'm guessing I avoided it because I loaded zero JS files while getting the forum content. They don't seem to have invented the technology to serve the forums as a "single-page app" (which actually would have made it easier because then I'd be working with an API).

Anyway the backup scraper software is on my Github, and if anyone wants, I'll send you a copy of the forums. It's only 36MB compressed.-- ?×V

[robkelk]

Anyway the backup scraper software is on my Github, and if anyone wants, I'll send you a copy of the forums.  It's only 36MB compressed.

Off-site backups are good. I'll take a copy, please; I'm reasonably sure you have my email address.--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Bob Schroeck]

Perhaps you (Vorticity) can put it up on some other big-file sharing service that's trustworthy and not a warez site, so anyone who wants one can have it.

So now, basically, I'm the bottleneck.  The board software is up and running on my website, but I haven't ported the forum structure over yet.  I'm also trying to figure out if asking everyone to register there now under your current names will help or hinder bringing the threads over afterward.  Either way, I'll probably have to create a whole bunch of users for everyone who's been inactive for a while and won't necessarily know to move over.-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Black Aeronaut]

Well, having us go over and start creating accounts for ourselves would probably be a good start.  We can proceed from there and see how things go.

[Bob Schroeck]

I keep going over it and I can't see how it would hurt, so sure, go ahead and register.  The forums -- still in their default colors -- are here.

And although I probably don't have to say it, please use exactly the same handle there as here.-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Bob Schroeck]

Oh, and before I forget, I just discovered by accident another reason to dislike Tapatalk.  I was doing a Google search just a few minutes ago, and a thread here on the boards came up in the results -- and it turns out Tapatalk's robots.txt now prevents Google from getting a description or cache of the thread.  And I don't remember seeing any access to robots.txt in my admin options, so I probably can't change that.-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Black Aeronaut]

Okay, I'm in.  Just waiting on you to activate my account, Bob.

EDIT:
Minor quibble, Bob, but did you turn off signatures?  I don't see anyplace for me to put in a default signature to end my posts with.

[Bob Schroeck]

I don't think I did, but I'll check when I get a chance -- tonight's going to be very busy for me.

ETA:  Look now.  I set things up that I'd have to approve new members, and that may have kept you from seeing that option until I did.  I do know that there is a sig field, so if you're still not seeing it, let me know.-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[LynnInDenver]

Yet another thing to dislike about things over here, and a reason to speed up the move a big: jumping us over to Tap-a-talk now as a domain, which invalidated my auto-login. Had to dig up the password from my file.--

"You know how parents tell you everything's going to fine, but you know they're lying to make you feel better? Everything's going to be fine." - The Doctor

[Inquisitive Raven]

Moar Tapatalk sux. What is the deal with the top level forum links? They keep sending me to Bob's website instead of the top level of the forums?

[Bob Schroeck]

That's my fault, not Tapatalk.  I need to change an option.-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Morganite]

I notice it still opens the link in a new window, which is... not exactly the desired behavior from a "to forum top page" link.

-Morgan.

[robkelk]

Click on the words "Drunkard's walk" in the page header - that'll take you to the top level in the same window.--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Morganite]

So, we've got four links per page that all go to the same address. Three say "Drunkard's Walk". Only one doesn't open a new window.

And it's not the one that you can see without scrolling all the way to the top of the page.

Tapatalk!

-Morgan.