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Topics - Frenzie

51
Browsers & Technology / Zim Desktop Wiki
Already during Opera's lifetime I started looking for alternatives to Opera Notes. I didn't use it anymore besides providing an easy means to insert text into websites. I looked at popular alternative applications like Tomboy Notes, but they just didn't satisfy me. But for the past few months I've been using Zim, and it's been quite satisfactory.

I might add some more on how I use it, but this tiny link dump will actually tell you more than I could.

http://ajy.co/linux/zim-desktop-wiki-more-than-taking-notes-part-1/
http://ajy.co/linux/zim-desktop-wiki-more-than-taking-notes-part-2/
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/linux-and-open-source/how-to-use-zim-a-multi-tasking-desktop-wiki/
54
Hobbies & Entertainment / xkcd fanclub
I've been reading that comic since '06, and a shared fandom certainly helped to cement my relationship with my wife. For instance, while we were still dating I gifted her a no raptors shirt and she gave me the "Science. It works, bitches" shirt.

The amount of awesome stuff that guy makes boggles the mind. His what if? blog earned a solid place among my feeds. I highly recommend especially the posts on draining the oceans. I also love how he references stuff later.

Do you have any favorite xkcd comics? Please share them here!
55
Browsers & Technology / Opus 1.1 Released
Quote
Versions 1.1 released

5 December, 2013

After more than two years of development, we have released Opus 1.1. This includes:

  • new analysis code and tuning that significantly improves encoding quality, especially for variable-bitrate (VBR),
  • automatic detection of speech or music to decide which encoding mode to use,
    surround with good quality at 128 kbps for 5.1 and usable down to 48 kbps, and

  • speed improvements on all architectures, especially ARM, where decoding uses around 40% less CPU and encoding uses around 30% less CPU.


These improvements are explained in more details in Monty's demo (updated from the 1.1 beta demo).

http://www.opus-codec.org/
56
Browsers & Technology / The best versions of Opera and Firefox probably came out in 2009 at the latest
Well, at least I'm not the only one who thinks so.

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/firefox-suckfest.html
Quote from: Dedoimedo
Starting with Firefox 4, when Mozilla realized that being Chrome-like is more important than giving users what they want, it continues to this day. The once beautiful and fun browser is becoming more and more a clone of the Google product

Opera started down the same path already a few years back, and obviously took it to extremes by literally taking the Chromium code instead of wasting time removing features.

Quote from: Dedoimedo
The second item on the menu is the so-called Australis interface. I'm not going to link to any articles about it, search for yourself and read all about oligophrenia at its finest. Anyhow, the most obvious change is that tabs are now rounded. Hmm. Can you think of any other browser that offers rounded tabs? Yes. It's called Google Chrome. How original.

And somehow they've managed to make it look even worse than Chrome.
61
Browsers & Technology / Why the addressbar acts the way it does
Quote from: Hallvord Steen
And the best brains in the industry have been struggling with this problem for a while, and eventually came up with the solution: highlight the most important part of the URL, hide parts that regular end users typically don’t understand – all to help users figure out that all-important “what site is this really?” question.

[…]

I’m sorry to hear that you don’t like the result. Many of us don’t exactly love it either. But I do disagree with your insinuation that it is a bug – that wording is, to be frank, a bit of an insult. The new address bar is a feature we’ve thought long and hard about and spent man hours implementing. Because it’s an important safety feature for regular users.

http://www.whatcouldbewrong.com/articles/1/welcome-to-your-site

I realize my anecdotal evidence is far from a usability study, but every user I've seen trying to use Opera 11+ was disturbed by the fact that it wasn't loading the page requested properly. On sites with large headers, or forum threads with a reasonably-sized OP, you'd just be seeing the same thing show up without any indication that you didn't merely refresh. Even I have on occasion been confused by this behavior if I forgot to turn it off. The thing is, no matter how "average" the user, just about everyone's been using the Internet for a decade.

Anyhoo, it's obviously not a bug, but it's definitely buggy. :right: It doesn't work with different color schemes, most importantly perhaps high contrast. Besides which, even on a white background my parents don't exactly have the easiest time reading the grayed out text. "Just select the addressbar," I say. "That doesn't make any sense," they'll reply. Indeed, it doesn't. Color contrast checking seems like a pretty basic thing one should perform on a feature such as this, as does testing some of Windows' built-in accessibility features.

Incidentally, I once made this mock-up of how the information could be presented better:

http://fransdejonge.com/2010/11/whats-wrong-with-the-opera-11-address-bar-and-how-to-fix-it/
http://fransdejonge.com/2010/12/opera-11-addressbar-revisited/

Looking at it now, I might add some padding on the sides of the domain name. Note that the query string part of my mock-up is really a separate thing.
63
Forum Administration / Initial Feasability Report
Disk usage should be fine. I don't know how long it'd take the database to reach hundreds of megabytes, but by that point performance might be more problematic than size. Honestly I have no idea, other than that as long as we stay below 1GB everything's peachy, and that'd take a long time to reach.

Bandwidth usage is harder to get a handle on. We've used 186MB this past week, but we have only a skeleton crew. Below 20GB/month everything's great. If we assume a 20 times greater activity for an active forum that should still easily be within acceptable limits.

These are not hard limits in the sense that our account allows for more, but you understand I shouldn't use more than about half of it.

In conclusion, so far it looks like DnDerbirds are go. (That sounded better in my head.)
64
Forum Administration / Time display
You'll notice I'm running an experiment with ISO-8601, but I realize it may not be the most easily readable format. I suppose the default format wasn't too horrible, except I'd make it 24h and possibly add day of the week.

Default:
November 21, 2013, 08:04:15 PM
Today at 09:35:56 AM

Example proposal 1:
Tue 26 Nov 2013 23:52:12

(That's the format I use on my personal computer, by the way.)

The Unix timestamp is related to quick quote functionality. The forum itself works with a server round-trip, but I think that's ridiculous. I can hide it somewhere out of sight if desired but actually I kind of like it. Also, it would allow people to tap into it to change their personal time display with a UserJS if they wanted.
65
Forum Administration / Moderation
I'll pen down a few thoughts on what I think would be good to have in moderators:


  • An international aspect with regard to timezones. This probably means at least a couple of people from Europe or Africa and a couple from the Americas. I know there might be some people from around UTC+6 through UTC+11, but that might be harder to achieve. Note that I mean this primarily as a practical matter with regard to potential moderator response times, not as an attempt at cultural diversity.

  • Diversity of beliefs. This is not an atheist forum. I'm not sure whether this will have to be defined more precisely, but it means e.g. Belfrager could a candidate if he were interested.



PS This is more for myself but it might be of interest:
http://my.opera.com/community/forums/findpost.pl?id=14979862
Quote from: jax
I wouldn't bother too much with the captchas, but what any forum needs is quick ways to mass delete messages. Post limits and join limits are good as well.
67
Browsers & Technology / Australis moved on from Fx experimental GUI to regular nightlies
http://www.webupd8.org/2013/11/australis-ui-lands-in-firefox-nightly.html
Quote
The first thing you'll notice when using Australis is its curved tabs and the clear distinction between foreground and background tabs.

I don't like curved tabs.
Quote
However, since it landed in the latest Firefox Nightly, it will most probably be available with Firefox 28 which will launch March 4, 2014.

March 2014 sure is a depressing month in browserland. :P
68
DnD Central / This is a testing forum
This forum is meant to test the software[1], the technical feasibility, and, to some extent, interest.

The goal isn't presently replacement of D&D or migration from D&D. Depending on what Opera decides, it may never be. For now, it is at most a safety net.

Please ask here if you have any questions about this forum not pertaining to administrative issues like forum categories, moderation, security questions, etc.

[1] Does it work, do we like it.