March 7, 2008
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New Feature: Themed Photo Page
The last half a year, we’ve been steadily working to standardize the whole of Xanga under the “themes” system. My particular role for the last couple months has been to create a “unified” commenting system, that will allow every “Themed” item type to have a consistent look and feel, as well as a common set of commenting capabilities (equal in richness to the weblog comments), including Rich Text, Comment Replies, and eventually Minis. The final goal is to, every time we add a new commenting feature, to have ALL Xanga comments acquire that ability all once once, regardless of type (weblog, photo, pulse etc…) But first we need to update all the items pages to use the system.
The first baby step in that direction, was the themed chatboard, which acquired the “unified” commenting system in multiple stages over the last three months. Starting with its themification, the addition of rich text commenting, it completed with the addition of comment replies. The next domino in that set is the photos item page, which was themed and linked up to the unified commenting system during these last couple weeks. (BTW, that page inherited a TON of features from the old Photo page, in addition to the unified comments. I’m still not sure I actually caught them all. >_< :massages his poor tired typing hands: )
The hardest part was the crazy Ajax filmstrip that it inherited from the original photos item page. The one currently on the new page works the same way, but it doesn’t have the same smooth scrolling transition that the original one did. Bleh… It also only supports a maximum of seven images at a time – because thats what the old one supported. One of the hardest parts was making the system work for ALL themes, because different themes can fit different quantities of thumbnails at any given moment. We have to detect that for EACH page, and calculate how many can fit using javascript.
Anyways, next on the queue is a themed video page. Hopefully that will roll out with 1) a slightly more polished filmstrip that can support more than seven images at a time and will have smoother transitions and 2) smiley’s capabilities for all pages currently under the unified commenting system. Theoretically, your custom smileys (if they work on the themed weblog page) should also begin working on those pages as well!… Well.. at least Sean‘s super smileys will work… :crossing fingers:
Personally, I’m most excited about comment replies on Pulse! I get so many comments on my pulse, where I wish I could just reply to the person instead of having to pollute one of their random pages. Hopefully I’ll get to that soon. OK, tired now. Have a good night! ^_^
Comments (23)
nope, SuperSmileys don’t work on the photo page… actually, I noticed they’ve been broken on the chatboard page ever since the chatboard got themed, but I haven’t had the time to work on it
:ssboohoo:
@sean - its not your fault. I haven’t implemented normal smiley’s yet, which have a bunch of functions the super smileys need in order to run properly. Like I said, they should start working in the next rollout with the video page.
hehe.. that’s what I get for skimming
:ssgrin:
(ok, well the text macros work on photos & chatboard pages if you type them in, but the smiley icons don’t do anything when you click them)
This might be a programmer’s nightmare, but it’s something that those of us who are not using the themed pages would deeply appreciate, I know I would, at least. Could you make the basic pages (unthemed) simply use the default background, typeface and other colors WE have selected in the old look and feel page? In other words, if I have selected pink and green as a background and trim, could that be the global background color on all the pages instead of the default white and blue or whatever it is now? Just that would make lots of people happy…and would make pages not using themes match much more than they do.
I love the themes, btw, but I have several people who read who can’t access my site when I use them, and I have seen others with this problem, and have had it myself, so I stay with the original so everyone can get in. So just having the ability to make global changes to my pages with the style sheet that we already have in the old look and feel editor would be lovely…pretty please??
Thanks for all your hard work! :ssgrin:
Thank you for your hard work.
I really appreciate all the work you are doing behind the scenes. It is truly amazing really.
Thank you!
thanks for working so hard! xanga is definitely the top blogging site in my book
Woot! Woot!
Thanks for working so hard to make Xanga a great place!
:sscrush: Love the new SuperSmileys! And all the new goodies to come.
Aww the SuoperSmiley did not show up
@moniet - you’re right, it is a programmer’s nightmare
– that was the problem with the unthemed pages in general – there was no standards in the way that they were developed, which makes it very hard for us to do things like a universal look and feel. The Themes system is just so much more powerful (from the developer’s point of view) than the old system that unfortunately, it makes little sense for us to create new unthemed pages which take twice as long to build, and have half the functionality. All of those “non-customizable” pages are actually being brought under the themes umbrella for exactly those reasons, so 1) users can have their entire site use their skins, and 2) we can generate those pages much faster and with a much higher standard of quality.
For your friends who can’t view themed sites, have them message me. We’ll look into the issue and see if we can’t make things work out a little better for them.
@Divine_Diva_in_NC - they do show up. They just take a second to load.
@Grampa_David - thanks! ^_^
@ItalianSafety -
@phil_leafman -
@sugarxane -
@skanickadee -
Y’all are the reason I’m still here at 10:00pm every night… >_< hehe. And you’re welcome.
:sscrush:oh i love these super smileys!! I hope they will soon be a part of everywhere!! I feel for you.. i truly do.. programming is a “b”.:ssboohoo:
I don’t understand why God didn’t make at least 48 hours in a day just for programmers alone. :ssgrin:
::BUNCHES::
i would really like it if there was a website where I could see just
the title and date of all my weblog posts (hyperlinked to the actual posts). That would be nice, think you guys do make a rough draft available soon?
@The_Astrocreep - I believe that you can edit your weblog module on your front page to just show titles. 1) Sign in. 2) click edit theme (in your header). 3) go to your weblog module and click the little pencil icon. 4) in the text section, click snippet. 5) done!
@joseph -
what if you have more than the maximum viewable weblogs on a module?
@The_Astrocreep - i hear rumor of a weblog archives page coming out soon. Message Ben if you’re curious.
I believe that you can edit your weblog module on your front page to just show titles. thanx for