External Review and Mission Listings Site
By
3dent,
Posted on: 2009-04-13 07:27 in Mission Architect
I tend to use the toolbar I wrote to resize. Although there was some discussion between me and Emo about sizings. We decided that most gamers had bigger monitors so we could get away with the larger size... we were wrong 
and that zoom makes the site nasty 
Will have to look at a restyle to fit more usability and less menu 
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I tend to use the toolbar I wrote to resize. Although there was some discussion between me and Emo about sizings. We decided that most gamers had bigger monitors so we could get away with the larger size... we were wrong
and that zoom makes the site nasty
Will have to look at a restyle to fit more usability and less menu
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Opera Zoom is horrible, it zooms the Images as well rather than just adjusting the Text Size (Firefox lets you do either). One thing I really hate about Opera is the manky zoom.
It's great because of that. If I need zoom, that's because I don't see something clearly, and that "something" includes the whole site, not just the text, the whole site, not just the text author thinks is important, the whole site, not just everything except textfields... you've got the idea.
Serioussly, I don't even consider browsers that don't do that nowadays.
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It's great because of that. If I need zoom, that's because I don't see something clearly, and that "something" includes the whole site, not just the text, the whole site, not just the text author thinks is important, the whole site, not just... you've got the idea.
Serioussly, I don't even consider browsers that don't do that nowadays.
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Firefoxes Text zoom will always adjust the font size, even if the author used pixel measurements. It just won't make the images horrible as it does so. They did it right, a wee flag which lets you flick between the two modes so you can use the one which suits you and the site best.
That said I don't expect perfect layout from a zoomed page... But this forum, for one, is usable with zooms up to 250% in my monitor. (1600*1024) Nothing is overlaid/mispaced, text reads in the correct order, no horiz scrollbar in sight.
ADD: Just where is that magic flag? Never found it, gave up on FF, thinking that their zoom doesn't zoom everything including images and flash.
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Oh, and one other thing: will it be possible at some point to view/sort arcs by rating in the overview screen? In that case, I hope 0 gets treated as "no rating" instead of just "abysmally bad", because when I add a comment (as I just did), I obviously wouldn't wan't to rate my own arc, but I wouldn't want to bring down my average either by not doing so
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ooooo-ooo a bug, you aren't supposed to be able to comment on your own arcs. Although the sort idea is not a bad idea. I like to shy away from ratings though as they are very easy to corrupt.
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(Sorting on) Ratings in the global overview could be an exciting feature, IF ratings would be fair and balanced. I am afraid that is very hard to achieve and that's why I advised against this feature in the beginning.
BTW, Opera 8.x-9.0 zoom was broken, one they have now behaves much better.
That's the same reason it wasn't included in the original designs. Although it does seem to be a popular request. So I am considering adding it.
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That said I don't expect perfect layout from a zoomed page... But this forum, for one, is usable with zooms up to 250% in my monitor. (1600*1024) Nothing is overlaid/mispaced, text reads in the correct order, no horiz scrollbar in sight.
ADD: Just where is that magic flag? Never found it, gave up on FF, thinking that their zoom doesn't zoom everything including images and flash.
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View > Zoom > Zoom Text Only checkbox. It's been there since 2.5 I think. Switch it off and it works like Operas.
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But this forum, for one, is usable with zooms up to 250% in my monitor. (1600*1024) Nothing is overlaid/mispaced, text reads in the correct order, no horiz scrollbar in sight.
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I'm a bit of a weirdo. I read this forum in Opera with the Stylesheet and images switched off. Makes it much easier to read. That's mostly because it uses Tables rather than Div tags & CSS for layout though, any more modern sites look rubbish when you switch off the CSS.
Error with result set pagination.
I just ordered missions by author asc. I have 4 arcs published and I was split over page 2 and page 3.
The order of arcs within author groupings is random, and so
Example 1: the first time I looked I saw the following:
At the bottom of page 2 was the following arc:
--- 1076 The foul-mouthed Handyman!
At the top of page 3 were the following 3 arcs:
--- 1076 The foul-mouthed Handyman!
--- 83744 To Save A Single World
--- 83747 Marketing Opportunity
i.e. 1076 was repeated twice (once on each page) but 3662 was not shown at all.
Example 2: swapping pages again I saw the following:
At the bottom of page 2 was the following arc:
--- 3662 Ee-Ai-Ee-Ai-Oh!
At the top of page 3 were the following 3 arcs:
--- 3662 Ee-Ai-Ee-Ai-Oh!
--- 83744 To Save A Single World
--- 1076 The foul-mouthed Handyman!
i.e. This time 3662 was repeated twice (once on each page) but 83747 was not shown at all.
You'll notice that the ordering varies greatly.
I'd suggest throwing an order by either your unique internal arc id or the ingame arc id as the last sort criteria on every search query - these should give a unique ordering that can be paginated properly (without errors due to random ordering within groups).
By my mohawk shall ye know me!
my toons
Funny: Ee-Ai-Ee-Ai-Oh! #3662 * The foul-mouthed Handyman! #1076 * City of Norms #132944
Serious: To Save A Single World (#83744) * Marketing Opportunity (#83747)
Good spot, thanks for the info.
And grrrrr.... damn login snarfled again!
By my mohawk shall ye know me!
my toons
Funny: Ee-Ai-Ee-Ai-Oh! #3662 * The foul-mouthed Handyman! #1076 * City of Norms #132944
Serious: To Save A Single World (#83744) * Marketing Opportunity (#83747)
It should be a little more stable for logons now. We added a cookie backup for the login. Not ideal, but it works.
I don't like part of the search.
The options such as AV/EB/soloable are all tick box options. I guess that putting a tick in the box searches for a 'yes' in th erelevant category, but leaving the box unchecked does not mean 'no'.
Whilst these should be checkboxes for mission entry, for search they should really be 3-option option boxes or list boxes - giving 'Yes', 'No' and 'Unspecified/not bothered'.
By my mohawk shall ye know me!
my toons
Funny: Ee-Ai-Ee-Ai-Oh! #3662 * The foul-mouthed Handyman! #1076 * City of Norms #132944
Serious: To Save A Single World (#83744) * Marketing Opportunity (#83747)
Drop down or radio is probably preferable but I can see what you mean. If you don't want AVs you can't search for missions without only with. Good spot.
Just to keep track of requests for the site.
From me - FAQs or MA stuff to put into a help section. Not a guide as such, they go in the guides section 
Editing and Deletion of comments posted.
Author responses to comments.
Sort By Level Range - Done.
Restyle so site can be seen by people who don't own the huge monitors that I do
Enlarge the comment box for clarity.
Preview comment before submission.
Sort by ratings - Done ( although this is by overall rating )
Order by arc within author id
Review addition
Secret things of a text nature
Edit: addtion of this
Search boxes should be include/exclude/don't care instead of include/don't care.
Did I miss anything? probably did.
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Order by arc within author id
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Nearly - I suggested ordering by arc as the final ordering for all searches to ensure a set ordering when paginating - it just happens that I gave examples using sort by author.
Ok - it may not be a big problem for some orderings, e.g. order by arc title would appear to be a unique order, but is it?
You can get duplicated arc titles.
Order by last comment would appear mainly sorted if a decent precision timestamp is used, but if only date is used it could fall down, or for arcs with no comments yet (unless something like arc creation time is used as a default order for nulls in last comment).
Level Range and Mission Count could be as problematic as author name.
Just add the [CoG_arc_table].[id] to the end of every 'order by' - it won't really harm anything if it's redundant because the previous orders already specify a unique order.
e.g.
ORDER BY [datetime of entry] DESC, [CoG_arc_table].[id] ASC
may be exactly the same order as just
ORDER BY [datetime of entry] DESC
as the datetime of entry for an arc may be unique, but I'd guess that adding the internal arc id shouldn't add any noticeable overhead and will be needed in more places than not.
BTW - on that point, can we add timestamp_of_entry as a sort order? I think that with no ordering applied the system seems to default to system entry order (probably using internal unique autoincrement ID rather than datetime, but the effective order is the same) but:
1. You can't explicitly state order of entry
2. I don't think you can specify order of entry oldest 1st (internal ID ASC, I'd guess) and that can be useful!
By my mohawk shall ye know me!
my toons
Funny: Ee-Ai-Ee-Ai-Oh! #3662 * The foul-mouthed Handyman! #1076 * City of Norms #132944
Serious: To Save A Single World (#83744) * Marketing Opportunity (#83747)
Default sort order is most recent to the top. I use nixTimestamps as time entries so they are very accurate.
Good idea on putting the arcId onto the end of the sorts. It won't add much to the sorts as they tend to get optimised by MySQL anyway and it does prevent issues where names or timestamps are frighteningly close.
It's just as well the dataObject framework is robust
CoG_arc_table ooo underscores in names how very 90s I tend to use camel case and prefix all the MA tables with ma. So maMission and maMissionComment, etc. Using MVC style system.
Bit of a warning, it's just been pointed out to me that you can delete an arc from CoG with a single click. Someone, Emo, forgot to add the You Sure? page. Any arcs deleted in this way are not lost as I can recover them so if you do delete one by accident email me and I can put it back.
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Please, if you can, also try out the magnification function in the Opera.
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We are working on the site style to address several issues, magnification is one, and we think we may have come up with an interesting fix. At least it works up to maximum zoom levels on our test box so far.
The website needs to list all arcs without pages. Just one big scrolling list, please. Pages mean that your arc will never be seen if it's not new, because if people have to click another button, they won't.
Please fight My Brute: http://2hero.mybrute.com
Mission Architect 54161 - Michael Mundano, Megan Malloney and the Secret Senate.
Mission Architect 91838 - Constantinople Jones' Family Secret. A One Mission Story arc.
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because if people have to click another button, they won't.
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Only speaking for myself here, but I tend to list them by last commented (descending for reading, Ascending for playing), so I can leave feedback for the ones at the back of the 'queue' so to speak.
Perhaps an *option* to list X per page, but not forcing all the arcs into one page. If the ingame client did that, i'm sure most people's laptops/computers would explode, w/XXX,XXX entries all coming up at once.
CoG seems to be going that way, with so many new entries each time I look, so, the option for those who think mankind is retarded to the point of not wanting to click a button, but leave it alone for the rest of us?
There is a downside to that method. When there is a lot of arcs, lets say 200. (there is already over 100 listed on the site) Anyone not hitting the site from a fast connection will get a blank page as it will time out. Ideally I would drop the pagination as it is extra code, but we have to think about people that access via dial up, slow broadband or even mobile broadband. We could up the number per page, but that just moves the problem on.
I am open to suggestions for throwing older arcs up the list. We are looking at a couple of options at the moment but can't decide how they would work or even if they would work.
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There is a downside to that method. When there is a lot of arcs, lets say 200. (there is already over 100 listed on the site) Anyone not hitting the site from a fast connection will get a blank page as it will time out. Ideally I would drop the pagination as it is extra code, but we have to think about people that access via dial up, slow broadband or even mobile broadband. We could up the number per page, but that just moves the problem on.
I am open to suggestions for throwing older arcs up the list. We are looking at a couple of options at the moment but can't decide how they would work or even if they would work.
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Stick a "Number of rows per page" setting for the user, that's what I usually do (I like 1000s, this makes clients sad so I default theirs to 25).
On the Arcs thing maybe some sort of Random Search button on the main page which gives you a few results completely randomly, maybe with an optional specified level range (like an I'm Bored button).
I've honestly got no idea to the working of this site so feel free to shoot down these ideas if they're insanly impractical.
* Have a sort of front page which picks arcs at random or under fairly random criteria;
Most recently added;
Most recently commented on;
Most views;
Least views;
Just as a sort of "lucky" dip of arcs.
* Possibly the amazon style "Users who played this arc also liked". Perhaps a checkbox whenever the review system gets online that says "I would reccomedn this to others"
Meh I'm just randomly chucking ideas out
great site though, also nice to see you taking the oposite aproach to devs and are actually preparing for a lot of arcs -.-
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now we just need to get it written 
Seriously though it is on the cards to be able to edit your comments. There is also a bit of discussion between me and emo about allowing longer reviews as well as comments. We are also looking at replying to comments/reviews.
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IMO it would be a good idea to allow reviewers to edit their reviews and for authors to comment against reviews.
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It would imo too.
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Oh, and one other thing: will it be possible at some point to view/sort arcs by rating in the overview screen? In that case, I hope 0 gets treated as "no rating" instead of just "abysmally bad", because when I add a comment (as I just did), I obviously wouldn't wan't to rate my own arc, but I wouldn't want to bring down my average either by not doing so
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ooooo-ooo a bug, you aren't supposed to be able to comment on your own arcs. Although the sort idea is not a bad idea. I like to shy away from ratings though as they are very easy to corrupt.
I am going to have to get Emo to restyle a bit as not everyone uses the huge resolutions that we do. I tried the site on another machine and realised just how much goes off screen.
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Tip for this, use the Firefox Web Developer toolbar and use the Resize option to try out other screen sizes. My work machine is 1600 x whatever so when I'm templating a site I use this set to 1024*768 to see how it affects more normal set-ups.
I hadn't noticed the site set-up either. I reckon you could lower the Sidebar text and narrow the sidebar. That might mean resizing the nice curvy borders though which is a bit of a pain.