We’ve been busy at work on some new features for the community. When we announced the last set of features, we got some great feedback which was incorporated into this release. Some of you may have already noticed the features as we rolled them out silently over the course of the last two weeks, but we felt it prudent to announce them officially, now that they appear to be reasonably stable.
Several members have expressed the desire to be able to be able to subscribe to a service which notifies them of responses to their posts. Because Velominati is a community where everyone’s voice contributes to the conversation, we ultimately decided that having a system that notified readers (either via email or rss feed) in this way would encourage myopic behavior focused on responses only to specific posts rather than the whole conversation. This would ultimately fragment the conversation and diminish the sense of community here.
However, the point is well taken that it can become quite difficult to identify responses to a particular post – a member’s own post or anyone else’s, for that matter. In an effort to improve visibility, we added two views which will hopefully help readers follow specific threads: @Mentions and @Replies.
@Mentions:
The @Mentions view is accessible by clicking the @Mentions link displayed on each post. This will open a view which shows all posts for the article that mention the posts’s author’s name.
The @Mentions view
@Replies
The @Replies view is accessible by clicking the @Replies link displayed on each post. This will open a view similar to the @Mentions view, except this view only shows those posts which used the Reply or Quote link to respond to it.
The @Replies view
V-Mobile Site:
Marko has been the most vocal about the need for a Mobile version of Velominati, as he regularly accesses it from him iPhone. He graciously stepped up as the leader for this effort and provided all the requirements and did the bulk of the testing for it. Turns out he was totally right; after doing the math, this was revealed:
mobile-specific site = way more awesome than regular sites
The Mobile site has essentially all the same content with all the same radness on the regular site (Rule and Lexicon quickviews, photo and YouTube viewers), but provided in a streamlined (and faster loading) view when loaded from a mobile phone (you have the option at the bottom of every page to switch to the regular version if you prefer that.) All the features normally visible in the layout are available via the menu at the top of the page. Please let us know if you spot anything a muck with the site, or if anything your rely on is missing.
The V-Mobile site: (l-r) Home, Main Menu, Posts, Categories
The major outstanding feature requested by the community remains the direct message capability, and once we work out some privacy and philosophical issues around that concept, we’ll release something to support that as well.
As usual, your feedback is welcomed as we’d appreciate any input you have. If you spot any problems or if a feature doesn’t work as you expect it to, just drop us a note and we’ll see what we can do to correct it, or explain to you why it’s your fault and precisely why you’re an idiot.
Cheers.
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View Comments
@Cyclops
That's nice of you. Especially given I don't eat burgers, don't have BB30, and dislike cats.
Duder, how'd your holiday party turn out? Was the top tube beer rack a success?
Mobile = christmas all over again! Question: Is the mobile site supposed to load automatically if Velominati is accessed from a mobile device or is there a distinct mobile URL? The full site seems to load on my Blackberry.
@Nate
It just loaded automatically for me with the same URL. at the bottom of the page there's a slider which lets you turn Mobile Theme off.
@frank
Here is an article that explains things better: http://www.dustindiaz.com/behaviors-and-semantics/ or search for "unobtrusive popup" and you will find several more examples.
jQuery is nice, but there are tons of other js libraries out there that can do just as good of a job.
The Android browser is nearly identical to the iPhone frank it too uses webkit, you could just disable the lightbox thingy on the mobile site, it would probably work better all around that way anyway. I believe this is what @huphtur is referring to.
I was hoping you would disable the javascript that fades in the main photo for each blog entry as it's a rather slow animation on mobile and imho is a bit annoying on the desktop site and sometimes partially blanks out the photo in Chrome and Safari on Mac (webkit again).
Oh and I just noticed that you got rid of that annoyingly slow method of displaying links to old comments on the rules, thanks!
This is awesome btw, I noticed it a few days ago.
If someone somehow use an iPhone to read this site, AND type a reply on a touch screen, while cycling - well, they are more skilled than me.
All joking aside, I truly doubt you're going to see a drop in comment quality, as it was already possible to read and post from the site before using a smart phone, this just changed the formatting to make it easier. I don't think sitting at a computer at a desk vs. reading and replying on a phone inherently adds or detracts from the quality of comments.
Also, as a smart phone owner, I never use it during rides unless I'm going through a new area and want to stop and look up a map to plan my route better. Mostly I drag it along in case there is some sort of emergency, since I do a large majority of my riding solo. As much as I love my iPhone, it has never occurred to me that I'd want to post to a website while out on a ride - I'm on a ride, dammit! A key feature of riding is for some quality alone time away from computers, other people, life/job stresses, etc.
@Nate
What BB are you using? I can make sure the user agent is in the mobile device list.
@frank
Blackberry browser on a Blackberry Bold. Thanks!
@mister_fisher, @michael
Ah, stupid holdover bug from some tweaks I'd made specifically for the iPhone on the old site. Should be fixed; quickview overlays for Rule, Lexicon entries, and Photos are still there, but they are removed for videos.
Some of that wide content still renders funny on the mobile device and I'll get to it at some point, but this should at least be giving you the basic functionality now. Let me know if it is better now.
@Nate
Does it work now?