Excessive smileys causes SMF 2.0.x (and likely 2.1) to fail parse_bbc

Started by Arantor, October 20, 2014, 07:10:32 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Kindred

basically, by removing the pop-up, we have preemptively limited the smilies to a max of 10-20 standard sized ones...   as I said, it is a bad UX (and not something I realized that we had done)
Слaва
Украинi

Please do not PM, IM or Email me with support questions.  You will get better and faster responses in the support boards.  Thank you.

"Loki is not evil, although he is certainly not a force for good. Loki is... complicated."

Arantor


Antes

Why everyone always looking for user-side, I mean okay yes we are doing this for our community/users but if you dig to code you see that new pop-only smiley box is the default action came directly from SCEditor itself, in old builds there was an extra code to hide pop and show list. This changes (using more core stuff from SCEditor) allowed us to upgrade SCEditor more easily in the future. I think its better not to depend on extra code when we can avoid. Yet I must remind, I'm not a real developer people like Suki, Oldiesmann are... my opinions are mostly based on my Marketing side.

Arantor

So, you're more interested in limiting user experience in favour of developer convenience, yes?

You realise most of the bone-headed UI in the admin panel is directly descended from that mindset, right? (Hint: not clever marketing to snub your users to make your devs' lives easier)

Kindred

Well, I am looking at the UI/UX, because that is what people who use our software judge it on.

the functionality of the system is important, yes... but the UI/UX is just as important (that's why companies have entire departments dedicated to UX these days)

Actually, for 3.0, I was considering that we might want to do a full IA/UX analysis with user roles, card sorts, and all that jazz....

but, back to the issue at hand...
I am confused. I finally had a chance to return to my test site and confirm some things.
in the sceditor, I see the "pop-up" window for smilies... this is what confused me when Illori said that the pop-up was removed.
The row of smilies, like we have now, is gone... that is fine.
The pop-up that is in sceditor, and then duplicated in the BBC editor is fine.

but, we do need to consider the no-so-edge cases of up to 100 smilies and then 100-200 smilies...   I admit that 200-500 and 500-1000 are likely to be edge cases... but up to 100, while obnoxious, IMO, is not an edge case and is actually quite likely...  even up to 200 is still realistic, given the admins....
So, we need to consider how (up to at least 200) smilies get displayed... especially if they are not all 16x16 icons.
'
Слaва
Украинi

Please do not PM, IM or Email me with support questions.  You will get better and faster responses in the support boards.  Thank you.

"Loki is not evil, although he is certainly not a force for good. Loki is... complicated."

Illori

Quote from: Kindred on October 21, 2014, 09:43:36 AM
in the sceditor, I see the "pop-up" window for smilies... this is what confused me when Illori said that the pop-up was removed.
The row of smilies, like we have now, is gone... that is fine.
The pop-up that is in sceditor, and then duplicated in the BBC editor is fine.

yes you see a popup, but in 2.0 and earlier 2.1 we had a popup when you clicked more which IMO took care of the issues we now have with smileys. what we have now is a mess.

we also dont have a matching layout in the admin panel for how the smileys look when viewing them for posting. which is another issue.

Antes

Quote from: Arantor on October 21, 2014, 09:35:17 AM
So, you're more interested in limiting user experience in favour of developer convenience, yes?

You realise most of the bone-headed UI in the admin panel is directly descended from that mindset, right? (Hint: not clever marketing to snub your users to make your devs' lives easier)

Yes, because efficiently level its more useless, then why we removed Karma? or left support of PHP 3? I can say more examples about that. Maybe some of the other non-teamed developers needs to consider this as well, so they won't spend years on releasing products to users. Also I don't see any limitations in this usage, it makes my UI more clear. Maybe some mind-sets stops being selfish and tries to adapt new changes and have some respect mercy on decision taken by team. People can find old code in history and they can add the trick back (or make mod out of it). I took the decision to remove those lines and Lead Developer agreed to include it.

Its a clever move to make release/upgrade easier with removing/changing something little (and yes Its little for me).

Quote from: Illori on October 21, 2014, 10:05:17 AM
Quote from: Kindred on October 21, 2014, 09:43:36 AM
in the sceditor, I see the "pop-up" window for smilies... this is what confused me when Illori said that the pop-up was removed.
The row of smilies, like we have now, is gone... that is fine.
The pop-up that is in sceditor, and then duplicated in the BBC editor is fine.

yes you see a popup, but in 2.0 and earlier 2.1 we had a popup when you clicked more which IMO took care of the issues we now have with smileys. what we have now is a mess.

we also dont have a matching layout in the admin panel for how the smileys look when viewing them for posting. which is another issue.

and the problem is ?

reported here: https://github.com/SimpleMachines/SMF2.1/issues/2169

Arantor

QuoteYes, because efficiently level its more useless, then why we removed Karma?

Because it was a user problem, not a technical one. There were no technical issues with karma.

Quoteor left support of PHP 3?

Because PHP 3 era code doesn't work on PHP 5.3+. Again: a user requirement, not a technical one.

QuoteMaybe some of the other non-teamed developers needs to consider this as well, so they won't spend years on releasing products to users

They need to build what the users want. Otherwise it's a waste of time.

Kindred

Interestingly, Antes...   despite the lead dev approving your change...   Oldiesmann clearly says
Quote
Again, why are we changing how smileys are displayed? SMF has always displayed them either inline on the editor or in a popup when a "[more]" link is clicked. It should remain that way in my opinion.
Слaва
Украинi

Please do not PM, IM or Email me with support questions.  You will get better and faster responses in the support boards.  Thank you.

"Loki is not evil, although he is certainly not a force for good. Loki is... complicated."

Antes

Problem here you skip, which I'll remind you is the "competition" if you spend more time than its needed on products you become late supplier which is an ultimate fail for your product. I'm sure you already know those, but its still a friendly reminder from this cat ;)

So I kinda find it wrong to call "not cleaver" is not cleaver.  After all if you keep loosing your user-base there is no point of making further development on such product (unless you are really a big looser to feed your ego daily). So I ask you not to bring all this directly to "User" level see more in general product life cycle. Yet It wasn't me all talking about the decline.

Quote from: Kindred on October 21, 2014, 10:48:31 AM
Interestingly, Antes...   despite the lead dev approving your change...   Oldiesmann clearly says
Quote
Again, why are we changing how smileys are displayed? SMF has always displayed them either inline on the editor or in a popup when a "[more]" link is clicked. It should remain that way in my opinion.


I need date on that, I didn't see any comment from Oldiesmann about that in IRC, he wants to keep this in that way from now on. I'll ofc respect the decisions taken by development team no discussion needed about that :)

Arantor

*shrug* What good is being first to market if what you bring to market is considered mediocre at best?

Hint: Apple is almost never first to market in anything. It doesn't appear to be a significant problem for them.

Antes

Quote from: Arantor on October 21, 2014, 10:59:00 AM
*shrug* What good is being first to market if what you bring to market is considered mediocre at best?

I don't see any reference about being first in my post, I was talking about being late... I suggest before further *shrugs* try to understand the point not dictate your owns as right ones.

QuoteHint: Apple is almost never first to market in anything. It doesn't appear to be a significant problem for them.

After Watergate scandal Richard Nixon said I/we didn't do anything yet resigned.

Data taken from: http://www.idc.com/prodserv/smartphone-os-market-share.jsp

Arantor

I'm sorry, I shouldn't have reported this. I shouldn't have tried to make this a thing that needed fixing and I certainly shouldn't have bothered trying to suggest this be reviewed for 2.1.

Hope it works out for you.

Kindred

Antes,

It's often a trade-off... yes.

However, it is better to be a little bit later with a good UX than to be "early" or even "on time" with UX issues.... and things which the user is going to look at and say "that looks terrible" is a UX issue.

It's one thing to force users to limit smilies to 500 or even 200...   it's quite another to tell them that they get 20 smilies, maybe more - but all of them have to be 16x16 and standard in order to fit the design. (additionally, as Illori points out, the admin interface for smilies now doesn't match the user-side implementation)

So - I understand the reasoning behind the original change now... I think there is a trade-off between "ease of upgrade" and user experience.
Just because we have always done something one way does not make it a requirement to continue doing so... I agree with that statement...   but before we remove a piece of functionality and layout that MANY systems use, we need to consider the impact.
(and, just look at how many people link to and steal k@'s smilie sets for some idea on how prevalent the non-standard smilie use actually is)


BTW: Arantor, I appreciate the report - although it is an edge case, it does need to be considered... (even if it is discounted in the end) and the fact that it raised an issue with how 2.1 was designed is actually important as well (and not your fault at all -- if I had noticed the 2.1 stuff before this, I would have raised the same complaint that I just did :) )
Слaва
Украинi

Please do not PM, IM or Email me with support questions.  You will get better and faster responses in the support boards.  Thank you.

"Loki is not evil, although he is certainly not a force for good. Loki is... complicated."

Kindred

hmmm.... not sure who locked this...

(no entry in the moderation log...)

Слaва
Украинi

Please do not PM, IM or Email me with support questions.  You will get better and faster responses in the support boards.  Thank you.

"Loki is not evil, although he is certainly not a force for good. Loki is... complicated."

Illori

Quote from: Kindred on October 21, 2014, 01:42:19 PM
hmmm.... not sure who locked this...

(no entry in the moderation log...)



that i what happens when the op locks their own thread.

Kindred

ah... I'll respect the lock then... relocking.

hmmm....   that seems like another bug, (albeit a minor one).   Mod log should track actions on the user's own topic
Слaва
Украинi

Please do not PM, IM or Email me with support questions.  You will get better and faster responses in the support boards.  Thank you.

"Loki is not evil, although he is certainly not a force for good. Loki is... complicated."

Advertisement: