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safetypin
So, everyone who thinks they might have an inkling of interest in playing SR online, by post, help me out at http://www.shadowland7.com. I've got the basics (mostly) ironed out, and I'm beginning to work on some of the more fiddly features like address books, notes, and characters.

You can leave comments here, or you can post in the OOC section of Shadowland7. If you run into errors, please let me know (roughly) what day/time/timezone it happened, and what you were trying to do when it happened, so I can review the log files and stomp the bug.
Wolfman
I didn't receive the activation email...
safetypin
Okay, I just made sure the server is still sending activation emails, and it is.

If it didn't end up in your spam folder, it may have been rejected by your email service. I took a number of steps to validate my server to send email, but it may not have been enough.

I probably should have gotten a "resend activation email" function up and running before announcing it, but I'll let you know when I get that working. If you want, I can delete the account you created so you can try sign up using a different email address. Send me a PM with your username, or your email provider domain (gmail.com, live.com).
Wolfman
received it 2 hours ago wink.gif
Umidori
Sure, I'll help test.

Aside from basic bug reporting, are you looking for any particular sort of feedback?

~Umi
safetypin
Umi,

I'd like help with thinking of features, feedback on the UI, and things like that.
mister__joshua
Why does my password have to be 10 characters long? That seems excessive. None of my go-to passwords have 10 characters! nyahnyah.gif
safetypin
Get your easily crackable password in before I institute better password rules: 10% uppercase letters, 20% lower case letter, 30% numbers, 50% non-alphanumeric characters.

Because, reasons wink.gif
Tymeaus Jalynsfein
QUOTE (safetypin @ Mar 25 2015, 12:03 PM) *
Get your easily crackable password in before I institute better password rules: 10% uppercase letters, 20% lower case letter, 30% numbers, 50% non-alphanumeric characters.

Because, reasons wink.gif


Won't work, you cannot have 110% characters for a 100% long password. smile.gif
Umidori
Had no problem activating account, initial log in automated and smooth, layout seems intuitive, no hitches creating a test Group or posting. A few minor thoughts thus far, but they're entirely aesthetic and personal preference options and very, very minor so I'll save 'em. Gonna try to test various systems as I come up with interesting ways to try to break them.

Only actual bug I've found is as follows:

Made a comment with plaintext active. Switched to markdown, went to edit the prior comment and have no options for things like bolding and whatnot. Same for bbcode, can't even type in modifiers manually, they just don't get translated.

~Umi
pdboddy
Created an account no problem, got the email right away. Will fiddle some.
Umidori
So I've noted a couple other things.

First, plaintext posts are formatted diferently than both markdown and bbcode. Example appearance.

>>>(Plaintext.)<<<
Posted by X @ Y

>>>(
Markdown or bbcode text.
)<<<
Posted by X @ Y

Second, I made a double post and discovered there's no way to delete a recent comment, so I just edited it to placeholder text.

~Umi

PS: Bizarre update, when I went back to my double post, it seems to have switched places with the first comment I made! Chronology of comments is oldest at top, newest at bottom, but somehow the second post is now at the top? They both share the same timestamp, which is unsurprising given it was a double post.
Umidori
Attempting a mock IC post, running into a UI problem in bbcode: trying to pick a color for a selection of text, noticed the various textbox buttons seem to be getting pasted over at both the top and bottom by other page elements, making them only visible and clickable in the center of the icons.

Update: weirdly was able to click on the icons and sort of "drag" them, until they were visible and interactable, but can't move them after. Color button seems to be trying to bring up a hover-over menu of pickable colors, but that's still obscured and can't be used. Clicking the main icon for color brings up a dialog box wanting a text input, but I don't know what inputs are accepted.

~Umi
Umidori
Some wonkiness with the dice system. Added an initiative roll, then tried to remove it for correction and readd it. Removing it left an empty entry line for the first roll, and readding it just created a new line for the "second" roll.

Also, will there be any options for dice rolls for 4E style initiative, or should that just be done with an "Open" type roll?

Further note - adding a roll seems to lag out the entire page for several seconds, and the descriptions of the rolls are not visible until you actually make the post. Even there, only one of my descriptions seems to have gone through - can't find the other.

A post preview function would be HIGHLY useful as well.

Also, not sure if it's post length, but I just had a post where going back to try to edit it, I can't access all of the text - it extends beyond the bottom of the edit box.

~Umi
Umidori
Okay, noticed the "View OOC" option for the first time - that could be more obvious.

Tried it out, and the "IC Post?" checkbox was still checked, which it obviously should not be. In fact, having two separate places to click is kinda wonky to begin with. Unchecked that and made a test OOC post, but it seems to have just dumped it into the IC section of the folder, and when I click "View OOC" there's nothing there, and "View IC" takes me back to the combined IC and OOC posts, with no differentiation between them.

Switching between "IC" and "OOC" seems to reset your Alias as well, which could easily get annoying.

That's all for now, might mess around with creating a "node" in a day or so if I can get around to it.

~Umi
safetypin
Umi,

Awesome feedback, greatly appreciated! I've addressed one or two of the issues you've encountered already and haven't pushed the changes up to the server, but I'm going to have to take a look at IC/OOC stuff, because I haven't encountered those issues before. So, yeah, posting OOC disallows the use of aliases, and then when you go back to IC, it auto-selects the last-used alias, which is now your username. Also, now that I think about it, I need a way to prevent people from editing their username-alias. If you edit your username-alias, then someone else could create a new alias that looked like your username. Ugh..

Dice
So, I'm planning/testing on my computer a simplified dice system, since it seems like a very error-prone system. This way, you can just enter the number of dice you want to roll, and select whether or not to reroll sixes. As far as the removal/adding of new rolls, I encountered some problems manipulating the HTML, and the first solution I found was to leave the numbers in place, so that's actually working as intended. But, as I read your comments I had another idea I want to try out to make it a little more intuitive. You should be able to resize the text areas, there's a dark area on the bottom edge that is supposed to let you make it bigger. Is that not functioning, or did I make the resizing handle too subtle?

Rich-text editing
So, this one seems a bit stickier - my thinking was that switching markup languages on comments would be troublesome (either for me to convert the markup, or for the user to manually go through and edit it. So I made the markup language static on each comment individually. So, new comments follow your preference, old comments stay the same. I imagine that people won't be constantly switching modes, though. However, your comments about the editor being weird make me want to abandon it and find a better solution. Maybe I should leave the markup languages behind, and just use CKEditor because I know that's a great editor, and let people switch to raw HTML if they want.
safetypin
Also, I know you said you were going to keep preferences to yourself, but I don't consider myself a UI expert or anything, so I would actually like to hear your thoughts and preferences on the layout/design. I think I know a good interface when I see it, but I also think I don't know how to create a good one from scratch, and I think it's more difficult for me to see problems in my own design and layout. I'm trying to keep the designing that I do to a minimum, but I do enjoy making it pretty.

So, I'll like take your opinions and preferences as such and consider them.
safetypin
There was a problem that was preventing commenting from working properly - it's been fixed now. Also, I added texture patterns as backgrounds for pages - this is one of the things that I think really added a lot of ambiance to the pages. I stumbled upon a really cool web site, subtlepatterns.com - which has a lot of really nice textures. I picked out a bunch that seem good to me and added them. If you want to use another pattern, let me know and I can add more background images.
Czar Eggbert
IE just gives me a partial view of the page, no log in boxes. Chrome allowed me to start the setup of the account, but when I submitted it I got the following:
"We're sorry, but something went wrong.
If you are the application owner check the logs for more information."


-Czar Eggbert

TaiChara
QUOTE (safetypin @ Apr 6 2015, 12:00 PM) *
There was a problem that was preventing commenting from working properly - it's been fixed now. Also, I added texture patterns as backgrounds for pages - this is one of the things that I think really added a lot of ambiance to the pages. I stumbled upon a really cool web site, subtlepatterns.com - which has a lot of really nice textures. I picked out a bunch that seem good to me and added them. If you want to use another pattern, let me know and I can add more background images.


I ran into the same problem when I tried to register (on Firefox).
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