Community Update & Patch Saturday: March 8, 2014
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Well Saturday was our first day of production updates since the community went live on Monday so this was a big test of the platform. I am happy to report that our updates went in without any downtime and we have a raft of new features that I think will do much to really improve the community experience. We are still looking for many more features and are nowhere near a mature platform state but after today's updates I feel that everyone is going to be very happy about the state of the community.
So what all did we gain today?
Emoticon / Emoji Drop Down Selector. While typing just start a word with a colon and you will see a drop down menu of emoji from which to choose. Start typing a word to see autocomplete show emoji starting with your description. An example is ":dog" but without the quotes, of course.
Text Coloration. Now colors are available %(blue)[while typing]. This formatting is a little odd but easy to do.
Search. This is the big one. The search menu option now appears and does an awesome job searching through the database for topics and posts. Try it out, we are very happy with it.
HTML5 Desktop Notifications. If you accept the "Allow Notifications" question that comes up, MangoLassi can now pop up desktop notifications instead of requiring you to look at the site at all times in order to see if anyone has responded to you or if there is new content on a topic that you are following.
Downvoter Anti "Troll" System This is an experimental feature. A topic's opacity is determined by its downvote status. If the community downvotes a topic too much it will slowly fade away making it harder and harder to get attention should we have people intentionally posting poor content. We will see over time how this impacts real behavior.
Email Handling We know that people are clamoring for email notifications on threads but, at this time, that is not possible. That is coming, I assure you, but at this time we finally have emails working for things like sign up notification and password resets. This is the first step towards email notifications.
Metro Tiles This is the one that everyone will notice straight away, on the main page the previously static tiles are now animated and show some of the content from those topic areas.
New Categories Trying to strike a balance of having ways to organize posts but making it always clear where a posts goes is important. We have expanded the range of posting options by adding some very clear new categories. New categories include "IT Careers - the place to discuss job hunting, resumes, certifications, training, relocation and all other aspects of getting a position and improving your career", "Job Postings - For anyone to post for positions that they want to hire. Could be head hunters, recruiters or just regular IT Pros looking to hire." and "IT Business - the place to discuss the business of IT for people working as Managed Service Providers, Consultants, VARs, etc. Talk about services, pricing, business practices, etc." As always, all technical discussions, the bread and butter of the community, will remain in a single category because there is no means of reliably segregating the discussions in an intuitive and meaningful way.
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Great. Metro Tiles are taking some getting used to. Maybe one of those glitz, not functionality features. IMO
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@steve said:
Metro Tiles This is the one that everyone will notice straight away, on the main page the previously static tiles are now animated and show some of the content from those topic areas.
Hi @steve , gotta just say not a huge fan of the tiles changing. Having the number of threads in there, or an unread number would be great but keep the title on at all times. If you want to have a small scrolling section for "quotes" that's fine, but the title should always be on. It's really for us old guys, because I can't remember my own name if it's not up all the time
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@Martin9700 said:
@steve said:
Metro Tiles This is the one that everyone will notice straight away, on the main page the previously static tiles are now animated and show some of the content from those topic areas.
Hi @steve , gotta just say not a huge fan of the tiles changing. Having the number of threads in there, or an unread number would be great but keep the title on at all times. If you want to have a small scrolling section for "quotes" that's fine, but the title should always be on. It's really for us old guys, because I can't remember my own name if it's not up all the time
I do agree in a lot of ways. Trying to remember which one is which can be frustrating. Maybe a heading over the tiles with the group name and then using the tile for scrolling content? In any case, something needs to be static so that it's easily identifiable which group is which at all times. The rest is awesome!
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I'm torn on it. Once you know what they are, I like the tiles. But it can be pretty tough to figure out what they are supposed to be.
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@scottalanmiller said:
I'm torn on it. Once you know what they are, I like the tiles. But it can be pretty tough to figure out what they are supposed to be.
It looks like it got tweaked a bit. I like it much better now albeit the different sizes are screwing with my CDO.
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This is what I mean. If they are all set to have the picture, title and description as well as the, what appears to be, four most recent comments/threads, that'd be better. The one bigger than the rest is making my eye twitch...
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I personally dont see the value of them changing. I sit and watch the tiles til I can read the forum heading
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Good feedback guys. As you can see, we agreed on the "Live Tiles" and moved to this alternative view with the titles still in place but a view of recent content right on the main page.
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@steve said:
Good feedback guys. As you can see, we agreed on the "Live Tiles" and moved to this alternative view with the titles still in place but a view of recent content right on the main page.
I like the new style that @ajstringham screenshotted above. Better use of the space and I can still tell what the categories are.
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@scottalanmiller oh wow I just went to long sleep yesterday. I am surprised with this changes.
@ajstringham where are you? -
@Joyfano said:
@scottalanmiller oh wow I just went to long sleep yesterday. I am surprised with this changes.
@ajstringham where are you?He had a time change here so it is later than you are used to with him and tomorrow he has to work early. I suspect that he is asleep.
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@joyfano Yes a lot of changes! I really like what all was done this weekend. It is really maturing here.
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@scottalanmiller I like the changes too!
hahahaha pretty sure he is sleeping -
The platform is not very old, so I am expecting to see a lot of changes coming on a regular basis. I can't wait to see the site after it gets themed too. Right now, as I understand it, they are running on a generic theme while waiting for the graphic designers to put things together.
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I am excited for additional changes...
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Other than the official MangoLassi theming, I think that the biggest thing that people are waiting on is email notifications. I've not heard any rumours of a roadmap for that yet, though.
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yes that is one thing .. I wondering before why I haven't received any notification form MangoLassi..
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@Joyfano said:
yes that is one thing .. I wondering before why I haven't received any notification form MangoLassi..
Yes, no functionality for that yet. I've been asking. That is some much needed functionality.
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Emoticon / Emoji Drop Down Selector.
@steve Do you have a list of emoticons? Just asking. Thanks
