Just spent a lot of time forming a question and posting code. Clicked preview. Had to log in again because the token expired. Where the hell is all my hard work? Anyone care to guess how many articles I’ve read on good site design just to see the author break half or more of his or her own rules?
lesson* learned: compose lengthy posts in a text editor on your local machine… use auto-save if the text editor allows, or hit the save button yourself once in a while
this covers you not only if the site you want to post to goes down, but also if your own machine goes down
once your post is okay in your text editor, copy/paste the whole thing to teh interwebs
- i learned this lesson when working with sql source code, which is a lot trickier than english, for a microsoft access application, because microsoft access takes your carefully crafted code and bïtchslaps it by removing all spaces and linefeeds and inserting (horrendous (and (unnecessary))) parentheses all over da place
Did this happen in these forums? I’m asking to be certain, because it never happened to me so far.
be certain that it did
Yeah, unfortunately it happens sometimes. I don’t think it’s normal behavior, but sometimes things go a bit wonky … which is why I’va also learned to do a r937 advised and make a copy first before submitting.
it seems to be behaving. had me worried. i think i’ve seen too many sites where “not working” is typical behavior. Other typical behaviors are getting the reply “huh?” when verbally asking a question or making a statement. “you’re about to get hit by a train!” … “Huh?” [smack]
But the big one is asking a question in a forum after doing as much as I can before bothering folks (while a few others just post without trying) and getting responses that have nothing to do with the question, getting questions that were already addressed clearly in the OP, advice, opinions, everything but the answer or even “can’t be done that way”. I think I just stated and restated my objective and prob 3 times in another sub-forum.
Although the expiry problem surely has something to do with the forum’s vBulletin settings. I think it most likely also has a lot more to do with individual browsers and their settings.
I typically use Firefox on Win7 for SitePoint and unless I leave the browser open and break my cnx to get away for a while I have never had to log back in.
And I have never “lost” a lengthy, in word or time, post. Though I admit I do prefer to craft the longer (in word) posts offline in an editor and then copy-paste them, if not for any other reason to let me proof-read them first.
It did happen to me recently when I took a phone call before finishing a long post and didn’t come back to it for over an hour. As a precaution, I copied the post and made a backup. Of course, trying to submit the post failed, but fortunately I was able just to paste it in again afterwards. Using Firefox.
Mittineague, ralph.m:
I think it was firefox, but under linux - a REAL firefox, not the hacked up crap from some distros. I can’t believe i failed my simplest solution. If I have no need to do anything to expire or destroy the session, I just ctrl-a, ctrl-c the post and if the design of the site allows that, (i.e.,
if( highlights the whole page on ctrl-a) { highlight with mouse } else { proceed }
if( post failed ){ get back to post or reply editor and ctrl-v }
Hey… time to do the above < time to open editor and paste < time to type this
Cheers,
Mike
Linux - Saving you from the Gates of hell.
wonder what will happen when he dies. Maybe he’ll meet again with his old nemesis Steve. I hope Steve whips him for copying the Mac GUI to make 'doze, lying, stealing good code and screwing it up, lying, sacrificing quality for quantity while low-balling price to sell everyone a puter that they now can’t afford to replace nor afford my reasonable repair rates.
Here’s an alternate outcome of Bill’s demise:
http://www.ahajokes.com/com040.html
uh, the alternate punchline was “… screensaver.” Much better since, as we all know, his “demo” crashed at a university presentation. 8)
Anyone up for gates whipping - let’s take it to General Discussions
What I don’t understand is why the forum can’t take the post data, repopulate the form and tell you the token was invalid. Surely that’d fix the issue for everyone?
Tom:
Some sites do. Some even repopulate the form when you click back - browser cache, I guess. In this case, the POST request brought me to a blank page and clicking back and/or a page refresh resulted in the error msg after I told the dialog to go ahead and resend the data. So then I logged in again and it was gone. Maybe I’ll never forget to cover my ass again. I’m hyper and in a hurry, so I say that tongue in cheek.
Here’s a good one. I’m looking at your post after seeing it in email. I notice that the last time I posted I could find the option to reply or reply with quote and this time I only find reply with quote. “WTF?”, says mike’s left brain - his right brain is slightly out to lunch today. So I click the only option and it tells me I’m not logged in. Ok. that wasn’t a big deal, and now both options are there. But why even put the “reply with quote” option there instead of “log in to reply”?
Here’s another good one. I had to change my gmail background color. Anyone out there have an LCD (maybe mine is LED, but whatever) monitor with the matte screen? Gmail changed their user interface and copycatted the lovely new style of using the absolute lightest shade of grey border around check boxes and text fields. You know those little check boxes you use to mark messages for deletion or move to? They show up on my LT monitor, but not my new one. So I switched to a black background. It’d be interesting to play with different themes and colors just to learn how NOT to design a UI.
Sure enough. Sitepoint is guilty, also. The aforementioned login to reply - sure enough, there’s the login button. It’s draws the eye like a moth to flame. You can’t see a border around the username and password fields. The words inside those fields are darker than most sites, like you see in search boxes where it says “enter search terms here”. With that shading, experience takes over and you expect it to disappear when you click in the box. Here, the text inside the boxes with no apparent outline is dark enough that it just looks like more text - noise. My brain filters noise. Second time I got caught on this. Expecting the login button to bring me to a login page, I clicked it. Oops! 1 out of 5 attempts.
This might not seem related to a simple login form, but there’s a good article out there somewhere on a study done to determine the best way to layout and style a user input form. In a nutshell, an eye scan study was conducted and the conclusion was that top to bottom ordering is the most efficient and it’s what users expect - I’ll add to that - despite the plethora of handwritten forms designed to utilize every square millimeter of paper while leaving no room to write the requested info. Also, it was concluded that right justified label text on the left side of the input field also resulted in easier reading and less eye movement. Makes sense.
I treated myself to a xmas present back in 2010. I held out 'til the last day and sitepoint brought together their final offer. 5 books for $25. I got my money’s worth. Principles of Beautiful Web Design was one. It goes beyond merely how to make a good looking page. It touches on color schemes (which I knew, but it concisely summed it all up for me), the psychology of colors, and yup, eye scan and how to direct the user’s eye to scan a page to find what they want (or what YOU want them to do). Definitely a good read. THe other 4 books were also worth it.
Hey Tom, nice background. I think I’ll read those two articles or more. Experience has shown that even the most basic beginners books can reveal a salient point or some other golden nugget of info.
Happy 4th!
Mike
ctrl-a | ctrl-c