HeadphonesandLSD
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Oct 10, 2011
- Messages
- 2,245
Wasn't sure which prefix to use for this so I went with general feedback.
First issue: The animations above forums/threads.
Can we please have an option to disable these? They're nice and I'm not trying to knock the person that made them. But they use a lot of CPU even on modern systems (mine causes it to eat 18-20% of a semi-modern CPU when it's on screen). On my laptops they kill my battery if I happen to forget and leave them on screen. I've had to resort to blocking them using an element blocker on a couple of machines to prevent them from eating battery power. Plus if I'm being frank they're kind of annoying when I want to see the threads.
Now I understand useful information is linked within them for each forum. That's very nice. These links could be offered in a simpler way that is less taxing on user's systems. A traditional box with the links and relevant information could be offered with no animation instead. Whoever made them also did a decent job. It's just the nature of modern browsers that you can't do stuff like this without it causing a lot of load on the end user's computer.
Offering this option would be very easy to implement. All we'd have to do is offer a new option to users in preferences then make a minor modification to the forum/thread templates that would check for it. Based on that check it could load template A with the animations or Template B with either no box at all or an element that had the same information as template A without the animations and maybe in a more simple layout that doesn't take up so much screen real estate.
Second issue: Dark style and misc. issues with styles
I prefer using the Dark mode. I'm using the "Blackout" style right now. There are several minor issues with this style. I won't name them all. But the main one that annoys me is the color of text within input forms like the one I'm using now. The background color of the input form I'm using is almost the same color as the text. They're way too close together and it makes it very hard to read. The text within threads/posts/forum is a little better since the background is a bit darker. But it's still too close to the background for my liking.
What I've had to do is write my own style sheet for BL to fix this and other issues with the dark style. I've tried some of the other darker styles and they have minor problems like this as well. I did stumble upon one that seemed broken as well. I forget which it is now. I'll try to remember to come back and give more details about that.
Again fixing these issues wouldn't be very hard. Just requires tweaking some values in the admin cp for the style in question.
Third thing: Support for older devices, text browsers etc.
Alright I lied I have a third thing I'd like to bring up. I like to browse the web using text browsers from time to time. Lynx, eww, w3m mainly. I like to do this from within emacs for various reasons. Thankfully, with BL it's still possible to do this because you guys have been halfway decent about not requiring javascript to lurk. But the formatting within text browsers is really bad and could be greatly improved. Posting no longer works through text browsers either. Which could also easily be fixed.
Now I know in this age of phones and modern systems people don't think much about someone trying to read and post from a terminal emulator, machine from the 1980s/1990s or anything that isn't Google Chrome, Firefox or Safari. But considering BL is already halfway working in these text based browsers why not go all the way? Again, it would only require minor modifications. A new style plus a few lines of code to auto detect these browsers and serve them that style by default. You'd be surprised how many people are out there that want to still browse the web this way. Given the nature of BL I think it's important. There are a lot of people that require them because their machines can no longer run modern browser engines. A lot of modern devices like phones from just a few years ago can't get updated browsers anymore. But with a simplified text browser style they could still read content here and post.
Final gripe: Might get shouted at for this one. But why are you guys using cloudflare and googletagmanager? I really wish you guys wouldn't embed those scripts on every page load. Are you using CF for the anti-ddos protection? If so there are better ways to do that without cloudflare being able to snoop upon all data going to and from your server. Same goes for googletagmanager. They can track what people are doing here and tie it back to their real identities. But back to cloudflare for a moment. You know how https is supposed to ensure the connection is encrypted and everything going between the user and the BL server is safe? Well cloudflare breaks that. Since they need a copy of the keys to host mirrors of the content. So everything is decrypted when it hits their server, then re-encrypted, then sent to the user or the server. Meaning everything to them is in plain text.
I just wanted to make you all aware of this in case you weren't. There are ways to do this same thing for anti-ddos and mirroring content without involving a third party. It doesn't cost that much a month to do it. Just need a handful of VPSs. Even if you want to out source it there are many other companies offering this type of service. Plus most good hosting providers offer anti-ddos now anyway.
I'll stop with the questions and suggestions now. I'm always willing to help as I've said before a few times already tonight.
First issue: The animations above forums/threads.
Can we please have an option to disable these? They're nice and I'm not trying to knock the person that made them. But they use a lot of CPU even on modern systems (mine causes it to eat 18-20% of a semi-modern CPU when it's on screen). On my laptops they kill my battery if I happen to forget and leave them on screen. I've had to resort to blocking them using an element blocker on a couple of machines to prevent them from eating battery power. Plus if I'm being frank they're kind of annoying when I want to see the threads.
Now I understand useful information is linked within them for each forum. That's very nice. These links could be offered in a simpler way that is less taxing on user's systems. A traditional box with the links and relevant information could be offered with no animation instead. Whoever made them also did a decent job. It's just the nature of modern browsers that you can't do stuff like this without it causing a lot of load on the end user's computer.
Offering this option would be very easy to implement. All we'd have to do is offer a new option to users in preferences then make a minor modification to the forum/thread templates that would check for it. Based on that check it could load template A with the animations or Template B with either no box at all or an element that had the same information as template A without the animations and maybe in a more simple layout that doesn't take up so much screen real estate.
Second issue: Dark style and misc. issues with styles
I prefer using the Dark mode. I'm using the "Blackout" style right now. There are several minor issues with this style. I won't name them all. But the main one that annoys me is the color of text within input forms like the one I'm using now. The background color of the input form I'm using is almost the same color as the text. They're way too close together and it makes it very hard to read. The text within threads/posts/forum is a little better since the background is a bit darker. But it's still too close to the background for my liking.
What I've had to do is write my own style sheet for BL to fix this and other issues with the dark style. I've tried some of the other darker styles and they have minor problems like this as well. I did stumble upon one that seemed broken as well. I forget which it is now. I'll try to remember to come back and give more details about that.
Again fixing these issues wouldn't be very hard. Just requires tweaking some values in the admin cp for the style in question.
Third thing: Support for older devices, text browsers etc.
Alright I lied I have a third thing I'd like to bring up. I like to browse the web using text browsers from time to time. Lynx, eww, w3m mainly. I like to do this from within emacs for various reasons. Thankfully, with BL it's still possible to do this because you guys have been halfway decent about not requiring javascript to lurk. But the formatting within text browsers is really bad and could be greatly improved. Posting no longer works through text browsers either. Which could also easily be fixed.
Now I know in this age of phones and modern systems people don't think much about someone trying to read and post from a terminal emulator, machine from the 1980s/1990s or anything that isn't Google Chrome, Firefox or Safari. But considering BL is already halfway working in these text based browsers why not go all the way? Again, it would only require minor modifications. A new style plus a few lines of code to auto detect these browsers and serve them that style by default. You'd be surprised how many people are out there that want to still browse the web this way. Given the nature of BL I think it's important. There are a lot of people that require them because their machines can no longer run modern browser engines. A lot of modern devices like phones from just a few years ago can't get updated browsers anymore. But with a simplified text browser style they could still read content here and post.
Final gripe: Might get shouted at for this one. But why are you guys using cloudflare and googletagmanager? I really wish you guys wouldn't embed those scripts on every page load. Are you using CF for the anti-ddos protection? If so there are better ways to do that without cloudflare being able to snoop upon all data going to and from your server. Same goes for googletagmanager. They can track what people are doing here and tie it back to their real identities. But back to cloudflare for a moment. You know how https is supposed to ensure the connection is encrypted and everything going between the user and the BL server is safe? Well cloudflare breaks that. Since they need a copy of the keys to host mirrors of the content. So everything is decrypted when it hits their server, then re-encrypted, then sent to the user or the server. Meaning everything to them is in plain text.
I just wanted to make you all aware of this in case you weren't. There are ways to do this same thing for anti-ddos and mirroring content without involving a third party. It doesn't cost that much a month to do it. Just need a handful of VPSs. Even if you want to out source it there are many other companies offering this type of service. Plus most good hosting providers offer anti-ddos now anyway.
I'll stop with the questions and suggestions now. I'm always willing to help as I've said before a few times already tonight.
