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Andy Zhao (he/him) for The DEV Team

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dev.to Repo Recap from the Past Week

#changelog #meta #opensource

Hey all! This edition will be covering January 6th to January 12th.

Features

And in the iOS repo...

Bug Fixes / Other Contributions

aspittel

New Years and New Beginnings: I'm Joining the DEV team!

Ali Spittel ・ Jan 9 '19

#meta #career #personalnews

  • @abraham updated our Gemfile to use the published buffer gem version instead of the one from the GitHub repo. Thanks, Abraham!

  • @lightalloy fix comment cancel button redirect url

New Issues / Discussions

  • @vnbrs requested the ability as a tag moderator to merge similar tags. We technically have this functionality, but don't have the tooling for it yet. If you're a tag moderator and see a tag that should be merged, feel free to let us know in the Connect channel. Thanks, @vnbrs!

    Ability to merge similar tags #1469

    vnbrs avatar
    vnbrs posted on

    Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. Recently I've posted "I want to learn functional programming: where to start?" and to tag it, I searched for what people were using to tag functional programming posts. I found out that there were two tags being used, "fp" and "functionalprogramming", but these two tags mean the same.

    Describe the solution you'd like Stack Exchange deals with it very well with moderation features. They provide a way to merge and make tags as synonym, considering one of the tags as the main one.

    For instance, if we choose 'functionalprogramming" as the "right" one, this feature would:

    1. Remove synonyms from existing posts, in my case it'd remove "fp" from my post
    2. Add the main tag ("functionalprogramming") to these posts, if it isn't tagged with it yet
    3. For new posts, auto-correct "fp" with "functionalprogramming"
    View on GitHub

  • @vladkodmc opened up a discussion about UI and drawing attention to the right places. Check out the issue for the deets. Thanks, @vladkodmc!

    UI contrast and drawing attention to the right places #1470

    vladinator1000 avatar
    vladinator1000 posted on

    Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. The article view is hard to read because the UI makes you look to the right instead of at the article: example of box-shadow being too distracting

    Because dev.to is about reading articles, the article should attract the most attention. The box-shadows are very flavouful, but when there's a lot of text to read it quickly gets tiring to read.

    Describe the solution you'd like We can make it easy on the eyes by enforcing a visual hierarchy by tweaking color values, so that the user doesn't have to try hard to look away from the right (like I did). Basically the area of most importance (the article) would have the most contrast, the second area in importance would have less contrast (black would turn to gray), and so on...

    Here's what I came up with in the browser inspector, I accidentally made the article text gray though, it should be black: reduced contrast of less important elements

    Describe alternatives you've considered Could also reduce the color value of every less important element, like text, not just the box-shadows, so that the article font is blacker and hence have more contrast than the less important stuff.

    Additional context This reasoning is rooted in visual design principles, see section 3, titled Value, of this style guide.

    Having a hierarchy of value ranges for specific elements can improve readability and accessibility. When I first saw dev.to I quite liked the bold box shadow, I think it adds personality. But with time I just naturally resort to the Firefox reader view because the article view is too straining for my eyes.

    There is an issue related to this like #1273, but I think it doesn't make sense in the big picture. The overall experience should be non-straneous so that users can read more articles, only after this is accomplished should people think about how to get a better lighthouse score.

    View on GitHub

  • @peter raise the issue where underscores in a username prevents @-mentions from linking properly. This is somewhat solveable with a Markdown technique, but we'll also want to implement a solution to handle this, too.

    Paired underscores in a username prevents @-mention linking properly #1491

    pkfrank avatar
    pkfrank posted on

    Describe the bug I tried to @-mention the user _morgan_adams_ (DEV profile) and noticed this issue. Instead of auto-linking to the DEV profile properly, it interprets the underscores as Markdown instructions to italicize. This is an issue both in both comments and posts.

    To Reproduce See GIF below.

    Expected behavior The @-mentioned username should link to the DEV account properly.

    Screenshots example GIF showing the issue in action

    View on GitHub

  • We brought up the discussion of allowing users to configure their own Markdown rendering. Feel free to chime in the issue. Issue by @jess:

    Allow users to configure markdown rendering #1492

    jessleenyc avatar
    jessleenyc posted on

    Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. Markdown can be handled in a few ways and some people will have preferences for certain things. Makes sense to let people choose how they want their markdown handled.

    Describe the solution you'd like To start, let's add the option for our markdown parser to ignore certain line-breaks. See #575 for more info. This is a setting users should be able to toggle through their settings page.

    View on GitHub

  • @link2twenty discussed adjusting how collapsing comments look in the mobile view. Thanks, Andrew!

    [UI] Collapsible comments on Mobile #1498

    Link2Twenty avatar
    Link2Twenty posted on

    On mobile, the collapsible comments arrow and summary are a little small.

    Screenshot

    Reddit, who also do collapsible comments, get around this by not having collapsible comments, on mobile, but rather only displaying base level comments with a button to reveal replies.

    Reddit

    Once replies are revealed they can not be hidden away again.

    This issue serves as a place to discuss the UI for mobile and any changes that may need to be made.

    View on GitHub

  • @vinistock requested a feature where you can see in your dashboard the total number of reactions of the comments for each of your posts. Thanks, @vinistock!

    Add comment reaction count to dashboard #1505

    vinistock avatar
    vinistock posted on

    Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

    Feature.

    Dev already has a post reaction count in the dashboard page. I thought it would make sense (in my opinion, of course) to have a comment reaction count as well.

    A lot of comments contribute significantly to the content present in articles so I believe it makes sense to include the count for them as well.

    Describe the solution you'd like

    Have the dashboard display the number of total comment reactions.

    From a brief code analysis, it should be as simple as doing a sum over a user's comments' reaction count. The extensive part of the work is the design and the front end portion.

    View on GitHub

  • @maestromac raised the issue of having better Liquid tag error handling.

    Better Liquid tag error handling #1511

    maestromac avatar
    maestromac posted on

    Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. Whenever there's an error in the liquid tag, the editor should try it's best to inform the author what went wrong and not display the dreaded Liquid error: internal. This has also proven to be difficult to debug in development.

    Describe the solution you'd like Currently, we are making our individual custom liquid tag to raise StandardError upon initialization if there's an... ArgumentError. We are doing this because any form of error that happens within #render will throw a Liquid error: internal.

    A better solution would be to let Liquid parse normally, ie Liquid::Template.parse(sanitized_content), then check for errors with Liquid.errors. This also has the added benefit of catching multiple errors at once, letting them be added to errors to be displayed in the view.

    Describe alternatives you've considered There could be a better solution I've missed in this documentation.

    Additional context This should also account both of our editor versions.

    View on GitHub

  • @wuz requested a feature where you can create polls in dev.to. Thanks, Conlin!

    Implementing polls on dev.to #1512

    wuz avatar
    wuz posted on

    Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. There are many great types of content on dev.to, but I would love to see a way to gather information from the community. I think polls are a natural fit alongside things like #discuss topics and many other dev.to features.

    Describe the solution you'd like I'd love to see a tag and liquid tag for implementing polls. To begin with it might be worthwhile to test out the feature with a #poll tag and an embedded poll service. If that goes well, a built in poll feature could be very cool. That would prevent the need for a separate service and could lead to some interesting statistics around the types of questions and answers that are created.

    Describe alternatives you've considered As I said, using a third-party system is a good alternative to start with.

    Additional context N/A

    View on GitHub

  • @kurtz1993 raised an issue where the Twitter and Github links are too large on Safari's reader mode. Thanks, @kurtz1993!

    Twitter and Github links too big on safari reading view #1517

    Kurtz1993 avatar
    Kurtz1993 posted on

    I've always used the reading view in mobile safari to read articles in the webpage, but recently I found that Twitter and Github icons are being rendered at 100% of the viewport's width.

    To Reproduce Steps to reproduce the behavior:

    1. Go to any article in dev.to using mobile safari
    2. Click on reading view
    3. See error

    Expected behavior The icons should be rendered at normal movile size.

    Screenshots f2dc5134-9f10-4e0f-a432-126e85bf7043

    Smartphone (please complete the following information):

    • Device: iPhone 7
    • OS: iOS 12.1.2
    • Browser: Safari
    </div>
<div class="gh-btn-container"><a class="gh-btn" href="https://github.com/thepracticaldev/dev.to/issues/1517">View on GitHub</a></div>
    Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode



  • @jess raised an issue where Tag liquid tag overflowing comment box in notifications.

    Tag liquid tag overflowing comment box in notifications #1520

    jessleenyc avatar
    jessleenyc posted on

    Describe the bug Styling of the tag liquid tag is getting cut off / not minimizing properly.

    Screenshots

    View on GitHub

  • @artemix discussed move expand/collapse indicators for the comments. Thanks, @artemix!

    Move expand/collapse ticks into comment cards #1518

    Arteneko avatar
    Arteneko posted on

    Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

    When I first saw the expand/collapse ticks, I didn't understand the original purpose of them.

    After hovering them, and seeing that it was not simply a bug in the website, but an actual action, I understood its purpose.

    I think that the tick's not explicit, and its positioning wrong: it changes the comment card's state, I'd expect to find it in the card.

    Additional context

    For nested comments, maybe the parent card could contain child cards in design?

    Finally, here's a screenshot of an example of ticks and nested comments:

    View on GitHub

    • We've got some good discussions going in the issues above, and any feedback on the new features is appreciated. Thanks for reading!

Top comments (1)

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andy profile image
Andy Zhao (he/him) •

Thank you for your contributions @timorthi , @link2twenty , @mariocsee , @striderhnd , @arun , @delbetu , @vnbrs , @ben , @maestromac , @vinistock , @jess , @aspittel , @abraham , @lightalloy , @vnbrs , @vladkodmc , @peter , @wuz , @kurtz1993 and @artemix !

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