MetaFic

sleep well...

My request would be to make the story/chapter thing more idiot (i.e. me) proof so that the chapter number was given and not something the author input. The second thing would be to remove chapter as a 'create content' choice except where linked to a story.

For what its worth, knowing you are busy, I wasn't actually expecting you to do anything with it immediately, but I also wanted to get the idea out there while it was fresh on my mind. I'm a chronic procrastinator and if I put something off it tends to get put off indefinitely... Good idea collecting everything in one thread though. :-)

- SC

as some of the older threads have been getting longer I've been wondering if there's any chance of putting a 'return to top' link at the bottom of each page.

Also I've noticed that clicking the 'x New' link in the recent additions page always takes me to the most recent post. is there any chance of changing this to the first post marked 'new'?

- SC

Except I am sadistic enough to enjoy reading this thread. :-)

I would agree with this one. I'm a bit confused on adding chapters. I have no idea if it's working correctly (i.e. adding chapters to the correct story) when I do it, but when I look at the story as a whole (after Story Search) it appears they went to the right story. It must be magic. :-) I also kind of would expect "add chapter" to be under "create content", but it's not. I can deal with it, but like I said, I find the whole adding chapter thing confusing. (Then again, I'm sure my wife would say that I'm always confused. :-)

Kevin

Nope, not magic, it's me. I just send them to the proper story.

To do it properly, go to your story page, and use the "Create new chapter" link in the "Story operations" section. And write the chapter numbers without the 0.

I'd say that's pretty straightforward. Maybe we should add a FAQ item about that...

I've posted a full report to the Bug Report forum (http://www.metafic.com/content/upload-failure-tlt-story) but basically the second and subsequent chapters are not linked from the story and do not link to each other properly.

What happened I cannot say from here, obviously, but the chapter URLs do not have a story ID in them.

Insert embarrassment emoticon here.
The real story? I was not paying attention to what I was doing on the upload. My bad.

The story for public consumption? I decided to stop lurking on "The official torture Dino thread" and participate in it.

Thanks! I appreciate the help!

(sheepish look) I eventually found the "Create new chapter" link in the "Story operations" section several days after I posted my comment. Yeah, I'm slow sometimes. Yeah, a FAQ might be a good thing.

Maybe this has already been addressed in my absence, but Chuck couldn't get strikethrough to work. This is as much a note to myself as to Dino, but I enjoy torturing him.

. . . onto the To-Do list.

From RecentPosts (metafic.com/tracker), clicking on the "X new msgs" ought to jump me straight to the start of the new messages. When there are multiple pages of comments, it can be tedious to load page 1, then scroll to the end, then load page 2, then scroll to the end . . .

Related, when multiple comment pages exist, better nav support.

The admin level function to move comments and chapters among locations. Example, a comment recently should've been posted in this thread, but was an outgrowth of another discussion. Being able to migrate it would be useful. Chapters we've already talked about, but requiring DB work to do it is moderately silly.

Repeat of "strikethrough" font issue.

Air delivery of netbook to Dino when he's banished to medical care under the microscopic scrutiny of his other half. Note to self - check export regulations and WiFi options.

Add to the list email notification that you have a new private message (a must have feature if you have members that like to disappear for long periods of time).

There is a link, just under the thread title on Page 1, which says "X replies" and will take you directly to the real new messages on the correct page.

The information as to where the new messages live is obviously available somewhere. Maybe the Tracker could use this information?

I had been meaning to say something about this but got distracted by too many other things, sorry.

One of the things I liked about certain other sites was the ability to view all the chapters of a story at once, especially with longer ones. Is there any way to do this? If not, I'll suggest adding it (sans comments)

I did not used to have much time to sit and go through page after page, chapter by chapter. I liked to select all and save the stories to be read offline.

Is it possible to add an option to the "filtered recent posts" page to show only "unread" posts and/or new/updated chapters?

I'm guessing the information must be stored somewhere to allow the system to display the little red exclamation marks on chapters, and the "new" links to fresh replies, but I wouldn't know whether this would be available to filter on.

Still, "what you don't ask for you can't get" is a mantra in my job, and it seems to apply here also.

Would it be possible to increase the text size to make it easier for my tired old eyes to read? If you can't, it's OK. I'll just copy the text to word and increase it there, but it would be really convenient if I could just click a button or something here on the website. Thank you.

in Safari and Firefox you can independently adjust the text size. This is done either by choosing a bigger default font size (in the Preferences or Settings pane), which will increase text size on every site you visit, though, or by using the "Zoom In" menu option while "Zoom Text Only" is checked. I suppose this should have the desired effect.
Don't want to have too much unnecessary code, now do we? ;)

Many browsers also let you hit Ctrl-+ or Ctrl-- (or some other variant such as Alt/Cmd/...) to pop the font up or down one step in the usual chain (10, 11, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 28, 32, ...)

Is there any way to increase the font size when reading one of the fics? I am vision impaired and have a hard time seeing the standard small font.

I have just installed a font-size changing control on the site to help those that need it.

On the top-left, just under the "search" box, is a header that says "Text Size". This is expandable. If you don't see a selection to increase/decrease/reset the font size, click on it, and you should get a drop-down list of choices.

The font size adjustment is presently limited to 30% of normal (if you like tiny fonts), or 200% of normal (if you like large fonts).

This is contingent on your browser supporting cookies, javascript, and the font sizes for the default font you view with. The cookies/javascript are required to store the "current" font size setting you are using. When you come back to MetaFic, it should keep the same font size you previously selected -- as long as you haven't wiped out your browser's cookie cache.

Please let me know if you have any problems, or need a wider range of font increase/decrease settings. The best solution is to just post a note here in this thread.

You have three choices for strikethrough. Note that as of HTML 4.01, the "strike" and "s" tags are deprecated. I think "del" is the recommended manner forward. So, using <del> as an opening tag, followed by the text to be "struck", followed by the closing </del> should do the trick. Using "s" or "strike" will also work in place of "del" but is not necessarily future-safe.

Like so: Butter! Parkay!

I've made some code changes to the private message system, and I believe email notify should work. There's a time lag, so don't expect it to be instant... Additional testing is in progress, but the code is in at least.

I just updated Chapter 6 to Sorcerer's Apprentice where Harry struck out several words in his letter to Ginny. The "del" code works fine!

That looks excellent, but for some reason this chapter didn't show up on the tracker as "updated".

What up with that?

Do all edits show up as "updates"? All I did was add the del code and remove the ** and note at the end.

Otherwise, why the distinction on the tracker between "new" and "updated"?

Once again, I have received an email alert for something which turns out not to be available when I get here.

Is there some way that the system could give me "That page is not yet available", with the navigation bar, rather than just a naked "Page not found" from which there is no place to go?

Better still, don't send me email alerts until the page is actually ready to read ;-)

Sorry about that. I tried to post the annotated story, but the formatting was so terrible that it wasn't readable. I thought I was being careful to not actually post the story until I had it worked out, but somehow it got posted anyway while I was experimenting. Josh set up a better way to include the annotations, and I hope to re-post the story tomorrow.

While I can confirm that the above still works fine, I can also sadly confirm that the chapter linkage is still borked. Chapters 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7 still have incorrect URLs. Is there any chance of fixing this?

I'm still not sure how that happened in the first place, but I think I've fixed it. Give it a try and let me know.

Thanks for the swift response!