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KernelTrap: Adding navigation tabs

October 19, 2003 - 11:49am
Submitted by Jeremy on October 19, 2003 - 11:49am.
KernelTrap

Step two of our upgrade path is more-or-less complete. I've added navigation tabs in place of the chaotic list of links in the header. I've only tested them heavily in Galeon & Mozilla, but verified they also work in Konqueror (which seems to be quite IE-like). Opera, on the other hand, doesn't like my CSS tabs at all, ignoring them and just displaying a list... For now I suggest Opera users login and select a different theme.

I implemented my new 'taxnav module' on top of Drupal 4.3, so I've also had to upgrade the site. For the most part, I hope this upgrade will be transparent... But please let me know of any regressions. BTW: for those that prefer to see all site content, try this link.

Step three will be a redesign of the default fron-page. The goal is that someone first coming to kerneltrap.org will first see our featured-articles, and then move on to the rest of the content... We'll see how that progresses.

And finally, I intend to make the above tabs configurable. That is, with a user account I want to make it so that you can configure defaults... (For example, perhaps you're only interested in 'Linux -> News', or 'OpenBSD -> All'...

Anyway, comments are appreciated. The earlier you can let me know of any problems I've created, the better... (Remember, I'm not a web designer, I'm just having fun... So, expect a few issues! ;)

Opera

October 19, 2003 - 1:17pm

What version of opera did you test? It looks fine in 7.2beta7

re: Opera

October 19, 2003 - 1:22pm

"What version of opera did you test? It looks fine in 7.2beta7"

I was using Opera 7.11.

I just upgraded to Opera 7.21 and now the tabs look correct.

SQL error on the front page

October 20, 2003 - 4:10am

I saw this error message on the front page just below the colocation
donated by message when I was not logged in:

user error: Duplicate entry 'taxnav:block:latest_updates' for key 1
query: INSERT INTO cache (cid, data, created, expire) VALUES('taxnav:block:latest_updates', '<div class=\"item-list\"><div class=\"title\">News:</div><ul><li><a href=\"http://kerneltrap.org/taxonomy/view/or/12,36,38,40,37,39,97,9,14,16,13,15\" title=\"Interview: Rusty Russell :: by jeremy on Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - 08:03\">Features</a> <font size=\"-2\" color=\"#DDDDDD\">(09/23)</font></li><li><a href=\"http://kerneltrap.org/taxonomy/view/or/3,38,14\" title=\"FreeBSD: Improving ULE Scheduler Performance :: by jeremy on Sunday, October 19, 2003 - 22:51\">FreeBSD</a> <font size=\"-2\" color=\"#FF0000\">(10/19)</font></li><li><a href=\"http://kerneltrap.org/taxonomy/view/or/2,37,13,19\" title=\"Linux: iSCSI Target Implementation :: in /home/http/kerneltrap43/includes/database.mysql.inc on line 90.

re: SQL error on the front page

October 20, 2003 - 9:01am

"I saw this error message on the front page just below the colocation donated by message when I was not logged in:"

Yes, there's a race condition in the caching code that needs to be addressed. Fortunately the above error will never linger (ie, it will be gone if you reload), and you should not see it very often. Still, it's an issue I intend to focus on soon and resolve.

compliment + Opera suggestion

October 20, 2003 - 8:49am

I really like the appearance of the new site.

I noticed that the link tag that refers to the tab stylesheet is in the body of the document, but HTML 4 only allows the link tag to appear in the head of the document. The W3C MarkUp Validation Service also finds this problem. Opera seems to have quite a good CSS implementation, so it's quite likely that correcting this error will make the pages work as you intend in any recent version of that browser.

re: compliment + Opera suggestion

October 20, 2003 - 9:08am

I really like the appearance of the new site.

Thank you! :)

I noticed that the link tag that refers to the tab stylesheet is in the body of the document

Thanks for pointing that out -- that was quite sloppy of me. Fortunately there's a Drupal hook allowing me to move this to the header. This is now done...

Missing comments..

October 20, 2003 - 3:06pm

Some comments seem to be missing. They are listed on the main page (eg: 10 comments, 4 new), but when I go to read the article, there are either a subset of the comments (only 2 or 3) or the comments are gone. My read mode is set to:

Threaded List - expanded
Date - oldest first
30 comments per page
view all comments

Any ideas?
-molo

re: Missing comments..

October 20, 2003 - 3:47pm

Some comments seem to be missing. They are listed on the main page (eg: 10 comments, 4 new), but when I go to read the article, there are either a subset of the comments (only 2 or 3) or the comments are gone.

Yes, there appears to be a problem. I'm trying to track it down...

FYI, I'm seeing this too

October 20, 2003 - 5:34pm

Also, when I changed the comment settings, and told it to save the settings, it took me to an entirely different story. I am using Mozilla 1.5 on Win2k and I had the other story open in a different tab. It was very very weird.

re: FYI, I'm seeing this too

October 20, 2003 - 5:37pm

when I changed the comment settings, and told it to save the settings, it took me to an entirely different story.

Yes, I've seen something like this happen before, too. I hopefully will have time to track this down soon...

re: Missing comments..

October 20, 2003 - 6:53pm

Yes, there appears to be a problem. I'm trying to track it down...

Okay, I believe the problem with comments not all showing up is solved... Let me know if you're still noticing problems with this.

Looks good!

October 20, 2003 - 8:28pm

Looks good, thanks!

-molo

re: Missing comments..

October 21, 2003 - 2:13am

When clicking on comments from "Anonymous" I'm taken to the front page...

re: Missing comments..

October 21, 2003 - 8:36am

When clicking on comments from "Anonymous" I'm taken to the front page...

What do you mean? How are you 'clicking on' the comment?

re: Missing comments..

October 21, 2003 - 8:59am

The strange problems you were having with Anonymous comments should be fixed... Please let me know.

Thanks,
-Jeremy

Problem persists

October 21, 2003 - 11:54am

Comments from anonymous people are created as links (example: "Looks good in IE by Anonymous" right on this page, somewhat hidden between the comment boxes). When I follow it (url: http://kerneltrap.org//4337#4337), the main page gets loaded.

UPDATE: Seems to have been fixed in the exact moment I wrote the comment :)

re: Problem persists

October 21, 2003 - 1:14pm

When I follow it (url: http://kerneltrap.org//4337#4337), the main page gets loaded.

Yes, that is an invalid link. It should be http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/1022/4337#4337, but the 'node/view/1022' was dropped. Oddly, this doesn't happen on all pages with anonymous comments, just some of them. I'm still trying to understand why. It's evidently due to some changes I made manually a few months back, turning up when I upgraded the site.

Anway, for now I've tuned things so anonymous comments are visible without clicking a link. It will remain like this until I track down the root problem...

2 column doesn't render correctly in Mozilla

October 20, 2003 - 3:41pm

Since the upgrade, my page style (2 column, with ads, polls, and whatnot on the left) does not render correctly on either Mozilla 1.5 for Windows, or Mozilla 1.2.1 for Linux. The left column will take almost the entire width of the page, with all of the comments (or blog entries) as a little sliver on the right.



3 column (default) format does seem to work OK.



The other thing I don't particularly care for is having to go through a menu to pick which kind of content you want to add, as opposed to having separate links for "add blog entry", "add story", etc. right from the home page.

Since the upgrade, my page st

October 20, 2003 - 3:52pm

Since the upgrade, my page style (2 column, with ads, polls, and whatnot on the left) does not render correctly on either Mozilla 1.5 for Windows, or Mozilla 1.2.1 for Linux. The left column will take almost the entire width of the page, with all of the comments (or blog entries) as a little sliver on the right.

Interesting, as I didn't touch the two column themes yet. They probably need an upgrade to be compatible with the the latest version of Drupal. Sorry, you'll temporarily need to use the three-column theme until I get to this.

The other thing I don't particularly care for is having to go through a menu to pick which kind of content you want to add, as opposed to having separate links for "add blog entry", "add story", etc. right from the home page.

It's a great improvement for administrator's, as the block was far too cluttered with all the choices... I suppose if you only have a couple of choices there's less benefit. I'll look into a way to auto-expand this at a future data. (One option is to display a javascript version -- I believe someone was wokring on something like this. That way the page wouldn't have to reload when you click the 'create content' arrow)

Interesting, as I didn't to

October 21, 2003 - 2:11pm

Interesting, as I didn't touch the two column themes yet. They probably need an upgrade to be compatible with the the latest version of Drupal. Sorry, you'll temporarily need to use the three-column theme until I get to this.

This happens too with the three columns view, sometimes, and it happened with me with Beonnex, Mozilla, Firebird, Galleon and even IE... But it only happens sometimes, I can't figure out why.

KernelTrap appears broken

October 21, 2003 - 11:13am
Anonymous

Ever since the upgrade, I cannot view comments when browsing the site as anonymous. If I click on the title of a comment to view it, I am returned to the front page. If I change my comment viewing options and hit 'Save', the same thing happens.

Moz 1.3 on Linux

Column Rendering

October 22, 2003 - 8:30am

This is probably a Mozilla bug, version 1.2.1/Windows2000
Every time I visit Kerneltrap the left column is rendered over the whole page. A little bit later will Mozilla aquire the format that you intended. This is a little bit annoying, more annoying when you had your salary survey covering the whole page.
Lately has Mozilla started to render column 1 over the whole page, you have to panorate with the slide bar to read the other columns, this is increadible annoying.
The problem can sometimes be solved by reloading the page, or clicking on another kerneltrap link.
I beleive this is a hard to track down intermittent error somewhere.

/Magnus

re: Column Rendering

October 22, 2003 - 8:38am

Every time I visit Kerneltrap the left column is rendered over the whole page. A little bit later will Mozilla aquire the format that you intended. This is a little bit annoying, more annoying when you had your salary survey covering the whole page.

Do you remember when this started? Was it when I first added the new CSS-based three column theme? Or later, when I added the CSS-based tabs at the top? Or...?

re: Column Rendering

October 22, 2003 - 10:50am

This started ages ago.
This is my beleif, you have run Kerneltrap for quite some time, this code has been stable and usable. Then you decided to update the site, a few weeks ago, sometime in the time when you were running the salary poll, thats when I beleive my trouble started, I was actually about to mail you a complaint.
/Magnus

re: Column Rendering

October 22, 2003 - 11:00am

This started ages ago.

I suppose the implication is that something in the left colum is not rendering properly _some of the time_...

Please do me a favor -- when you see this, take a look at the ad that's currently displayed. See if it's the same ad every time... If so, then that's obviously the problem. Let me know which one, and I'll fix it. (I'd troubleshoot this myself, but I've never had the problem with Mozilla on Linux)

I've also temporarily moved the poll to the right column on the off chance that it's somehow related. I don't expect so, but if the right column now starts taking up most of the screen...

Thanks!

re: Column Rendering

October 22, 2003 - 11:19am

I don't think it is the poll, it is probably not the advertisment either.
It looks like you first load the left column and render it over the whole page, mozilla is still down loading and when it stops, having loaded everything, the page is displayed as intended, most of the times...

/Magnus

re: Column Rendering

October 22, 2003 - 11:40am

It looks like you first load the left column and render it over the whole page, mozilla is still down loading and when it stops, having loaded everything, the page is displayed as intended, most of the times...

I think it's "fixed". I'm not exactly sure what was causing the problem, perhaps the javascript-generated ad was confusing Mozilla's rendering of CSS, specifically the width. Anyway, moving the ad to the right column (at which time the table width is fully defined) appears to solve the problem. Let me know if this has worked for you too...

For a long term solution I intend to re-implement the advertising block w/o JavaScript... there must be another way to rotate ads on cached pages...

re: Column Rendering

October 22, 2003 - 12:33pm

Yes, now it appears as I want it.
Thanks,

Well, you know I do some html/php coding with functionality as goal, just for access of internal data bases. These pages are _ugly_ but quite useful.

Maybe, I am just guessing know, you could do some implementation with frames, loading your advertisement, then you can set the expiretime to something short, like always reload.

Magnus

Sorry to disappoint you, but

October 30, 2003 - 5:25pm

Sorry to disappoint you, but it still happens...

Check this screenshot.

re: Sorry to disappoint you, but

October 30, 2003 - 5:31pm

Sorry to disappoint you, but it still happens...

Con Kolivas seems to have tracked it down to an issue with Mozilla (or the gecko-engine)... If you compile your own copy, he has posted a fix.

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