live-update comment usability bug

by appleshampoo on Apr 24, 2009 5:01 PM PDT

Hi folks,

I've been really annoyed recently with what looks to be a usability bug in SBN2.0, so I'm posting to see if other people are experiencing it or if it's just my uncommon setup (Firefox + Ubuntu GNU/Linux).

It happens when you are scrolling through comments, either using Z or C+X, although I'll reference 'X' for this post, since that's how I do it. When a new comment appears above you. If at this point you hit X (or Z) to try to mark the comment you are currently visiting as 'read', it will actually mark the new comment above your focus as 'read', and you lose the ability to scroll to and find the new comment (other than by manually searching for it).

You can try to mitigate the bug manually by scrolling back to your current comment anytime you notice a new comment has appeared above you (you can usually notice the screen shifting down). But then you get into a race condition, because if you hit 'X' within a very short amount of time of a new comment appearing above you, you'll usually un-mark the wrong comment. This gets really bad in heavy game threads, as you can hit 'X', then wait for a few seconds as a bunch of new comments come in, and then end up marking a comment way above you as read which wasn't even on the page when you hit 'X'.

Anyway I'll stop rambling now as hopefully I've laid the problem out pretty clearly. I'm surprised no one else has bitched about this, hence my suspicion it's not an issue in IE or on Windows. In any case I should probably just talk to the SBN tech folks, but I wanted to get some feedback first. Does SBN have an official support channel or bug-tracking site somewhere for us proles? Or should I just funnel my feedback through the mods? It doesn't seem like the fix should be too hard, just don't change the focus when a new comment appear above the current focus.

Thanks for reading, and let's go get 'em Erik.

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This also happens for me

in Firefox, on both WinNT (at work) and OS X (at home). I only really use Z so I don’t know about the other hotkeys.

Nice Guys Finish Third - Hopelessly lost, but makin' good time.

by pdb on Apr 24, 2009 5:22 PM PDT reply actions

It's worse with Z

which is why I’ve started to use C+X. With Z you have no way to mitigate the bug, with C you can scroll back to your current comment without unmarking the as-yet-unread comment.

by appleshampoo on Apr 24, 2009 5:26 PM PDT up reply actions

Happens with me as well

Firefox on both WinXP and Win7.

by BrianL on Apr 24, 2009 5:33 PM PDT reply actions

There's a reason I disabled the live updating.

I like using semi-colons; they make me feel smart.

by Llewdor on Apr 24, 2009 5:47 PM PDT reply actions

You can turn it off?

Apparently I didn’t look hard enough for this feature.

by appleshampoo on Apr 24, 2009 5:48 PM PDT up reply actions

Haha, there's a checkbox right there.

Although I feel like hitting F5 every few minutes would get annoying, kind of like SBN1.0. I might try it though.

by appleshampoo on Apr 24, 2009 5:49 PM PDT up reply actions

I liked SBN 1.0. I saw no reason for the upgrade.

So I do what I can to undo the changes.

I like using semi-colons; they make me feel smart.

by Llewdor on Apr 26, 2009 7:42 PM PDT up reply actions

I don't think it's ever worked

I kinda have a feel for when to use c+x and when to use z after a new comment pops up though

by Graham MacAree on Apr 24, 2009 5:47 PM PDT reply actions

Well I've submitted a contact with SBN

The fact that it’s happening on Windows seems like it’s serious enough to let them know, if they don’t already have a bug open for it.

Thanks for the quick feedback guys. I wanted to make sure it wasn’t just me.

by appleshampoo on Apr 24, 2009 5:48 PM PDT reply actions

I haven't seen an incoming case for this in our bug tracking system

But, we weren’t aware of the issue and would want to fix it ASAP. Please send us a bug report!

For everyone there are two ways to do that:

1) Send an email to support@sbnation.com

2) Use the contact us page linked at the bottom of every page on LL (and all the other SB Nation blogs)

We prefer #2 because it allows us to ask all sorts of specific questions and we can automatically detect your browser/OS, etc. However, we realize #1 is easy to remember. Either way works for us because they both feed into our bug tracking system and it puts the case into the hands of our product team ASAP.

It helps if the hitter thinks you're a little crazy. - Nolan

by Trei Brundrett on Apr 26, 2009 8:14 AM PDT up reply actions