Website Update Announcements (Updated: February 16, 2024) • Page 8

November 21, 2019

Added some new Star Wars emoji.

 

Hi Jason! Super minor, but typing comments doesnt seem to be working in Duck Duck Go on iOS (used to up until recently). It just shows up as Greyed out and won’t let me type/leave comments (I switched to Safari to type this). Not a huge issue but I know you like hearing things as they come up!

 

Duck Duck Go has a browser? I’ll look into it.

 

Yep, I originally used just the site for search engine but switched to the browser like 8 months ago. Has some quirks, but I like their views on privacy and they are down the street from me!

 

Emoji requests:

• Crossed Sabers
• #KyloRen (TROS version)
• #GeneralLeia

 

I can't replicate this on the latest version of iOS and the DDG app.

One possibility was a very slow internet connection at the time, or maybe it's a bug they have since fixed.

 

Thanks! It actually went away a few days ago I noticed so I can dive into the Menzingers bracket officially now :) thanks for looking into it!

 

January 21, 2020

Today I'm happy to announce a new feature for mobile devices. Since, I believe iOS 11, when you would type in a textarea in the browser, it would automatically expand to fit the size of all of your words. This was something built into the operating system and not something I could control. In theory, it's a nice idea, however it had one pretty big side effect. Once you typed enough that the textarea would expand, it would go down below the keyboard on the screen and you could no longer see what you were typing. It was an annoying game of type, scroll, type, scroll. In iOS 13 the Safari team fixed this and textareas no longer expand with the content inside. This means you'll always be able to see what you're typing into the message area, but, it also means that the message area is one fixed size and if there's a very long message inside, it can feel a little cramped. Today I'm adding a new feature to help address this.

Now, when you're posting a message from our "more options" page on a mobile device (or small screen), you'll see a new icon in the toolbar.


This expand/shrink button will expand the posting box to fill up your entire screen giving you far more real estate for your message. This is great for long messages, needing to work with longer quotes, or reading back through a long post for edits.

I've tested it on all phones running iOS 13 as well as phones going back to iOS 9. (It works on those as well but the textarea will also still expand below the keyboard because it's an old operating system.) I've also tested this on various Android devices and it works as expected on Android 8, 9, and 10. (The one issue you may see on Android is that if the keyboard is currently on screen and you hit the button it will not expand as far, if you dismiss the keyboard and then hit the button, you'll get the full screen experience.)

I also took this time to fix a few bugs with the emoji insert system.

With a good majority of people visiting and posting on the forums from a mobile device, I think it's a huge benefit to be able to take advantage of the larger screen sizes and give posters the option of having a larger message area when they need it.

If you like seeing new features like this added to the website, please consider becoming a supporting member of the website. For just 7 cents a day you can help support the continued development of new features on this website and its continued existence.

 

r u spam

 

May 7, 2020

• Bug fix: Double tap once again works to take you to the bottom a forum page.

 

May 11, 2020

• Launched Chorus.fm 3.0
• Minor changes to the navigational structure in the forums to compliment and copy what the navigational structure looks like on the main website. Added "explore" menu to the desktop and mobile menus. Tried to do this in a way that keeps muscle memory from getting too out of whack.

 

My initial thoughts:
Thank god for the notification count for the community! Though I do wonder if it might have the inadvertent effect of bringing less traffic to that page. For instance, I have a feeling I'll actually be less inclined to comment on other random threads in the community because I'm not having to load the full thing to check if I have a message. But we'll see! I'm very happy to have it either way.

Since I was signed out when first loading the site, I got a taste of the ads. They definitely seem more prominent than they were before on the top and side (at least from what I recall), but I get it. This is a business, and you've got to make money if the subscribers and sponsored posts alone aren't cutting it. I was just surprised a bit when i first saw them.

I like the collapsed highlights at the top. They're more noticeable and feel more streamlined than they did off to the right side.

The new sort button is great. A nice way to catch up on something you might have missed without having to scroll through stuff. I'm also enjoying the article display itself. I see what you mean when you say it's a bit retro to AP.net.

Speaking of scrolling, I love that the site continuously scrolls now. Funny enough, I was literally about to suggest such a change before I realized that I hadn't scrolled down far enough to get to the buttons, and I realized it was already there.

One question for you—I see that my comments say "draft saved" when I pause typing, but I don't actually see any ability to access drafts, nor do I see my open comments when I open a new tab to the same community thread. What's up with that?

Overall, great work with the redesign. Keeping the site fresh!

 

May 12, 2020

• Fixed it so the notification link on the main website will adapt based on what notification is available: If you have a new notification/alert, it'll send you to the alert page, but if there’s no new notifications and there is an unread inbox message, it’ll send you to the inbox page instead. Should make the notifications from the homepage less confusing.
• Fixed album artwork spacing bug on mobile Chrome.

 

Thanks for all the feedback!

There's not currently a way to access the drafts, it's just being saved behind the scenes. There is a delay, and it's not instant however. For example, I'm typing this in this box:



But if I open the thread and look at quick reply, most of my reply is saved there ... but not all of it yet.

 

May 13, 2020

• Fixed Twitter and Instagram embeds to once again use your selected theme (dark or light) for displaying the embedded content.
• Removed Facebook and Reddit auto embeds because they're just not working right and both sites keep changing how they display embedded content. So screw it, back to basic links instead.

 

Love the new site design! Quick question - is the Apple News feed officially dead?

 

I was wondering if anyone was going to notice and see. You're the first person all week to say anything. I did not reactivate it yet, because the plugin to use it is kind of a pain in the ass and I was curious how many people used it.

Looking at the stats, it looks like something I should bring back:



But I really, really hate the plugin. I have it on my list to do early next week, and it looks like there's enough interest. So I will try and do that early next week and tweak the plugin/theme as needed.

 

Apple News has been reactivated. It should work going forward.

 

@Jason Tate Just saw that my browser was flagging Flash on the community site (https://forum.chorus.fm/js/swfupload/Flash/swfupload.swf) and thought I'd shoot you a reminder that Flash will be dead at the end of the year. Still loving the redesign!

 

If you uncheck the box here that says "Use the Flash-based uploader to upload attachments" that'll go away.

 

Well thank you very much! And now I know that you have a very easy path of disabling Flash. Just remove the option and disable it for everyone.

 

That’s great to hear! Not that it keeps me away from the site, I also check out the main page, but missed going through Chorus each morning in my Apple News rundown.

I think I recall Tici saying on one of the Connected what a pain in the ass the Apple News plugin is (and why he is no longer using it for MacStories).

 

It’s garbage. It makes me so mad.

 

@Jason Tate Have you ever ran an Instagram ad for Chorus? I'm thinking of doing one for my photography website, and if you have, want to see if it was an effective thing to do

 

The Mike Herrera podcast episode had one ran for it but I've never actually run one myself. I think @EntryLevelDave might know way more about that sort of stuff than me, I just never got into all the social media ad stuff. Probably to my detriment, but alas.