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Usability on Editing Blog Comments

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by bork blatt

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Hey TR guys.

If you add a comment to a blog post, you see the original blog entry in a blue block (as normal) and your comments underneath in white, as you would expect.

But, edit the comment and when you hit submit you only see your comment in the blue block. It looks like you deleted the original blog entry and replaced it with your comment.

The first time this happened to me it scared the **** out of me - I thought I had erased the post.

Please make it behave the same as when you add the comment - show the original blog entry and then comments beneath.

Regards

9 replies

by justin james

... I submitted this as a bug report a month or two ago. This "Jive" software is probably the worst software I have *EVER* used. It is pre-alpha quality, as far as I am concerned. If I ever released code as bad as it, I would be ashamed of myself.

J.Ja

by bork blatt

I really hope that the source is available and that they haven't gone and hidden the core functionality away in some COM component. If so, I guess TR are stuck with it unless they upgrade or switch to something a bit more customisable.

I am going to try and suggest usability improvements one at a time to see if I can't maybe contribute to improving the usability of TR. Some of the features are fairly usable, others defy the imagination. (My apps are sometimes like that too - so don't sue me people!)

For instance - you can subscribe to a thread easily, by clicking the "subscribe" button underneath the first post in a thread. But, once subscribed, the "subscribe" button simply greys out and becomes unusable. Why not replace it with an "unsubscribe" button if you are already subscribed?

by debuggist

Due to configuration management constraints, it won't be released as soon as we would like it, but it will be there in late September.

Keep posting your ideas and suggestions in the Site Feedback forum or private message one of us like Smorty, Jay, Beth, or myself.

by justin james

I am 90% sure that this software is PHP based, so they should have the source, be able to make changes, etc. However, I also know that they get patches and what-not from the software marker, meaning that they are not going to touch the underlying source code. Open source software is only as "open" as the developers make it. You can let anyone see the code as much as they want, but if it is all one giant file or library, you cannot touch it anyways because then you've just forked it...

I have put innumerable bug reports and usability suggestions in to TechRepublic. They love getting them and they are able to follow up on some of them, but I know that for some stuff, their hands are tied, and for other things they are simply bogged down.

J.Ja

by debuggist

These are two disparate subjects on this site. On other sites that use the default Jive implementation, it is not.

Fixing a usability problem is not going to require modifying Jive source code. If you wish to report other usability problems, please use the Site Feedback forum.

Thanks,
Doug

by justin james

Doug -

There are scores of usability problems with the TechRepublic site that are indeed problems with core Jive functionality. I have sent literally dozens of bug reports (one contained over 2 dozen bugs), nearly all of which impact site usability in one way or another.

When someone clicks on something and it has unintended and unexpected results, that is a usability problem. For example, a friend had bookmarked my profile immediately after sending me a private message. As a result, I receive a blank private message every time he visits my profile. That is indeed quite a usability problem that points to one of Jive's biggest flaws, how it handles postbacks, and its complete lack of input validation.

Jive is a dog.

J.Ja

by bork blatt

Thanks for the update. It's good to know the comments and suggestions aren't "falling into the void" like at most big sites.

I am a programmer myself, so I realise some of the difficulties of rolling out changes to software, especially software that is used by a lot of people.

I will keep the suggestions rolling in.

by debuggist

Isn't that what you're implying? If I submit a post, and it shows up as the newest discussion on the site, then that's a usability problem. I didn't expect it, and I didn't intend it.

If you think Jive is such a dog, then start at the source by telling them what's wrong. They will probably tell you that the problem is not their code but TechRepublic's code. And they would probably be right.

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