I started writing my own Overchan recently:
http://metachan.org/
Anybody have something they want to see in this sort of site? I'll be raiding the English Image Boards thread soon and changing the DB structure after that will suck.
My big idea is that I'm going to put checkboxes next to the board listings. You can then check off the boards you like and have a script generate a navigation frame for you.
Somehow distinguish between image boards and discussion boards?
It's looking good so far.
Good idea. I added little talk bubble icons for now. Will probably make discussion boards collapsible, like the alternate URLs and whatnot, when I get the chance as well.
At first I thought you meant a clone of the overchan navigation, where you could set up which boards you wanted to appear in the sidebar. That would be a lot more popular, I think.
That is what I meant, it's just not programmed yet. T.T
Yes, and you also said that. I am half asleep, sorry.
maybe add http://onechan.net
english adress is http://e.onechan.net
Forgive me for intruding into the realm of code-monkey-business here, but for the love of God, please do not use the - and + metaphor for expanding and collapsing things. It's one of those idiotic things that persist in Windows, as well as (God help us) being copied in other GUIs, despite the fact that it makes no logical sense at all...
Other than that, it looks interesting so far. Let's see how it develops.
Onechan is actually in there. You have to open the settings section and then click on DE in the language filters (or ctrl-click to select more than one). Eventually all those settings will stay set between visits (via a cookie) and so be less of a pain.
I wonder how feasible it is to parse the accept-language header that browsers send and set the languages filter automatically. We could even remove all the improper uses of the word 'hentai' if they have Japanese set as the preferred language, lol.
I could tweak the DB so that sites can have multiple languages, but there really isn't a lot of English posting going on at Onechan AFAICT. In the meantime I'll look into adding a 'show all' link for people who don't want to fuss with the settings.
Well I don't have any objection to changing it, but what would I change it too? The plus and minus make perfect sense to me. I click on the plus to get more content, click on the minus to get less, and if there are no children under the element to show/hide then there is no plus/minus.
The only other options I know are triangles and filled/empty circles. These have a huge disadvantage, however, in that they can be used as normal bullets as well. So people can't tell right off if they are a bullet or a collapse control. I tried to Google this and apparently the Apple Finder even does use them as both bullets and collapse controls. It will have a right pointing arrow even if clicking on it does nothing!
Maybe they fixed that idiocy by now, but it just goes to show that even the UI designers mixed up that triangles are not bullets and should never be used as bullets in a program that uses them to indicate more content is present and that clicking will do something. I imagine that would cause a lot of fruitless clicks.
Is there a good alternative I'm missing? Maybe it's impossible to find a symbol that's obvious to everyone and it should just be '(click to show more)' or something like that. I do really like not having that wordy about section and that complex settings section cluttering things up unless people actually want to see them.
>>10: I have no idea what the hell you're talking about. The Mac OS has always used triangles for this, and they have always had the function of expanding or collapsing a list or showing more options in a window; they've never been ornamental bullets. Link to wherever you're finding this BS, please?
As for another alternative, just plain text links or HTML buttons saying "Show More Options" or "Show Less Options" or something would be ugly, but still make more sense than "plus" and "minus."
Personally, I have this pet-peeve that people should stop applying the suffix -chan to image boards and also stop acting like "-chan" indicates and means "image board".
But that's just me.
ATPM 10.02 - ATPO: Outliner User Interfaces
http://www.atpm.com/10.02/atpo.shtml
>This is the way the Finder works, by the way: you can “collapse” an empty folder.
Looking at it with your dissenting opinion in mind, it's possible he is using 'Finder' to refer to the app that subsection is about. If that's true, however, it is weird how he capitalizes it like a name and uses a 'by the way' as if it were about something else.
If Finder were a general purpose name for a type of app it wouldn't be capitalized. So there must be a Company X Finder and an Apple Finder? He then refers to a 'pre-Panther Finder' right below adding to the mix.
So downgrade that part of my comment to 'some Apple application programmers even confuse triangles for bullets' if you aren't convinced. Weaker example, but I still don't see anything wrong with my reasoning that proceeded it.
I'll look into the 'show more' alternative. Maybe right underneath each heading would be good. That's somewhere you'd logically look for the content and it doesn't get in the way of reading the header like putting text where the symbol is now would.
Well I did avoid calling the Evangelion site "Reichan" like Overchan does. ^^ Not much I can do about most of them, though. Maybe bug their admins to change their site names, heh.
Now that I think about it, isn't chan short for channel in this case too, though? That has a little more validity.
Anyway, updates related to the thread:
1) Language detection added. Now defaults to showing English sites and any sites with languages matching what your browser asks for (any priority level and location is fine). For Mozilla this can be set in 'Edit->Preferences->Navigator->Languages' and for MSIE it's 'Tools->Internet Options->Languages...'.
One hopes that if your UI is set to German or whatever this is set automatically, but who knows. Well that was interesting coding even if not very useful, I suppose.
2) "Show all sites" link appears above the table if some sites are hidden.
>>12
echo that for using -tan to mean 'personification' or 'mascot'. Even if it's a burly guy. Sheesh...
Aha, found a 4th type of collapse control today. Up and down pointing instead of right and down. So stole the design and am trying it out now. Does seem less likely to be mistaken for a meaningless bullet than the right pointing or circle varieties at least.
>>13: I still am not sure what the heck you're talking about. "Finder" refers to the part of the Mac OS in which you can move files, open applications, etc; so basically, the part of the Mac OS that the user interacts with. As far as I know, it has always referred to this. There is no other Finder...
Well then I was correct all along. Apple has had triangle markers that do not collapse anything despite using them to do so in other places.
What's wrong with the current overchan?
Just wondering.
Isn't that what I asked to start the thread? For anything someone wants added?
The only real improvement I have at the moment is that everything is in a database. This will let me do the navigation generated from checkboxes (or cookies, or short URL aliases, etc.). Currently I save a copy of the Overchan Navigation and edit it to my liking. This is annoying to keep up to date or change and I have to save it online somewhere anyway to access remotely.
There must be other neat things to do with all these sites in a DB, though. For example you could run a link checker each morning. For any dead boards you could hide them, or maybe just mark them in red, or replace them with a mirrored copy of the last time they were alive, or replace the link with an equivalent (4chan boards for IIchan boards, for example). Maybe more useful for everyday operations you could DL the HTML for each board each day, compare them, then list the number of new posts next to the board in parentheses.
I'm just looking for ideas like that while I fill up the database and decide what tables are needed. Adding something after the fact could mean visiting every site in the various image board threads we have here a second time.
>>19: Whatever, dude. I am totally incapable of following your line of thought. I wish you would take my word for it that this has never been the case, though.
Empty directories have open/close arrows next to them, even though clicking those do not reveal anything. So they are essentially bullet points marking directories, and not interface items that signify that there is hidden content.
Not a major issue to be sure, but an inconsistency.
So some directories should have disclosure triangles, and some should not? Not an inconsistency. Clicking on the disclosure triangle and having it reveal nothing signifies that the directory is empty.