Myspace previews complete redesign • Hacker News Board

Re: Myspace previews complete redesign

#241

Post by Tomis02 » Tue, Sep 25, 2012, 3:32 PM UTC

rauljara wrote: post #111

notatoad wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opera doesn't support websockets. I'm sure some socket.IO fans will tell me that's not a big deal, but it kind of is. modern browsers support websockets. and i know, this demo doesn't use it and will work fine in opera if you spoof the UA, but it's a lot easier to develop if you pick a feature set you're going to support, and skim out any browsers that don't support that feature set.

I agree with you that opera should support web sprockets, and I sympathize with web developers making the decision to develop for new technology and browsers that don't support it be damned. But the actual message myspace displays is pretty needlessly snarky and stupidly insulting. I also have zero faith they'll be able to update their browser detection script often enough to avoid looking like dinosaurs themselves f…

Opera does support web sockets: opera:config#UserPrefs|EnableWebSockets

They are not enabled by default, that's all. So it's not just that the message is snarky and insulting, it reflects ignorance as well.

Re: Myspace previews complete redesign

#242

Post by exterm » Tue, Sep 25, 2012, 3:35 PM UTC

lordlarm wrote: post #48

As a computer scientist and an Opera user this actually insults me: http://i.imgur.com/7k0bN.png Ironically Opera was the one who proposed the -tag which this site uses for it's rotating LP, in 2007. [1] Way to exclude users. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video#History_of_.3Cvideo...

I want to add the fact that it works just fine when spoofing the user agent. "Identify as Firefox" setting in Opera.

Re: Myspace previews complete redesign

#243

Post by exterm » Tue, Sep 25, 2012, 3:38 PM UTC

__abc wrote: post #183

ricardobeat wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't provide any extra support? "Your browser is not supported/you are on your own" is much better than denying access. Eventually people will start spoofing just to get in, and then you have a much worse problem in your hands. You know the Opera story. There is no excuse to block user agents unless it's commercial software with support contracts on the line.

I challenge your assumption that the average person knows how to spoof user agents.

Actually that's quite easy in Opera. There is a dropdown box to select different user agents called "Browser Identification".

Re: Myspace previews complete redesign

#244

Post by rplnt » Tue, Sep 25, 2012, 4:11 PM UTC

robinduckett wrote: post #212

lordlarm wrote: post #48

As a computer scientist and an Opera user this actually insults me: http://i.imgur.com/7k0bN.png Ironically Opera was the one who proposed the -tag which this site uses for it's rotating LP, in 2007. [1] Way to exclude users. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video#History_of_.3Cvideo...

You (or someone else reaping sweet karma) already posted this comment on reddit. As a computer scientist who uses the most modern browsers, I haven't had Opera installed SINCE 2007. As a web developer, opera has always been last to implement things, even when opera had been the one to propose new features. Opera just does not have the same support for HTML5 as the ones listed. If you're going to use a Hipster's brows…

> opera has always been last to implement things

Except when it wasn't, right? Sorry, but this is a complete lie.

Re: Myspace previews complete redesign

#245

Post by rplnt » Tue, Sep 25, 2012, 4:20 PM UTC

mpd wrote: post #90

ceejayoz wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, 0.14% of the folks hitting our servers are using it. If 10% of the world's Internet users are on Opera, where are they?

In my experience, Opera gets significant usage in non-English-speaking countries. I read at one point (several years ago, so grain of salt) that 25% of Russian users were using Opera. That said, our own traffic shows 0.80% Opera users, which puts it just above RockMelt. It's silly to actively filter them out as MySpace is doing here, but would be equally as silly (for us at least) to devote any resources to dealing w…

Yes, if you look at http://gs.statcounter.com/ and select individual countries you can see that Opera is strong in Eastern Europe and parts of Asia. There are historical reasons for that (just my opinion, see bellow) and also the fact that Opera had/has Turbo - which really helps on slow connections (mobile).

So if you run US-focused site, there isn't really reason to care about Opera, and test for it. Blocking it (or any other browser) is bad though.

The "historical reasons": Opera was by any means the best (serious) browser out there, but it was paid. People in these countries weren't paying for software anyway, because their income was well bellow western standards while prices were same, and as a bonus, there was no one who would care. So while someone on the west would rather use something free (like IE), people in (for example) Ukraine picked the best. That's why first decent browser (Firefox) took over the west so fast.

Re: Myspace previews complete redesign

#246

Post by warfangle » Tue, Sep 25, 2012, 4:26 PM UTC

timfrietas wrote: post #197

warfangle wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big thing about it is the horizontal scrolling.. that works really well on an ipad, but not so well on the screen. This is definitely a tablet-oriented design ...

Can you explain more why? My monitor is 16:9, my iPad home button suggests is should be held 3:4, and at best is 4:3, which is not as well suited for side scrolling as modern monitors, which are wider than they are tall.

It's as big of an issue on my OSX touchpad devices, as I can scroll sideways with the same gesture I use to scroll vertically. But on any device where my primary HCI device is a mouse, it requires finding the horizontal scrollbar and click-dragging it. It's also not typically what people expect out of a website outside of the touch realm, which breaks a pretty primary rule in UI design (don't present the user with something they don't expect).

Re: Myspace previews complete redesign

#247

Post by progrock » Tue, Sep 25, 2012, 4:37 PM UTC

jonknee wrote: post #233

DigitalSea wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks mate, I'll pass the praise on to the design team. I'm on the dev team here, so my involvement hasn't been as great as theirs. The response from the video seems to be pretty positive, hopefully everyone is just as impressed when the final site is ready for the public to use. I am a bit biased here because I'm proud of the work my colleagues have done, but it definitely is one of the nicest looking music product…

> It's different and the horizontal scrolling might not be everyone's cup of tea, but screens seem to be getting wider so it makes sense that sites start adopting a more horizontal oriented approach to web design to accommodate larger resolution screens. It seems very tablet like. Side scrolling isn't a big deal on a touch device. Not sure how I'd like it in a browser with a mouse that only scrolls one way, but the v…

I for one can't read Facebook's timeline and that uses downward scrolling. I don't quite get why I find it so difficult. I really can't get on with it. I'm fine with one column (but two - is a complete mind warp for me.)

It's probably an alignment issue with my brain scrabbling to differentiate content.

I'm also a fan of paging over scrolling. So it will be interesting to feel how this works. Perhaps scrolling with the finger lets you focus better than scrolling with the keyboard or pointer.

Re: Myspace previews complete redesign

#248

Post by jarek » Tue, Sep 25, 2012, 5:29 PM UTC

sunkencity wrote: post #238

lordlarm wrote: post #48

As a computer scientist and an Opera user this actually insults me: http://i.imgur.com/7k0bN.png Ironically Opera was the one who proposed the -tag which this site uses for it's rotating LP, in 2007. [1] Way to exclude users. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video#History_of_.3Cvideo...

Doesn't that say more about Opera than Myspace? It even works in lynx. https://twitter.com/tuxtux/status/250605928691417088/photo/1...

Not sure if that was sarcasm or not. What that actually says is that they're explicitly blocking Opera by the user-agent string, and haven't bothered blocking Lynx. As pointed out elsewhere in comments here, the page actually works just fine in Opera when you tell it to spoof the user-agent string to pretend it's Firefox.

Re: Myspace previews complete redesign

#249

Post by jenius » Tue, Sep 25, 2012, 5:59 PM UTC

SkyMarshal wrote: post #157

jenius wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what exactly do you propose? That we just halt all technological innovation on the web so that people that don't feel better about having old browsers and/or computers? This is a ridiculous idea, and a ridiculous comment. I'm a web developer and I'm so excited about making awesome things and the fact that the web is evolving and enabling us to do this, and share our creations with the world. People like you and co…

>So what exactly do you propose? That we just halt all technological innovation on the web so that people that don't feel better about having old browsers and/or computers? Straw man. >This is a ridiculous idea, and a ridiculous comment. He didn't propose anything, just stated the problem. You're the one putting words in his mouth and jumping to overwrought conclusions. Relax dude.

Fair enough - it wasn't a totally fair logical argument and you called me out on that one - +1 for that. However, you must acknowledge that the conclusions I jumped to were far from unreasonable. Who complains about technological progress?

Re: Myspace previews complete redesign

#250

Post by jenius » Tue, Sep 25, 2012, 6:07 PM UTC

luriel wrote: post #160

jenius wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what exactly do you propose? That we just halt all technological innovation on the web so that people that don't feel better about having old browsers and/or computers? This is a ridiculous idea, and a ridiculous comment. I'm a web developer and I'm so excited about making awesome things and the fact that the web is evolving and enabling us to do this, and share our creations with the world. People like you and co…

> So what exactly do you propose? Sane and simple standards that can be implemented in any platform without requiring hundreds of man years of effort. Nothing done in the web today is particularly technically advanced, we are about the same UI level as standard apps were more than 10 years ago (hell, I doubt you can build a photo manipulation app today that can compete with where Photoshop was 10 years ago). Most of…

If your beef was with the W3C, you should have stated that in your original comment. And then do some research on what it is, how it works, and who sits on the panel before you decide to rule them all inefficient idiots.

...then you argue that we should replace javascript with another language, and that would improve "best viewed in" problems? The kinds of changes you are proposing here would make the same issues you complained about 1000x worse. "Sorry, we wrote this in python, so you have to upgrade your browser, because it only runs javascript". This would immediately invalidate all old browsers, rather than slowly upgrading the tools we already have. Progressive enhancement and graceful degradation is how it goes when upgrading, you can't just make vast and rash changes like this.

It's great that you are thinking this way, but you have a lot more thinking to go, and a lot more research before you start posting comments like this.