I forget who said "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds", and it may well apply here. But it should be fairly easy to fix (I'm guessing).

When you're reading a root node and its replies (in the sections that admit discussions) there's usually a link somewhere on the page return you to the section the node is in. But the various sections are inconsistent in whether they have a link and where they place it. Here's what I've noticed in some of the sections:

I looked, but I don't think there's a User setting that will change this. (It might be particularly well hidden.)

Actually, what I think would be really slick would be links to take you to the next and previous root node in the respective section. But that would be a lot more work, no?

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Inconsistency of navigation links
by blakem (Monsignor) on Sep 17, 2001 at 22:13 UTC
    Aside from the obvious consistency issues, I ran into this when programming my custom random node program. In order to customize which categories got displayed, I had to determine the category from the page in exactly the manner you describe above. I even had to differentiate between discussions and catacombs based on the existence of a shaded table... Ewww, how long before that assumption breaks?

    In short, a consistant category label would have made this project *much* easier, and would improve its robustness in the future.

    Update: Although it's quite ugly, here is the relevant snippet. 

      my $html = get("http://perlmonks.com/index.pl?op=randomnode");
  ($node) = $html =~ /\blastnode_id=(\d+)/;
  my ($title) = $html =~ /<title>([^>]+)<\/title>/i;
  my ($author) = $html =~ /\bby\s*<A HREF[^>]+>([^<]+)<\/A>/i;
  if ($title eq $author) {
    $section = 'Homenode';
    ($homenodexp) = $html =~ /Experience:.*?<B>(\d+)/;
  } elsif ($author eq 'perlnewsbot') {
    $section = 'News';
  } else {
    ($section) = $html =~ /\b(?:go|back)\s+(?:to\s+)?(?:see\s+more\s+)
+?<A HREF=\
"\/index.pl\?node=(Seekers|Meditations|Craft|Cool|Perl)/i;
    $section = 'Poetry' if $section eq 'Perl';
    $section ||= $html =~ /bgcolor="CCCCCC"/i ? 'Code' : '';
    $section ||= 'Disc';
  }

    [download]

    -Blake

[reply]
[d/l]
Re: Inconsistency of navigation links
by Jerry (Scribe) on Sep 18, 2001 at 05:51 UTC
    I also think the ability to offer your reply should be shown when you click the title link for a posting from a main page. Its very inconvenient having to click on the post title to see it all, then go back and click Offer Your Reply. Just a thought.

    -Jerry
    http://www.digilliance.net
    http://www.jerryfowler.net

[reply]
      Hmm, interesting ...

      I see, something resembling: 

      () ## Root Node title
   #--------
   ## Root Node content
  #################
(x)## Root Node reply title
   #---------------
   ## Root node reply content ...

      [download]
      Where the (x) represents a radio button. It is potentially useful, and implementable (even though it might be confusing for some, but as an "optional" view, it might not be a bad idea)

       
      ___crazyinsomniac_______________________________________
      Disclaimer: Don't blame. It came from inside the void
      perl -e "$q=$_;map({chr unpack qq;H*;,$_}split(q;;,q*H*));print;$q/$q;"

[reply]
[d/l]
Re: Inconsistency of navigation links
by hsmyers (Canon) on Sep 17, 2001 at 22:44 UTC
    Perhaps I'm missing something, but isn't this precisely what templates are for?

    hsm

[reply]

Back to Perl Monks Discussion