Bureau 42: In Your Mailbox!

I’ve been meaning to mention this for a while actually, but, well,
I’m slothful. Apologies. If you’re interested in having the
day’s headlines from here, IGN SciFi,
SciFi Storm, and a couple
other places, emailed to you every morning, click here to subscribe. Cool, ain’t it?

13 replies on “Bureau 42: In Your Mailbox!”

  1. NP
    No problem, friend. I’ve been meaning to do this for a while, actually. Your recent announcement

    that the list will also include info on new SF movies in the IMDB is what spurred me

    to get my behind in gear.


    Thanks for providing a useful service :-)

  2. State Of The Site (5/28/01, really)
    Since I haven’t done one of these “state of the site” articles in a while, this seems like as good a place as any…

    Now that threading for comments is in the system on a database level, does anyone actually want/need it? (I did it because it only took like a half hour to do — hopefully it’s fully debugged by now…)

    Any suggestions or preferences on how to display the article to which you’re replying? Should it be done in italics, or maybe set off with the traditional email indicia, like this:

    >>> this is one comment

    >> this is another

    > this is a third comment

    (Maybe do ’em in a different font or something.)

    It’s not really relevant how exactly it’s done, because you, gentle reader, can always get to the HTML that represents such formatting anyway. But, any suggestions for a default setting?

    Assuming that, someday, there’s an article with enough comments that it’s not comfortable to read them all, how should threads be displayed? I’m kinda leaning towards the Slashdot model where you get a whole lot of ways to handle them, but that’s a whole lot of work. :) Again, any preferences?

    • Re: State Of The Site (5/28/01, really)
      Which reminds me: yes, I know the dates for comments are off by a day. I’ve notified the sysadmin for the Web server; he may or may not actually fix it.

      • Re: Re: State Of The Site (5/28/01, really)
        >Which reminds me: yes, I know the dates for comments

        >are off by a day. I’ve notified the sysadmin for the

        >Web server; he may or may not actually fix it.

        I prefer the > offsets myself. :) It works well

        with more than one level of comment reply, although

        you probably shouldn’t be quoting that much anyway.

    • Re: State Of The Site (5/28/01, really)
      The problem with > quoting is that it screws up when the line wraps. You get the last word on the next line and it just looks weird.

      What’s wrong with BLOCKQUOTE tags? They nest nicely, the set the text apart, and if somebody prefers to quote with STRONG tags instead they’re easy to remove. :) (Actually, a BLOCKQUOTE EM pair might work particularly well:

      …like this…)

      Kuro5hin does some funky thing where BLOCKQUOTE tags result in

      a little blue bar down the side. It looks spiffy. :)

      -Erf.

      ps. I don’t suppose you could have the article/comment you’re replying to appear on the page with the form when you’re entering a new comment, eh? That would be convenient. Just a thought… :)

      • Re: State Of The Site (5/28/01, really)

        Kuro5hin does some funky thing where BLOCKQUOTE tags result in

        a little blue bar down the side. It looks spiffy.

        Hm. That might take actual work (unless it’s implemented with a stylesheet or something, which I kinda doubt), but I’ll see.

        ps. I don’t suppose you could have the article/comment you’re replying to appear on the page with the form when you’re entering a new comment, eh? That would be convenient.

        you’re right, it is kinda handy. :-)

      • Re: State Of The Site

        Kuro5hin does some funky thing where BLOCKQUOTE tags result in a little blue bar down the side. It looks spiffy. :)

        Hm. Yeah, that is neat, but I can’t figure out how they do it, unfortunately. The HTML only refers to a “blockquote type=cite” tag, which isn’t in any HTML standard I’ve seen. I’m guessing it’s a stylesheet feature, but I also can’t find it in any stylesheet loaded by that page. I’m open to suggestions.

  3. also:
    also it looks like scrye fixed the clock on the Web server, so posts are accurately timestamped again. woohoo.

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