Well, everthing appears to have transferred. I have the same objections Chris had - there's no central page where I can review the most recent comments, which sucks. But generally it looks to be working as advertised.
Another discovery: If you hover over or click on the user name or avatar, Echo displays a box with a View details link. Clicking on the link shows the last several comments by that user, along with a permalink for that particular comment. Unfortunately, that is the only way to get a permalink to a particular comment. If the comment you want to refer to is not in that list, you're SOL.
It also appears that the only way to be notified of new posts in a thread is to use an RSS feed. Right now that means I either need to add a bunch of feeds to my web browser, or use yet another piece of software instead of just getting an email. :'(
Oh goody I can add a 30MB picture to make my comment more famous!! But I won't. Where's the emoticon for a zippered-mouth? This is like the comment version of the Monstosity Health Bill.
That's why I won't go to something else without KNOWING I can transfer all the comments, properly linked to the correct posts. I have too many comments I'm just unwilling to lose.
Has anyone else tried the Follow options, either Mail or RSS? I've tried both. So far, I haven't received a single email about new comments. But I have gotten alerts about "new" comments via RSS… OLD comments. That's right, it routinely alerts me of messages it thinks are new, but have been posted for hours or days and which it has previously alerted me of! >:o
Oh, and this is cool… The RSS feed identifies which individual comments are "new", but when I select that particular comment, it doesn't link to the specific comment, just taking me to the entire thread. (And it doesn't have a rolls eyes smiley!)
More and more, I'm preferring Haloscam in spite of its problems.
U-J, any luck on finding something decent for Kevin to use?
I haven't looked hard. Discus, maybe. But Kevin's been locked on Haloscan (Which would have been relatively easy to convert from), and I think he's quite locked on this.
I'd love to help, but it's like Microsoft stuff. I've stopped evangelizing and trying to convince/help people who are going to buy MS anyway, then bitch about the money, costs, downtimes... From Kevin's tone, he's going to stick with this until they go under - no matter how bad it is. *shrug*. It's his site, his choice.
http://support.js-kit.com/jskit/topics/is_there_any_way_for_users_to_preview_their_comments
"The company has not planned to implement this.
The best point from the company
Igor Lebedew, Official Rep, replied 4 months ago
Echo doesn't have the "preview comment" feature. We'll take your feature idea for consideration."
Riiiight. I think that tells you all you need to know, right there.
"What, why would you want something useful we used to have? That's CRAZY. Yeah, We'll, uh, think about it." In about 6 months they'll get pushed into it, rush out a shitty preview... *sigh*
"You can use RSS for retrieving exact links for each of necessary comments (note: 'Enable Echo Live' option should be disabled). Please check the following page of our Wiki:
http://wiki.js-kit.com/RSS-Support
The link to access comments via RSS looks as follows:
http://js-kit.com/rss/your.site.com/uniq
links to exact comments look in the following way:
http://your.site.com#jsid-comment_id_... The exact feature as you described is under our consideration of our developers, possibly it will be implemented in future."
Kevin: do they have a site backup system?
Use it. Nightly. They've got cash flow problems. Or are about to.
I'd offer to backup remotely, but guess what? You can't easily now, since it's all JavaScripted instead of HTMLed.
Kevin had acceded to moving to another system here if you could find one, though I could just feel the heavy sigh in his comment. You had seen it, because you replied to it. That's why I thought you were looking for one.
"I tell you what, U-J, you figure out how to convert those saved comments into another commenting system that you like, and I'll consider dropping Echo."
I know he said that, but I was taking that as sarcasm.
And I hate to keep on this topic, because it gets to be a seeming attack on Kevin, which isn't my intent.
But this system sucks. It doesn't work right - and based on the comments around the web, it was launched a year late, missing massive functionality, but with all the right "buzzwords" - hey, it integrates with Facebook! And TWITTER!
What it doesn't do is work well for a discussion system. At all. And the execs seem to be scrambling to head off some of the worst criticism - if Kevin were to bash them on the front page, they apparently would quickly be in the comments. Which is a nice thought and all, but maybe the time to worry about stuff was BEFORE the conversion/rollout.
But permalinks? Preview? Not planned/implemented?
I suspect most of us in/near SW dev have seen this a few times. I know I have. It's never a good sign. I saw it with the Infoworld Forums, among other places, where they tried to rollout a new system that was all blinged up.
There's a reason they're not giving easy permalinks, they're setting it up so it's hard/impossible to search with Google, and it's much harder to extract comments. My experience leads me to believe it's not for Kevin's benefit. :)
I didn't know all that history. That's good to know. I knew echo was a piece of garbage before, but this just adds to fuel to my opinion that Echo is a disaster waiting to happen. Or more likely, a disaster in progress.
I don't want to seem like I'm bashing Kevin because I definitely understand his concerns, and they are legitimate. But I feel no such compunction about bashing Echo because it harms Kevin and the rest of us here. I'd like to see him rescue his comments while it's still reasonably possible.
That's it! After trying RSS notifications for about a week, I'm finally giving up on getting any viable notifications of new messages from Echo. I think there have been about 3 valid notifications, dozens of false alarms, and 2 instances of "Unresponsive" requiring manual intervention.
More than anything else, these problems tell me that Echo has some serious stability problems in its core code. It would not surprise me in the least to hear reports of Echo losing comments.
Actually, if you want to see something interesting....
They farmed out *Their own support forums*.
That's hardly a resounding endorsement of their own products.
Note:
All avatars and any images or other media embedded in comments were hosted on the JS-Kit website and have been lost;
references to haloscan comments have been partially automatically remapped, but accuracy is not guaranteed and corrections are solicited.
If you notice any problems with this page or wish to have your home page link updated, please contact John Hardin <jhardin@impsec.org>
JS-Kit/Echo comments for article at http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/2009/12/brace-yourselves-were-going-in.html (53 comments)
Tentative mapping of comments to original article, corrections solicited.
Good luck with that, hopefully this survives.
Is that the hideous thing that also shafted Chris-Anarchangel? My sincere condolences.
Well, everthing appears to have transferred. I have the same objections Chris had - there's no central page where I can review the most recent comments, which sucks. But generally it looks to be working as advertised.
The page you want to have exists. Find your recent comments here: http://js-kit.com/moderate/
Thank you!
Wow. It seems to work, but it also seems excessively complicated....
I nominate this as a "test" thread...
Looks like the ability to post as a "guest" is now available.
testing....cool, it allows choice of Gravatar or other icons for the "face" option.
More testing.
At least I don't have to reenter my name every time I want to post. And manual avatars is nice too.
Testering.
So many damned passwords that I don't even rememebr who I am anymore
So many damned passwords that I don't even rememebr who I am anymore
Aw hell, I gotta be somebody? Waitaminit, that's not fair. Marky doesn't have to be anybody. Different rules, man...
*snicker*
This sucks works than Mark's lying mind.
Looks like they still haven't figured out how to handle something as simple as quotation marks in names. *DONT_KNOW*
Do blockquotes work? Let's see:
This previous statement was wrong. I still have to reenter my name. Geez! Don't these guys know that human beings have to use their software?
Crap
I'm not feeling the love for Echo. So far it's worse than haloscam.
Is there supposed to be a more advanced toolbar available for doing things like quoting?
There are supposed to be keyboard shortcuts for the formatting, but of course they don't work on my primary browser.
Another discovery: If you hover over or click on the user name or avatar, Echo displays a box with a View details link. Clicking on the link shows the last several comments by that user, along with a permalink for that particular comment. Unfortunately, that is the only way to get a permalink to a particular comment. If the comment you want to refer to is not in that list, you're SOL.
It also appears that the only way to be notified of new posts in a thread is to use an RSS feed. Right now that means I either need to add a bunch of feeds to my web browser, or use yet another piece of software instead of just getting an email. :'(
This is an improvement?
Did Congress have a hand in this?
This is why when everybody was bashing Haloscan I did say "it COULD BE WORSE".
It can ALWAYS be worse.
And this is. Makes us long for the easy carefree days of usable Haloscan...
And most notably, they STILL DIDN'T PUT IN A LINK TO THE ORIGINAL POST.
Kevin: I, might, you know, have backed up your comments. Ahem. In case you want to move to a commenting system that's not made of more fail...
I did. But I've yet to see anything that will actually, you know, import those comments and link them to the proper posts.
I meant, I snarfed them down here. Just in case.
And it shouldn't be hard to do that, if you've got another system you like.
Can you add email notification to the ways to follow threads from your admin access? It implies there's more than 1 way to follow threads...
Can you add email notification to the ways to follow threads from your admin access?
Yes, but why?
Because it's how Haloscan used to work, and it works well, and I can't see how RSS can possibly work better?
And right now, the RSS option is the only one there?
(Like so I'd know that you'd replied to that, or the thread? :) )
Thanks!
testing, testing
Oh goody I can add a 30MB picture to make my comment more famous!! But I won't. Where's the emoticon for a zippered-mouth? This is like the comment version of the Monstosity Health Bill.
Erf. Is there any way to make the pagination optional?
I can change the number of comments per page, but not make that number "unlimited." I've set it to 1,000 comments.
The "zippered mouth" smiley is this one: =-X
I couldn't do it--it's just too non-optimal. I went back to Blogger commenting, which means I lost all my comments.
That's why I won't go to something else without KNOWING I can transfer all the comments, properly linked to the correct posts. I have too many comments I'm just unwilling to lose.
Anarchangel did the same. I still HATE any comment system that requires javascript.
I think the lack of a "preview" ability is the worst, um, feature.
Am I missing something?
I think you can "Post" a comment, then edit it as long as you don't leave the page.
Time to test this theory…
Nope. You can't edit it. But you can delete it and start over! :-E
Delete it and start over ... now that's efficiency.
Opera 10.10 on Windows XP SP3. So far, the only issue I'm seeing is that it will do italics or bold, but not both at once. I haven't tried underline.
Test normal.
Test Bold.
Test Italics.
Test Underlined.
Test Bold Italics.
Test Italics Underlined.
Test Underlined Bold.
Test Bold Italics Underlined.
Testing, Mac OS 10.4.11, OmniWeb 5.10.1
Let's see if the client end during posting makes the difference.
Test Bold Italics
Test Bold Italics Underlined
It looked right in the editor. Now, will it post right?
More Testing. Firefox 3.5.6 on Mac OS 10.4.11.
My previous post looks right in both browsers.
Test Bold Italics
Test Bold Italics Underline
It looks right in the editor again. Here goes…
Moving on to Firefox 3.5.5 on Windows XP Pro SP 3:
My previous two posts still look right.
Testing Bold Italic
Testing Bold Italic Underline
This also looks right in the editor. Here goes...
Okay, let's see if I can duplicate Gumpy's issue in Opera 10.10 on Windos XP SP3:
So far, my previous posts appear correct.
Testing Bold Italic
Testing Bold Italic Underlined
It looks correct in the entry area. Now for the acid test...
Sure looks like Opera 10.10 isn't getting along with Echo very well.
How about Safari 4.0.4 on XP?
Testing Bold Italic
Testing Bold Italic Underlined
Looks good so far...
Here's some more fun… :(
Has anyone else tried the Follow options, either Mail or RSS? I've tried both. So far, I haven't received a single email about new comments. But I have gotten alerts about "new" comments via RSS… OLD comments. That's right, it routinely alerts me of messages it thinks are new, but have been posted for hours or days and which it has previously alerted me of! >:o
Oh, and this is cool… The RSS feed identifies which individual comments are "new", but when I select that particular comment, it doesn't link to the specific comment, just taking me to the entire thread. (And it doesn't have a rolls eyes smiley!)
More and more, I'm preferring Haloscam in spite of its problems.
U-J, any luck on finding something decent for Kevin to use?
Ed:
I haven't looked hard. Discus, maybe. But Kevin's been locked on Haloscan (Which would have been relatively easy to convert from), and I think he's quite locked on this.
I'd love to help, but it's like Microsoft stuff. I've stopped evangelizing and trying to convince/help people who are going to buy MS anyway, then bitch about the money, costs, downtimes... From Kevin's tone, he's going to stick with this until they go under - no matter how bad it is. *shrug*. It's his site, his choice.
http://support.js-kit.com/jskit/topics/is_there_any_way_for_users_to_preview_their_comments
"The company has not planned to implement this.
The best point from the company
Igor Lebedew, Official Rep, replied 4 months ago
Echo doesn't have the "preview comment" feature. We'll take your feature idea for consideration."
Riiiight. I think that tells you all you need to know, right there.
"What, why would you want something useful we used to have? That's CRAZY. Yeah, We'll, uh, think about it." In about 6 months they'll get pushed into it, rush out a shitty preview... *sigh*
It's sadly predictable.
http://support.js-kit.com/jskit/topics/how_can_a_user_link_to_an_individual_comment
"You can use RSS for retrieving exact links for each of necessary comments (note: 'Enable Echo Live' option should be disabled). Please check the following page of our Wiki:
http://wiki.js-kit.com/RSS-Support
The link to access comments via RSS looks as follows:
http://js-kit.com/rss/your.site.com/uniq
links to exact comments look in the following way:
http://your.site.com#jsid-comment_id_...
The exact feature as you described is under our consideration of our developers, possibly it will be implemented in future."
Kevin: do they have a site backup system?
Use it. Nightly. They've got cash flow problems. Or are about to.
I'd offer to backup remotely, but guess what? You can't easily now, since it's all JavaScripted instead of HTMLed.
Kevin had acceded to moving to another system here if you could find one, though I could just feel the heavy sigh in his comment. You had seen it, because you replied to it. That's why I thought you were looking for one.
"I tell you what, U-J, you figure out how to convert those saved comments into another commenting system that you like, and I'll consider dropping Echo."
I know he said that, but I was taking that as sarcasm.
And I hate to keep on this topic, because it gets to be a seeming attack on Kevin, which isn't my intent.
But this system sucks. It doesn't work right - and based on the comments around the web, it was launched a year late, missing massive functionality, but with all the right "buzzwords" - hey, it integrates with Facebook! And TWITTER!
What it doesn't do is work well for a discussion system. At all. And the execs seem to be scrambling to head off some of the worst criticism - if Kevin were to bash them on the front page, they apparently would quickly be in the comments. Which is a nice thought and all, but maybe the time to worry about stuff was BEFORE the conversion/rollout.
But permalinks? Preview? Not planned/implemented?
I suspect most of us in/near SW dev have seen this a few times. I know I have. It's never a good sign. I saw it with the Infoworld Forums, among other places, where they tried to rollout a new system that was all blinged up.
There's a reason they're not giving easy permalinks, they're setting it up so it's hard/impossible to search with Google, and it's much harder to extract comments. My experience leads me to believe it's not for Kevin's benefit. :)
I didn't know all that history. That's good to know. I knew echo was a piece of garbage before, but this just adds to fuel to my opinion that Echo is a disaster waiting to happen. Or more likely, a disaster in progress.
I don't want to seem like I'm bashing Kevin because I definitely understand his concerns, and they are legitimate. But I feel no such compunction about bashing Echo because it harms Kevin and the rest of us here. I'd like to see him rescue his comments while it's still reasonably possible.
That's it! After trying RSS notifications for about a week, I'm finally giving up on getting any viable notifications of new messages from Echo. I think there have been about 3 valid notifications, dozens of false alarms, and 2 instances of "Unresponsive" requiring manual intervention.
More than anything else, these problems tell me that Echo has some serious stability problems in its core code. It would not surprise me in the least to hear reports of Echo losing comments.
Yep. I've not gotten a single email followup, either.
Actually, if you want to see something interesting....
They farmed out *Their own support forums*.
That's hardly a resounding endorsement of their own products.
Note: All avatars and any images or other media embedded in comments were hosted on the JS-Kit website and have been lost; references to haloscan comments have been partially automatically remapped, but accuracy is not guaranteed and corrections are solicited.
If you notice any problems with this page or wish to have your home page link updated, please contact John Hardin <jhardin@impsec.org>