YWS: Apollo Updates Thread

A few updates for tonight.

- The review stars for the January 2014 Review Day have now been awarded, along with the team trophy for those on the Cobalt Critiquers!

- Writing Gooder now has a new look. Check it out: http://www.writinggooder.com

- All issues with WriterFeedPad should now be resolved. There was an issue where new accounts weren't being created for some new members, but I've managed to fix the issue for the future and retroactively. Everyone should now have their own WFP at http://yourYWSusername.writerfeedpad.com.

Made some updates to the chat bar, and it now works on mobile devices. But, I'm not happy with the result, and will probably remove it from mobile.

However, I would like to hear how it's working on tablets. Worth keeping, or get rid of it?

It's always worked on my Nook. It works great on the iPad, except whenever I type, it will keep bringing the chat bar down to the veeery bottom of the page. Like not even the footer, beyond that, to where it's only the blue background. Then it stops.

It may make you dizzy, but I still like it! Can we keep it?

I just checked it out properly on iPad, so I figured to give you a report. There are things which are less than great, but I vote to keep it. Both good and bad things following.

~At first it wouldn't let me properly see the message I'm typing, it kept.. jumping, disappearing under the keyboard and then appearing above it again xD That, however, could easily be handled by undocking the keyboard (for iPad users who don't know - long press on the little keyboard in down right corner -> Undock). Now that stopped happening, though (did you do something?), I can type in it normally.

~The chatbar is not visible while I'm in the main chat, but oh well.

~I didn't notice any bugs; it didn't crash my browser, it doesn't lag or eat messages, it lets me set my status, manage blocked users, talk to more people at once, enter chatrooms and all that

~I can send game requests (not too sure about actually playing games though, but I never do that anyway xD), add smileys and in general use those buttons in the conversation

~I can't draw a doodle and send it. I'm guessing it's because iPad has touch screen, but it opens it in new tab and makes the screen blank, and the whole thing moves around when I move my finger trying to draw on it xP

~The little bubble appears when I get a new message, so I get notified like that, but there is no sound. That might be a thing with my preferences though, I don't get sound notifications in Safari at all.

All in all, while it has some.. glitches, let's call them so, I think it's worth keeping. I'm very often on iPad, and it's really really useful to me to be accessible over this chat (especially with mod duties, but I see other users being in need of this as well). Seeing as I can now use it on my phone too, that's just another plus.
Unless it's harmful to the site somehow, please don't remove it.. if people dislike the way it works on mobile or something, they can just ignore it; it's nothing more than a little line, after all, and they can make themselves stay offline or invisible while using YWS on mobile/tablet.
Sure it's not perfect, but I vote worth keeping.

Edit. Iggy made me realise, chatbar disappears when I zoom on it on phone. I'm still in for keeping it, though.

It does kinda jump all over the screen, but once you get used to fetching it from the bottom of the page, it's fine. I didn't find that it disappeared from my screen when I made the page bigger, but then I'm on my iPod...

So far, I've received far more positive comments about the chat bar on mobile than I have negative comments, so it'll stay. Also, thank you very much Aria for your post! It helps a ton.

However, what I'm going to do is add in a user setting to turn the chat completely off when you're on a mobile device, and that user setting will be turned on by default. I'll try to add it in today, and when I do, I'll be sure to let everyone know.

Yeah, literally just logged on and it jumps down my screen as I scroll which is sort of annoying - I realise it's probably really tricky to make it scroll with the bottom of the screen, but I'm just worried that it could get a bit off putting!

The chat bar has been upgraded to the very latest version of it. Initially ran into some hiccups with it, but everything appears to be smooth now.

You might notice some minute differences, but the new version mostly addresses bugs in the previous version we had. Unfortunately, it seems that the Zoom issue is still a problem though, but the problems a few had with Chrome should hopefully be resolved.

The biggest change, though, is compatibility with the cometchat mobile app. I'll post a topic about it soon, but you'll now be able to use a mobile app to access the YWS chat bar.

So, I was hoping that the chat bar would be compatible with the cometchat mobile app, but apparently for that to happen, I need to pay $250, which is a bit steep! However, the chatbar does now work on mobile devices, albeit not very well.

I've posted a somewhat more detailed explanation here:
How To Use The YWS Chat Bar (incl. on mobile!)

In short, to turn the chat bar on for mobile, go to the settings dashboard, then to preferences.

Spoiler

Tagging those who expressed interest in chat bar on mobile! @AriaAdams, @megsug, @Iggy, @Auxiira

The chatbar seems ok to me. It doesn't jump around to the bottom of the screen, which was probably one of the most aggravating parts of the chatbar.

It works fine. A way to zoom in to see better is just to zoom in enough to see it, but not to take out of the screen completely. The only thing that seems weird with it is that now it looks like there are lines through the chat bubbles.

Most of the old problems seem gone now. Yay!

Hi Nate. I was wondering if you could implement (if it was possible) a notification whenever someone submits their character template in a storybook if you are the creator or storybook manager of the storybook in mention. I have a lot of problems remembering them XD.

Please and thank you!

Aquestioning wrote:Hi Nate. I was wondering if you could implement (if it was possible) a notification whenever someone submits their character template in a storybook if you are the creator or storybook manager of the storybook in mention. I have a lot of problems remembering them XD.

Please and thank you!

This would be pretty cool. I believe Nate is currently busy with putting Cassini together, though, and who knows what kinds of wonders will that bring

Also, and this is more of a question and request, but is there a way for an admin or creator of a club to remove people from their club, other than the person unsubscribing themselves? Because I have a club that has a lot of people who have dropped of the face of YWS and I would like to clean up the club so I can see who all is active right now.

Did the method for counting reviews on all time leaderboards change? Just curious - my count was always eighty over and now it's thirty under. Not complaining, just curious!

@Aquestioning I can answer that for you.

All you click on their character right? There is an option to edit that character (if you are the story book owner) From there, you can delete them from the storybook.