New Almeopedia

[zompist]

I've basically redone the Almeopedia. You can find it here:

http://www.almeopedia.com/almeo.html

The problem with the Wiki version was speed. For a long time, it's been taking 40 seconds just to load a page. That made it almost impossible to consult, and extremely painful to modify.

I've been on a kick of using Javascript with large files (see here and here), so I applied the same methods to the Almeopedia. It's lightning-fast... at least on my computer. This will make it a lot easier to work with and expand.

It's not quite as fast online, but that's because of cacheing. As soon as your browser has cached the big files, a page should load in less than a second.

The "How do I use this" link on the front page should tell you all you need to know to explore.

The conversion involved loading every damn page— 800 pages— and copying over the text. I took the opportunity to update the text, add maps, and add a portal to every page. But I haven't yet tried out every page, and there are undoubtedly typos, missing pictures, etc. There is a special category (:2017) for pages that are new or largely rewritten.

Unfortunately, all this means the thing is no longer editable by everyone. I'm sorry about that. I still invite you to e-mail me corrections or new articles, but I realize that doing it on-page was very convenient. But for me, it was more important to make the thing usable, and to enable me to make quick edits. Plus, since it's now my code, I can do programming things like facilitate the historical atlases, improve the choose-your-own-adventure, and implement a SFW button. Plus I could customize the Wiki-style markup to avoid a lot of busywork.

Another regrettable loss is the talk pages. I don't think I have the patience to load the 800 pages again to check for those.

As I was converting files, I realized that I could solve another impending problem: the Skouras Atlas needed to be converted to something besides Flash, which is deprecated these days. So, the entire Historical Atlas of Skouras now lives in the Almeopedia (like the Arcél one).

I've left the old version up for now, but I'll probably remove it in a few months to save disk space.

If you have pages on the old Almeopedia, make sure you get the info. The only thing I remember running into is a page on Qedik, which if still valid should be moved to the Akana wiki.

I've tested the page extensively in Safari and a bit in Firefox. I'll check IE tonight, now that it's up. Browsers being what they are, there is undoubtedly some grotesque Javascript incompatibility I'm not aware of yet.

Going forward, my aim is that every page have added value over what's already on zompist.com. In a very few cases, that means I've removed pages that duplicate VV pages, or which really didn't say anything useful.

[hwhatting]

Looks good! Although I miss the ability to edit.

Some things I noted:
- On the Bod'neay page there are lots of brackets that need to be cleaned.
- Curym: in "inhabited byhunter-gatherers", a space is missing
- Eši: Is the sentence near the top of the article starting with "There, she was associated ..." in italics intentionally? "COmo" with two capital letters. In the last sentece Vlerë isn't linked.
- Gallene: brackets / formatting
- Kaltenia: This sentence seems unfinished: "Their language family is Kalténian, which is spread"
- Koleva: "an epic poem by Teltailes" - that name is intentional, right? Third paragraph: "disguised as a body" -> "disguised as a boy"? 4th paragraph - "Teltailers".
- Oruseon: "He probably marks the tradition" -> "He probably marks the transition" ?
- Thermometer: space missing in the 3rd paragraph ("recentsuggestion")
- Vlerë: Last paragraph "bit not surprisingly" -> "but not surprisingly"?

For me, the SFW mode creates the "business" headlines, but does nothing with the pictures (I use IE 11).

Will there be a "changes / new articles" feature that lets you follow when new content is added?

[zompist]

Thank you, Hans-Werner! Should be corrected.

I added a "What's New" link to the front page.

[So Haleza Grise]

It looks like there is an error with the language box that means the words for "big" and "river" are identical in every language. E.g. in the Verdurian article, both are listed as selë. The "Sample wordlist" page appears like it doesn't have the box in it.

The map on the "multilingualism" page doesn't seem to work. The diagram of the script on the Tžuro language is also missing I think.

In the "Thermometer" article there is a missing space: "thusmaking"

Some of the "author" tags don't seem to have come across properly. I haven't checked every page for this, but here are a few that I've noticed:

Old Skourene
Old Verdurian
Proto-Eastern
Elkarîl
Ismaîn

[zompist]

Thank you! Should be fixed.

[Mornche Geddick]

Whenever I click on a link in the new Almeopedia I get this sort of thing:

There is no article yet for Xengiman.
There is no article yet for Almea.
There is no article yet for Magic.
There is no article yet for Ktuvoks.
There is no article yet for Clothing.
There is no article yet for Jippirasti.
There is no article yet for Diversions.
There is no article yet for Tourism.
There is no article yet for How do I use this thing?.

And for a change..

:People Topics found: 0

I respectfully submit that the new Almeopedia is not user-ready.

[hwhatting]

I added a "What's New" link to the front page.

Sorry for being a bother, but that's not very user-friendly... what I had thought of was more like "new articles since your last visit" or, if that's to difficult, at least a listing of articles by their time of addition / last major update, with the newest additions / updates on top? Right now I have to go to "2017" and look for new articles in the alphabetical list, which becomes more taxing on my memory the more articles I've read and the more articles are added.

[zompist]

Mornche, what browser and OS are you using?

[Frislander]

The direct link to the Almeopedia from your main page still takes you to the old version: you have to go through the Virtual Verduria page in order to get to it.

[Mornche Geddick]

Mornche, what browser and OS are you using?

Firefox 57, with NoScript. Or Midori, with scripts off.

[So Haleza Grise]

It does look like the "Sample Wordlist" page stil doesn't have the language box it had on the old version.

[Mornche Geddick]

So, is it script blocking, or do I blame Firefox?

[zompist]

It works fine on Firefox on my Mac. I will have to download Firefox on the PC to see if there's any difference.

There should be an error console on Firefox— on my machine it's Tools > Web Developer > Debugger. If it gives you a specific error message, that would be helpful.

I don't know how NoScript works, but the page works via Javascript, and it loads server .txt files. My guess is that you have scripts turned on (otherwise you wouldn't be getting a "page not found" thing at all, since that's generated by Javascript), but the add-on is disabling reading other files. Does my numbers pages work for you?

[zompist]

The direct link to the Almeopedia from your main page still takes you to the old version

Should be fixed, though Dreamhost is cacheing the main page or something, as I can't see the change live yet.

newest additions / updates on top

Well, I guess a year is too granular. I've made it a month for now— "What's New" should show you the months. Frankly I wouldn't advise checking the site more than twice a month.

[hwhatting]

[

newest additions / updates on top

Well, I guess a year is too granular. I've made it a month for now— "What's New" should show you the months. Frankly I wouldn't advise checking the site more than twice a month.

I'll heed your advice. And thanks!

[Mornche Geddick]

It works fine on Firefox on my Mac. I will have to download Firefox on the PC to see if there's any difference.

There should be an error console on Firefox— on my machine it's Tools > Web Developer > Debugger. If it gives you a specific error message, that would be helpful.

I don't know how NoScript works, but the page works via Javascript, and it loads server .txt files. My guess is that you have scripts turned on (otherwise you wouldn't be getting a "page not found" thing at all, since that's generated by Javascript), but the add-on is disabling reading other files. Does my numbers pages work for you?

NoScript works by whitelisting javascript files. I have just whitelisted two files that turned up in the new Almeopedia: http://almeopedia.com and almeopedia.com, and that seems to have sorted the problem.

Even when I had NoScript activated in Firefox 57, I was still able to get to the initial page. Curiously I was even able to do that in Midori, with all scripts deactivated.

Note: There are some basic scripts, such as these listed on NoScript's FAQ which are apparently essential for the functioning of Firefox.

1: chrome:
It can't be removed because it is the privileged pseudo-protocol used by Firefox internal scripts: disabling it would prevent the browser itself from working.
2. about:xyz, moz-safe-about:, resource:
A bunch of internal pseudo URLs. They can't be removed because they help your browser to work as expected.
3. blob:, mediasource:
Internal pseudo URLs identifying content generated by a script. They can't be removed because if you have these on a page, you already allowed the script generating them, so no point treating them separately.
4. about:pocket*
Internal URLs of the Pocket service, distributed as part of Firefox.

[Aldwinkle]

Not enough Rifter articles.

[Mornche Geddick]

Can there ever be enough rifter articles?

[vec]

Overall, great. I admire your holding on to the HTML4 look—the Metaverse remains a bastion of original web aesthetics that otherwise are almost completely gone.

That said, I hope you take the opportunity to make some of the pictures on here (especially maps) somewhat larger and perhaps wrap them in such a way that they scale properly on mobile, and if you could make the type-sizes go up on mobile, that would be awesome. Right now you have to zoom and slide to make out the text which makes reading a hassle.

Here's some good information about how to do this:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/doc ... t_meta_tag

[zompist]

Should be fixed, though Dreamhost is cacheing the main page or something, as I can't see the change live yet.

Ha, no, I just forgot I have two separate domains. Uploaded to the right place now.

Not enough Rifter articles.

I only hope that whoever makes the first Rifter fursuit sends me pictures.

I admire your holding on to the HTML4 look—the Metaverse remains a bastion of original web aesthetics that otherwise are almost completely gone.

Very nice way of saying it looks old-fashioned. Most web pages now seem to be optimized for ad delivery rather than for readers. At least I can worry much less these days about downloading huge files.

Thanks for the information on mobile. I put the following tag onto the page:

<meta name="viewport" content="width=500, initial-scale=1">

I have no way of testing this, so please tell me if that's a (dis)improvement. I'll look into how to make the text bigger.

[So Haleza Grise]

The "Diversions" and "Tourism" links on the front page seem not to work because I think they are pointing to articles rather than categories.

[zompist]

Thanks, SHG, should be fixed.

I increased the text size slightly all over. I'm not sure what's best for mobile— apparently the new hotness is "media queries", but I'm not comfortable with adding scripts I can't test. I did realize I can test on my iPad, and the bigger text looks nice there, but I realize that phones may be another beast entirely. If someone knows how to add some CSS to scale up text appropriately only for mobile, I'd love to get a snippet.

[alynnidalar]

Meh, maybe it's old-fashioned, but you could always just base it on screen width. (which also makes it convenient to test that it's working, because you just have to resize your browser window)

[Mornche Geddick]

I admire your holding on to the HTML4 look—the Metaverse remains a bastion of original web aesthetics that otherwise are almost completely gone.

Very nice way of saying it looks old-fashioned. Most web pages now seem to be optimized for ad delivery rather than for readers. At least I can worry much less these days about downloading huge files.

I can't stand the new web aesthetic. Especially the images that increase in size when you mouse over them, and the popups that should be blocked but aren't.

[Arkasas]

Couple issues I've noticed:

- the pictures in the Arcél atlas do not work. Skouras is fine, though.
- indeed, you have quite a few maps and other pictures that aren't functional
- because the pronunciations were done in brackets, many now are links to "pages" named for the first syllable
- the link to the mothership leads you to almeopedia.com/www.zompist.com, which isn't particularly helpful.

I'd also hope that something can be done about images in general, particularly maps. Some are far too large (such as the map of Apoyin), while others are far too small to be of any use (for example, that nice new map of Téllinor you've snuck in there). I'm not sure what can be done about this in your framework. Perhaps some could be put on pages of their own?