ThinkUp's beta interface overhaul
Gina Trapani
explaining what the app actually DOES more clearly and obviously. And
what better place to do it than in the interface itself--especially
the public, non-logged in interface. We want people who see a ThinkUp
installation to say, "I want that."
So, alongside improved marketing outside the app, I've wanted to
overhaul the app's entire interface and stop hiding ThinkUp's best
functionality behind a login. That's the premise of the beta UI
revamp, which I'm staging on my ThinkUp installation now. Check it out
in action here:
http://smarterware.org/thinkup/?u=anildash&n=twitter
You'll see we're ditching the Private Dashboard/Public Timeline
differentiation. Everything is in the public-style layout, and the
main view is simply the Dashboard. (Or, as I like to call it, the
AnilDashboard.)
The tabs have been ported over to a sidebar, which exposes all of
ThinkUps post/user/data views whether or not you're logged in. If
you're not logged in, you don't see protected replies. That's the only
difference.
Instead of a mixed flow of posts by public users in the timeline, the
default view is a single user's "Main Dashboard", a collection of
interesting data points. By default, your home page will display the
most recently updated instance.
The "Switch user" dropdown is now available in the public, non-logged
in view as well as when you're logged in. If you switch from a Twitter
account to a Facebook account, you'll see the that available views in
the sidebar change. These are all configured on a plugin basis. (For
example, a listing of "Mentions" doesn't make sense for a Facebook
user, but it does for a Twitter user.)
There are only a few features "hidden" behind the "you must be logged
in" wall: export to CSV, and the SlickGrid searchable
spreadsheet/export.
I'm not working exclusively on this branch, which is located here:
http://github.com/ginatrapani/ThinkUp/tree/beta
I'm hoping to merge it into master sometime this weekend. Then, the
beta bugfix-o-rama will begin early next week, while we sort out
problems before the beta launch.
Thoughts/suggestions/feedback on the new layout? Let me know what you think.
Gina
PS. There's obviously a whole lot left to do, like style that sidebar
and refine the links/explanations of each data view. Send on your
suggestions!
Randi Miller
Anything you need just let me know.
Randi Miller
know if it was meant to be that way or not.
Gina Trapani
> The bullet points for the side bar are almost off my screen. Don't
> know if it was meant to be that way or not.
Nope--one of the items at the top of the to-do list is to style that
sidebar to look a lot nicer. Anil had something going here:
http://github.com/ginatrapani/ThinkUp/pull/222
But it requires rejigging the entire grid system. Hopefully we'll get
that or something like it before release.
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Gina Trapani
along with a first attempt at styling the sidebar, which you can see
here:
http://smarterware.org/thinkup/
I've built a new user distribution release for testing, it's available
here:
http://github.com/ginatrapani/ThinkUp/downloads
IMPORTANT: If you are upgrading your install from the 9/13 release or
earlier, you will have to either 1.) nuke your ThinkUp database and
start fresh, or 2.) run the database migrations by hand. All
migrations are contained in the install/sql/mysql_migrations/v0.008
migration file. They are dated, so run all the ones that have happened
AFTER your last installation.
We're working on automating database migrations for upgraded
installations this week.
Thanks for testing everyone.
Gina
On Sep 17, 3:09 pm, Gina Trapani <ginatrap...@gmail.com> wrote:
Amy
On 19 Sep, 2010, at 1:39 PM, Gina Trapani wrote:
> Quick update: the beta interface overhaul has been merged into master,
> along with a first attempt at styling the sidebar, which you can see
> here:
> http://smarterware.org/thinkup/
That's looking great. I like the idea of pulling more info out into the public view.
A couple comments:
- My reaction was that the font size for the posts is too large to start with. My vote would be to move it down a notch and then let users increase the default browser font size if they like.
- I noticed that when I increased the font size in the browser, the layout no longer worked as intended, e.g.:
http://cl.ly/c922a66ad2e7177cd81d
(I have run into this before with css layouts... trying to remember what I did to address it. someone more expert in css will probably know immediately).
[As a side note: I have been managing to keep up with all the architecture/UI changes in my 'twitter favorites' fork-- I now have it using the new interface and export/search. I still have to write the tests for it, but should have more time this week and hope to get it done quickly. I don't think it makes sense to hastily push it into the 9/27 release though].
-Amy
Gina Trapani
> I noticed that when I increased the font size in the browser, the layout no longer worked as intended, e.g.:
> http://cl.ly/c922a66ad2e7177cd81d
Yes, the current sidebar location pushes the main canvas down in a
small browser window, or with enlarged fonts. We're hoping to relocate
that sidebar inside the main canvas, but that requires resizing the
rest of the grid.
It's issue #277, and a new ThinkUp contributor named Will is taking a
look at it this week as is Bill (Dash30):
http://github.com/ginatrapani/ThinkUp/issues#issue/277
> [As a side note: I have been managing to keep up with all the architecture/UI changes in my 'twitter favorites' fork-- I now have it using the new interface and export/search. I still have to write the tests for it, but should have more time this week and hope to get it done quickly. I don't think it makes sense to hastily push it into the 9/27 release though].
That is *fantastic* news, and I seriously cannot wait to see the
favorites work you've done. Agreed it won't go in for the first beta,
but super exciting nonetheless!
Randi Miller
where would the script go? I tried to insert the script in the post
and head tpls but it just gives me smarty errors...
Gina Trapani
On Sep 21, 9:48 pm, Randi Miller <techra...@gmail.com> wrote:
> If I wanted to put in the hovercard like thishttp://punchaduck.com/thinkup/twittertest.html
> and head tpls but it just gives me smarty errors...
go into the webapp/plugins/twitter/view/ tpl files. Since the
JavaScript includes curly brackets { } and those are also used in
Smarty, you have to wrap the JS in a {literal} {/literal} Smarty tags
to tell Smarty to not parse the curly brackets as usual.
http://www.smarty.net/manual/en/language.function.literal.php
Michael Louis Thaler
> Since the JavaScript includes curly brackets { } and those are also used in
> Smarty, you have to wrap the JS in a {literal} {/literal} Smarty tags
> to tell Smarty to not parse the curly brackets as usual.
>
> http://www.smarty.net/manual/en/language.function.literal.php
On a side note, Smarty 3 overcomes this limitation by ignoring curly
braces proceeded by a space, allowing JS and CSS to go through it
without issue. Smarty 3 really is a huge improvement--in fact we've
started using it in production at my day job and haven't looked back.
I vaguely recall this having come up earlier in the list--just thought
I'd mention it.
--Mickey
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Twitter: mithaler
Randi Miller
the @twitternames is being linked (which I can't seem to find) is
affecting it.
PS just incase you haven't run across this little cheat sheet for
things to use @anywhere for...
http://platform.twitter.com/js-api.html
Randy R
>> The last step on the road to ThinkUp's beta release is exposing and
>> explaining what the app actually DOES more clearly and obviously. And
>> what better place to do it than in the interface itself--especially
>> the public, non-logged in interface. We want people who see a ThinkUp
>> installation to say, "I want that."
Hi there,
I installed ThinkUp yesterday and think it has a brilliant future, I
love the idea and I see ways to use it as a service for our customers.
However, I was wondering if there was an explanation of what it does
exactly somewhere, and it would appear by the above that there is not.
I'd like to take a shot at improving the situation.
The install was very easy. Connecting to Twitter was easy enough, but
only because I've already made and registered simple Twitter apps. For
someone who never has, it would be confusing. I could try to write a
paragraph or two on that subject to submit if anyone would want that.
Connecting to Facebook is a little scary, it talks about "writing on
your wall" on the FB side. What exactly is supposed to happen with
Facebook? By the way, does the Twitter app need read-write access?
For Twitter, I can see what ThinkUp is doing when I run the cron
script on a console. Ironically, our customer asked last week how they
could have a record of all their tweets and discussions. Is the
Twitter API limit the reason we don't see all of the answers or is
there a limit as to far back they can go? Does it's nice to be nice
mean you're not sucking the blood out of Twitter?
Kudos for a brilliant project, I can't wait to see new versions.
/r
Gina Trapani
On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 10:33 PM, Randy R <randu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I installed ThinkUp yesterday and think it has a brilliant future, I
> love the idea and I see ways to use it as a service for our customers.
> However, I was wondering if there was an explanation of what it does
> exactly somewhere, and it would appear by the above that there is not.
> I'd like to take a shot at improving the situation.
Our beta launch is on Monday, and by then we'll have a proper
explanation up on our project web site. Here's a preview:
http://ginatrapani.github.com/ThinkUp/
> The install was very easy. Connecting to Twitter was easy enough, but
> only because I've already made and registered simple Twitter apps. For
> someone who never has, it would be confusing. I could try to write a
> paragraph or two on that subject to submit if anyone would want that.
We'd love that. Our user guide has fallen out of date--would you be
willing to read/revise? Here's the wiki page:
http://github.com/ginatrapani/ThinkUp/wiki/User-Guide
> Connecting to Facebook is a little scary, it talks about "writing on
> your wall" on the FB side. What exactly is supposed to happen with
> Facebook? By the way, does the Twitter app need read-write access?
It's true, our Facebook plugin isn't as well fleshed-out as Twitter.
ThinkUp only requires read-only access to Twitter and Facebook.
> For Twitter, I can see what ThinkUp is doing when I run the cron
> script on a console. Ironically, our customer asked last week how they
> could have a record of all their tweets and discussions. Is the
> Twitter API limit the reason we don't see all of the answers or is
> there a limit as to far back they can go? Does it's nice to be nice
> mean you're not sucking the blood out of Twitter?
Twitter will only return 3,200 tweets back into a given users's
history. More on the pagination limit is here:
http://dev.twitter.com/pages/every_developer
Randy R
> Hi Randy,
> Our beta launch is on Monday, and by then we'll have a proper
> explanation up on our project web site. Here's a preview:
> http://ginatrapani.github.com/ThinkUp/
I'll look, thx
>> someone who never has, it would be confusing. I could try to write a
>> paragraph or two on that subject to submit if anyone would want that.
> We'd love that. Our user guide has fallen out of date--would you be
> willing to read/revise? Here's the wiki page:
>
> http://github.com/ginatrapani/ThinkUp/wiki/User-Guide
Will take a look.
> It's true, our Facebook plugin isn't as well fleshed-out as Twitter.
> ThinkUp only requires read-only access to Twitter and Facebook.
I finally saw what it does, I wasn't posting publicly - never do on my
dev account. And I'm not a huge FB user anyway.
> Twitter will only return 3,200 tweets back into a given users's
> history. More on the pagination limit is here:
> http://dev.twitter.com/pages/every_developer
I keep seeing that limit, I guess that means the older replies are lost.
This is an exciting development, I'm looking forward to following all
this in spite of a heavy load.
OT, sort of: We do a live geeky conference every Friday at 12 Noon
EDT, the VoIP Users Conference, mostly about telephony, but we diverge
into all kinds of technologies. As it happens we have no guest
tomorrow. If you're available, I'll bet the gang (35-50 live geeky
callers) would love to hear about ThinkUP. I will be talking about it
anyway, but if there's any chance you can make it, we'd love to hear
from you. We talked about about Wave "back inthe day". We've had
plenty of great people on over the past three years, many CEO/CTO,
programmers, authors and innovators (hey you're triply qualified!) If
not this Friday, some Friday?
http://voipusersconference.org
Thanks to you and everyone working on ThinkUp, it's a very cool idea.
/r
Gina Trapani
the sidebar is now integrated into the main ThinkUp canvas.
It looks so good! See it in action here:
http://smarterware.org/thinkup/?u=ginatrapani&n=twitter
Thanks Bill! This is now included in the master branch and today's
user distribution zip file.
On Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 3:09 PM, Gina Trapani <ginat...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 3:06 PM, Randi Miller <tech...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> The bullet points for the side bar are almost off my screen. Don't
>> know if it was meant to be that way or not.
>
> Nope--one of the items at the top of the to-do list is to style that
> sidebar to look a lot nicer. Anil had something going here:
>
> http://github.com/ginatrapani/ThinkUp/pull/222
>
> But it requires rejigging the entire grid system. Hopefully we'll get
> that or something like it before release.