dev.to Repo Recap from the Past Week

#changelog #meta #opensource

Hello again! 👋 To cut down on some confusion -- mostly for myself -- I'm going to cut this edition off a few days early so we can cover a full Sunday to Saturday for future editions. This edition will be covering November 28 to December 1. Next week will cover December 2 to December 8.

Features

We've recently updated our Code of Conduct. Thanks to @jess for the PR!
- Link to PR
We also recently added a new feature that allows you to fine tune your feed a bit more. More details in Ben's post:
- Link to PR
  
  Changelog: Adjust the weights of tags you follow
  
  Ben Halpern for The DEV Team ・ Nov 30 '18
  
  #meta #changelog

Bug Fixes / Other Contributions

@rxx made a small improvement to our header tag by replacing a long string with an array join method. Thanks @rxx!
- Link to PR
@francisco refactored some Preact and JS code in our onboarding components. Thanks, Francisco!
- Link to PR
@mhchen made a pull request that fixes an issue in the V1 editor: you should be able to move the text cursor in the editor with arrow keys properly now.
- Link to PR
@ycmjason fixed an edge case where punctuation was being included in a header's anchor links. Thanks, Jason!
Link to PR
@link2twenty fixed a CSS issue where the left edge of the navbar would have a different height than the rest of the navbar. Thanks, Andrew!
- Link to PR
@tterb changed the settings alert banner from a stark red to white, which should be much easier to read. Thanks, Brett!
- Link to PR

New Issues / Discussions

@alcha reported an issue where he had a hanging Connect notification that he couldn't clear. If you have this bug, too, let us know in the issue. Thanks, Devin!
Unavoidable connect notification badge #1210
4lch4 posted on Nov 28, 2018
Describe the bug No matter where I go on the site or what I do, there's a notification badge as if I have an unread message in the Connect feature:

To Reproduce I'm not certain these steps will reproduce it but after my investigation into the bug with some help from @benhalpern:
1. Join a group like the group for mentors.
2. When there is a notification badge like above, leave the group.
Expected behavior I'd expect for me to go to the Connect page and there be a message, if not, then there should be no notification badge.

Screenshots I posted a screenshot of what I'm actually seeing above, but here's a screenshot of what I see after I click on the button and go to the Connect page:

Desktop (please complete the following information):
- OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro build number 17134
- Browser: Chrome
- Version: 70.0.3538.102 (Official Build) (64-bit) (cohort: Stable)
Additional context Ben initially suggested going to /chat_channels?state=unopened to locate the culprit and it appears the Mentors groups channel is what's causing it:
```
[
  {
    "id": 31201,
    "slug": "mentors",
    "channel_name": "Mentors",
    "channel_type": "invite_only",
    "last_opened_at": "2018-10-13T03:27:22.619Z",
    "last_message_at": "2018-11-18T15:16:00.595Z",
    "adjusted_slug": "mentors",
    "membership_id": 79646,
    "description": "Chat amonst mentors"
  }
]
```
Also, I don't recall this happening when I first reported this issue but when I click on the button with the notification (to go to Connect, I'm not sure how to phrase it) it directs me to dev.to/connect/mentors which is empty. You can see the results of this in the 2nd screenshot I attached above.
</div> <div class="gh-btn-container"><a class="gh-btn" href="https://github.com/thepracticaldev/dev.to/issues/1210">View on GitHub</a></div>
@link2twenty opened an issue where we have some missing alt tags on the homepage. Thanks, Andrew!

A11y: alt attributes for landing page picture #1212

Link2Twenty posted on Nov 28, 2018

Describe the bug On the landing page, there are 3 images that do not have alt tags associated with them this leads to lower accessibility score.

nav-profile-image: https://github.com/thepracticaldev/dev.to/blob/65110550d8c2231f73ff99ae305a46b7b0bcb4f9/app/views/layouts/_top_bar.html.erb#L25 alt="profile image"

sidebar-profile-pic: https://github.com/thepracticaldev/dev.to/blob/f744f43493ef4f90f5421665d0d393db03da052d/app/assets/javascripts/initializers/initializeBaseUserData.js#L36 alt="profile image" Side note: I'm not sure editing the inner HTML directly is the best approach here.

MY READING LIST: https://github.com/thepracticaldev/dev.to/blob/65110550d8c2231f73ff99ae305a46b7b0bcb4f9/app/views/articles/_sidebar_nav.html.erb#L20 alt="Bookmarks"

Expected behaviour Alt tags are important for screen readers and for broken image links

Additional context These will stop chrome audits flagging the issue but at some point, we need to do a scan through the entire site to find other images with the problem.

I think this will be a good first issue too, little changes like this are so important for usability.

View on GitHub

We've had a few reports where signing in via GitHub has failed. Let us know if that's the case for you in the issue below:

GitHub logins sometimes fail authentication #1223

Zhao-Andy posted on Nov 29, 2018

There have been a couple of cases where a user tries to sign in via GitHub, and they run into an error that says "Invalid credentials". Most of the time it's because something went wrong and retrying usually works. So far we've had two reports where someone tries to log in, and they repeatedly hit the "invalid credentials" error.

For the more stubborn cases, I've tried removing their GitHub identity and having them authenticate again. This has worked sometimes, but when it doesn't, I suspect there's something else that's becoming invalid.

@dance2die has experienced this issue with Chrome specifically. Logging in with GitHub on Firefox and Safari works.

View on GitHub

@aspittel opened up the discussion of allowing people to pin specific posts to their profile. Thanks, Ali!
Feature Request: featured profile posts #1225
aspittel posted on Nov 30, 2018
Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. I would love to be able to feature different posts on my profile page. I have a lot of discussion-based or re-occurring posts which are great from the community, but I would love for people to see my best writing work when they go to my profile instead of those posts. I think this is especially helpful for people trying to share their articles outside of the dev.to ecosystem (i.e. tweeting check out my blog or something along those lines). Also, it would be helpful for job seekers who want to put their best content first.

Describe the solution you'd like I think there are a number of solutions to this:
- Something like "pinned repositories" on GitHub profiles (maybe these could use the cover_image too) -- I think this would be the best solution
- A "sort by reactions" view on profiles that is link-able
- One "pinned post" similar to a pinned tweet
- The ability for the user to decide how posts are sorted on their profile page
- A boolean on posts for whether they should appear on the person's profile or not
View on GitHub

@k20shores opened up the discussion of different ways to improve comment threading. They suggested more visual cues or being able to collapse a comment thread. Thanks, Kyle!

Improve the comment thread #1211

K20shores posted on Nov 28, 2018

I cannot tell where the root of a comment begins after reading past the first few comments. Could an indicator be added such that it is easy to tell when I am reading a new, root comment? If not, could a collapse function be built in such that all replies to a root comment are hidden?

View on GitHub

@somedood requested showing line numbers to code blocks. Thanks, @somedood! More comments in the issue:
Feature Request: Add the option to include line numbers in code blocks #1236
Some-Dood posted on Dec 01, 2018
I currently enjoy the benefits of having syntax-highlighted code blocks in my articles or comments. It makes the code stand out from the rest of the text. However, there may be times when it is necessary to reference a line number in a code block for a clearer explanation of a particular line.

In that case, I open this issue to request for an option to add line numbers in code blocks. I believe this is possible with Jekyll? Knowing that Hofstadter's Law exists, I hope that it wouldn't be too hard to implement.

Perhaps line numbers can be globally enabled through the front matter?
--- title: Line numbers in code blocks are cool! tags: meta linenos: true ---
Or perhaps it can be enabled inline with each code block?
--- title: Individual Code Block Activation tags: meta --- # Example of Unactivated Code Block ```javascript console.log('I have no line numbers... 😟'); ``` # Example of Inline Activation ```javascript linenos console.log('I have inline line numbers! Yay! 🎉'); ```
Perhaps it could even be globally enabled by default?

Anyway, that's pretty much this entire feature request. Looking forward to the day this becomes possible! Thanks for reading!
View on GitHub

@rpalo opened up the discussion where as an author, you would be notified of every comment in your post. Thanks, Ryan! More details below:

Notify author if someone replies to any comment on their post #1238

rpalo posted on Dec 01, 2018

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. A clear and concise description of what the problem is. Ex. I'm always frustrated when [...]

Currently, if someone comments on a comment on my post (replying to someone else), I don't get notified, so I end up either having to check in/refresh or miss a lot of conversations I didn't know were happening.

Describe the solution you'd like A clear and concise description of what you want to happen.

It would be nice if I got notified anytime a comment happened on a thread on my articles.

Describe alternatives you've considered A clear and concise description of any alternative solutions or features you've considered.

Even if it was just a single bundled notification that said "You've had 10 new comments on your article today!" that would be nice.

Additional context Add any other context or screenshots about the feature request here.

View on GitHub