h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

was there a reason to change the format of the smiley page? i quite liked it before... now i can't scan them all at once. is a page with all on it possible?

Well, there's so many smileys now that a page with absolutely all of them would take relatively long to load, and I think it would also cause some unneeded server strain.

It would be possible, though, to have a page that just listed the name of the smiley and the codes, without the actual graphic smiley, and get them all on one page without significant problems. You wouldn't be able to see what they all looked like on that page, but it might be handy to print out as a reference or whatever.


Mikey

i like being able to browse them all, say i am looking for one, and im not sure which heading it falls under...
would it really make that much of a difference as far as server strain?

yes please. If i am to improve my smilie use I need to know which one's what. If you want to know what it is you could then check the long list, all I need are the codes.

Okay, I'm working on a codes-only full smiley list page. I'll post a note here when it's ready.

Well, here's the first chunk done. Eventually all the tables will be filled in, but I will probably only get one done each day. A1318529

thats thanks!

It's about half way done, I think. My elbows are aching, so no more typing for me tonight! I'll post again here when it's finished.

thank you for doing this, its so much better, even if i cant see the smileys all together...

I second that - brilliant work Mikey, thanks!

We did remove the smiley page because of the strain on the servers. We still wanted to show the new ones off and offer easy access to the others, and we felt the only real compromise was to categorise them.

h2g2 Support

i find it hard to believe that a smiley page provides such strain on the servers. most people have them cached, or a good number of the smileys cached, and how large(filewise) are the smileys? wouldnt the picture pages provide more of a strain? im sure that 20 or so pictures are larger combined than all of the smileys....

It's not the bandwidth that's really the problem. It's the amount of markup used. Tables of smilies relies _heavily_ on GuideML and the transformation of it into HTML, this can strain the servers quite badly at times.

spelugx - <./>guru</.>

Yeah, I'm doing some cutting and pasting from the current Smiley pages to make my Smiley table page, but I'm using less than half the markup.

Just one category to go, BTW.

Okay, all done.


Mikey

I miss the original format as well, it just took me ages to find the one I wanted. I looked for under seasonal and loads of others before thinking of actions. Can't we have a page for weather?

Well done Mikey!!

thanks!


Mikey

i guess changing it all from guideML could be straining...
im gonna go look in a sec...

thank you thank you thank you

Just jumping in here without reading the backlog to say that the new smiley pages are brilliant. Having them all on one page took ages to download, and now they're there much quick - after all, one only comes here to check quickly how to make a smiley - or at least, that's what I use the pages for.

Of course, it took me ages to figure out if is an "emotion" or an "action" or from the new collection, or in which list to find it, but it would have taken just as long to scroll down the old version of the page with all the smileys on and the question would still have to be solved - which list is it in?

On the whole - definitely an improvement. Thank you.