4.1 is here!

It's been a bit since 4.0 has been introduced and we are very happy to bring you the newest version of your favorite website, VideoSift 4.1! Without further ado, let's take a look at what's new:

Conversations

Quoting has never been more fun. Since comments and discussions are an important part of this site, we've reworked the way quotes are being displayed. While long back-and-forth exchanges benefit the most from this feature, even single quotations look more appealing and include a smaller version of the quoted person's avatar.

Screenshot:





Dynamic comment loading

Loading times can be quite long for videos and talks that enjoy a healthy dose of discussion. That's why we've implemented a system that loads an initial batch of the comments and adds more to the page on request, rather than loading them all on page load. It should speed up those page loads. You still have the option to load all the comments by either clicking the corresponding link on the given page, or by disabling this new feature all together in your preferences.

Screenshot:





Related video display

You've just watched a video and want more of the same? You don't want to scroll down past the comments to find the related videos? No problem. Once your video has finished, you'll be greeted by a presentation of related videos in its place. This feature is only available for YouTube embeds.

Screenshot:





Preview comment posting

This feature has been requested a couple of times and we're proud to announce that it has made its way onto the sift! It is now possible to post comment from the comment popup, making it no longer necessary to leave a listing page and open another page to post a comment. Simply click the "submit new comments" link within the popup to show the comment edit box.


More comment goodness

The comment box toolbar has been extended with a "pin" button, which pins the comment box to the bottom of the screen, making it possible to read through comments while still having the edit box on screen.
The invocations in the listing above the comment box are now clickable and will insert the given invocation into to comment box on click.
The comment icon under a video's thumbnail will change depending on the number of comments it has. It'll be semi-transparent when there are no comments at all, while it'll feature an exclamation mark once a video receives 10 or more comments.


Revamped user preferences and country flags

The user preference section has been restyled to be more in touch with v4. In addition, a "country" setting has been introduced to the profile prefs. The country you choose will be represented by a small flag on your profile page.


A whole lot of small tweaks and fixes

There are alot more small changes, most of which you will discover eventually, such as

  • The ability to read a video's extended info while the embed is expanded in gallery mode.

  • The sift lounge has been opened for silver star members

  • A new bookmark icon.

  • A whole lot more social sharing options for videos.

  • Faster initialization of the navigation and user menu.

  • A revamped channels page.



As usual, please let us know in case you're experiencing any problems.
Kevlar says...

Love the new quoting! I wonder how that will effect the duration and tenor of flaming - seeing a cutesy avatar below yours every time you make an angry response might curb the hate a bit.

rasch187 says...

Good jerb. Not so sure how the dynamic comment loading is gonna work out, but I guess time will tell.

I have noticed that VS seems to be experiencing the same problems it did a few days ago; vids staying in queues after 2 days, etc etc

dingens says...

Looks very good,thanks. One minor thing: The country list in the preferences looks kind of half sorted:
* Estonia
* Egypt
* Western Sahara
* Eritrea
* Spain
* Finland
and so on.

Edit: Oh, yeah and *quality

ReverendTed says...

>> ^dag:
Thanks again for your tremendous effort on the changes, Fab.
I've noticed that when a quote is the first thing in the post (although watching this go in I'm not sure how that happens -I had to fudge this one), it leaves a lot of whitespace above the quote. (Due to the right-side avatar formatting, I think.)


Also, I have a link for the Sift Lounge at the top, which I don't think was there before, but since I'm not priv'd enough, when I click it SiftBot calls me a meatbag and tells me to go away.

Are there a lot more ads now than before?

choggie says...

Related video display full-frontal, & Preview comment posting/More comment goodness/
as an editing tool, a nice touch-help for the inebriate, much needed and appreciated-Country flags....now that's a bit much-

I r frum AmeRikuh....

dag says...

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

So, for the load comments - it will load thirty by default, and then you have to load more- but you are right VSBM, you can make it load all of them at once by adjusting this in your profile settings.

This was a necessary step to reduce the load on our poor DB for long comment threads.

raith says...

One problem with the "Related video display" feature is that for people with slow internet connections, once the video has ended, it removes the embed (?), which means that if we want to replay the clip now, we have to wait for 6 minutes again for it to buffer. Previously, we could replay instantly.

The related videos at the end of the page works fine, I think.

gwiz665 says...

I'm proud of how far we've (as if I've done anything..) come. You're a boon to the site, cdm! The new quotes are much better, well worth the blood spilled.

I see we can click the invocations now too, could we do that before? Awesome non-the-less. We're missing quality from both videos and talks though, but that's a quick fix I think.

Oh, when you have someone ignored, it shows 2x "[show the body of this ignored comment]".

Other than that, great jerb!

videosiftbannedme says...

Ok, well if it's to help take load off the server, I'm all for it. I'll drop mine back down to 10. Hey, if one click on my part can help, just imagine if we all clicked?

(singing)
I'd like to buy the Sift a home so it can run its code,
have multi-cores and lots of RAM, instead of just one node.
I'd like to teach the Sift to 'bate, in perfect harmony,
but since I'm poor I can't afford, so let's just keep it free...

(and I'll leave it up to you whether you debate or masturbate)

therealblankman says...

Biggest positive: Flags.

Biggest negative: Related video display. This completely blows. I don't want to have the video I'm watching replaced by related videos, I've got a slow connection out here in the wild, and to have to completely re-load a video if bychance I want to re-watch it sucks ginger balls.

campionidelmondo says...

>> ^therealblankman:
Biggest positive: Flags.
Biggest negative: Related video display. This completely blows. I don't want to have the video I'm watching replaced by related videos, I've got a slow connection out here in the wild, and to have to completely re-load a video if bychance I want to re-watch it sucks ginger balls.


The video should still be cached, so it shouldn't have to load it again. However, we are working on a solution that will completely preserve the player's state and we'll let you know when these changes go live.

ForgedReality says...

I have to say it, even though I'm sure it will probably make no difference to anyone:

I do not like some of the new VideoSift features. Good design goes unnoticed. If you notice a feature, something's wrong.

PUT MY TEXT WHERE I TELL YOU TO PUT IT! DO NOT AUTOMATICALLY PUT THE QUOTE BENEATH IT. What happens if I want to quote multiple posts and I want to address each one individually? This is extremely annoying.

And WHY THE HELL DO I HAVE TO CLICK TO SEE ALL COMMENTS NOW?! It was a lot better being able to simply scroll to read comments, especially the newest ones. Now I can't see the newer ones until I click a stupid link. At least I can disable it, so that's a start. Too bad it isn't disabled by default.

The stupid "Share" button is annoying and utterly useless to me. If it were moved somewhere else on the page so that I don't inadvertently mouseover it, causing it to balloon out and OBSCURE 50% OF MY VIDEO, making me WAIT FOR IT TO DISAPPEAR, it would be fine. I don't use facebook, twitter, or any of those other annoying ass "communities" for a reason. Do not make me look at a stupid list of places I never visit. It simply reassures me of the reasons WHY I don't use those sites. I am not going to share a video with anyone via that button. I know I don't like spam. I'm sure none of my friends do either. If I want to show someone, I'll simply fucking copy the URL and paste it to them. At least MOVE THE GODDAMNED ICON to some place where it isn't accidentally annoying. As it is now, I simply adblock the button so I don't have to fucking deal with it in the first place.

Christ. Whose bad choices were these?

dag says...

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

With regard to the click to see comments- this is something that we did to increase the performance of the site for everyone. We noticed that our slow queries that bog down the site are those on long threads. However! You can disable this in your profile and view the entire thread, old school style.

WRT the share button, I'm finding it annoying too - perhaps we should just axe it.


>> ^ForgedReality:
I have to say it, even though I'm sure it will probably make no difference to anyone:
I do not like some of the new VideoSift features. Good design goes unnoticed. If you notice a feature, something's wrong.
PUT MY TEXT WHERE I TELL YOU TO PUT IT! DO NOT AUTOMATICALLY PUT THE QUOTE BENEATH IT. What happens if I want to quote multiple posts and I want to address each one individually? This is extremely annoying.
And WHY THE HELL DO I HAVE TO CLICK TO SEE ALL COMMENTS NOW?! It was a lot better being able to simply scroll to read comments, especially the newest ones. Now I can't see the newer ones until I click a stupid link. At least I can disable it, so that's a start. Too bad it isn't disabled by default.
The stupid "Share" button is annoying and utterly useless to me. If it were moved somewhere else on the page so that I don't inadvertently mouseover it, causing it to balloon out and OBSCURE 50% OF MY VIDEO, making me WAIT FOR IT TO DISAPPEAR, it would be fine. I don't use facebook, twitter, or any of those other annoying ass "communities" for a reason. Do not make me look at a stupid list of places I never visit. It simply reassures me of the reasons WHY I don't use those sites. I am not going to share a video with anyone via that button. I know I don't like spam. I'm sure none of my friends do either. If I want to show someone, I'll simply fucking copy the URL and paste it to them. At least MOVE THE GODDAMNED ICON to some place where it isn't accidentally annoying. As it is now, I simply adblock the button so I don't have to fucking deal with it in the first place.
Christ. Whose bad choices were these?

lucky760 says...

>> ^ForgedReality:
PUT MY TEXT WHERE I TELL YOU TO PUT IT! DO NOT AUTOMATICALLY PUT THE QUOTE BENEATH IT. What happens if I want to quote multiple posts and I want to address each one individually? This is extremely annoying.

This seems to work fine for me, just like it always has, so I'm not sure if I'm misunderstanding this complaint.
>> ^ForgedReality:
If it were moved somewhere else on the page so that I don't inadvertently mouseover it, causing it to balloon out and OBSCURE 50% OF MY VIDEO, making me WAIT FOR IT TO DISAPPEAR, it would be fine.

I agree it is an annoyance, however I would like to note how interesting it is how devastating these changes seem to be for you. From your virtual tone, I'd guess you were cursing the man who murdered your whole family. Take a chill pill and try to relax there, little buddy. Namaste.

ForgedReality says...

>> ^lucky760:
>> ^ForgedReality:
PUT MY TEXT WHERE I TELL YOU TO PUT IT! DO NOT AUTOMATICALLY PUT THE QUOTE BENEATH IT. What happens if I want to quote multiple posts and I want to address each one individually? This is extremely annoying.

This seems to work fine for me, just like it always has, so I'm not sure if I'm misunderstanding this complaint.
>> ^ForgedReality:
If it were moved somewhere else on the page so that I don't inadvertently mouseover it, causing it to balloon out and OBSCURE 50% OF MY VIDEO, making me WAIT FOR IT TO DISAPPEAR, it would be fine.

I agree it is an annoyance, however I would like to note how interesting it is how devastating these changes seem to be for you. From your virtual tone, I'd guess you were cursing the man who murdered your whole family. Take a chill pill and try to relax there, little buddy. Namaste.


How are you putting your text below the quote?

raith says...

I think the problem has been fixed! Previously, the video never used to get cached when the player state was gone, so we had to wait to re-buffer the video to replay, but now it keeps it where the player left off (the "Replay" screen). Perfect!

>> ^campionidelmondo:
>> ^therealblankman:
Biggest positive: Flags.
Biggest negative: Related video display. This completely blows. I don't want to have the video I'm watching replaced by related videos, I've got a slow connection out here in the wild, and to have to completely re-load a video if bychance I want to re-watch it sucks ginger balls.

The video should still be cached, so it shouldn't have to load it again. However, we are working on a solution that will completely preserve the player's state and we'll let you know when these changes go live.

ReverendTed says...

>> ^ForgedReality:
>> ^lucky760:
>> ^ForgedReality:
PUT MY TEXT WHERE I TELL YOU TO PUT IT! DO NOT AUTOMATICALLY PUT THE QUOTE BENEATH IT. What happens if I want to quote multiple posts and I want to address each one individually? This is extremely annoying.

This seems to work fine for me, just like it always has, so I'm not sure if I'm misunderstanding this complaint.
>> ^ForgedReality:
If it were moved somewhere else on the page so that I don't inadvertently mouseover it, causing it to balloon out and OBSCURE 50% OF MY VIDEO, making me WAIT FOR IT TO DISAPPEAR, it would be fine.

I agree it is an annoyance, however I would like to note how interesting it is how devastating these changes seem to be for you. From your virtual tone, I'd guess you were cursing the man who murdered your whole family. Take a chill pill and try to relax there, little buddy. Namaste.

How are you putting your text below the quote?
There are a couple of ways to do it.
If you have more than one quote "thread", your text goes where you see it in the input box. Currently, if you only have one quote thread, your text automatically goes at the top. (Which I agree can be frustrating.) Hopefully they'll fix that, but in the meantime, you can trick it by putting an "em" tag pair (Like this, [em][/em], except with <>) anywhere outside of the existing quote thread and your text will go where you put it.
Note that, currently, if the post starts with a quote, you'll get an avatar's depth of wasted whitespace at the top of the post, like you see in this one.

(Note also how what is in whose quote boxes here was broken at some point - I've noticed this when what you're quoting isn't a "chain", like lucky's post.)

ReverendTed says...

Another thing I'm noticing is that I'm losing line breaks when I've got a quote in a post.

Like, here there are two line breaks in the text box and two show up in the preview. If I had a post quoted below here, it might take an extra break or two in the text box before it showed up in the preview (and the final post).

You can test this yourself by typing up a multi-paragraph post. Then at the top add a set of [em][/em] tags (with <>, obviously) and watch the first few breaks disappear from the preview.

It also seems like there are several breaks added after quote boxes, that for some reason get "added" between the new text and the quote unless they're deleted.

Krupo says...

Ok, so how do I put quoted text below the conversation? Here I am at the top.

>> ^ReverendTed:
>> ^ForgedReality:
>> ^lucky760:
>> ^ForgedReality:
PUT MY TEXT WHERE I TELL YOU TO PUT IT! DO NOT AUTOMATICALLY PUT THE QUOTE BENEATH IT. What happens if I want to quote multiple posts and I want to address each one individually? This is extremely annoying.

This seems to work fine for me, just like it always has, so I'm not sure if I'm misunderstanding this complaint.
>> ^ForgedReality:
If it were moved somewhere else on the page so that I don't inadvertently mouseover it, causing it to balloon out and OBSCURE 50% OF MY VIDEO, making me WAIT FOR IT TO DISAPPEAR, it would be fine.

I agree it is an annoyance, however I would like to note how interesting it is how devastating these changes seem to be for you. From your virtual tone, I'd guess you were cursing the man who murdered your whole family. Take a chill pill and try to relax there, little buddy. Namaste.

How are you putting your text below the quote?
There are a couple of ways to do it.
If you have more than one quote "thread", your text goes where you see it in the input box. Currently, if you only have one quote thread, your text automatically goes at the top. (Which I agree can be frustrating.) Hopefully they'll fix that, but in the meantime, you can trick it by putting an "em" tag pair (Like this, [em][/em], except with <>) anywhere outside of the existing quote thread and your text will go where you put it.
Note that, currently, if the post starts with a quote, you'll get an avatar's depth of wasted whitespace at the top of the post, like you see in this one.
(Note also how what is in whose quote boxes here was broken at some point - I've noticed this when what you're quoting isn't a "chain", like lucky's post.)




Here I am putting text at the bottom.

And now with around it.

Whoa, trippy.

Krupo says...

And I have no idea why the other conversations showed up blank?

BTW, do we have a one click button to mark a video as dead yet, or is still invocations only? One of my friends (and a registered sifter but rare visitor) pointed out the lack of the auto-dead-marker button being a shortcoming...

Aside from the comment horrors I'm wrestling with good job though.

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