Pets are wonderful things. We love our pets! But sometimes...

• What cat owner hasn't come home to find a dead bird, lovingly placed on the seat of your favourite armchair, to show how much Whiskers loves you?
• What dog owner hasn't walked into the lounge to find an embarrassed puppy sitting by a suspicious puddle in the middle of the floor?
• What bird owner hasn't let Tweety fly around the dining room, only to have an unexpected extra dropped in their coffee?

Well we love Waze editing and we love WME. So we ought to be used by now to firing up WME, just to find an unexpected "gift" has been dropped in the middle of the UI. Just for us.

This week's gift is the Notifications button. Haven't seen it yet? Just save an edit and wonder why the button you clicked on didn't save. That's right - all the edit buttons have been pushed to the left to insert the Notifications button - which is nothing to do with editing.

So what would you like me to do with it. There are a range of options I can immediately think of:

1. Do nothing. Leave it where it is (although it will be smacked with the compression/contrast enhancements
2. Make it disappear when the count is zero. I'm not sure that will be an easy thing, since I don't have a mechanism in my script to constantly monitor it. But it's possible that just hiding/unhiding it on refresh, or panning the map, might be good enough
3. Move it elsewhere. Since we've all spent years expecting notifications in the feed, somewhere on that side of the screen seems favourite. Ideally, next to the WAZE logo top left, where I also move the user info button seems best, but that little header is getting crowded. I might have to remove the logo entirely.
4. DESTROY IT! Nuke it from orbit, sow the ground with salt, . . . well you get the idea. Application of a display:none is easy. After all, you all check the forum regularly for announcements/PMs, don't you?
5. Move the button into the tab headers (suggested by jm6087). I place the button before or after the Feed tab header. It probably wouldn't be a tab (that might be quite a lot of work), but that seems like a logical place.

OK. Obviously, I'm feeling a bit whimsical. I did denial: I couldn't believe they would do something like this. I did anger: that's why I haven't posted anything until 5 hours after I saw it, so I wouldn't get banned. I didn't bother with bargaining: I've long since given up expecting them to listen to concerns about WME. I'm always dealing with depression: every time they mess up the UI and I have to fix it, again. I've finally reached acceptance: it's here and it needs dealing with.

So there 4 options above. Please let me know what you like - or if you have another suggestion of your own.

jm6087 wrote:maybe turn it into its own tab in the left panel

I quite like that idea - enough that I've added it to my last post as option 5. Since the notifications were formerly in the feed anyway, putting the button next to the Feed tab header seems quite logical.

I've done a quick bit of playing: this isn't coded yet, just directly hacking the web page to see what happens.

It's definitely possible to move the button into the tab bar - next to the feed seems best: That image only show very basic formatting. I would obviously look to play with the element alignments and appearances; and a highlighted background when there are current notifications seems reasonable.

The pop-up window will still work from there. Moving the content of the popup into a proper tab below may not be possible and would certainly be a lot of work if it is - probably too much to be worthwhile.

RussPA wrote:move it next to the user info icon, there seems to be a bit of free space there.

Although there is space in production, in Beta, there are version numbers displayed in that header. With the user info moved there and the Panel Swap button as well, it's currently overcrowded in Beta. The WAZE logo on the left doesn't really serve any function for experienced editors (who are the only editors likely to use my script). So I don't think removing it will cause anyone any issues. Or I could replace it with a Wazer icon? The angry one, of course.

SeveriorumPatrem wrote:First preference is with user info and Waze button, but I can live with the tab option. It actually isn't causing me too much personal heartache where it is, either..... but.... WHY?

You are so much better at ranting than I am. When I do it, I don't wait long enough and just let the words spill out... and often end up getting a champ or two sending me a gentle PM about it... do you give lessons in how to rant acceptably?

I used to rant immediately as well. Then read before posting and modify it. Then read before posting and modify it. Then... Eventually, I just learned to judge how angry I was an wait an appropriate amount of time before starting the process.

Apart from that, it's just many years of practice. That Angry Champ logo in my signature is there for a reason

I've discovered that it doesn't work in the online meetups, though. The frustration of the stupid questions, the off-topic questions, the repeated questions in the chat drives me mad until I open my mouth - and I've been told off twice. So I've now given up on the online meetings. They don't give me the time to calm down and moderate my words. Plus, they're all pretty awful anyway.

I thought I'd have a relaxing evening editing. But no - some idiot has placed something else where the Save button should be and I keep hitting it. So version 2.50 is published on GreasyFork.

I did like the idea of turning the Notification button into a tab, but moving the content into a proper tab panel was always going to be difficult.

In then end, it was much easier to extend the Move User Info function to move the Notification Button as well. It means I don't have to create a new script function, along with a new setting to be saved/loaded and UI to set it. In addition, the justification for moving the Notification Button is exactly the same as for moving the User Info Button: neither of them belongs in the edit controls. So it only took the addition of 3 lines of code and changing some text.

For the moment, I've just shrunk the Waze logo a bit to compensate for the extra buttons. I may well make some more tweaks there in a later version, as well as restoring some of the original styling like the colouring of the notification count. But for now - I can edit with the buttons where they're supposed to be.

Just to keep up to date with recent posts

Dark Theme. It's a nice idea - particularly when I have a migraine like today! Unfortunately, it's probably not going to be practical. A well design user interface will be well parameterised: in other words there will be a few, central definitions for important UI settings like font, background colour, text colour, button designs, input controls etc.

Unfortunately, WME does not have a well-designed UI. It's a scrambled mess of old and new parts. Even the last major update that was supposed to re-implement WME to have a more consistent look/feel largely failed to solve this problem. Since then, they've continued to add bits & pieces all over the place. If you look at the underlying UI code, I reckon they started using an new design framework a couple of months ago, but it's only in use in about 20% of the UI code - and that framework encapsulates some of the styling in such a way that it's impossible for me to change it. If I was paranoid, I might think it was aimed at me.

So the fact is that implementing a dark mode is going to be pretty difficult, because I'll have to make changes to a great many different UI elements; and every time they change something, I'll have to adapt to that because it won't be sensible using existing styles. I'll bear it in mind, but I don't think it's likely I'll be doing it.

Enlarged Geo Nodes. That request greatly embarrasses me. I thought about that, probably a couple of years ago. I even did some preliminary experiments about it and showed some of the GCs. I got as far as segments, then Justin's PIE script actually did it for place editing, then I forgot all about it.

I've had a quick look at Justin's script - it certainly doesn't look like the way I was planning to do it. If I can remember my method and it seems simple, I might still add it as an option to FixUI. I was also thinking about thickening the actual segments. I know that, late at night, my dexterity goes down and I have trouble grabbing segments/geo nodes.

Other bits

• I know that FixUI is breaking some of the formatting for the Notifications button, even when it's not being moved to the left with the User button. I'm surprised nobody has complained. A fix for that should be here soon.
• If you're a beta user, you'll be aware that yet another piece of unwanted sewage will soon be found floating on top of the map area. I need to look at disposing of it neatly.
• Following a request from mikemachado, the next version of FixUI will have an option to permanently display the username with Live User avatars. This used to be a feature of WME Chat Addon: that doesn't work any more, so I've shamelessly ripped off the code for it.

Thank you. Yes - I knew HQ were going to drop another steaming little turd on the map; it's been in Beta for a while.

When I can decide what to do with it and I can find some time/motivation, I'll get it moved.

BTW, The_Cre8or has let me know that colour-blind turn arrows has failed due to an unexpected WME change. That fix will be in the next version.

I'm aware of unhappy rumblings about the way the new Share Location button works. I also know about the Fancy Permalink part of Toolbox that continues to offer the behaviour that the Share Location button no longer does.

I've found a little motivation and I'm working on the code now. I'm thinking that I might see if I can detect the presence of Fancy Permalink. If that section is there, I might just flush this particular little excretion completely.

Twister-UK wrote:Also note that your float() function is now causing the damned permalink button to be pushed to the top of the stack, playing havoc with my muscle memory whenever I go to open the layers menu...

Oh dear - it is.

Sorry about that. Most of the script simply adds or removes extra CSS based on option settings. But the bits that move UI elements around tend to place them either in new or original positions, depending on the settings. When those original positions are changed, my code starts mixing things up.

I could say I don't give a damn about the control positions when they're pooed onto the map area, but that would be a poor excuse. I should be breaking the UI if you have an option turned off.

Somewhere in the script I have a flag to record whether or not the script is doing initial load. I should probably co-opt that and only do the "turn option off" actions if the page is already loaded and you're just changing the options.

[EDIT] Yes - that works.

age4670 wrote:The native WME format for me is great. If there was a way to retain it, that would be awesome (seeing as copying from the bottom bar stopped working).

I'm not quite sure what you mean here. The old, native permalink button returned a permalink, rather than just coordinates - although I can see they are the opposite way round from the Toolbox coords link.

How do I know this? Because the old permalink button is still in WME!!

All they've done, so far, is hidden it. In a demonstration of poor design, they've applied display:none to the element itself, then also added the class hidden which duplicates the display:none.

Meanwhile, I've been working on moving the new share button into the footer bar. The results so far look like this:
What you can see there is the Livemap button, followed by the moved Share button, followed by the un-hidden original Permalink button, followed by Toolbox's Fancy Permalinks.

I don't think I'm actually going to unhide the old Permalink button. CTRL+C has already stopped working and they're liable to remove it properly at any time. But I think it's the best location to move the Share button to. So far, I've moved the button and moved the pop-up so it stays on-screen. But I haven't done the coding to undo those changes and put it back where it belongs when the option is turned off.

It's 2:40 am in the UK now and I still have to add the option controls for another new feature, so I won't be getting an update out tonight. But I should have an update ready tomorrow evening UK time.