October 14, 2011

Shorter Events Stream

By David McKelvey

Over the last week, I’ve made some changes to the displays, both in the range of events they show and what they show for each. Range The range of events had already come down some, from always 30 to anywhere between 20-30, and now it’s shorter again. Now, each display will show a events up through the next 12 days or 20 events maximum, whichever is less. Not only does this keep the events stream more relevant, but also allows for faster cycling, in case you …

Over the last week, I’ve made some changes to the displays, both in the range of events they show and what they show for each.

Range

The range of events had already come down some, from always 30 to anywhere between 20-30, and now it’s shorter again. Now, each display will show a events up through the next 12 days or 20 events maximum, whichever is less. Not only does this keep the events stream more relevant, but also allows for faster cycling, in case you just have to see that event you just missed when you walked up. Thanks to the viewers who suggested this change.

Summaries

Long summaries (over 250 characters) are now truncated so that they don’t get overlapped by other elements on the displays. Remember though — summaries are required.

Titles

Titles are now Title Capped when they have been saved as all CAPS. All caps is ineffective as an attention getter and we don’t need people yelling.

Lastly, I updated how events get pushed to the screens. Since the recent LiveWhale upgrade took away the ability to update a shared-by-link event’s place or other data, events that are shared needed the ability to grab the original event data. (This is better too by the way.)