Funkiness with Edit Profile February 16, 2010 1:47 PM Subscribe
The settings in Edit Profile open to how they were set on the computer where they were last saved, not what they are set to for on the computer you're currently using.
I use different settings for each of my computers. (I like Professional White for work and phone, and the traditional blue/gray/green for home.) Here at home, I recently made a change to my profile, without reviewing the other settings, and clicked save. Now my view settings on my home computer are changed to what I have at work, presumably because that's where I most recently saved them.
I'm not sure this makes sense. It's a pretty minor little glitch, but now I have to reset all the settings for my home computer.
I use different settings for each of my computers. (I like Professional White for work and phone, and the traditional blue/gray/green for home.) Here at home, I recently made a change to my profile, without reviewing the other settings, and clicked save. Now my view settings on my home computer are changed to what I have at work, presumably because that's where I most recently saved them.
I'm not sure this makes sense. It's a pretty minor little glitch, but now I have to reset all the settings for my home computer.
Yep, this makes sense. This happened because MetaFilter stores your preferences in the database and sets the preferences with cookies. When you made the change at work, you set your current database preference AND the cookie at work. Then, when you loaded your preferences for editing here, we took a look at the db and loaded those preferences as your defaults. Because you didn't change the theme preference as you were editing at home, that cookie was set at home as well.
I hope this makes sense. We could load your preferences based on the cookies that are on the current machine, but I'm not sure that's any more intuitive than storing them in the database.
posted by pb (staff) at 1:58 PM on February 16, 2010
I hope this makes sense. We could load your preferences based on the cookies that are on the current machine, but I'm not sure that's any more intuitive than storing them in the database.
posted by pb (staff) at 1:58 PM on February 16, 2010
Huh. Kinda surprised me when it happened. But you guys are the experts.
Since we're pretty much done here, I'm going to go ahead and close this up.
posted by slogger at 2:09 PM on February 16, 2010 [1 favorite]
Since we're pretty much done here, I'm going to go ahead and close this up.
posted by slogger at 2:09 PM on February 16, 2010 [1 favorite]
Since we're pretty much done here, I'm going to go ahead and close this up.
... isn't that cortex's line??
posted by frwagon at 2:17 PM on February 16, 2010 [1 favorite]
... isn't that cortex's line??
posted by frwagon at 2:17 PM on February 16, 2010 [1 favorite]
Yep, that's exactly how it works and pretty much the only way it can work, and how it works on other sites as well.
I don't know if this is true. A lot of sites cookie your login information and run that through a transparent login to make sure the cookies are valid and in the process will set your preferences for the session, each time. This way you don't get a weird user experience from computer computer.
posted by xmutex at 2:47 PM on February 16, 2010
I don't know if this is true. A lot of sites cookie your login information and run that through a transparent login to make sure the cookies are valid and in the process will set your preferences for the session, each time. This way you don't get a weird user experience from computer computer.
posted by xmutex at 2:47 PM on February 16, 2010
Yes, but our weird user experience from computer to computer is a feature for many people. I think this is a case where we trade precision for flexibility. With our current system you can set a different background/font for different browsers and you don't have to reset your preferences each time or turn to browser extensions to do it. So you might have a few extra clicks here and there when you change preferences in one spot and want them changed everywhere. But it saves dozens of clicks if you want different settings for different browsers. Pulling preferences from the database instead of cookies would absolutely make the task of saving preferences a better experience, but we'd lose some flexibility in the process.
posted by pb (staff) at 2:58 PM on February 16, 2010
posted by pb (staff) at 2:58 PM on February 16, 2010
Oh, really? I read the question more as: I changed the settings whilst using Computer X, then changed the settings again using Computer Y and when I returned to Computer X my settings were still in place from my time on Computer Y.
posted by setanor at 2:58 PM on February 16, 2010
posted by setanor at 2:58 PM on February 16, 2010
setanor, that's not quite it. slogger updated the theme setting at work, we wrote that change to both the db and cookies. slogger then went home, opened MeFi, and the theme settings were peachy—the old theme. Then slogger went to his settings to change something else, and we brought up all of the defaults from the db. One of which, the theme, was recently changed at work. When he resaved all of his preferences, he was expecting the one item he changed to be different, not the theme. He hadn't noticed that the new theme was set as he was editing preferences. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's how I read it.
posted by pb (staff) at 3:06 PM on February 16, 2010
posted by pb (staff) at 3:06 PM on February 16, 2010
To track multiple user preference settings on the same account, we'd have to incorporate something pretty substantial (and frankly something I've never seen before) to allow for that.
I was thinking of something along these lines, since this kind of question keeps coming up. Specifically, allowing users to create multiple named profiles (e.g. "work", "home", "iphone"), and after you log on, it asks you which one you want to use.
Then it remembers *that* with a cookie instead of all the individual settings, so when you change your work profile, it changes on all your computers where you use that profile.
It would be cool. And it would probably be a hell of a lot of work to implement, so I suspect it's well into pony in the sky territory.
posted by FishBike at 3:21 PM on February 16, 2010
I was thinking of something along these lines, since this kind of question keeps coming up. Specifically, allowing users to create multiple named profiles (e.g. "work", "home", "iphone"), and after you log on, it asks you which one you want to use.
Then it remembers *that* with a cookie instead of all the individual settings, so when you change your work profile, it changes on all your computers where you use that profile.
It would be cool. And it would probably be a hell of a lot of work to implement, so I suspect it's well into pony in the sky territory.
posted by FishBike at 3:21 PM on February 16, 2010
frwagon: "Since we're pretty much done here, I'm going to go ahead and close this up.
... isn't that cortex's line?"
Yes and the joke is getting rather old.
posted by IndigoRain at 9:19 PM on February 16, 2010
... isn't that cortex's line?"
Yes and the joke is getting rather old.
posted by IndigoRain at 9:19 PM on February 16, 2010
Sky pony!
This could be a song... Pony in the sky with diamonds? Sky ponies in flight?
posted by FishBike at 6:31 AM on February 17, 2010
This could be a song... Pony in the sky with diamonds? Sky ponies in flight?
posted by FishBike at 6:31 AM on February 17, 2010
Settings are obviously stored in a cookie since you're able to use a cookie to control the display on each machine. So, when you open the preference screen, why can't you just pre-fill the fields with the cookie settings instead of with the database settings? Add a get saved settings to pull it from the Database in case the user is trying to standardize along with the ability to choose to apply settings to the current computer or save settings for other computers and you'd make it much easier for the user to do just about anything they may want to do.
I can imagine a minor UI problem to solve with that scheme, but nothing as major as multiple profiles in the database.
posted by willnot at 11:57 PM on February 17, 2010
I can imagine a minor UI problem to solve with that scheme, but nothing as major as multiple profiles in the database.
posted by willnot at 11:57 PM on February 17, 2010
I feel like people who are using MetaFilter enough to have different display settings for different machines should be prepared for a few extra clicks now and then. This doesn't come up enough to justify a highly engineered solution like profiles for different machines, and introducing a "get saved settings" button will simply cause confusion for the 90% of people who want their display settings standard across browsers.
It's tempting to want to solve inconveniences like this, but every complication we add potentially adds more inconvenience for someone else—even if it's simply the frustration of having to learn what "display profiles" are or what "saved preferences" are. The system isn't perfect but I think we're in ain't completely broke territory.
posted by pb (staff) at 7:30 AM on February 18, 2010
It's tempting to want to solve inconveniences like this, but every complication we add potentially adds more inconvenience for someone else—even if it's simply the frustration of having to learn what "display profiles" are or what "saved preferences" are. The system isn't perfect but I think we're in ain't completely broke territory.
posted by pb (staff) at 7:30 AM on February 18, 2010
The nice part about the current setup is that it does the right thing for most people even if you don't understand how it works. Any time something doesn't look how you want on the computer you are using at the time, you change that setting. Eventually, everything looks right on all your computers.
It would be nice to reduce the amount of fiddling necessary to get there, but it really does look like the only solutions involve replacing one kind of fiddling with a perhaps more intentional-looking kind. And the intentional-looking kind requires being aware of it and understanding how it works. So, not really an improvement, I agree.
And the nice thing about sky ponies is you don't have to shoot them... they can just be allowed to fly away. Bye bye, sky pony!
posted by FishBike at 10:54 AM on February 18, 2010
It would be nice to reduce the amount of fiddling necessary to get there, but it really does look like the only solutions involve replacing one kind of fiddling with a perhaps more intentional-looking kind. And the intentional-looking kind requires being aware of it and understanding how it works. So, not really an improvement, I agree.
And the nice thing about sky ponies is you don't have to shoot them... they can just be allowed to fly away. Bye bye, sky pony!
posted by FishBike at 10:54 AM on February 18, 2010
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Yep, that's exactly how it works and pretty much the only way it can work, and how it works on other sites as well.
You have two computers, work and home, and maybe you have the plain theme at work to evade gazes, and the normal one at home. You only have one user account though. You last saved your settings at home, which is set to blue. You go to work two weeks later, change a font size, and suddenly your theme is blue.
That's precisely how it should be, given that we save all user settings to a single user account in the database. To track multiple user preference settings on the same account, we'd have to incorporate something pretty substantial (and frankly something I've never seen before) to allow for that.
The system assumes one person equals one user equals one set of settings.
That said, I do this myself, setting my iphone to read mefi with a plain theme, but I just change my preferences back whenever they get saved on a new machine.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 1:54 PM on February 16, 2010