UbuntuIRC / 2008 /10 /30 /#ubuntu-website.txt
niansa
Initial commit
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[00:02] * Turl "fixed" the JS-animations bug
[00:03] <Turl> btw, are you canonical employees?
[00:12] <newz2000> Turl: you fixed it?
[00:12] <newz2000> yes, I am a canonical employee
[00:13] <Turl> newz2000, read all what I wrote to you :p
[00:13] <newz2000> reading now
[00:13] <Turl> ok ;)
[00:14] <newz2000> on your computer what does the 7fps look good?
[00:16] <Turl> it'sway faster
[00:16] <Turl> I have to leave
[00:16] <Turl> see you tomorrow
[00:16] <Turl> hope you can release it ;)
[00:16] <newz2000> thank you so much, I will play with it
[00:16] * newz2000 has hope!
[00:22] <newz2000> I can't believe it, he figured out the solution!!!!
[04:17] <boredandblogging> is someone swapping out the countdown image?
[04:57] <pufuwozu> newz2000: do you still have that animation problem?
[09:55] <Mirv> if you need (/can use) I can eg. collect all to-be-fixed strings (those utf-8 problems with some languages, though not mine) and all offered Search button translations to a pastebin page
[10:06] <newz2000> boredandblogging: yikes! I'll correct that
[13:15] <thorwil> newz2000: whoa, ineterest is heating up. 770 views from the countdown page to my blog already today. where 100 views total was normal and maybe 400 total since the banners are up :)
[13:15] <newz2000> yeah, release day is insane
[13:16] <thorwil> hope everything is working alright for you :)
[13:17] <newz2000> good so far
[13:17] <newz2000> there's always a last-minute panic
[14:39] <thorwil> ah, the animation works and the fan not spinning up tells me it isn't causing excessive load :)
[14:40] <newz2000> yes, huge improvement
[14:43] <thorwil> the countdown banner script seems to deliver "coming soon", still
[14:43] <newz2000> yep, will update that in a couple min
[14:43] <thorwil> cool
[14:43] <mpt_> newz2000, I have a small problem
[14:43] <newz2000> hey mpt_, what's up?
[14:44] <mpt_> Ubuntu 8.10 has been released, but the only mention of the desktop edition is in a tiny news headline below the fold
[14:44] <newz2000> big huge banner on the homepage - alternates between server and desktop
[14:45] <mpt_> I know that, but the only reason I know it is because gerry showed me both animations yesterday
[14:45] <mpt_> otherwise I'd just think you were making a big deal of the server and not of the desktop :-)
[14:45] <newz2000> That's not a bad point, though I'm at a loss what to do
[14:47] <mpt_> Perhaps add an "Also available: Ubuntu 8.10 Desktop Edition" link to the server banner, and vice versa for the desktop banner?
[14:47] <mpt_> But that would still have the problem that it wouldn't be visible until ~10 seconds had elapsed
[14:47] <mpt_> hmm
[14:50] <newz2000> I'm going to change the ratio of desktop to server shows to be 3:1
[14:50] <newz2000> never mind, I guess I'm not
[14:51] <mpt_> You could change "Get Ubuntu" to "Get the new Ubuntu 8.10"
[14:52] <mpt_> though that's still a bit small
[14:52] <mpt_> If this was microsoft.com, they'd have a slidey thing for choosing which banner you want to show
[14:52] <mpt_> like they did for their Vista vs. Office 2007 banners
[14:53] <newz2000> you want to join #marketing on canonical's irc? Gery and I are discussing it now
[14:53] <mpt_> If this was apple.com, they'd have a large banner for the desktop edition, and one of the four underneath would be for the server edition
=== mpt_ is now known as mpt
[15:17] <Turl> hi newz2000
[15:17] <Turl> could you make it work?
[15:17] <newz2000> hey Turl, our hero!
[15:17] <newz2000> we did
[15:17] <Turl> great :)
[15:17] <newz2000> it's live now, and feedback has been excellent
[15:17] <Turl> exellent news :D
[15:18] <Turl> has 8.10 been released?
[15:18] <newz2000> just in the last hour
[15:18] <Turl> :)
[15:18] <newz2000> Turl: I want to give you a public thank you for your help, do you mind if I make mention of it on the webteam mailing list?
[15:18] <Turl> btw, firefox's homepage is still unfixed
[15:18] <Turl> newz2000, it isn't necesary ;)
[15:18] <newz2000> correct, its not as simple as it seems apparently
[15:19] <newz2000> Turl: may I though? I'd like to if you don't mind too much.
[15:19] <Turl> no problem, but it's not necesary - any webdev could have found that out
[15:19] <newz2000> I didn't and neither did another friend of mine who is a js guru
[15:20] <newz2000> Turl: do you have a blog or website of your own?
[15:20] <Turl> yep, but it's in spanish
[15:20] <Turl> and I don't post very regularly
[15:21] <newz2000> what country are you in?
[15:21] <Turl> Argentina
[15:23] <newz2000> well, kat, the canonical corporate identity person was severely distressed when she found out the banners were causing problems and this morning was exstatic to find you'd gotten them working
[15:24] <Turl> :)
[15:36] <Turl> now, what's the problem with the index? why is it that difficult to fix?
[15:36] <newz2000> we're using a program called html2po that takes the translation files and turns them into an html page
[15:37] <newz2000> so the characters are correct in the .po file (the translation file) but the html2po seems to be messing them up
[15:37] <newz2000> about half a dozen languages are seeing this problem
[15:37] <Turl> mhm strange
[15:37] <newz2000> yeah, earlier today someone posted a possible solution to one of the mailing lists so I need to try it out
[15:38] <Turl> there are 2 possible fixes
[15:39] <Turl> 1- use entities, or
[15:39] <Turl> 2- fix po2html
[15:40] <Turl> and well, there's always a third, fix them manually :p
[15:40] <newz2000> using entities is probably a good solution, both solutions require a bit of time
[15:41] <newz2000> things will slow down for me in the next hour or two and I'll catch up with that and the few other things
[15:41] <Turl> you can use a simple match-and-replace script on the po files to fix them
[15:41] <newz2000> good idea
[15:41] <Turl> after all, .po is just text
[15:42] <newz2000> I noticed they're versioned, is it important to update the version whenever you makea cahnge like this?
[15:42] <Turl> the po? I really don't know much about this, but you might version it
[15:43] <newz2000> yeah, its all new to me too
[15:43] <Turl> you have an entity table here http://www.cookwood.com/entities/
[15:43] <newz2000> the solution proposed on the tranlator's list is to set an environment variable before running html2po and it will make it work correctly
[15:43] <Turl> maybe that's also possible
[15:43] <Turl> and it would be a better solution and less time-consuming
[15:47] <Turl> I am reading this bug newz2000 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-docs/+bug/290494
[15:47] <ubot3> Malone bug 290494 in ubuntu-docs "Title of the browser start page not being displayed correctly" [Undecided,Invalid]
[15:47] <Turl> it seems the problem resides in htmltidy?
[15:47] <newz2000> ah, is that the culprit?
[15:47] <newz2000> that would make sense
[15:48] <newz2000> let me see if I can find the message with the proposed solution
[15:48] <Turl> see here http://linux.die.net/man/1/tidy
[15:48] <Turl> you might try with -utf8
[15:49] <Turl> I imagine you're using utf-8 on the files?
[15:50] <newz2000> yes
[15:50] <Turl> so if the culprit is tidy, that should solve the problem
[15:51] <newz2000> I will try it
[15:51] <newz2000> need a few more minutes to make other changes first
[15:51] <Turl> ok
[15:53] <Turl> well, I'll start the upgrade - hope there aren't many packages to update
[15:53] <newz2000> are you running 8.04?
[15:53] <newz2000> if so you may want to wait till tomorrow unless you have a nice fast mirror.
[15:53] <newz2000> updating on release day can be very frustrating
[15:58] <Turl> heh, just 1 package :p
[15:58] <Turl> I was already running intrepid alphas :p
[16:05] <omegamormegil> Greetings! I just thought I might suggest two wording corrections on the Welcome to Intrepid page: http://www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu/810features/. Change "with 18 months free updates" to "with 18 months OF free updates". Also, change "discover this for your self." to discover this for yourself." I was a bit jarred by those two items when I first read the page. Hope this is helpful. Thanks for all the hard
[16:05] <omegamormegil> work!
[16:06] <newz2000> thanks for the feedback, I'll investigate it omegamormegil
[16:09] <omegamormegil> Just saw something else on the same page. "on a platform that with 18 months free updates." The "that" in there should no be there, in addition to adding the word "of"..
[16:10] <newz2000> ok. If you see any more just list them and I'll hit 'em all at once here shortly
[16:14] <omegamormegil> same page, change "upload easily to you favourite social networking sites." "you" should be "your" and favourite should be favorite.
[16:21] <Turl> isn't it favourite?
[16:22] <Turl> I think both are correct
[16:23] <newz2000> we use british spelling
[16:23] <newz2000> so favourite
[16:23] <thorwil> everytime i try to use british spelling, i stumble over everyone writing "color" ...
[16:24] <Turl> :p
[16:24] <newz2000> yeah, I have to set my spell checker to en-gb but then when I'm writing to people in the US I have to ignore the squiggly lines
[16:24] <omegamormegil> Ah. Yeah, firefox picked it up.
[16:38] <newz2000> I will be back soon.
[18:07] <jspiro> hi all. My newbie cousin got confused by the mirror selector at http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download . Is it really necessary, or could you use auto mirror selection like getfirefox.com does? (I don't know if they use geolocation or random selection or what.) And if you must use manual mirror selection, could you please make it easier to use? (For example, you merely would have to choose your continent
[18:07] <jspiro> choice will be made for you. Also, if you don't make any choice but merely click Download, it should make a choice for you.)
[18:07] <jspiro> s/the rest of the choice will/ the rest of the choice should/
[18:09] <newz2000> jspiro: hi
[18:09] <newz2000> for now it is necessary, but hopefully for next release we will have a better solution
[18:09] <newz2000> I feel your cousin's pain though. I can't wait to get rid of it.
[18:11] <Turl> it should be an easy fix
[18:12] <Turl> you can get some code from the getdeb project, it has mirror selection
[18:12] <newz2000> if it were an easy fix we'd have done it long ago
[18:13] <Turl> erm, believe me, it's an easy fix :p
[18:14] <newz2000> how does it work?
[18:14] <Turl> pings the mirrors to check if they're up every certain time and builds an up-list
[18:15] <Turl> and then gives mirrors mantaining proportion if I'm not wrong
[18:15] <Turl> so they don't get overloaded
[18:15] <newz2000> so how do you ensure someone like Columbia doesn't download from a mirror australia (both are countries that have poor international bandwidth)
[18:16] <newz2000> on a 5 or 10mb file it's not a big deal but cds are 700mb
[18:17] * jspiro goes to check what Fedora's download page looks like
[18:18] <jspiro> ugh. http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora is horrible
[18:19] <jspiro> should I mention to fedora some suggestions for improving that page? or should I hope that it will confuse people and make them switch to ubuntu, which is a better distro?
[18:19] <newz2000> we're not competing with fedora
[18:20] <newz2000> I like mozilla's download page personally
[18:20] <jspiro> newz2000: but the better their website gets, the more people will use fedora instead of ubuntu, no?
[18:20] <newz2000> I wish we could have that level of simplicty
[18:20] <newz2000> I'm more interested in converting people from windows than fedora
[18:21] <Turl> newz2000, you could do geolocalization, there are good IP databases and they're like 99% accurate on country detection
[18:21] <newz2000> yes, that's my plan
[18:21] <newz2000> I actually just blogged about this a bit ago
[18:22] <Turl> it's just an API call/a sql query that you need to do
[18:22] <newz2000> http://www.bearfruit.org/blog/2008/10/30/the-new-ubuntu-download-page
[18:22] <jspiro> I live in Canada. When I click on Fedora's link to http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/9/Fedora/i386/iso/Fedora-9-i386-DVD.iso it seems to randomly point me to either http://less.cogeco.net's copy or http://www.muug.mb.ca's. Both of those mirrors are in Canada.
[18:22] <newz2000> but even that makes it sound much simpler than it is
[18:22] <newz2000> yes, that's a cool system then
[18:23] <newz2000> right now we have a hard time delivering dynamic content to individual users. We are able to serve the immense amount of traffic by using several web caches
[18:23] <Turl> you can talk with joaopinto on #getdeb to explain the dl system better, or you can see the download page code directly, there's a getdeb-web project on launchpad, and you can get the code with bzr
[18:24] <newz2000> the web caches mean that the backend systems don't know details about individual users (i.e. their location)
[18:24] <newz2000> hey LaserJock
[18:25] <LaserJock> hi
[18:25] <LaserJock> sorry I've been away for a while
[18:25] <LaserJock> newz2000: you get anywhere on an Edubuntu download thingy?
[18:25] <newz2000> no, we're stuck with the same system for now
[18:25] <Turl> newz2000, maybe canonical can have a dedicate, uncached server/cluster for download that will run this script?
[18:26] <Turl> dedicated*
[18:26] <Turl> just for download redirecting
[18:26] <newz2000> Turl: it's a good idea. I've talked to the sysadmins and we'll discuss a solution for this later on this year I think.
[18:26] <Turl> another solution is to send headers so the cache servers don't cache the redirect thing
[18:27] <newz2000> well, at that point its too late
[18:27] <newz2000> the back end servers need to know about the client before then
[18:27] <jspiro> I wonder what fedora does.
[18:27] <newz2000> It's a good question
[18:27] <newz2000> jspiro: are you on the web presence team's mailing list?
[18:28] <jspiro> newz2000: no, and not really interested to join, why? :)
[18:28] <newz2000> I was going to suggest starting a conversation there so we'd have better record of it and broader involvement
[18:29] <jspiro> newz2000: Turl: LaserJock: may I email a transcript of this conversation to there later?
[18:39] <Turl> no problem for me
[18:39] <LaserJock> sorry, none here either
[18:44] <jspiro> newz2000: may I email a transcript of this conversation to there later?
[18:44] <newz2000> certainly
[18:44] <newz2000> this channel is logged and is publicly available
[18:45] <LaserJock> newz2000: would you foresee being able to have an Edubuntu download page prior to Jaunty?
[18:45] <jspiro> newz2000: ah, I didn't know it from the topic.
[18:45] <newz2000> LaserJock: yes
[18:53] <qense> hello
[18:54] <newz2000> hi qense
[18:58] * jspiro goes off to #fedora-websites to ask them some questions
[19:13] <jspiro> fedora uses a script which makes http://download.fedoraproject.org/ work. in #fedora-websites they said:
[19:14] <jspiro> <ricky> Yes, it's open source: https://fedorahosted.org/mirrormanager ; Matt Domsch (mdomsch in #fedora-admin) is the main person who wrote it
[19:14] <jspiro>
[19:14] <newz2000> oh, I've actually looked at that in the past
[19:40] <mmcgrath> jspiro said you guys might be interested in Fedora's mirror setup.
[19:40] <newz2000> hi mmcgrath
[19:40] <mmcgrath> we've got 4 proxy sites (dig mirrors.fedoraproject.org) each proxy server connects to a set of backend servers
[19:40] <mmcgrath> hello
[19:40] <newz2000> I did some reading on it, looks like an interesting solution
[19:41] <mmcgrath> These backend servers are spread geographically similar to the proxy servers. Each server has a local mirror cache so an outage at one site won't affect the others.
[19:42] <mmcgrath> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/haproxy/proxy1/ <- One example. mirror-lists is what you want.
[19:42] <mmcgrath> thats half of the proxy hits at one site. Some of our sites have multiple proxy servers.
[19:43] <newz2000> so you have a system in place where you have a URI to a downloadable file
[19:43] <newz2000> but that file may be served from one of several locations dependent on where in the world the end user is?
[19:43] <mmcgrath> yeah, part of that is apache mod_rewrite voodoo, and part is mirrormanager. GeoIP determines where the user is.
[19:43] <mmcgrath> it tries to be smart about it, sometimes if there's not enough mirrors in a country it'll add locations near it.
[19:44] <mmcgrath> so depending on where you are - http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?arch=i386&repo=fedora-9 will return a different value
[19:44] <mmcgrath> you can force it with http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?arch=i386&repo=fedora-9&country=de (the country= flag)
[19:45] <mmcgrath> also we have the ability to have people redirect to local mirrors as well. If you work at $SOME_PLACE and they have a few nat pools, you can have our mirror system return your local mirror even if its not public.
[19:45] <mmcgrath> some places have reported major bw savings just by using that.
[19:45] <newz2000> fascinating
[19:46] <newz2000> are you the maintainer of the software that does this?
[19:46] <mmcgrath> The main contact is Matt Domsch (of dell) mdomsch in #fedora-admin. I've given a talk on it in the past, I might still have the paper and slides. he's given some talks as well.
[19:47] <newz2000> mmcgrath: your name sounds familiar, are you affiliated with another project?
[19:48] <mmcgrath> I've talked with some of the Ubuntu guys in the past about smolt the hardware profiler. Other then that I'm the Fedora Infrastructure Team Lead.
[19:49] <newz2000> My eventual goal is to get rid of the "choose a location" box on the ubuntu download page
[19:49] <newz2000> unfortunately I'm a web guy and the infrastructure stuff is not my strength
[19:49] <newz2000> I've talked to them about possible solutions and earlier today someone suggested what you guys have.
[19:50] <jspiro> me.
[19:50] <newz2000> right. :-)
[19:50] <newz2000> I've only briefly looked at it. I definitely want to show them how it works because it looks like a well thought out system
[19:50] <jspiro> i suggested it because i asked them what they use, and they said this is what they have. :)
[19:51] <mmcgrath> Its been one of our more solid application, very few problems with it.
[19:51] <newz2000> I think what I need to do is show it to some others because it's a bit beyond me
[19:52] <newz2000> unfortunately today was a release and everyone is pretty much wiped out and gone for the day