I struggled for a few hours to get a new test site online, so that people can see changes before they are put on the live site. Since these features are bringing the site to a new level, I thought I would increase the power by one and publish it at http://remixcubed.com/.

As the warning banner indicates, the data on the test server is deleted periodically to fix corruption caused by bugs. Don't upload anything there you expect to be kept. The robots.txt file is configured to hide the site from search engines, so that if someone puts gibberish on the server for testing, it won't cause people to be misdirected to the wrong site.

The main reason I configured the server now is so that people can view the new compo voting system and offer feedback. On the test server, I changed the voting end dates of the "Final Destination" compo so that voting is open again, and people can test-vote.

As you can see, all grids were removed from the page. Now, voting involves dragging the songs up and down in the list until the right order of votes is achieved. During the voting period, songs are displayed in random order unless you have voted already, in which case the songs are displayed in your voting order. As with all the other song displays, you can click on the boxes to listen to the song. Another change is that the voting results are never displayed during the voting period.

Please offer comments so that I can complete these changes before the February compo concludes.

This may be my inner game design nerd speaking here, but I feel that there isn't much in the way of feedback. That's to say, there's no messages that say "Your votes have been saved".
I'd recommend adding in a SAVE VOTES button, so that way the voters can confirm that they've successfully cast their votes.

Aside from that... I'd say it's pretty much flawless!

This is actually a problem I have with the Google Docs interface. Like the voting interface, Google Docs automatically saves every letter you type. That's obviously better than the way things were in the 90s, when you had to periodically press CTRL-S in WordPerfect or else you risked data loss. But for a few months I always found myself wondering my Google spreadsheet was actually saved when I changed a cell.

Do you think it would be fine to add a non-dialog message that appears briefly below the voting box telling the user his votes were saved every time he moves a box up or down? If you really think it's important to put a save button in, I'll do that, but the button wouldn't actually do anything except display a message. Let me know which you think is better.

I really like the idea of simply dragging the songs around until it's in desired order. That's as easy as one could imagine.
I've got just one probably odd question: You said if someone doesn't vote, the songs are in random order. So when does someone technically vote? As soon as he visits the compo's page or as soon as he drags something around?

As soon as a person drags at least one song around. If you look at the top of the songs, you'll see a red box that states "You have not voted." When you drag a song, it turns green and states that you have voted.

There's a problem with this design that someone would cast all his votes even if he only dragged one song, but I don't know any way around that. Feel free to suggest things.

Ah, I see.

Well, I think this works good enough. I guess I'll just have to mention that when I announce the voting period for Justice 4 All. (IF there will be one...)

I just updated the test site with some fixes for a few of the issues that had been discussed here. Take a look and see what you think.

1. Every time a song is moved up or down, a "Your votes have been saved" box appears for two seconds.
2. Instead of dragging to the right of the votes, the boxes now drag inline.
3. The "results visible" checkbox on the compo creation page was removed because it is no longer necessary.

Just tested out the new changes, and it appears that there are some overlapping text issues.

http://i.imgur.com/LP8eKMo.png

Would this be a resolution issue? Because I have a very large (1920x1200) monitor.

After some research, I was unable to reproduce Shred's problem. In every case I tested, the "Your changes have been saved" box appears over the top of the box behind it, in Firefox, Chrome, and IE.

The only idea I have is that this issue might be related to Macs, if you use Apple products. There have been other Apple-related bugs in the past, but I have no way of reproducing them.

I'm not using any Apple software or hardware. I'm running Windows 7, and I'm using Firefox as my default browser.

After messing about with the test site for awhile, I've discovered that pretty much every drop-down menu on the song editing page, for me at least, is borked.

http://i.imgur.com/4pDD27C.png

I've also discovered that the embeddable image available on each song's page still uses the old logo:

http://i.imgur.com/WgtcD37.jpg

Hi Shred,

Could you post the version of Firefox you are using? You can find it by pressing [ALT] and clicking "About Firefox."

I'm guessing that this issue must be specific either to Windows 7 or your version of Firefox. Also, are you using any extensions?

18.0.2
I get all of the "Full version" releases (no Beta versions).
The only real extension I'm using is Adblock Plus.