(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . What is going on!! I already visited this page! (Be careful, this might be provocative clickbate!) [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-06-27 Some time ago, there was a post about how the “visited” articles were no longer showing up in the form of a font color change as is often customary when browsing web pages and following links. This started happening after a change to the DKos website. The poster (forgive me, but I can’t seem to find the original post) was miffed by it because it causes one to click a link to the same article sometimes, especially if the title didn’t stand out as extraordinary or click-baity (see what I did there?). This has been bugging me as well and I’ve grabbed some examples to talk about. Now, you should know that I have not done a deep dive to try and find the original article, so forgive me if these issues have been addressed in detail. Also, know that I have experience with this IT-kind-of-thing. However, I am NOT a seasoned web designer. My IT experience was much more “under-the-hood” type of work, but I did design some user pages in both desktop and web applications for close to 16 years, so I am not a novice in this area. I did more coding of business logic and database objects than I did web interface design, but I know how it is supposed to work and I also know what I find efficient and/or maddening about using web pages. Let’s go forward. The “help desk” comments (as I recall) below the article referencing this new behavior mostly focused on the possibility that the user (you or me clicking links to posts we want to read) may have change settings in the web browser that would cause this. This wasn’t a plausible explanation for me, but I did not have the time to investigate or get involved. I just suffered and marched on like a good DKos soldier. However, the march has been long and I’ve grown weary these past months. I find that I sometimes skip a posts simply because the title seems “familiar” and I don’t want to inadvertently waste my time. However, it still happens several times a day, as some titles are THAT provocative that I click through only to figure out several paragraphs in that I’ve been duped once again! This morning, it was Tom The Dancing Bug that finally got me to write about it. I think it this is an easy example as there is not mistaking that the published article is the same in each example, as cartoons are both graphical and script, after all. Hard to mistake one cartoon for another. I’m going to cite the actual underlying url/links in each post: They will be shown in the order of “Top News Slot”, “More Recent News” and “Comics”: So, from the perspective of the web browsers involved in rendering these different published articles, they are indeed different. The proof is literally in the highlighted text. If there was no difference in text, then the browser would recognized it and the font would change colors, giving you a visual identifier that you’ve already read this article/clicked the link. Not a happy situation for me and many others. Back in the day, the idea was not to duplicate files/data, as storage was at a premium. Not so much anymore, but one of the outcomes of this was that (maybe unintentionally) the web browser code recognizes when a link has been viewed. At its core, it is single web page in a central location. However, not having the knowledge about the structure of this website, I can’t be certain of the unseen architecture. I can say that the markup implies that there are multiple, identical versions of this article stored in different places. I am certain that this is not the case, as it is likely that text of the article and associated graphics are in one central location/database, including the comments on each articles, as they are identical. But the actual platform has a different design and dynamically renders the links as the the client and server interact based on user activity. The issue probably lies in the fact that the same content is being “posted” to different “groups” within Daily Kos, so “Top News”, “More Recent” and “Comics” are all their own entity, strictly speaking from the web browsers perspective (each has a different web url), but reference the same content. From the perspective of the browser code, they are actually “unique”, i.e. different from each other. Thus, they will not show up as “visited” when we go from one section of the website to the other. In short, I don’t see any solution to the problem. I think I recall that there was an article stating that this was a thoughtful decision attempting to tailor the site so specific groups could have some cross-subject centralization within said group while not having to look at other content that potential members of a group may not be interested in. Maybe it was a known shortcoming or it was overlooked. Either way, here we are. I do not know the platform DKos is built on, so I can’t make any recommendations about a possible solution. As it stands, it can not be remedied unless content is not “posted” in each individual group entity within the DKos website. If I am wrong, please correct me in the comments section. 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