Gold Bar and version navigation operate on a "compare with last editor" or "compare with last calendar day" [GMT] basis, whichever is the more recent.

We're still interested in feedback from those not using IE4 or 5. Of course we're interested in feedback from everyone, it's just that we've tested mostly with IE 4 & 5. -- Richard Drake

Gold Bar does not work in the increasingly popular Fire Fox 1.0. -- Scott Moonen

True. We switched it off for all but IE a while back. Firefox would be first in line on restoring it. But giving an estimate on that would be dishonest I'm afraid. We just don't know enough about the future of the project right now. -- Richard Drake

Richard, would your approach just be to tweak the CSS? The only glitch I can see (saving a page from IE and loading it in Fire Fox) is that there's some extraneous spacing after paragraphs that are "barred". If you're willing, I can try to cook something up. I'd love to make the full switchover to Fire Fox as my sole browser. -- Scott Moonen

A very kind offer, thanks. Let's talk a little about the options offline. Well, using another kind of line. -- Richard Drake

One tiny extra request, Richard. . . . Can we have different colors/symbols for the gold bar depending on whether a paragraph was added or merely edited?

We deliberately wanted to start with the very Simplest Thing for Utter Non Nerds. We have of course begun to think about what we might do after that. I'm not convinced about a simple "added vs edited" color distinction being the very next step. Rationales and other ideas very welcome of course.

User preference settings would be a nice solution, with the defaults set to satisfy Utter Non Nerds. Few interfaces will be usable by all people in their default setting. Even my car (a very non-nerd transportation interface) has many adjustable features like seat and mirror positions. I'm sure someone 10 inches shorter or taller than me would want different car settings than the ones I chose. Likewise people with differing levels of experience will have different needs.

Yes, absolutely. And preserving simplicity remains key to effective control and personalisation. We're looking at breaking out some of the most important preferences very soon, you X11 Sun OS types.

Oh, and has it done something to spacing between paragraphs? -- Tom Kreitzberg

The spacing between paragraphs is now only wrong in rare cases, such as on the boundary of preformatted text that has been changed. Please let us know any quirky glitches you find, we so love noting them all down.

This is pretty cool. It's nice to have tables, isn't it? However, the one issue I see is deleting text. There's no diff function for removed material. However, if you're happy to limit use to IE4+ and NS4+ then you can put a little icon on the left, say a red circle, that users can cursor over. Put the deleted text in the TITLE attribute of the IMG. It will show up as a tool tip. Actually, using tool tip text is evil because it's hard to read. You could use DHTML to your advantage here, but that wouldn't work too well in Netscape. But then again, what does? -- Sunir Shah

We have various ideas on showing deletes. The pop up using alt or title is one of them. Not worrying about it to avoid screen clutter is another. We often choose Visual Simplicity Even If Info Is Lost. Not just in this area. But we'll also be prototyping some other ideas in the coming weeks. Thanks. -- Richard Drake

Richard Bash commented at some point: Perhaps when we didn't have it at all there was the interesting result of causing discussions to naturally split into separate pages after they've gotten much bigger than a few screenfuls, or more than two or three participants. (E.g., I was tempted to create a new page such as Timestamped Signatures to underscore this point, rather than bury it in the midst of this page where it is hard to find.)

Gold Bar is IMHO one of the coolest features of Clublet. You have hacked the Gold Bar code lately, haven't you? Somehow it feels different from how it felt a few days ago... Anyways, keep hacking! --Klaus Seistrup

Yeah, as it says at the top, Gold Bar and version navigation now operate on Wiki's "compare with last editor" rather than "compare with last edit". Try clicking back and forth through the versions of this page, for example. We've also removed the Gold Bar completely from a new page with only one editor. How does all this grab you?

It's fabulous, I prefer this behaviour. --Klaus Seistrup

Richard, why do your edits not always result in a gold bar, allowing us to see what you've written? -- Mark Tilley

Like everyone else, there's two cases that no gold bar shows: a new page and after only whole paragraph deletes. Other than that I think it works!

Ah, when I say a new page I mean one that only one person has so far edited. Maybe you were thinking for example of Ward's Reaction, which is very old (by our standards) but still only edited by yours truly. We have thought about having a significant time difference trigger the Gold Bar, as well as a change of editor. What would you say is significant?

Obviously any choice would be arbitrary, but if you think the programming effort is really worth it, I would suggest a month as the point where the probability of new edits being part of the same initial thought process would be low enough. Not recognizing the two cases of non-appearance by the Gold Bar was just my learning curve. I have to agree with Klaus above on its usefulness though. -- mt

We've gone for the calendar day in fact. Doesn't apply retrospectively as yet. That sentence and what this Change Change really means for us all may need clarifying.

As Scott mentioned, the Gold Bar doesn't work in Firefox 1.0. This is a real PITA for me. -- Tom Ayerst