Just wondering how you would do this. Would you have some sort of process that scanned through all the actions that took place over the past X minutes? Would you trigger a badge update check every time any action took place (up vote, down vote, tag, etc.)? It seems like this would be a relatively expensive process one way or another. ...
I've been admiring StackOverflow's default quilt-like profile pictures (which I notice are also on the Fail Blog) and am curious what program both are using to generate them. But what I really want to know is: If you were to design the system to create default profile pictures, how would you do it? I'm looking for ideas on what algorit...
Okay, this is just a crazy idea I have. StackOverflow looks very structured and integrable into development applications. So would it be possible, even useful, to have a StackOverflow plugin for, say, Eclipse? Which features of StackOverflow would you like to have directly integrated into your IDE so you can use it "natively" without c...
Checking the HTML source of a question I see for instance: <a id="comments-link-xxxxx" class="comments-link">add comment</a><noscript> JavaScript is needed to access comments.</noscript> And then in the javascript source: // Setup our click events.. $().ready(function() { $("a[id^='comments-link-']").click(function()...
Is there a URL for StackOverflow that I can use on the VS startpage in place of the never updated MS page? The URL that VS uses can be set on the Tools->Options::Startup dialog. I've tried http://stackoverflow.com/feeds VS complaints with the following error: The current news channel might not be a valid RSS feed, or your interne...
I'd love to know how Stack Overflow's tagging and search is architected, because it seems to work pretty well. What is a good database/search model if I want to do all of the following: Storing Tags on various entities, (how normalized? i.e. Entity, Tag, and Entity_Tag tables?) Searching for items with particular tags Building a ta...
The most favorite feature of StackOverflow for me is that it can automatically detect code in post and set appropriate color to the code. I'm wondering how the color is set. When I do a Ctrl+F5 on a page, the code seems first be black text, then change to be colorful at a glance. Is it be done by jQuery? ...
If this question has already been asked I appologies, please point me in the right direction. I was wondering if anyone has any insight into how StackOverflow pops up the "n new answers have been posted, load new answers" thing at the top of a question when you are adding a post. This seems like a very useful function for my forum web-s...
I'm looking at building basic CMS functionality into our web product and am researching tips and design ideas for versioning content. I'm specifically looking for database schemas in use today. What are you using for content versioning? What patterns apply if you have different types of content that need versions stored? How is question...
I have been thinking about Joel's comments on the podcast - and wondering, am I smart? I feel I get things done, but the "smart" bit seems to elude me. What I do seem to be able to do is see ways of using other smart ideas to solve a problem. But that does not seem to be smart, just using someone elses smart idea. I have been loo...
I realized that I'd like to publish my StackOverflow questions and answers on my twitter feed, but I don't want to do it manually. Where would I begin for this? What techniques/technologies/etc are available that would enable this? Perhaps someone has done this, or something similar (posting to blogs, etc?) Ulf's suggestion about my ...
This is a general question about helping other programmers solve their problems, which specifically applies to StackOverflow. Sometimes when I'm asked for help with a programming problem, I find that there are really two problems: the one that the person is asking to be solved and often a larger problem that, if solved, makes the former...
It's my understanding that StackOverflow (SO) was built using ASP.NET. What surprised me is it's so well designed and well implemented. Without knowing much about the internals of SO, here are my observations and educated guesses: SO appears to be highly scalable. URLs in SO are friendly. It appears that SO does not contain a bunch of...
I like the Stack Overflow comment UI a great deal and I'm looking into implementing the same thing on my own website. I looked at the code and it looks like the main tool here is WMD, with the JQuery TextArea Resizer playing a supporting role. WMD converts Markdown into HTML on the client side. That's pretty nice because it helps out w...
My personal site defines my OpenID delegate in the HEAD like so: <meta content="http://claimid.com/nicksergeant/xrds" http-equiv="x-xrds-location" /> <link rel="openid.server" href="http://openid.claimid.com/server" /> <link rel="openid.delegate" href="http://openid.claimid.com/nicksergeant" /> The XRDS location definition is required...
Is the problem me, or Stack Overflow? If I post a comment or question with this named link, some text, and then an inline link the preview will show correctly but the actual result is strange. All of the text from the start of the first link up to and including the text of the second link is linked to the first destination. For exampl...
I am a somewhat green developer; some work experience, last year of school. As most of you, I am constantly working on an assortment of personal projects. Since my mind often has a somewhat drifting characteristic; I am not always able to keep the projects in check. After some time they all exhibit the moral fiber of Vikings, harlots and...
I love stackoverflow and I love my new Kindle and I'm looking to bridge the gap. Anybody devised a clever way to do this? Disclaimer: Yes i know this is not technically a programming question but theres always so many things on here I want to read but want to do it out by the pool and not at my desk :-) ...
What ORM do stackoverflow use with their ASP.Net MVC project? ...
What's the best (easy) way to implement a login/authentication system on a Rails web-app that looks and works like the Stackoverflow system? I realize that it's basicly OpenID, but Stackoverflow handles integration with multiple providers. Is there a easy way to this on Rails? Or do we have to hack restfull_auth or authlogic to do that...