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Every time I load a new page on the RuneScape website, I have to login again. For someone who doesn't save their passwords, this is extremely annoying. Can this be changed please?
External link →Every time I load a new page on the RuneScape website, I have to login again. For someone who doesn't save their passwords, this is extremely annoying. Can this be changed please?
External link →They mentioned this in the web panel at runefest. The constant logouts when you move to different pages should be getting fixed, but the session timeout when you've been logged in for a little while won't be getting changed.
As we migrate more modules over this will indeed become resolved but we have no plans to alter the session length :)
Why don't you advocate for this issue to be pushed up the ticket list? I'm sure you have some say in the matter as a senior dev. From a user and player's perspective, the web side of Runescape is in an embarrassing state. The useability of the website and forums are terrible, making users flee to third party websites and apps to do the things the forums were made to do. A lot of the projects you guys seem to prioritze and spend a lot of time and effort on (Runefest PWA, runefest websites, promotional micro-sites, Jagex corporate site, runelabs, polls, ..) are either temporary projects and lose their value quickly after the event or promotion is over, or just DoA because third party websites do it better (thank god you made the wiki official). I don't know what is going on at jagex and can only give you a player's take on it all, but with the companion app going down and your APIs being almost non-existant (and the part that does is a burning pile of shit), I see very little actual, permanent value coming out of the web team. The fact that you're only rolling out responsive design for some of the websites core feautres in 2017/2018, when those ideas have been around since 2010, is a joke. I know you're probably trying your hardest, but I just can't seem to wrap my head around how you have time to animate an SVG on jagex' corporate website, but not to implement proper https and session management on your base product website. /end rant
Ok a fair few points there to pick apart so I'll explain this as best I can.
We are actively improving the platform and we are looking forward to sharing some updates with you in the near future on this. The Jagex site is our test project for this as we can make large changes without impacting the player experience. Recently we shaved seven seconds off the homepage load for users on 3G in California visiting Jagex.com so early signs are positive. The animated svg takes nothing but a few seconds to implement whilst overhauling the platform - it's a simple but clever css stroke trick.
The RuneFest PWA was a test implementation of a service worker to see how we can integrate one of these in conjunction with CMS driven content. Again we do not want to negatively impact player flow on the main sites so RuneFest was a logical place to try this out.
I accept your point concerning marketing sites but they are essential to getting the word out for things like Twitch and of course the mobile games.
Third party websites doing it better is of course not something we are proud of. But to makes changes to things such as the Grand Exchange is not always as simple as "turning on the awesomeness" and upgrading to 2019 :) A lot of these systems were built with very good intentions 10-15 years ago but now are very old to update. The forums also suffer from this issue and whilst not an excuse, we have got into difficulties before doing short term fixes rather than well-planned and executed approaches.
All the work we undertake is agreed and sorted by the team and we as developers all contribute to this. Truth be told though hacking a session management fix over a 15 year old web platform is a recipe for disaster (no pun intended) and it is not that we will never improve it it is just not in the pipeline at this time.
Apologies a lot of the above is quite vague but we have a duty to protect the infrastructure and not release specifics until we have agreed it is suitable to do so. But if you go to RuneFest or ever visit Jagex I am more than happy to chat about web stuff if there are things that irritate you about the site(s) or you have ideas to do things better. Better still we are also hiring so if you want to join the team please apply :)
The team does listen and honestly I hope this year we can help everyone see some great improvements to what people see on our sites!
I'd like to thank you for taking the time to respond to my points of criticism. Mods regularly bring up "spaghetti code" or technical debt as a reason to explain why certain feature requests are impossible, or at least not practical, to do at the moment. From what I've gathered I understand that Jagex has been big on using in-house and pretty customized solutions from the start. Do you think the two are related? Do you think you'd be in as much technical debt if they had opted to use more open and third-party tech for their problems? Would you go with Java/HippoCMS again if you had a chance to start over?
Well proprietary software is not all bad but it all depends on how it used and designed.
We are now much better at embracing 3rd parties now but I cannot comment on what back-end infrastructure we may / no longer use for various reasons.