“Writing lets you step back and think through a problem. Even the angriest rant forces the writer to achieve a degree of thoughtfulness.”
- Atul Gawande

I am _so overdue for a rant...

Nevertheless, (sitting down intending to write a rant), after "achieving a degree of thoughtfulness" as mentioned by Atul Gawande in my lead-in quote, I am both surprised and happy to find I must instead begin with a sincere praise, to be followed up by nothing more than a gentle plea...

https://www.google.com/

Coders make the world go 'round... (source)

What am I talking about?

My frustration began back in the Steemit days when my nice, neat, attractively formatted blog articles were suddenly disfigured by ugly insertions appearing alongside or under every link. My annoyance knew no bounds. I exploded into a righteous rant, which you can still read here on Steemit, as well as its lineal descendent here on Hive.

I was so frustrated!

I started including this embedded complaint (below) in every post. In it, I appeal to every reader who happens my way, hoping that perhaps one of you might "have the ear" of the right Hive admin or programmer, someone who could provide us all with blessed relief:

P.S. If you have an "in" with anybody at Steemit, Inc. - Would you please ask them to get rid of these damn, extremely annoying "off-website" arrow/boxes? The have, overnight, made Steemit ugly. There are much better solutions.

Even more annoyingly, the ugly "Box and Arrow" (wouldn't that be a good name for a pub?😜) links were showing up even when the link was NOT external, i.e. when it pointed to content on Steemit (and later Hive) itself.

Now to praise Hive coders:

I've noticed lately (no, I don't recall precisely when these changes took place) that some of the pain has been assuaged, and that there seems to have been a partial adoption of the things I appealed for and ranted about.

Links that point to Hive content (like this example) no longer rock the ugly box... Yaayyyy!!! A good, noticeable step in the right direction.
One of the "much better solutions." I alluded to above has been partially implemented; namely, popping up a warning box that prompts the user to decide whether or not they want really want to visit an external link.
Also—blessedly and amazingly—external links now open in a separate tab... Yaayyyy!!! Another good, noticeable improvement in the experience of every Hive reader.

For reasons I do not understand, some external links invoke the desirable pop-up warning (example: This link to a NASA site), while others do not (example: The link to my lead-in quote way back at the beginning of the article)—Go ahead, please, try them both to see the difference! Are some links more trustworthy than others? Perhaps... but, what makes AZQuotes more reliable, and who decides? Or perhaps it's just "something in the code" about being near the beginning of the post?

Maybe it might be possible for Hive to learn a user's preferences, and after one visit to the Popup Warning Box, remember that the user proceeded anyway?

Here's an image of the warning box that pops up when accessing some external links:

The Beautiful, Desirable Pop-Up Warning...

I still believe that this is the right approach... Why? It offers the right level of protection to naive users who don't understand the (potential) risk of external links, while at the same time preserving the author's desired visual formatting of their blog.

My hat is off

to all the skilled and dedicated programmers—every last one of you—who created (first) Steem, and then Hive, and who, on an continuing basis, keep Hive alive and growing and improving. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. Your work has made a clear, measurable, and enduring positive impact in my life. I will always be grateful.

More specifically for the sake of this article, thank you for making the positive changes in the Hive User Interface (i.e., the
Condenser) that I've just finished describing! Know that your improvements are appreciated.

Finally, my Gentle Plea...?

My Dear, highly esteemed Hive Programming Team; I'm appealing to you as nicely as I know how:

PLEASE, once and for all, get rid of these
damn ugly #%$^&# Boxes and Arrows??!!!

These hideous offenders are a blight on the face of Hive, this otherwise wonderfully functional and nicely format-able, much loved, archival quality, community oriented blogging platform.

Believe me; I love Hive, but somewhere in the past—when it was still in it's larval Steemit phase—a horrible mutation took place. Overnight, the platform went from an attractive venue to having these ugly box-arrow warts pop up and break out all over its face.

I implore you; please eliminate them, once and for all; the community of readers who access Hive via the "standard condenser" at https://hive.blog will be forever grateful.

They say you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.

I really don't want to catch any flies, but I sure would love to see these boxes and arrows disappear forever. Please make them fly off into the distant recesses of unpleasant memory...

I hope I've made my case, and Thank You for your attention!