dw_beta | Comment Pages in S2: the old becomes new

One of our long-running projects is to remove the old crufty code written in BML (our old templating system) and replace it with better alternatives throughout the site. And the coding for talkread.bml -- which is what is used any time you load up a site-skinned comment page -- is a particularly painful example.

Add to that, having the site-skinned comment pages be written one way, and custom comment pages another, makes it likely for one to lag behind the other. For example: site-skinned comment pages show the link for entries with screened comments as: "x visible | y screened". But S2 comment pages didn't have that information until this code push!

So I'm really happy to say that we have a new version of the comments page which uses pure S2, so now site-skinned comment pages and journal-styled comment pages are formed the same way on the backend even if they don't look the same. exor674 worked hard on the backend to make this possible, then momijizukamori came through with some spit and polish (with some help from kunzite).

The idea is for the new version to look as much as possible like the old version, though there might be a few discrepancies, because the backend is so different. momijizukamori has done her best to mimic the look and feel of the old comment pages. But the comments page is one of the most used pages here, so we'd like you all to come and give it a good shakedown.

Turn on beta testing for the "New S2 Comment Pages" -- and let us know in comments if you find anything out of the ordinary.

List of known issues.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only | Expand All

Just a visual tic of mine, but having three ways to link to a single comment seems a bit redundant to me. The comment title turning into a link changes the visuals of the site in a detrimental way to me, what with the extra underline on the title doubling up against the journal name and its underline and the overabundance of red in the header. Leaving the header as is with a black non-linkable title and the (Link) seems fine to me.

I've heard this is an issue with the S2 system that the developers weren't sure if they wanted to keep in, so I understand the reasoning, but that's my two cents on it so far.

Seconding this. Leaving the subject headers as they were is preferable. Making them clickable links is very distracting in site scheme (Tropo Purple, here).

They've now been changed back to plain text!

I also really dislike the anchor-text-colored and underlined subjects on comments. I don't mind the fact that they link to the comment? But wish they'd lose the underline and revert to the regular non-link-text color. (For example, a lot of DW journal styles do that same thing for entry subjects. They are links to the entry, but they don't have the underline and they're the same color as the regular text, not the links.) (eta: this is when viewing with ?style=site, and I'm using tropo red)

Edited 2012-09-23 05:03 (UTC)

Oh, that's a method I hadn't thought of! Though it's generally not great practice to have a link indistinguishable from text...

But I'll definitely keep it on the table *g*

DW does already do it all over the site in a lot of their journal styles, though? But if you mean like, in the case of it being the site style, I see the point. (If it's changed to the new way, for myself I'd prolly just write a stylish script to make them look how I want and all.)

(Some other things I noticed I'm gonna put in a new comment now, heh.)

A lot of them distinguish on hover (ie, change color or the underline appears), though yeah, a few don't. And yeah, not so great to have it on site scheme - but as I said, it's definitely an option for us to consider :)

No linkies: http://i.imgur.com/CZs98.jpg

Beta testing on: http://i.imgur.com/TN8k6.jpg

With this I can officially crown myself the queen of online errors. It never stops!

Hmm. It actually looks like you're not getting the beta style at all - you don't have any of the differences others have reported. If you look at the source, is it a huge table, or stacked divs for the comments?

I had to throw ?style=site on mine for it to show up. Even w/ beta feature on and viewing this entry which uses site style for comments, I got the old style otherwise. But I figured that was intentionally for testing or whatnot.

Re: Sure...

fu - 2012-09-23 13:24 (UTC) - Expand

Ditto here; no evidence of beta style after turning it on. Source shows divs, not table. Tried clearing cache, turning off all Greasemonkey scripts, signing out and in again, restarting browser; nothing worked but

chagrined's suggestion of ?style=site. Tropo Red, Nouveau Oleanders, Firefox 15.0.1, Kubuntu 12.04. Edit: Also not seeing it in Chrome 21.0.1180.89.

Edited 2012-09-23 13:16 (UTC)

Fu dropped a comment below saying she fixed it (there was an error apparently that as usual, *sigh* affected me). Thanks for looking into it, though. :)

Found it, fixed!

Fu, love you, thanks so much! :)

Fu worked out a version of the code she was happier with, so thankfully no need to resort to CSS hacking - they're now straight-up plain text~

I saw when I came to reply to your other comments! :D Cool, glad it worked out. They work a lot more easily for my eyes now again, heh.

+1 to this entire comment - the extra link doesn't actually serve any purpose except to put something in the way where I might accidentally click on it while trying to do something else to the comment. There are already two clearly marked ways of linking to the comment there, I'm not sure why anyone would want a third that doesn't add anything useful?

In most S2 styles, they were being used to build the page summary - which isn't a part of this style, and the 'thread' link only appears if a comment has replies. But subject lines are now unlinked, leaving just the small one in the header :)

I have to agree with all of this. I've tried it in Chrome, Firefox, and RockMelt, both with my Grease/Tamper Monkey and Stylish scripts on and off, and I find the linked titles to be ugly, quite frankly. The link is redundant, as there are multiple ways to access a comment link already.

Additionally, I like to comment from my smartphone, and don't like the mobile interface (which is neither here nor there), so I use the regular site, as it displays just fine. But with the comment titles made links, that's just one more thing I can accidentally click on while I'm just trying to scroll through the page.

Essentially, I don't think there was anything wrong with the previous comment title format (i.e. non-linked), and would be thrilled if it did not change.

+1 to all of this, especially the mobile issue which I didn't even think of at first. I use the normal page through my smartphone's browser too, which is actually a lot easier than the mobile interface and just fine. But links in comment subjects are going to make scrolling and trying to click on anything else a real crap shoot.

They've been changed! And thankfully the mobile interface should be getting a redesign to haul it into the 21st century soon (though that's not my project)

Hooray to both of those things!

It's actually not a change from S2 - all journal styles have linked comment titles - but based on feedback we went ahead and changed it to mimic the BML style, so you should have happily unlinked comments now :)

Ask and ye shall recieve ;) They're now unlinked.

You guys are awesome. ;A;

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