Comment Pages in S2: the old becomes new

[fu]

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.

Comments

KNOWN/FIXED ISSUES

[momijizukamori]

Collecting these here for everyone's edification :) Please reply to the main post with issues, not to this comment. Otherwise I can't edit and keep it updated!

Known

• Comment subject has too much padding in Lynx/style=light
  
• Filter/restriction symbols printing in a less-visible location
  
• Time not displaying in 24-hour UTC format
  
• QR box is appearing centered on page instead of under the comment it's in reply to
  
• Very deeply nested threads may not be printing as links properly (core2 issue)
  
• JS beta icon browser is taking the Tropo colors instead of the selected site scheme colors
  

Fixed

• Comment header color is working off post order, not depth
  
• Small gap below icons in comment headers - thanks chagrined for the fix!
  
• There is no space between comment body and edit time, when a comment is edited - workaround, may need to be fixed in core2
  
• Celerity is adding a border to .entry .header
  
• Collapsed comments have a bolded subject link
  
• Comment subjects are now links
  
• ?style=light strips page styling along with all other styling
  
• Entry title is now h3 instead of h2
  
• div nesting within threads doesn't play nicely with CSS precedence
  
• Seperator before 'Expand All' appears inside parentheses

comment title link feedback

[ahappylie]

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.

Re: comment title link feedback

[musyc]

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

Some other differences I noticed in the site comment scheme

[chagrined]

I made a picture of this for reference but it's large so I'm linking rather than embedding: http://i49.tinypic.com/2e49fv6.jpg

1) There is a small gap under the userpic btwn it and the bottom edge of the div it's contained within. Prolly a margin or padding that needs fixing.

2) The color-meaning scheme in relation to comment hierarchy has changed. Old style has top level comment subjectbars (whatever they're called) one color, and then next-level comments are another color, and I believe comment color swaps off like that based on the level of hierarchy. In the S2 style, color instead swaps off with each comment, regardless of hierarchy level. This makes the hierarchy levels more difficult to distinguish.

3) Old-style there is a gap btwn the bottom of the comment text and the "last edited" notice, if the comment was edited. New style there is not a gap. Prolly again an easy fix with margin/padding or w/e.

I'll comment if I notice anything else. :)

Re: Some other differences I noticed in the site comment scheme

[momijizukamori]

1) It's not actually padding or margin - I have yet to figure out /what/ it is, or how to fix it other than making the comment header fixed-height (really really really bad if an image doesn't load and prints it's alt text instead)

2) I literally noticed that when I edited that comment. EMBARASSING.

3) Ooh, nice catch! And now that I look, fairly easy to fix :) I guess the BML page was calculating the .odd or .even class off of depth, while S2 .comment-wrapper does it off of print order. But! We have an option for doing it by depth, too.

[highlander_ii]

in beta:

post is this: http://highlander-ii.dreamwidth.org/554588.html

click the comment link, you get this: http://highlander-ii.dreamwidth.org/554588.html?nc=3#comments

-- the 'action' icons across the top are missing
-- the post 'content' is hidden (this may be desired behavior, but not one that I've seen in the past

[momijizukamori]

Hmm, can you screencap for me? I'm still seeing the post and interaction links if I scroll back up from where the '# comment' redirects you.

[marahmarie]

Titles aren't linkifying for me in site scheme with comment beta turned on. They're supposed to, right? (using tropo red, btw)

[momijizukamori]

They should! Can you give me a screencap? (I'm also using Tropo Red and seeing them linked)

[turlough]

I tried the new comment pages for the light style and they're looking quite awful as you can see here and here.

[momijizukamori]

Oooh. Looks like ?style=light strips out the page styling CSS along with everything else (and probably 3/4s of the new icon page 'look' is in the CSS). Most definitely noted!

[boomvox]

I'm turning it on and off as I mess with it overlaid with a greasemonkey script (turned off for now to look at this), and I've noticed that when comments are collapsed, all the links to the collapsed comments are bolded, when they aren't without the beta turned on.

I'd also like to echo that the bold/underline link on subject lines is aesthetically unpleasing and distracting. It makes me think there's a borked tag in the post body I need to go fix, and it looks really clunky.

[momijizukamori]

The collapsed comment thing is noted! I'll get that added to my list :)

[cmshaw]

In Celerity, the entry title has shrunk from h2 to h3 and there's now a line between the poster info and the action box. The title change isn't a huge problem (although I do like it larger) but the line is a bit disorienting. If there's a dividing line wanted, it would make much more sense to me to have it instead between the actions and the title + content, but I'm not sure why it's wanted.

(Chrome on Vista; I can screenshot if this is an error instead of a choice!)

[momijizukamori]

Can you screencap the line for me? And I'll make a not of the font-size thing and check it across the other site schemes - that one is an easy enough fix :)

Never mind...

[marahmarie]

For some reason this comment: http://dw-beta.dreamwidth.org/13187.html?thread=290179#cmt290179, which began the entire thread about Comment Beta not working at all, is marked 5a. and is many comment threads *below* the replies from fu and momijizukamori to it. Their replies (and my subsequent replies) are under 2b1a-2b1a1a2a, a thread that was about another issue entirely, here: http://dw-beta.dreamwidth.org/13187.html?thread=286083#cmt286083! As soon as I find a screen cap program that can scroll the entire page without freezing up (the one I have now doesn't cut it) I'll edit to add a screencap of this.

I'm thinking that turning on both ECHI and Comment Beta has borked the threading up? Actually (edit) the threading is the same logged in or logged out; just noticed. I'm not going to post a screencap after all; looking at it more, this one might be on me (that somehow I replied to the wrong thread). I don't have email copies of my own replies to trace this back with (I discard those as soon as I get them, which is why my replies hit almost everyone's Spam folders) so never mind...

[cmshaw]

Okay, here's a weird one: the comment-handling links in the beta scheme now have extra (and incorrectly placed) dividers.

Old style:
(66 comments) - (Post a new comment)
(Flat) (Top-level comments only) (Expand All)

Beta style:
66 comments Post a new comment
Flat | Top-Level Comments Only | Expand All

--okay, hey, that's really weird. There are parentheses around each of those links that are not being copied in the text. It must be a weird style thing...? This is still in Celerity. Hang on, let me get another screenshot:
http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/cmshaw/392463/200187/200187_original.png

[momijizukamori]

Yeah, the seperator difference is Known, and it was decide that it wasn't a significant enough change to be worth the effort necessary to fix it (unless a pile of people complain *g*)

The parentheses not copying is a weird thing with how :before and :after elements are displayed, so not just you! Just weird CSS behaviour.

[zvi]

When I'm viewing entries in light style, the entry management links have little black dots on them. I think it's the list icons from an unordered list.

Also, the comment interaction links are lined up vertically, instead of horizontally.

I have light style by default when viewing entries.

[momijizukamori]

Yeah, ?style=light is currently stripping the stylesheets the S2 styles call on their pages (so the /icons page looks a little weird too, because it's not getting CSS styling either)

[turlough]

I've just noticed another thing.

The filter and restriction symbols are now located between span.poster.entry-poster and span.datetime instead of the filter symbol above in #entrysubj (above the subject itself) and - which I discovered just now - the restriction symbol nowhere. The old position isn't ideal (and WHERE is the restriction symbol?) but at least it's visible. With the new coding I didn't even notice it was a locked entry for the longest time.

[momijizukamori]

Iiiinteresting! I didn't catch that - it looks like it's using the default S2 printing for filter/restriction which yeah, with the set-up here is significantly less than ideal.

Would inline with the subject make the most sense, you think?

[musyc]

I can't figure out how to do screencaps or whatnot on my (ancient) iPodTouch, but the comment bar headers have really small text which is almost impossible to read without serious zooming. The little usericon greydude is also looking odd, with a HUGE shadow on its right side. (It's entirely possible this is just iThingie weirdness and nothing to do with/nothing fixable in the code changes, but figured it couldn't hurt to mention.)

[momijizukamori]

Hmm. I will see about grabbing someone with an iDevice for testing!

Have beta s2 comment titles been de-linkified on purpose?

[marahmarie]

Because once again: no linkies.

Re: Have beta s2 comment titles been de-linkified on purpose?

[momijizukamori]

Yes, they have - they were pretty much the #1 thing people wanted changed so far, so we went ahead and pushed a change for it :)

comment box centering?

[boomvox]

On Tropo schemes, when you hit "Reply to this" on a comment high enough in a thread to allow for the width of it, the comment box shows up centered (even sometimes off-center to the right) instead of aligned properly beneath the comment you're replying to. It's not noticeable on comments lower down in threads, which is why I don't think I noticed it before.

Re: comment box centering?

[momijizukamori]

Hmm. I will play with this! I know why it's happening, it's some code I put in because the comment box was being printed off-center if you hit the 'reply to entry' link - but I didn't catch it going all the way down.

[trinity_clare]

I was going to comment and say that threads weren't indenting right, but I refreshed and now they're fine!

Hmm. Mildly dislike the show/hide functionality. It's just too weird that they disappear completely instead of showing the collapsed version. Meanwhile, there's no more collapse button! Is this a change that's happening because of the new scheme, or did it happen earlier and I missed it? I would much rather collapse a thread than make it go away altogether. On the same theme, I'd love there to be an Expand button on top-level comments, even when the reply directly below it is already expanded. If I want to expand the whole gosh-darn thread, I want to expand the whoooooole gosh-darn thread, not one subthread at a time.

[momijizukamori]

Hmmm. I will talk to the people doing that side of things - the problem is that the implementation isn't in S2 at all, not just this version of it (which is one of the things we're trying to get away from - having to update two sets of code in tandem)! Just for reference, are you using the new Javascript beta as well, or no?

Is cross-posting broken?

[goody_scrivener]

I just noticed that both of my new posts from today, as well as the several dozen archive posts I've copied into my DW from a WordPress blog, are NOT cross-posting to my LiveJournal account. The last post to cross-post is dated 9/23, so this is something fairly new.

I've tried editing those posts and manually re-checking the cross-post box, but no luck there. And that box is definitely checked when I start a new post.

Re: Is cross-posting broken?

[momijizukamori]

Your best bet would be to open a Support request - nothing in this particular beta should have gone anywhere near crosspost settings, so I'm afraid I'm not much help!

interesting behavior in a page loaded before I enabled the beta

[cheyinka]

This isn't, strictly, a bug, but it was kind of interesting:
Using Celerity as my site skin:
I loaded the most recent dw-news entry, started reading, enabled the beta, and then resumed reading. When I got to the comments, I discovered that expanding a thread resulted in that thread not being indented anymore. Reloading fixed it, so it's in the "neat glitch" category, not the "annoying bug" category for me, but I thought I'd share it just in case!

Re: interesting behavior in a page loaded before I enabled the beta

[momijizukamori]

Hmmm. I bet it was trying to call the old BML version of comments and failing ;) Those use images for indentation (turn off images in your browser and you'll see what I mean on the old page - horrifying)

tracking comments

[cheyinka]

Fairly certain this is just Chrome being weird (possibly just Chrome in Windows, I can switch into FreeBSD and check), because it works fine in Firefox in Windows but:
Previously, I could middle-click the bell icon and go directly to the more-options page for tracking; now middle-clicking just causes the same popup as left-clicking.

Re: tracking comments

[denise]

That usually means the browser's prevented the JS from loading -- are you having problems with the javascript site-wide? Check your security settings and make sure you haven't blocked scripting from us.

possibly slightly off-topic? style=site on recent entries

[kimira]

So, maybe it was already possible to do this and I just never noticed, but I just realized that anyway now that S2 pages are being used for comments, you can also throw ?style=site on a journal's recent entries to view them that way. Example: http://dw-news.dreamwidth.org/?style=site

I think that's pretty fabulous and a nice alternative to style=mine and format=light (much prettier than format=light), but it seems to have some bugs right now:
1) throw a clear:left on .entry-wrapper so the "Previous 20" at the top isn't pushing the icon & username over.
2) the memory/share/track links are showing up twice, both at the top of the entry in the center, and at the bottom in a line with the comment links. I like them at the bottom but I guess it'd work either way. If the ones at the top are kept, there's an extra border around .action-box ul that should probably be ditched.

Anywho, maybe this did already exist and I never knew about it. Maybe it's not connected to implementing S2 on comment pages and I should submit this to help/support to have it marked as a bug instead? I'd also be happy to throw up a patch for those CSS things if it is posted as a bug or something.

Re: possibly slightly off-topic? style=site on recent entries

[denise]

Been there for a while! foxfirefey is working on it, I believe.

[moptothehead]

Have all beta features turned on for this (paid) account. Seeing links in a long nested comment thread collapsing into text further down! Here are screenshots:

http://i.imgur.com/TwV14.png
http://i.imgur.com/5Whxs.png

(It's a private post, but it's currently at 262 comments, with 260 in the featured thread.)

[momijizukamori]

That.... is certainly an interesting bug. I'll have to see about replicating it to dig into the problem. If you have time, could you cycle through having only one beta feature turned on at a time, to see if it's a specific one causing vs a combo?

[ruriair]

S2 comments beta seems to be causing a... weird issue. When reading wankgate, all the comments appear bolded after this thread where, as you can see I asked, apparently someone put a bold HTML tag in their comment to allow a subject-only reply - at least that's what I think. It's affecting everything below it, as well as the post, reading page, inbox, etc. links in the site header.

When logged-out or when all beta testing is off, only the particular comment itself with the emoticon in its subject appears bolded. At the moment I don't know if it's because the anon didn't close their bold tag or what, having no reply.

... I only read that meme when I'm super bored and don't condone most of what goes down there. It's kind of like a trainwreck syndrome.

[denise]

Almost certainly an unclosed <b> tag, yeah. The old version of site-skinned comment pages are built with HTML that causes most browsers to auto-close any unclosed formatting tags; the S2 site-skinned comment pages are constructed with HTML that many browsers don't auto-close tags inside. So it'll be all up to the individual browser how it interprets an unclosed tag.

There's not much we can do to fix something like that -- our HTML cleaner does somewhat attempt to close unclosed tags, but it's not perfect -- so if it's really annoying people, the journal owner can delete or screen the comment to prevent the bold from overflowing. (Or, if you post a comment beneath it with an unmatched closing </b> tag, that might help.)

[instantramen]

Something about the new beta comment pages is messing with the beta icon browser. I use Gradation Vertical for my site skin, and before I turned on the New S2 Comment Pages the beta icon browser appeared in dark colors matching the Gradation color scheme. When I turn the new comment pages on, it's suddenly colored to match the light site skins, but if I go back to old comment pages it's normal again.

[momijizukamori]

That is... interesting and unexpected! I'll conference with fu and see if we can figure that one out.

[hermitsoul]

Very minor, but with the new version, page titles are 'username| subject' instead of 'username: subject'. Will this be permanent once the changes goes live?

[momijizukamori]

Most likely - the aesthetic change is minor enough that its not worth making the code base more complicated to change back.

[musyc]

I'm picking up an interesting and random quirk with the new comment pages.

Screencap! - All DW betas are on; all userscripts and etc were off.

It's appearing on both Firefox 3.incrediblyold.butpryaddon.fromcolddeadhands and Firefox 17.wants.updatesevery.freakingnightwtf, about once every couple of weeks, but I cannot even begin to guess what is causing it.

[momijizukamori]

Hmmm. Is this all threads, or just some, and do you have a different browser on your computer you can check on? (I'm not getting it, so investigation is required *g*)