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

ahhh yes it would do that. well there is a solution to that. :)

I should go and look at some of the themed S2 comment styles b/c I think they use similar classes and get this right. and I don't think it does it in as ugly a fashion as I'm about to suggest, haha, which is that you could use selectors to define the chain of child divs so that it would only effect the .header divs that were {a certain level of child} from their many-levels-parent


hmmm apparently it looks like there's also a slightly lower-level-div that has .comment-wrapper-even (or odd) which is ...the opposite of what is on the parent for .comment-depth??? bizarre. um but yes you could do something like,

.comment-wrapper-even > .comment > .inner > .header

using the > selector to specify a direct child rather than any descendent. and the same for .comment-wrapper-odd. not super attractive when written out but gets the job done?

PLUS: okay I went and looked at the themed S2 comment style I use, in any case, and it actually colors the whole comment so acts directly on either .comment-wrapper- or .comment-depth- and thus doesn't have to do this. but yes. I think this would work anyway, for how you're trying to make the comments look here, without adding additional classes. (although it may make sense to just add an additional class? .comment-header-even and .comment-header-odd?)

Yeah, I think the nicest way may be to go into core2 and add the thread depth info straight into the comment-wrapper div - that way it's easily available to S2 styles who want the site-style heirarchy instead of the other methods.

And comment wrapper even and odd are like... the overall structure of the page. Like, if you were to view all comments just in order of when they were posted, no threading, the first comment is odd, the second is even, the third is odd, etc. It's what the first CSS version was working off of, which is why you were seeing that swapping regardless of depth.

Also, thank you very very much for being willing to poke at things and offer solutions - it means a lot to me :)

oops yeah you are totally right, whoops. I was looking at this thread so they just happened to correspond, haha, b/c we were the only two commenting in it. so, okay, then instead you could do:

.comment-depth-even > .dwexpcomment > .comment-wrapper > .comment > .inner > .header

and same for odd. but I agree, adding another class lower down for thread depth info would be much nicer and prettier all around. :)

and no prob, I have enjoyed poking around! :) I've been trying once again recently to get started in dw_dev anywho so this is more fun related stuff, ha. (though I forgot to log into the alternate account I'm using for that for these comments, oh well.)

Ooh, do join us ;) I mostly work in styles, which is very easy to start out in if you know CSS - I think aside from typo fixes, adding new color themes is one of the easiest starter patches.

I did like one patch back in december and then just had a lot of other things happen in life which prevented me from doing more. actually I should have commented on this entry with

kimira which is the alt account I am using now for dw_dev stuff, but I 4got and commented with my regular account instead, oops.

maybe I will try some styles things! in december I was working on / now am trying to again work on this bug, which is sort of also S2 related? but my dream is a fix for the bug to allow video embedding in comments, haha, which will probably require beefing up my perl skills ...a lottttt. XD

Whooo removing tables! I fully approve (as uh probably noted by the fact that I wrote most of this S2 comment page stuff in like a week).

Fu suggested a slightly more compact version of CSS, which we ended up using - it turned out to be simpler that way than trying to integrate depth counting into core2

(if you're curious, it's .comment-depth-even >.dwexpcomment .header)

ohhhh yes, that makes total sense! :D thx for sharing with me. a very wise fu.

She is indeed :D

Comment Pages in S2: the old becomes new

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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