Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Changes To Blog Comments

I'm trying out a different flavor of Blogger comments. The primary changes...

  • Embedded comments: Comments are embedded in each post rather than appearing in a popup.
  • Comment appearance: Comment fonts etc. are hideously ugly (sorry!) and AFAIK cannot be changed (though I'm still investigating this).
  • Feed changes: If you subscribe to one of the blog's feeds (posts or comments), you may have to unsubscribe and resubscribe. (I am not sure about this. Newer Blogger blogs have a different default; I'm changing TO that default with this ancient blog.)
The above three changes are the price we pay for...
  • Threaded comments (i.e., replies to comments): explicit replies to particular comments are now possible! (This is the main motivation for the change; I enjoyed that feature in my WordPress days, and look forward to discussions in that friendlier format.)

Let me know if there are any serious problems.

UPDATE: I managed to tame the ugly fonts somewhat. The rest we may have to live with!

10 comments:

  1. This is a test comment, using the "Publish" button...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This is a reply, accomplished by clicking the "Reply" link.

      Delete
    2. ... which is actually just a reply to the original top-level comment. I do miss WordPress, though I don't miss the aggravation of that time they "disappeared" my blog; that's why I moved here.

      Delete
    3. It IS an improvement, isn't it, karmanot? :-)

      Blogger just BARELY gives one the capability to do this, and gives the blogger no control on where the focus goes in a body_onload event. The anchors are there, named #comments and #comment-editor, but the means to append them to a comment link is not there... you takes what you gets. That would be OK if they had thought out how it would work in various situations, but clearly they did not. Sometimes the comment text box is above the Enter-your-rhyme prompt; sometimes it's below. You had to scroll to get to the comment text box either way. So I put in the links as a last-ditch crude fix. Maybe something better will occur to me...

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    4. Where does my reply fit in? Trying to reply to your reply to a reply...

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    5. Now the word reply looks funny...

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    6. ellroon, there appear to be only two levels: 1) original comments and 2) replies. The first reply always appears immediately after the original comment replied to; subsequent replies are inserted below the last reply to the original comment.

      The job Google did on this wreck would get you a B- in any programming course I ever took. They should be embarrassed. But they won't be, trust me. WordPress implemented threaded comments much more sensibly. Then again, WordPress "disappeared" my blog like a Burmese dissident. The only perfect solution is what Bryan (among others) has, a locally hosted WordPress blog... but that's even more trouble.

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  2. I seem to have succeeded in changing the formerly big and ugly comment font to something more acceptable!

    ReplyDelete

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