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marahmarie) wrote in ![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png){kind=small}
dw_suggestions2012-09-26 12:41 am
Add the ability for logged-in users to visibly sort the Tags Page by access level.
Title:
Add the ability for logged-in users to visibly sort the Tags Page by access level.
Area:
Styles
Summary:
There is currently a hidden feature on the Visible Tags Page: the ability to show the approximate access-level assigned to each tag. I would like DW to add CSS or a combination of JavaScript and CSS to all our journals to show the hidden feature to everyone who opts-in.
Description:
Currently the Visible Tags page shows all your tags in a single, alphabetically sorted list but does not *visibly* indicate which tags are used on private, access-list-only or public posts. So one day about a year ago I asked myself, "Why not?" and wound up writing CSS that exposed the access-level of all my private and access-list-only posts. This became a fantastic sorting system since I have no other way to tell what I've thrown where without using the Manage Tags page, which can be kind of awkward and time-consuming.
So a week ago I took this a little further and refined the CSS so that 1) only logged-in users see the access-levels alongside each tag and 2) logged-in users see the exact access level used on each tag - public, private, or access-list-only. Here's a screen cap of my current Visible Tags page using my latest CSS for it (logged-in view - logged-out you won't see any of the extra information shown in this screen cap):
http://i287.photobucket.com/albums/ll128/marahstest/expose_access-level_tags_page.jpg
What I'm humbly hoping for is this system of sorting tags by access-level, as seen in the screen cap, gets adapted site-wide either as the default view on the Visible Tags page (of course, it will be visible to logged-in users by access-level only) or else becomes an opt-in default option (which is where JavaScript would probably come into play; otherwise, this is a pure CSS hack).
There are a few possible issues with adapting this styling: 1) it may take more firepower to serve up the additional CSS (but I'm thinking it would not be enough to crash servers or do anything that dramatic as things stand; it's just hard to calculate how much this might slow things down without knowing how much firepower DW has to spare) and 2) there is currently an issue where if you use a tag at more than one access level (say you use your "cats" tag both publicly and on several access-list-only posts) it will get an HTML tag indicating it's for public use only, which means DW won't be able to style it with the specific CSS to reflect that you used it three times publicly and three times for access list readers. Until that split-usage quirk is fixed, my idea makes for an imprecise-at-best look at how your tags are being used. But I think it's still better than not having any sorting system in place at all; in the meantime you can still use your Manage Tags page to drill down more precisely.
If this were to get adopted, I could see future improvements to it such as sorting tags by access level on the Visible Tags Page instead of sorting them entirely alphabetically as we do now, adding the ability to style each access level separately, and so on.
This suggestion:
Should be implemented as-is.
15 (31.9%)
Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
0 (0.0%)
Shouldn't be implemented.
3 (6.4%)
(I have no opinion)
28 (59.6%)
(Other: please comment)
1 (2.1%)
no subject
I had considered posting yet another suggestion saying we need to fix that, too, but my take from rolling around in DW Dev and DW Styles last week with Swaldman et al to discus this very idea was that it would be 1) a major re-write of existing code, thus hard, time-consuming, and expensive to pull off and 2) might cause security issues of its own unless its done right. Granted, my wording is indeed murky and inexact on this, but that's the general gist of the whole thing - wait, let me look up the discussion...ah yes, it was here: http://dw-styles.dreamwidth.org/22250.html (linking to the entire post as-is because the entire discussion that follows revolves around the Suggestion you now see here).
I'm pretty much resigned to keeping it a pipe dream (and I was even before posting the Suggestion) because if it were to be done, it should be done right, which means split-usage has got to get fixed.
no subject
Nope, it would be quite easy to do - and in fact can already be done by anybody who has the knowhow to write their own style layer.
no subject
Truth be told? It is the "multiplying of effect" that's got me worried this Suggestion will never fly unless someone, someday, can sell it better than I can. I got another (completely unrelated) idea shot down just the week before last when Denise wrote in her rejection that it would not be doable because it would require too much back-end power (no, that was not her exact wording on it, but yes, that's the same idea). So now I'm wary of suggesting *anything* that I think might even somewhat have that effect. But I love this idea so much I chanced it, anyway. My intuition tells me this Suggestion might very well qualify as "if implemented, will somewhat have that effect" (I'm surprised she let it pass through at all, to be quite honest).
no subject