Confusing display settings for entry/comment pages

[turlough]

Title:
Confusing display settings for entry/comment pages

Area:
entries, display

Summary:
The settings for "Entry View Style" and "Comment Pages" (under My Account Settings: Display) are sufficiently alike to be confusing and should be reworked into one setting for how you see your own pages and another for how you see other people's pages.

Description:
The Display tab under My Account Settings has two different settings that concern the same thing.

Both "Entry View Style" and "Comment Pages" govern the way you see entry/comment pages. The options they offer are almost, but not entirely, alike - "Entry View Style" lets you choose between viewing both your own and other people's pages in Original Style / Site Skin / My own style / Light format, and "Comment Pages" lets you choose between viewing comment pages (presumably other people's) in your own journal style or the journal owner's style by way of a tickybox - which means that I never feel completely sure that the settings I've chosen will give me the result I desire.

It's very confusing and I feel it would be so much easier if these two settings were reworked into a setting for how you see your own entry/comment pages and a setting for how you see other people's entry/comment pages.

I would suggest that the options for your own pages should be My Journal Style / Site Skin / Light Format, and that the options for other people's pages should be Original Journal Style / My Journal Style / Site Skin / Light Format.

Poll #8857 Confusing display settings for entry/comment pages

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 52

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
15 (28.8%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
4 (7.7%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
8 (15.4%)

(I have no opinion)
18 (34.6%)

(Other: please comment)
7 (13.5%)

Comments

[ceesoo]

:|a I'm not sure if your new suggested names for those categories are sufficiently clear.

Maybe one could be "How My Journal Displays Comment Pages"
and the other can be "How I View Comment Pages"

Something like that? It's a bit long but more clear to me, at least.

[ninetydegrees]

Maybe one could be "How My Journal Displays Comment Pages"

This isn't the option turlough's talking about. That would be "Journal Entry Style: Show my journal's entry pages in my chosen style instead of the site layout".

[ceesoo]

Oh, yes I... get all of those confused unless I'm actually on the page trying to change something.

Maybe I should just switch my vote to "Other" since what I'd like is just to see all of the menus and check-boxes related to comment/entry pages next to each other in the Manage Accounts > Display page...

[musyc]

Before I can vote on this, I need some clarification from someone familiar with backend/jargon. Is there a difference between entry/comment pages? I've had it in my mind for a long while that there is a difference, but I don't know what it might be. (I keep wanting to think that entry pages and day pages are the same, but that's not logical because a day can have multiple entries.)

[ninetydegrees]

Is there a difference between entry/comment pages?

Short answer: no.

Comment pages is the name users have given them. Entry pages is the name they have in the S2 backend. I think that's why there are two names.

[musyc]

Ahhh. Thank you.

Then I think my vote is "other" because the differences in the options aren't clear as they are. I do agree they need less obfuscation, but I don't know if this is the way to go about it.

As I've said somewhere here before, I like to see the package people put on the journals, but I love the sticky style=mine that means alllllllllllllllllllll the insides of those packages are exactly the same. (Kinda like the reverse of generic groceries.)

[ninetydegrees]

I disagree only because 1) I'd rather not have to set two options (three if you count the one letting you select whether you'd rather *display* comment pages in your style or the site skin). 2) I suggested the removal of the outdated 'Comment pages' at http://dw-suggestions.dreamwidth.org/583336.html.

[zvi]

I…thought these actually did control different things. Doesn't one setting affect how links are formatted on your reading page (adds style=Variable) and one controls how an unmodified link gets presented to you? I have different settings for this, because when I open someone's entry to read off my reading list, I want all the tools of my own style, but if I'm reading a dw entry away from the rlist (i.e. I bookmarked fiction to read later) I just want the light style.

[cheyinka]

That's my understanding of the two options, yes. (I have different settings for them also.)

[turlough]

Oh, I didn't know that. Seeing someone else's entries in my own style just confuses me so I'd never even thought of setting them differently. I use light style everywhere.

[the_shoshanna]

My first reaction on reading the suggestion was OH YES PLEASE, because I too am confused by these options, and basically get by by shrugging, or flailing, or just hitting style=mine a lot. So I was all set to tick "implement as is," and then I read the existing comments, which suggest that I still don't understand exactly what these options are! So my "implement with changes" is basically "do SOMETHING to make this clearer, but I dunno what that might be..."

[ninetydegrees]

This is a different suggestion but I explained a little more what each option does. Just linking in case you're interested. :)

[archangelbeth]

That's my Other comment -- that I'm not sure what the change is... (goes off to read 90°'s link next)

[susanreads]

The description (poss. also findability) of these needs improving but I'm not convinced this is the way to do it.

[existence]

This, essentially.

[turlough]

I'm not either, but something definitely needs to be done. As they stand now they're terribly confusing.

[montuos]

This. Yes, the settings are confusing. No, I'm not convinced this is the way to clarify them.

[cesy]

+1