Visually mark new comments since last reload

[opusculus]

Title:
Visually mark new comments since last reload

Area:
Comments

Summary:
When you reload the page, any comments that have been posted since you last loaded the page would be marked as visually distinct and new.

Description:
This is about the only thing I really like about LJ's redesign, personally, so I thought I'd suggest it over here. It could be done with either a hardcoded visual thing like LJ's, where a little yellow new comment button shows up next to new comments, or something that can be styled with CSS to be a dot or a different header color or whatever, that would just become part of the layout and people can choose to maximize or minimize how much it stands out.

It's especially helpful in very fast-moving posts where you want/need to track what everyone is saying, but need more context for each thread than tracking and only seeing what the immediately previous comment said with the newest comment, rather than seeing the last 10 comments in a straight row. I play a game on occasion where 5-10 people can make a hundred comments in an hour all on pretty much the same topic and you have to try to be following them all, and the last time I played it was oh my god so much easier with that feature. But it's the kind of thing that seems like it would be useful in almost any discussion you want to follow, but don't quite want to track the post for whatever reason.

Poll #9007 Visually mark new comments since last reload

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 92

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
55 (59.8%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
6 (6.5%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
5 (5.4%)

(I have no opinion)
26 (28.3%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[green_knight]

I would love to have a 'new comment' class created by DW, and I think that is the behaviour that we should be looking to implement. Once you have class="new_comment" you have endless - and reader-definable - opportunities:
- collapse old and expand new comments
- show only new comments
- add a visual identifier: mark the text in a different colour, on a different background, display an icon next to it - all the CSS fun
- you could even add 'NEW: in front of the subject line. (Would that work for screen reader users?)
-... pprobaby more things I can't think of right now.

I dislike the LJ implementation - I'm lost in the white space and my brain isn't parsing the yellow blocks as meaningful information, particularly as they're too far down - it's information I'd expect in the header of a comment, not what appears to be its body.

[azurelunatic]

Whatever the text-only display would be, it should not be either able to be confused with the actual subject, or be something that someone could (accidentally or intentionally) duplicate the look of in ordinary business with their comment.

I might think with or near the timestamp?

[susanreads]

Next to the timestamp yes! When I'm scanning for new comments I look at the timestamp, but that'll only tell me what's new since time X, not what's been unscreened in that time. I wonder whether it's feasible to include newly-visible comments? Obviously not a flag per comment per viewer, but a hidden timestamp for when something became public?

[azurelunatic]

Ooo. Yes. This should definitely include newly-visible-comments if it's being Done Right. Which ... may require a back-end field just for "visible to non-owner since:", to compare against time-of-last-visit.

[azurelunatic]

Oh, but time-of-last-load wouldn't catch the things in threads that the user had not expanded, especially if they were reading down the page, had commented, page had reloaded, and something had happened in a thread up above.