Long ECHI could stand to get broken up

[ladyasul]

Title:
Long ECHI could stand to get broken up

Area:
comments, comment display

Summary:
When the ECHI (Explicit Comment Hierarchy Indicator) gets very, very long, like in a 100+ comment-deep thread, it can do odd and ugly things to the layout. Perhaps it could be broken up with spaces, every so many levels, to avoid mauling page formatting and allow it to wrap and improve ease of reading/understanding?

Description:
On comment pages, when a thread of comments gets very long (as often happens in some conversations, but mostly happens in roleplay threads, in my experience) the ECHI (Explicit Comment Hierarchy Indicator) can get VERY long. As in, absolutely ridiculous. It stretches comment headers and collapsed comments alike, and tends to make the layouts I've tried, including the site-schemed pages, behave poorly because of it.

Plus, after a while, it simply seems to blur into one long trail of characters, to try to read it. Phone numbers are broken up into groups of usually 3 and 4 digits for readability (and ease of remembering.) It would be great if the ECHI output could be broken up as well (by spaces every so many characters?) so that it could be made more human-readable and wrap within comment headers, too.

For example, one actual ECHI from an RP thread I was trying to read is 326 characters long (counting the period at the end.) It would be far nicer if it could be displayed more like this instead:


86a1a1a1a1 a1a1a1a1a1 a1a1a1a1a1 a1a1a1a1a1 a1a1a1a1a1 a1a1a1a1a1 a1a1a1a1a1 a1a1a1a1a1 a1a1a1a1a1 a1a1a1a1a1 a1a1a1a1a1 a1a1a1a1a1 a1a1a1a1a1 a1a1a1a1a1 a1a1a1a1a1 a1a1a1a1a1 a1a1a1a1a1 a1a1a1a1a1 a1a1a1a1a1 a1a1a1a1a1 a1a1a1a1a1 a1a1a1a1a1 a1a1a1a1a1 a1a1a1a1a1 a1a1a1a1a1 a1a1a1a1a1 a1a1a1a1a1 a1a1a1a1a1 a1a1a1a1a1 a1a1a1a1a1 a1a1a1a1a1 a1a1a1a.


My default font size is fairly normal (14-15px) so I can only imagine how badly the page layouts would break for someone who has their font sizes set much higher for eyesight reasons.

I've tried mucking about with Stylish to make the comments' headers and the collapsed comments simply scroll sideways when this happened, but couldn't find CSS which would do this to my satisfaction and still let the comments stretch horizontally with the page how I wanted them to.

As it is, I switched accounts just so I could read that thread without scrolling horizontally to read each comment's text.

I'm not sure what drawbacks such a fix would have. Maybe there would be disagreements over where to add the spaces so that the ECHI can be wrapped, or it would be difficult to implement? I know that long ECHI strings aren't an issue for most people, but it would be nice for something like this to be implemented for those times where it does become an issue.

Poll #11554 Long ECHI could stand to get broken up

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 43

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
29 (67.4%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
0 (0.0%)

(I have no opinion)
13 (30.2%)

(Other: please comment)
1 (2.3%)

Comments

[erik]

I'd like to be able not to see the ECHI at all, honestly.

[denise]

http://www.dreamwidth.org/manage/settings/?cat=display -- untick the box by "Comment Hierarchy"!

[arethinn]

Aha, now I know what that option is even for!

THE MORE YOU KNOW

[marahmarie]

"My default font size is fairly normal (14-15px)"

Mine is, too, but I have comment titles in my CSS set at 1.5em, I think (125% of 14-16px) so that giant block of ECHI is also this TALL, BOLD, GIANT block of ECHI. And I've grown to hate it. I wish I'd never enabled it because it looks like a pile of spaghetti and red sauce to me the bigger it gets. I can't read it or track it at all. But I keep it because I've heard it helps some people follow threads and thread hierarchies better, and I keep the comment titles big because I like big comment titles... (but now I'm wondering if there's separate HTML for the ECHI I could style with CSS somehow to keep titles big but make ECHI smaller - scrolling I'm not fond of setting, because it can be annoying)...

[ladyasul]

Viewing ECHI or not is an option in the settings which only affects what you see, not what others see. Hence why logging in with a different account let me read that thread without the ridiculous scrolling -- it had nothing to do with the community's or the journal's ECHI settings, and everything to do with my account's settings.

Styling the ECHI on your communities and journals through CSS should be doable, I think, in the event of your visitors having ECHI turned on? But I'm not sure that anyone actually does style theirs, or that even if they did, it would have any effect whatsoever on its un-wrappable-ness due to lack of being broken up by spaces (or some other method, if there is one. Pretty sure spaces are by far the simplest and lowest-bandwidth solution for breaking it up, though.)

If you don't like the ECHI, and it doesn't help you, then I would suggest turning it off in your account's preferences. I'm pretty certain it won't affect what any of your readers see, one way or the other.

(And if I'm wrong on any of these counts, I trust that denise or someone will correct me. :))

[matgb]

h4 .comment-title .echi {
font-size:0.75em!important;
}

Or whatever you prefer.

But as ladyasul says, you can turn them off, they're a display option for you. Probably worth styling them a bit though for those that have them turned on.

[marahmarie]

Thanks for that, Mat. I can dimly recall trying to style this months ago but got hung up on which psuedo-classes to target how (.echi alone wasn't doing it, if I recall correctly) so I gave up since it wasn't high priority right after it was implemented. But it's grating on my nerves the more I see it (I find it hard enough to use on unstyled pages, like this one - on my own blog, it's been an utter disaster).

Edit: apparently after trying to style it months ago I left the code in there (I normally can't find anything in this style sheet without launching a search team or at least opening Notepad++) and the code was working - but the fact that I had the font set to 95% was fooling my eye into thinking it was retaining the 115% size on .comment-title. Also, the color red was my fault, I had it in there but when I take it out, it defaults to a much calmer grey.

[denise]

The comment hierarchies are an account setting, not a journal setting, so you can safely turn it off -- nobody else sees it in your journal if you have it enabled for you.

(EDIT: ack sorry I was going down my email in order and didn't see this had already been replied to!)

[marahmarie]

But if other people have it enabled for themselves (be it an account setting or not) and view my journal in my style they'll see *my* version of it, won't they (like the big red lettering and everything I've got going on for comment titles, which .echi is currently inheriting)? If so, I will keep it and style it for them; if not, I'll get rid of it.

[denise]

Yes, people who have it enabled will see it in your journal.

[marahmarie]

Thanks! :)

[ladyasul]

I hadn't even really thought to be sure I styled the ECHI in my layouts, but I don't tend to go for very big subject lines anyhow. It'll definitely be a consideration in my future layout styles! :)