Add the ability for logged-in users to visibly sort the Tags Page by access level.

[marahmarie]

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.

Poll #11751 Add the ability for logged-in users to visibly sort the Tags Page by access level.

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 47

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

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%)

Comments

[marahmarie]

As it's a simple CSS hack, nothing would be revealed except what each user of your DW already has access to. In yet another version of CSS I'm running for this, I've restricted visible access to the security levels of each tag to .logged-in .has-access only, which means you can't even see that the public tags are marked "(public)" on my journal unless 1) you're logged into DW and 2) I have already granted you access to the access-only-posts on my journal.

There are a many ways, thanks to the sheer amount of granular HTML classes DW gives us to work with (.subscribed, .has-access,.no-access, etc.) to code the CSS for this idea to accomplish one of five things:

1) you can write the code so that the public and your subscribers (logged-out DW users, non-DW users, and logged-in DW users who subscribe whom you have not granted access to) can see the word "(public)" alongside already-publicly visible tags, but they can't see any other access-restricted tags on your journal (because user CSS can't make already access-restricted tags visible to people without the proper access - that's controlled though other, non-CSS forms of code used on DW)
2) you can restrict the above behavior to just your subscribers
3) you can restrict the above behavior to just your access-list
4) or you can combine 2) and 3)
5) or hell, you can just code this so everyone who can see your journal at all can see what access-level each tag has based on what access level you have granted each person who sees it (and yes, this is basically the same as option 1) but now I'm making it more granular so every access level out there can see a visible security level next to each tag they're already allowed to see - option 1) was really just me laying the whole idea out for you)

Does that make sense?

No matter how you choose to roll the code up in the end, it's basically impossible to crack it to breach someone's privacy since it's CSS-based only. (The JavaScript I mentioned in the OP? That's just to turn it on in your DW if it becomes an opt-in option instead of the default).