Add a CSS Class to Comment Count on View Month Page

[marahmarie]

Title:
Add a CSS Class to Comment Count on View Month Page

Area:
styles

Summary:
Right now there is no CSS class for the comment count shown after each post on the View Month Page (this page and all pages like it): http://exampleusername.dreamwidth.org/2013/01/. I've had to add sort of wonky CSS to compensate for that. The CSS doesn't target anything specific so in my case it messes things up (for instance, on my DW, it results in comment count text displaying both too small and too big - yes, all at the same time - which could be my own error, but still). So my suggestion is to simply add a separate span class for the comment count on the View Month page so it can be styled independently of other elements on the page.

Description:
Right now there is no CSS class for the comment count shown after each post on the View Month Page (this page and all pages like it): http://exampleusername.dreamwidth.org/2013/01/. I've had to add sort of wonky CSS to compensate for that. The CSS doesn't target anything specific so it messes things up (for instance, on my DW, it results in comment count text displaying both too small and too big - yes, all at the same time - which could be my own error, but still). My suggestion is to simply add a separate span class for the comment count on the View Month page so it can be styled precisely and independently of other elements.

Poll #14590 Add a CSS Class to Comment Count on View Month Page

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 33

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
17 (51.5%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
2 (6.1%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
1 (3.0%)

(I have no opinion)
13 (39.4%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[carene_waterman]

Before you can add an HTML class to be used by the CSS, you have to have some HTML.

Right now the comment count on these pages is unenclosed text within a dd element that contains various spans, links and headings, followed by a br tag.

I would suggest it be enclosed in p tags, since the desired effect would seem to be a block level element, with a class that can be used for all counts of things like entries, comments or tags.

But this brings up the larger issue of all the other places where the site is built with unenclosed text--the tag counts in the sidebar and tag pages, for example.

Is this good practice or not?

[marahmarie]

Well, my thought was more like this (sorry I forgot to explicitly mention HTML):

<dd><span class="datetime"><span class="time">02:44 am</span></span><span class="poster entry-poster empty"></span><span class="access-filter">
<img src="http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/entry/locked.png" title="" alt="protected" height="16" width="16"></span>
<h3 class="entry-title">
<a title="Welcome new inner Circlers..." href="http://marahmarie.dreamwidth.org/xxxxx.html">Welcome new inner Circlers...</a>
</h3> <b><span class="commentcount>- 4 </span></b><br>

Last span would be the new HTML, while the CSS would be .commentcount. I'm not forgetting anything in there, I hope.

Paragraph tags are leaving me less than excited because semantics - and I'm thinking inline-blocking for any count you want on the same line as tag name, comment title (but .echi covers this now, I believe), and so on, but IMO p tags are OK, as long as we get more finely targeted HTML/CSS to work with. :)

[carene_waterman]

A span may be more correct since the text is part of some sort of element in all cases, and a generic tag primarily for styling is enough.

But I noticed looking at this again that each entry on a particular day is not in its own dd, which it should be.

The whole page would make more semantic sense if each entry was separately enclosed.

I have no idea what .echi is or what you're trying to say there, sorry.

[marahmarie]

.echi is the CSS name for the comment count number tied to the comment hierarchy DW came up with for numbering comments, so that the first comment is 1, then 1a, then 1aa, and so on? You can explicitly turn it on here.

Code example from one of my comment pages:

<h4 class="comment-title"><span class="echi">1a.</span> 
<a title="Re: Agreed" href="http://marahmarie.dreamwidth.org/29154.html?thread=7650#cmt7650">
Re: Agreed</a></h4>

But I noticed looking at this again that each entry on a particular day is not in its own dd, which it should be.

Never realized that myself, will have to check it out. Thanks for the heads-up. :)

[marahmarie]

Found a fix for font size variation between one comment count and another on View Month pages; I set a dd font size using ems instead of a percentage, then erased any font-sizes for that page that seemed to cause a sizing conflict (it looked like having certain element's font sizes set in percentages was causing comment-count font-size to flake out every other try - which is admittedly sort of preposterous - and probably untrue - but it did have something to do with the way I was setting font sizes, regardless, so that's fixed for now).