Ability to style crosspost links

[florahart]

Title:
Ability to style crosspost links

Area:
crossposting

Summary:
I can make the crosspost link on the other end be small font or whatever; I just want the same deal on this end.

Description:
This is a little thing, but I like that the crosspost link on the LJ/other end of the crosspost is visually or stylistically distinct from the entry content--I can not only alter its content to a personal message, but make it tiny or--I haven't tried to fool with any other attribute, but there's a span tag there so there's a decent chance I could. I would like that to be true on this end, too, which it currently isn't. Ideal: just as customizable as the offsite link. Good: simple capacity to alter the font/color.

I'm so pleased that the new option exists I almost don't want to even be gripey about this little thing, but maybe it's an easy thing to fix.

Edit: as Afuna points out in the first comment, it's already possible to at least alter the size in the style. That's not as simple as the way there's a box right there in the crossposting setup for the external link, but is an existing option. :)

Poll #3378 Ability to style crosspost links

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 45

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
29 (64.4%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
3 (6.7%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
2 (4.4%)

(I have no opinion)
11 (24.4%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[afuna]

It's possible to modify it in your journal style for your good case, but not your ideal case (also not one-click simple). If it helps, something like this:

.metadata-label-xpost, .metadata-item-xpost { font-size: smaller;}

in your custom css might help with what you're looking for.

[florahart]

Thanks. I hadn't gone looking for it, but you're right, of course, CSS can do part of this.

[matgb]

Aye, I've done this so far:

.bottom-metadata ul {
list-style:none;
text-align: right;
}
.metadata-label-xpost {
text-transform:uppercase;
color: #ee5;
font-size:smaller;
}
.metadata-item-xpost {
font-size:smaller;
}

Works OK, needs a bit of tweaking though, but at least fits in with my layout generally. Not sure I like that it's in metadata though.

[briarwood]

I'm in love with having that link there at all!

I would love to be able to customise it the way I can the footer on other sites I crosspost to. I'm thinking this would be the same coding as being able to style it (outside the suggested custom CSS, that is)?

[coraa]

I would like this too, for the very simple reason that I'm a little anal and would like my posts to match visually as much as possible on both sides. :D

[holyschist]

Some customizability for look would be nice without messing with CSS, since not everyone is comfortable with that. I gathered from some comments in the News post that having it be identical (e.g. showing comment counts) would involve screenscraping, so isn't possible, but styling the rest of it would be a nice feature.

[matgb]

This. I'd also like for it to not have the CSS class metadata, that's music and mood, I can do without them, but the crosspost info is very useful.

And yes, screenscraping isn't an option, and when I suggested on LJ to allow comment images in feeds &c, it was rejected, they're not interested in interoperability, even with other blogs elsewhere, whcih given they were trying to sell themselves to neswpapers as a blogging platform, was daft.

[holyschist]

whcih given they were trying to sell themselves to neswpapers as a blogging platform, was daft.

Wow, seriously? I bet that went over...well.

[matgb]

Gods my typing really is bad tonight. I blame the lack of light, really ought to light a candle.

Anyway, yes, I think what really killed the pitch was sacking the staff that did the technical implementation half way through. On the plus side, we got DW out of it, on the downside, they really killed off LJ.

The UK paper they were working with (The Independent) finally killed off using LJ as a blogging platform yesterday, so I no longer get to laugh at the stupidest man in UK political journalism on my friends page on a daily basis. Probably better for my blood pressure though.

[holyschist]

Weird.

I'm not entirely sure that what made LJ such a great forum for personal blogging and community interaction and what makes a good news blogging platform are the same thing or ever will be. I don't think one blogging platform can be all things to all potential users.

And that's okay!

[matgb]

Absolutely, but...

I could really easily, maybe in 6-months to a year, see DW being really good for what the Indy wanted to do. Biggest selling point would be built in reading pages, they had it set to be the comments platform for their articles on the main site, and were encouraging readers to create accounts and start blogging within a little community of like minded people.

Unfortunately they launched it just after the leading right-wing paper did a major unpopular change to their similar setup, so a lot of trolling morons decamped en masse, and they didn't even consider doing an auto-follow or even a recommended follow during the sign up process.

So most of the new registrants (there were several hundred minumum) didn't even know they had a friends page, let alone how to use it.

Abysmal failure, top to bottom, although there was some good codework done to get it working, they even had decent domain mapping; lj user=jrentoul resolved to johnrentoul.independentminds.livejournal.com, a blitheringly stupid domain, but it wasn't just username.livejournal.

They were going to roll that out to all paid users, allowing their own mapped domain, but then they sacked Gorman :-(

[holyschist]

Interesting. I could see DW for that kind of thing more than LJ, because of the emphasis on interoperability.

[matgb]

Yup. Interop was one of the main reasons I decided to stop playing around with WP and just switch here, much bigger project dedicated to it. For mainstream news blogging, DW isn't actually that bad, needs some tweaks, but Denise is already thinking of them for the medium term, which is nice.

I honestly think LJ is dead now as anything other than an attempt at a cash cow, shame, but there y'go.

[aedifica]

+1 for your ideal case. I think it's seriously awesome to have the link at all, but now I want to customize it!

[kyrielle]

+1 for the ideal. I know they can't offer comment images because the other sites don't provide them, but the ability to link to the post or the comments or whatever would be nice. :)

[rosefox]

+1 for your ideal case and also (pretty please) for having it in the post text the way the "footer" is on the crosspost, so those of us with heavily customized S2 styles don't have to go in and add new elements and figure out how to make the current crosspost links display properly.