1: a test closed thread

A thread for discussing the mid-term intention (most recently raised here) that I've been incubating for a while to convert this standard Discus tables-based skin to a CSS-prettified wonderland. (Srsly... if you've messed around with the published html source as much as I have, it's not a pretty sight.)

I'll say right off that sigs will still not be allowed because YUCK, also EWW. I'm also keeping it userpic-free. However, any other features, bells, whistles or gizmos your evil hearts may desire...

Okay so posting here now? Can do.

*nitpicks* I'd define everything non-message as [div class="messagemeta"] and set the author name and date as SPANs (classed appropriately), not DIVs. Unless that looked stupid sans CSS, which it well might. *ponder ponder* Wouldn't actually have to class the author name if it stays a link to Twine, as in that case ".messagemeta a" would pick it up just the same.

Dammit, now you have me thinking. I've long meant to transform the MoonBurnt archives into a similar style, except I'd planned to have the archives mimic the main board in markup and CSS. *proceeds to kill the whole day wondering about the particulars*

Stupid sans CSS was the thinking. And block level is more flexible, I find from bitter experience with the fsking retarded positioning at which CSS is so very hideously bad. [/work gripe]

There's more hyperlinks in the message header than just the Twine one, remember. This is why I'm asking for feature requests first.

I may actually want name, date and navigation icons to behave differently (eg for my personal records I'd prefer date turned off most of the time). Not actively restricting myself just yet.

You're planning to keep the little arrow icons, or at least those links possibly sans images? See, I forgot those. Oops.

Have authorname and date within a classed DIV, and the up/down/top/bottom links in another, to make it easier to mimic the current layout if that's the intention. And set either a unique ID or class on the body, so dorks like me can set "#profusion-hellhound-net .authorname {text-decoration:underline;}" or whatever teeny tweaky thing.

I think I never bothered to figure out what the arrows are good for...

Saving your scroll button, basically. I personally never use the arrows, only the link, although when there's a board with five-hour co-op posts I think it is good accessibility practice to allow people to skip to the next.

If you want 'em gone or hideable, or indeed want author names underlined, this is the place to say so!

That is why I'm shouting out for feature requests. As in requests for features. Leave the styling to me when I know what elements, i.e. requested features, will be on the pages. *cough cough* 'Cause, you know, div ids and underlined text are trivial, whereas things like "make it so there's a link to my Twine page/whatever from the message header" are not.

Actually it came to seven hours at the end.

I don't think anything's wrong with the stuff the messages are displayed now, I just would like an alternative version which had none of the headers and author names and icons and frames and such - just the pure text.

A feature I'd like would be "next" and "previous" links so I don't have to go back to a page listing to go to the next page, and/or a list of the siblings in the navigation tree.

Ah, next page/previous page. Yes, that's something I've wanted for a long time, but it isn't something this version of Discus can do.

I think I worked out that the best case would be adding links manually through the admin interface to every page. The problem is that, as far as I know, 'page three' isn't associated logically with 'page four' - Discus doesn't think that way. (IIRC, it's one of those promised features for the mythical version five.)

However, when it comes to archiving finished stuff there will be a way, even if it's me copying and pasting a paragraph of links on every page.

That's just the sort of feature request I was hoping for, though. Let's hope we can come up with something I can do. :)

Bored at Slen's, so tweaked some markup - so far just adding divs and spans into the existing tables so I can hook CSS off it.

Don't panic if you see some font sizes change, 'cause Discus's epically failuriffic table markup is a bit weird between browsers, so in fixing that it's changed in the Firefox at Slen's but not Chrome, and yeah, it's happy fun times all around.

Further evil forthcoming.

Moar divs!

And made preview form listen to stylesheet.

Thinking on the "prev page/next page" thing, I realised a small gesture in that direction would be to add the crumb trail at the bottom of the page, as well as the top.

(To that end it's now a div class="navigation" and not id="navigation", for anyone CSSing along.)

Please let me know if this morning's round of changes seems to've broken anything further.

I should get bored waiting for Slen to get up more often... it's good for productivity.

P.S. change preview title to h1 too.
P.P.S. fix that basefont

crumb trail at bottom of page as well as top = a lot easier

Have you seeeen me washboard?

(More changes this morning, you know the drill. Spacing etc isn't final, I'm just trying to leave it in a working state each time.)

Testing About and Announce messages (see top of this page for examples).

Eliminated the "one table row per post" thing, then eliminated table altogether.

Fix preview next, then the add-a-message form, then topic/subtopic lists.

Tidied preview and add-message forms somewhat.

Rejigged main topics index. Nearly screwed up the main messages on the index, but all mostly back now, heh. This, my loves, is why we take backups...

Still can't work out why the table borders are collapsing on the main index. Anyone who spots it gets an "I'm better than Firebug" badge.

Next: .topsection/.topsect1/.topsect2

I award myself the "I and Firebug were right and browsers are silly" badge for untangling the collapsing issue (wasn't a border-collapse after all, just my tr border rules being summarily ignored for some reason).

#topsection/#topsect1/#topsect2 done, may want more tweaking - looks wonky on Search Results and other stuff without the stylesheet. Suppose I should leave Search Results alone, also, because Ree says she needs the font tags on there for the scraper to work (!)