Replies

xml77e2: How difficult would it be to modify the "Latest Posts" page to include peoples' custom style sheets?

JohnRob: Other than carving it up & assigning class names, not difficult at all. But before we go and do that, I'd like to debut the new thread format (and while doing so, breaking all existing style sheets. Ugh.)

Bring it on! I'm dying to see the new stuff. I'm looking forward to revamping my style sheets.

All your style are belong to us!

Speaking of which, what are the restrictions on class selectors? Not what is in the spec, but what is actually out there. Will fr_article_body and fr_comment_body be too long? Will the underscores confuse some dumb ol' browser?

BTW, I think the "fr_" prefix will solve almost all possible name conflicts with source material.

Only trial and error will tell us. I don't think that the class names you're planning will cause problems except in versions of NS and IE earlier than version 4. I'd suggest that you target the newer browsers: the IE 5/NS 5/Opera 5 etc. People who want to hold onto really old machines are just going to have buy Opera 5 sometime anyway. People with really old browsers are already being locked out of sites with extensive JavaScript/VBScript etc. I think there's a very definite limit on how backward-compatible you want to be.

I'd love to have a list of your class names. I'm preparing a utility for WYSISYG configuration of style sheets for FR pages. I'm doing the rough layout work in VB but will probably move to VBScript for my final version. It will be targetted for IE 5.0+, NS 6.0+.

I hope you will give a class name to the Reply link too. A name like <a class="reply|103|George W. Bush|102" href="...">. One could do some very interesting scripting. I've been working on how to do a built-in script for IE that would allow you to highlight a phrase and right-click it and select "FR Reply" and it would then bring up the Post Reply page with the highlighted text's HTML already inserted and BLOCKQUOTEd in the TEXTAREA. Not that hard to do. I'm pretty close to a solution even now without the class names. But with proper class names, it would be a snap. Highlight/right-click/select-menu-item/type-response. No more copy/paste and tag fumbling on most replies.

I noticed your new user name link modifications to eliminate user numbers and replace with user names. Very sly how you deployed that so quietly. I don't think hardly anyone even noticed. Soon, I expect Post Reply will only accept registered users and bumplist names.

Other than carving it up & assigning class names, not difficult at all (referring to allowing style sheets to be applied to the "latest posts" page). But before we go and do that, I'd like to debut the new thread format (and while doing so, breaking all existing style sheets. Uhg.)

Fire when ready.

Speaking of which, what are the restrictions on class selectors? Not what is in the spec, but what is actually out there. Will fr_article_body and fr_comment_body be too long? Will the underscores confuse some dumb ol' browser? BTW, I think the "fr_" prefix will solve almost all possible name conflicts with source material.

I don't think that understcores alone breaks NS 4.77 (definitely won't break IE 5.5/6 or NS 6). All you can do is try it (don't recall any site that's "broken" in NS 4.77 being broken because of either class length or underscores in class).

Have you ever collected statistics to determine browser/OS versions? On a per-user and per-post basis, I mean. So you could see the percentage of users on a particular browser and browser version and also percentage of total posts made per browser/version. It would indicate both how many users and the "intensity" of particular browsers at FR.

That information could be very useful in deciding future upgrade options. Not only would it tell you what the scale of the problem is right now with browsers currently in use but you could, for instance, look at your Netscape users to see who is using NS 4.xx and if they are running a Windows 98 or later, you can be sure that they could upgrade it to a newer Netscape or IE. Same thing for users of old versions of IE.

Just an idea. Might be handy for programming decisions and it would be a snap to code for you. You'd have pretty significant results within a week.