Comments aligning funny on long threads, also want ".invisible" to be visible, and there's more...

[marahmarie]

Hey all, over on css_code I'm having a few issues with a new layout I'm using, "Cake", based on the Crisped theme, and made by cirque at dustier.dreamwidth.org. I've never worked with Crisped before, and while I understand it's designed to re-size based on your screen width, I've always had bad luck with themes that re-size in that the really long and/or deeply nested comment threads seem to always get messed up.

Case in point: this page is a disaster (edited to update link; it was originally pointing to the wrong DW). The comment threads float left, right, introduce scrollbars I don't want, and when .partial (collapsed) comments are expanded on that page, they are invariably broken, with the user icon running into either the title or the date - or both - and all the comments on that page are too narrow after a thread depth of maybe four or five; I want all thread depths approximately the same width as the top threads that don't squish in so much.

Also, owing to the way I've coded things, the space for the comment title is there even when the comment title is not, like when it's [no subject] - which is now inconveniently hidden by the newish .invisible. I can't find the magic command(s) to un-hide it but I have tried various things.

So, in list form, this is what I need:

1. for the comments on my comm to align right, with no floating past the alignment point either right or left (use this page as your guide; I have it coded so all the comments are aligning perfectly). I cannot figure out what the code for that would be in this style (or any style designed to re-size like this) to save my life -
2. to kill bottom scrollbars on pages with long and/or deeply nested comment threads -
3. for deeper comment threads to stop narrowing in so much (again, use this page as your guide; the narrowing in on it is much subtler - not so obvious and ugly and squishy) -
4. for collapsed comments under the control of the .partial class to not look broken like they do now with the user icon running into the comment titles and dates and everything all squished looking when those comments are expanded -
5. to either unhide .invisible on comment titles so the title visibly says [no subject] again or else to adjust the comment title height to make it shorter for when there is no visible title -

Yes, this is a lot of stuff!

I feel like if I knew this style as well as I know the underlying code for Transmogrified I wouldn't need help with any of it (I figured the same problems out for Transmog myself, but I've had that style on my personal DW for almost three years, so I've had a long time to get to know it better - with my community style, I feel like I don't have the luxury of just puzzling it out for the next 24-36 months...)..so any help from you all would be very much appreciated - thanks in advance!

Comments

[ex_awakened208]

1. I could be wrong but I think the comments didn't end up so weird on the Firefox 3 post because usually the thread were only about 2-3 comments long, so they squished up less. I don't know if there is a way to do what you're asking for... I think the only options tend to be either deal with the squished comments or give the comments a fixed width and let them keep veering off to the right.
2. Put overflow-x: hidden; in the body{} tag.
3. Can't seem to figure this one out, sorry.
4. Try taking this out of the css: .comment .userpic { margin-top: -2em !important; }.
5. Maybe try .no-subject .comment-title{ margin: 0px; }?

[marahmarie]

Actually, I have much more deeply nested comments on other posts on my DW that don't have as many comments overall - wasn't sure which way to go with that as far as presenting an example, but at any rate comments on my personal DW don't break out of their margins (owing to fixed width***, no doubt, and _a_lot_ of hacking the code) but something in me wants this layout to keep re-sizing, so...

Try taking this out of the css: .comment .userpic { margin-top: -2em !important; }.

Yeah...no. I like user icons more relative to the title and date than running alongside the post or comment body. There's probably better code to do that with, since a lot of the code I've added was done on the fly, not thought out, but even better code might still present the same problem.

Maybe try .no-subject .comment-title{ margin: 0px; }?

I will, thanks.

Funny no one else has anything, not even an explanation on why I can't do much of what I want. Thought this community was so mainlined and all.. oh, well. :)

***not fixed width, an HTML hack, see this

Holy crap, just remembered...

[marahmarie]

I did hack the hell out of my personal DW to fix this issue: in fact, I recoded the HTML via my custom s2 theme layer to have narrower margins, then I tested the new code against one of the DW comms that gets like 400-1000 comments on each post to see the result; It Was Good. That was what, maybe about a year ago; forgot all about that. So basically I'd have to go the s2 route now, too. Thank God I finally remembered that - as I was replying to you before it hit me I couldn't even recall how I made my own DW behave, then I walked away to go cook something and bam! the memory came flooding back (which goes to show how much attention I pay to my own code once it's written, seriously).

Thanks for helping me jog my memory a little...

Re: Holy crap, just remembered...

[ex_awakened208]

Ah, okay. Glad I could jog your memory. :)

Re: Holy crap, just remembered...

[marahmarie]

Well, apparently it only jogs so far. Just got a chance to look at the raw s2 source on my personal DW and no HTML hacks specific to the threading are there. So I switched users and looked again and now I'm pretty sure they're on css_code under the last Flexi custom theme layer I installed (but apparently I deleted the specific style and just kept the source in my layers so I can't even link to the style for a visual now). Getting the code transferred over to my current style there is going to pretty much be like digging out Atlantis (that is, I'm dreading it).

I'm thinking I might just disable styles on comment pages (and use DW default, which I actually like in Tropo Red anyway) and just forget the custom comment pages, because once I get all my basic code set down, I am just too lazy to bother.

[ex_awakened208]

I should've re-read over this entry because I got it in my head that you'd rather not have the no-subject extra space gone than the no-subject text back. I think I read my own preference over this and went with that, sorry. But to make the no-subject text come back, you should be able to go to Customize Journal Style > Presentation. At the very bottom is an option to turn on the replacement text.

[marahmarie]

You know, I almost very vaguely recalled that this might or might not be in the options. Vaguely enough that I wasn't sure if I simply dreamed that up or not. Thanks for pointing it out. :_

[ex_awakened208]

You're welcome!