[thesite] comments on test.evolt.org

isaac isaac at members.evolt.org
Fri Jun 29 01:18:24 CDT 2001


> no, my comment was that the people who read the comments,
> who know they are there and scroll down to see them, will find the
> feature useless... it's an assertion, yes, but i suspect it's pretty
> accurate...

my only point was that you are making a pretty broad assumption. i am a
person who reads the comments, knows they are there, scrolls to find them,
but would still use the expand/collapse feature if it was implemented. i am
sure there are a few others.

however, as i've also said previously, that proportion obviously not enough
to justify the extra code and visual clutter. i can live with that.


one particular reason i've noticed a problem with the number of comments on
articles is that i've returned to read new comments or post replies to the
article in question around 20 times (mostly after receiving a "new comment
alert" by email). for the majority of those occasions, i've had to scroll
through screen after screen of comments, and/or had to locate where i was up
to. you may not have had this experience, i don't know.

> ok... what are we doing?  i am enjoying this discussion as i think
> it's helping us feel out what features we want to see, but what are
> we gonna do?

dumping expand/collapse feature. considering methods of dealing with
lots-o-comments for the future.

> > is serving up content based on feature more appropriate then? aren't
> > we already doing this in a small way with the stylesheet?
>
> no, we aren't serving conditionally... we serve a CSS file, period...
> we also serve <label>s and other HTML4.01 stuff that not all other
> browsers know, regardless of the browser, but that also in no way
> reduce functionality of the site as a whole... we don't serve that or
> the CSS based on browser... i don't know why you're hung up on
> that, but it's not analagous by any means...

css, html4, etc are enhancements appreciated by a select few. you don't
appear to have a problem with that. netscape3 users for example still have
to download that extra code (however tiny it is) without the benefit.

my point is that a richtext editor is similar. it's an enhancement.

your problem must exist with us detecting and placing enhancements based on
browser rather than feature detection, right? i'm sure that can be
implemented.

the inclusion of a richtext editor for IE5+ or ie5/nn6+ or whatever, or even
based on the features required for it to work, does not reduce functionality
of the site at all.


> > why would you care if that was the one we'd use if you weren't using
> > it, and using it was a voluntary choice?
>
> um, so i can decide which tool to use, provided i'm given a
> choice... how else does one choose how to work?

by default, users would use the textarea. if they wanted, and if their
browser supported it, they could choose to use the rich-text editor instead.
but the choice remained (much like a netscape4 user choosing to browse
evolt.org without css or something.

make sense?


i





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