That's the plan? That plan sucks!

That's the plan? That plan sucks!

: sunnyspringhome wrote in fail_fandomanon; December 22nd, 2011

It's like LJ gave us all the early Christmas gift of fugliness. I don't even celebrate Christmas.

Anyways. Like the way

fail_fandomanon looks right now? Want it for your own comm/journal? Here's how!

1. Set your layout to Minimalism "Georgia", with the sidebar on the left. (This code gets rid of the sidebar-- but it has to be on the left in the settings for it to work. CSS voodoo~)
2. Set "Disable custom comment pages" to NO. (LJ reset everyone's journal to the new comment page a couple hours ago, in what I assume was a childish fit of pique that we didn't like their present, so doublecheck your settings!)
3. In the custom CSS area, make sure "Use layout stylesheets" and "Use layout theme stylesheets" are both set to YES.
4. Copy and paste the mess in the box below into the custom CSS box:

body { 
    background-color: #fff;
    color: #000; }

.comment-wrap.screened .comment-head,
.comment-wrap.screened .comment-head.odd,
.comment-wrap.screened .comment-head.even
    { background-color: #ccc; }

.sidebar-inner { 
    display:none;width:auto }

.content .entry .entry-text .author dt {
    text-align: right !important;
    width: 120 px!important;}

.content .entry .entry-text .author .username {
    text-align: right !important;
    width: 150px !important; }

.content {
    float:left;
    width:100%;
    margin-right:-100%; }

.content-inner {
    position:relative;
    margin-right:50px !important;
    margin-left:30px;
    overflow:visible !important; }

.column-right .content-inner {
    margin-right:50px;
    margin-left:30px; }

.column-left .content-inner {
    margin-right:15px;
    margin-left:50px; }

.content .entry {
    position:relative;
    width:100%;
    margin:3.5em 0 0; }

.entry {
    margin-top: 0 !important; }

.entry-title, .entry-linkbar {
margin: 1em 0 0 !important; }

.column-right .hr-afterhead {
    margin-right: 0px; }

.header .hr { 
    margin-right: 0px
    margin-left: 0px !important; }

.column-left .hr-afterhead {
    margin-left: 0px; }

.header h2 {
    font-family: georgia, times new roman, serif !important;
    font-size:28px !important;
    font-weight: bold !important;
    font-style: italic !important;
    margin-left: 50px;  !important}

.header-sec {
    float: left;
    padding: 4px 0 19px; 
    font-family: georgia, times new roman, sans-serif !important; 
    font-size:12px !important; }

.content .entry .entry-title, .content .entry .entry-text {
    padding-left: 0 !important; }

body, .content .entry .entry-text, .entry-date, .content .entry .entry-text .author * { 
    font-family: verdana }

.comment-head h3 {
    font-family: arial;
    font-size: 1.4em;
    font-weight: bold; }

a, a:link {
    color:#00C !important ;
    text-decoration:underline !important; 
    border:0px !important;}

a:visited {
    color:#306 !important;
    text-decoration:underline !important;
    border: 0px !important; }

.ljuser a, .ljuser a:link, .ljuser a:link b {
    color: #00C !important;
    text-decoration:underline!important;
    border-bottom:none !important; }

.ljuser a:visited, .ljuser a:visited b {
    color: #306 !important;
    text-decoration:underline !important;
    border-bottom: none !important; }

strong, b {
    font-weight: bolder; }

a.comment-permalink { 
    color:#00C !important ;}

h2 {
    font-size: 24px !important;
    font-style: none; }

.entry-text H3 { 
    margin-top: 2px !important; }

.comment-head H3 { 
    margin-bottom:2px !important;}

.comment-head p { 
    margin-bottom: 0; }

.comment-menu {
    font-size: 0.75em;
    margin-bottom: 1.5em !important;
    margin-top: 1em !important; }

.comments-links {
    margin: 1em 0;
    text-align: center; 
    font-weight: bold !important;}

.entry-comments-text>table {
    background: none repeat scroll 0 0 #BDF;
    border: 5px solid #BDF;
    margin: 0 auto;
    width: 450px !important; }

dd.entrymenu, #page .layout .layout-inner .entrymenu .btn span { 
    font-style:normal; font-weight:bold }

#page .entrymenu .btn-comments {
    font-size:2.5em;
    padding-left: 0px;
    border: 0;
    margin: 0 0 0 -3px;
    padding-top:10px;
    font-weight: bold;
    color: #00c;
    background: none;
    background-image: none;
    border-image: initial; }

a.subj-link, dt.entry-title, .content .entry .entry-title { 
    font-size: 22px; 
    font-weight:bold;
    font-family: georgia, times new roman, serif;
    font-style: italic; }

.header .nav-sub { 
    float: right;
    padding: 4px 0 19px;
    margin-right:50px }

HTML, #page { 
    min-width:0px; }

.header .userpic, .header .userpic img { 
    display:none}

.header .item {
    display: inline;
    padding-right: 20px; }

.footer {
    border-top: 1px dotted !important;
    background: #ffffff !important;
    clear: both;
    display: block;
    margin-left:50px;
    margin-right:50px;
    padding-bottom: 30px;
    position: relative; }

If you just want to read and marvel at the kludginess of the code, I've slapped it up on pastebin here.

This is as close to cloning the old LJ comments page as I can humanly make it. The basics were cobbled together from

stoppedhiding's post here and

firstkinkmod (who now has their code up here) but I spent most of yesterday refining tiny fiddly stuff with the help of gentlefailers and

sunnysideolife. It's been deployed on the meme for most of today and so far, so good-- it's holding up.

Things that this layout fixes that the other various old-comment-page clones floating around don't all do:
- I evened out the left and right margins, they're now both at a fixed 50px.
- Aligned the poster's icon/username to the right side of the entry... it was bugging me that longer usernames were running into the margin. (You can set this layout to display icons or not, though.)
- Subject lines in comments are fixed to the top of the blue comment header box, instead of floating around in the middle. Takes up less space, especially for anon comments.
- Comment page numbers are back in a blue box under the entry.

Known issues:
- So far no one has managed to fix the thing where super-long comment threads run off the right side of the page and the overflow creates a scrollbar at the bottom of the comment area instead of the for the whole page (see this monster thread for an example of what I'm talking about, or, if your monitor is wider than that, screencaps. As far as I can tell, this is a "feature" of Minimalism... the way the divs are nested I'm not sure it can be fixed. FIXED
- There are no timestamps on comments in collapsed threads. This also seems to be layout-dependent and not something I can get back with just CSS.
- There's no "expand from top" function. I don't even know what witchcraft makes that work on the new comment pages.
- This breaks the sidebar completely. My one and only goal with this layout was to have the comments look as much like the old default as possible for memeing purposes; therefore everything else is pretty stark at best. So if you're looking at this layout thinking "well I like the look of the comments but I want the sidebar with a page summary and some tags and shit, I'll just delete that line that says sidebar {display:none}"... it won't work because the margins are fixed, sorry! Someone on

stoppedhiding's post has a version with a sidebar that may be better for a personal journal.

Comments, questions, and further bug reports are all welcome! Right now I'm messing around with Expressive because it displays timestamps on collapsed comments, and lets long threads break the box with a scrollbar for the whole window. If I can get that one up and running, I'll probably throw it up here too as an alternative :)

ETA Dec 22 21:48PST:

stoppedhiding PMed me to say someone found a fix for the scrolling issue.

.comment-wrap { margin-bottom:.5em; min-width:35%; }
.layout-inner{overflow:visible;}
.entry-comments-text {overflow:visible;}

is the relevant code. I've added it to the text box, and the pastebin link has been updated to ffa1.1!

( 80 comments — Leave a comment )

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(Anonymous)

2011-12-23 02:29 am (UTC)

Deleted and reposted cause I un-anonned. XD

I am officially switching to DreamWidth. Since I'm acting in the fanfic community here I'll continue to post there, but I'll only be posting the links to my stuff on DreamWidth.

LJ, congrats, you have now become the prime example of "how not to run a blogging website."

(Anonymous)

2011-12-23 03:46 am (UTC)

...And there was a point to saying this?

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sunnycamehome2u

2011-12-23 02:49 am (UTC)

I just wanted to say thank you for ALL the hard work you put into this. If it had been left to me, we would be in a puddle of misspelled HTML right now.

This is AWESOME>

sunnyspringhome

2011-12-23 06:02 am (UTC)

You're very welcome!

Heh. After a while, it was almost kind of fun... in its own impossible, frustrating, horrible way :D I think Tumblr is easier to customize. D:

sunnylunarbase

2011-12-23 04:27 am (UTC)

You're an angel. There's so much I can use this code for, and the meme here is looking great.

sunnyspringhome

2011-12-23 06:03 am (UTC)

Yay! Glad to be of service!

(Anonymous)

2011-12-23 04:46 am (UTC)

As far as I can tell, the "expand from top" function is also layout-dependent, and I've only found one layout that has it—"3 columns" (their capitalization, not mine!).

sunnyspringhome

2011-12-23 06:09 am (UTC)

Bah, that figures :\

(Anonymous)

2011-12-23 04:47 am (UTC)

Thank you for this, I mod a TV show specific anon comm and you have made our nonnies and this mod who hasn't coded a lj layout since the days when lj only had s1 very happy.

sunnyspringhome

2011-12-23 06:12 am (UTC)

You're welcome! Let me know if anything breaks-- I haven't tested commenting with images or embeds or extensive formatting changes really since FFA doesn't allow those.

(Anonymous)

2011-12-23 05:09 am (UTC)

Thank you! This comm was the first place I checked when I heard that comments were borked, and you'd fixed it already :)

blindfoldmod

2011-12-23 11:00 am (UTC)

Thanks for this! Someone linked to this for us to use on the

blindfold_spn kink meme and it looks pretty great!

(Anonymous)

2011-12-23 11:15 am (UTC)

You mods are super awesome. Thank you so much for fixing the meme. I'm one of the people who gets migraines looking at the new comment pages so I really appreciate it.

chocorococo

2011-12-23 02:41 pm (UTC)

Thanks so much for this!

Um, would there happen to be a way to keep the custom comment page like this, but retain our original layout?

sunnyspringhome

2011-12-23 09:15 pm (UTC)

Sadly, I don't think there's a way to have two different layouts at the same time-- it's either layout + matching custom comment page, or layout + site default comment page.

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anjak_j

2011-12-23 04:05 pm (UTC)

Just an observation, but to fix the issue with starkness in the rest of the journal, couldn't these mods be applied just to pages with comments using body.lj-view-reply and body.lj-view-entry ?

Good job though. Going to pass this on to a couple of anon comms I know.

Edited at 2011-12-23 04:06 pm (UTC)

sunnyspringhome

2011-12-23 09:12 pm (UTC)

Very possibly! I was mainly focused on getting the comments to look right, since the meme doesn't have much use for the main entries page or a Friends page or anything. I don't think we even use the calender really.

(no subject) —

anjak_j — Expand

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(Anonymous)

2011-12-23 05:11 pm (UTC)

Just wanted to say thank you for all your hard work.

deancaskinkmod

2011-12-23 09:16 pm (UTC)

This looks great! I was worried, since I run a kink comm and we pretty much rely on subject lines. :)

Now I've just gotta figure out how to disable the thing where if you click on a post it is shown in the default, white setting. *scratches head*

Anyway, great work!

sunnyspringhome

2011-12-24 07:26 am (UTC)

Belated, but-- you probably just need to double-check to make sure custom comment pages are enabled :)

(no subject) —

deancaskinkmod — Expand

(Anonymous)

2011-12-24 03:36 am (UTC)

I just wanted to say thank you, this is awesome.

(Anonymous)

2011-12-24 07:17 am (UTC)

Thank you for this!

We've been using it while running an event, but we've run into a little problem with it where after 500 comments, the screen won't scroll down any further. As in, you can continue to play off notifs and it goes through and all that, but the page 'ends' way before the end of the page when you try to look at it. Any idea what's going on there or how to fix it?

Thanks!

sunnyspringhome

2011-12-24 07:25 am (UTC)

Huh, that's pretty weird. We haven't had any issues on ffa since I made this post-- is it possible that LJ just isn't loading the page completely for you? I know that nonnies here run into caching/page loading problems quite a bit, especially if they're memeing while logged out.

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Non-Anon FYI

sunnycamehome2u

2011-12-24 03:45 pm (UTC)

This post is a public service- people do not need to be anon when discussing the code and styles :)

Unless you want to be anon, but I suspect some of these conversations are easier logged in.

Re: Non-Anon FYI

violue

2011-12-24 05:15 pm (UTC)

Judging by the first thread, people are probably too ashamed of their rudeness to comment w/their usernames.

Edited at 2011-12-24 05:15 pm (UTC)

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(Anonymous)

2011-12-24 07:35 pm (UTC)

How do I use the gloriously simple and non-obnoxious comment box code w/ a side bar on the right? Html me, I'm a moron.

(Anonymous)

2011-12-24 08:36 pm (UTC)

I've been using this:

.content .entry .entry-text { color:#000; font-family:Verdana; }

.sidebar, .sidebar-inner { width:275px !important; }

.sidebar-tags { width:240px !important;  }

small {font-size:80%;}
big {font-size:120%;}

.username, .entry-title { font-family:Arial; }

.header, .hr { width:97% !important; }

.content-inner, .entry-wrap { margin-left:145px !important; overflow:visible; width:85%; }

.content .entry { width:100% !important; overflow:visible; }

.username { max-width:120px; }

h3 { margin-top:0px !important; }

.entrymenu a { padding-top:20px !important; }

.comment-wrap { margin-bottom:.5em; min-width:35%; }

.layout-inner{overflow:visible;}
.entry-comments-text {overflow:visible;}

A:link,
A:visited { border-bottom:1px solid #999; text-decoration:none; color:#003261; }

.entry-comments-text>table { background: none repeat scroll 0 0 #BDF; border: 5px solid #BDF; margin: 0 auto; width: 450px !important; }

... which seems to work ok in my private journal anyway.

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mmegaera

2011-12-24 08:11 pm (UTC)

Can someone pretty please help me get my email notifications back? They vanished precisely when this new iteration of LJ-fail happened, and nothing I've been able to do has brought them back -- checking FAQs, nope, going to notifications page and redoing my notifications, nope, trying to contact LJ, nope.

LJ loses about 90% of its functionality for me with the loss of the email notifications, since I now no longer know when someone's responded to a comment I've posted on someone else's journal.

But while part of my FL has migrated to DW, not all of it has, and I really don't want to lose those folks who haven't.

Please help? And if you can and do, please reply by private message so that I actually receive the information? Thank you.

(Anonymous)

2011-12-24 10:43 pm (UTC)

It's a known issue on LJ right now. I wouldn't expect a fix until after the holiday.

(Anonymous)

2011-12-25 12:07 am (UTC)

I've followed the instructions but I can't get the CSS to work, sadly -- the comm is enabled as a plus account, etc., custom comment pages enabled, what have you. Any idea what I might have futzed up?

Thanks so much for all your hard work :)

(Anonymous)

2011-12-25 12:15 am (UTC)

Ah, neve rmind, I see what I've done now! Thanks again, though -- this is much, much appreciated :D

james_nicoll

2011-12-25 04:42 am (UTC)

Thank you! This was very useful (once I reset my account away from whatever archiac setup I established in 2004).

(Anonymous)

2011-12-25 06:31 am (UTC)

So I can't get the damn ~fancy~ comment box shit gone on my basic personal account, correct?

FUCK YOU IGRICK.

(Anonymous)

2011-12-25 12:01 pm (UTC)

Damn, new layout and comments look gorgeous! WTG ffa mods!

....I gotta admit I do like the automatic captcha popping up when I choose "Anonymous." But that's really about the one new feature that doesn't suck.

paid only?

(Anonymous)

2011-12-25 01:16 pm (UTC)

I run a comm that is suffering from the new comment layout and I'd love to steal some of this, but the comm is unpaid -- is there any way to get something like the old comment style back with a basic or plus community, or can I stop looking now? :-/