MOD POST

[sophistry]

Good evening, chickadees. By now, most of you have probably discovered the delightful, steaming heap of a Yule gift bestowed upon us by LJ in the form of redesigned comment pages, which are not only badly designed to the point of inducing headaches, but also make long threads almost entirely unnavigable. Hurrah! Seasonally-appropriate joy for all!

We've waited just under 24 hours since the changeover, to see if LJ suddenly manifested enough sense to do an emergency rollback to the old design, but the latest news post seems to indicate that that, unfortunately, is not gonna be happening (or at least not yet).

What does this mean for Milliways?

There are a number of workarounds and hacks popping up around LJ; as soon as I finish making this post, I will get to work on applying the Minimalism custom comments workaround to both milliways_bar and ways_back_room. This will restore subject lines and (hopefully) proper expand/collapse functions, and provide a rough visual approximation of the old default comment page.

However!

1) This is going to change the main page layouts of both communities. They'll still be perfectly usable, they'll just look different, so... FYI. Either this will be a stopgap measure until LJ comes to its senses, or there will be plenty of time to refine the look later; either way, comment pages and functionality are the #1 priority right now, so please bear with us as we futz around with things.

2) Custom comment pages currently require that the account employing them be either a Paid or Plus account. Since I am not particularly interested in giving LJ any more of my money at this time - and I urge all of you to refrain from doing so as well - that means Plus accounts, which means advertisements on the bar and back room comms. *cough*Adblock*cough*

There are also a number of tweaks and extensions that individual users can use to make their current LJ experience a little less painful - stay tuned for a round-up post once the community layouts are sorted.

If you're having any problems with the Minimalism layouts, or something isn't working as it should, or you've spotted a workaround you think should be included in the round-up, please leave them in the comments here!

ETA: List of workarounds is now here; if you have any tips or tricks, please leave them in the comments over there!

Comments

[bcgphoenix]

Remind me where the info on the custom Minimalism layout is located? I'd like to rig it up to my own journal so I can actually read comments sitewide without developing an eyestrain headache.

[bcgphoenix]

(also: THANK YOU SOPHIE WE LOVE YOU <3333)

[aj_crawley]

This is the Minimalism workaround I'm using at the moment. It's not perfect (see: the Known Issues list, and commenters are reporting some weird scrolling bugs with very long threads), but it's still leaps and bounds better than the hot mess that is the current default.

[alsoagreengrass]

Maybe a silly question that I should already know the answer to, but: Is there/will there be a way to opt out and continue using the new style of comments? I actually like it.

[aj_crawley]

Voila! Alternatively, if you don't have a paid account and are using Firefox, you can use this Greasemonkey script that will automatically append ?style=mine to all comment pages.

(Mind you use the one linked in the comment and not the one in the main post; the former only modifies comment pages to your style, while the one in the post modifies all journal pages to your style.)

[alsoagreengrass]

Hm, thank you for the links, but the Greasemonkey thing does not seem to be working for me. I'll have to look at it some more and see if I'm doing something wrong.

[remindmeofthe.livejournal.com]

Put the code below into your bookmarks/on your toolbar/wherever it's convenient! Then click it when you're on an LJ page you want to apply style=mine to and it should work! It's been my favorite thing in the world for months (I haaaaaate trying to read fic on custom pages, omg), and now it's just saving my eyes.

javascript:if(location.hostname.indexOf('livejournal.com')%20>=%200){location.search+=(location.search?'&':'?')+'style=mine';}

[sophistry]

What account levels does this work with?

[remindmeofthe.livejournal.com]

I know for sure it works with Paid and Plus, as I've used it successfully with both types.

So, hey, while I've got your attention, what are the modly thoughts on this (https://twitter.com/#!/dreamwidth/status/149545416378171392)?

. . . by which question I mean mostly, "Man, wouldn't it be nice to be able to back up years' worth of everyone's writing before LJ implodes?" Just to be clear. XD

[sophistry]

I think if DW do relax their restrictions on importing communities, that's definitely something we would want to seriously consider, even if it's just for archival purposes. As for a wholesale move... well, that'd be a lot harder to orchestrate - even thinking about it makes me want to go lie down in the dark - but I do think it's an option we would want to keep on the table, especially if LJ keeps going the way it has been.

[remindmeofthe.livejournal.com]

Ahaha, yeah, I was not even thinking in terms of a full-scale move. I'm exhausted by the very thought and I'm not even a mod. It definitely strikes me as a very-last-resort kind of option.

Thanks for the work in making the comms viewable again! They look great.

[alsoagreengrass]

Oh, that works nicely! Thank you!

[remindmeofthe.livejournal.com]

Awesome! I about turned inside out with glee the day I stumbled across it, so I'm only too happy to pass it along. :D

[winding_path]

If you're using the new style in your journal, you should be able to click the "view in own style" box on a Milliways page that displays the narrow version of the info/navigation bar at the top, and see Milliways the same way you have your journal set to display whenever you're logged in. (I can see it at the top of Meg's friends page, and when I clicked that option on, it changed my view of bar posts.)

[alsoagreengrass]

I'll look into this when I'm more awake too, thank you. Right now I'm using the fix that remindmeofthe provided.

[winding_path]

Sure. :)

It may only work with paid accounts, but it is pretty easy to do.

[minkhollow]

DROP-DOWN BOX, HOW I HAVE MISSED YOU, IT'S BEEN A WHOLE DAY
My one request in the layout change would be a link to the back room from the main comm; I rarely use vice-versa but I always used that one. Pls?

[aj_crawley]

Sorted!

[calmhrtprevails]

It's worth noting that if you don't want to deal with Adblock for some reason, the Opera browser has a built-in content blocker.

[sardonicynic]

I have been so buried with work + life + wrapping my Yuletide assignment, I completely missed this last night! Just wanted to say thanks for all the hard work, Soph -- you and the rest of our beloved mods are rock stars.

[chanter1944]

Sophie? You get ginger cookies (once I make the dough), tea, and a shimmery star in whichever color you so desire. <3!

*scrambles for a workaround or three*

[thewrittenfae.livejournal.com]

Thank you So SO much for the links to help get it somewhat back to normal!

[genarti]

Thank you SO MUCH for this! I miss the old layout, of course, and obviously workarounds and cludges and tweaks aren't ideal, but this is so much better.

<333333

[leeshajoy.livejournal.com]

The custom comment pages seem to have disappeared. Check the journal settings?