MOD POST 2: The Hackening

[sophistry]

Okay! The layouts for milliways_bar and ways_back_room have been changed, and commenting should be more-or-less functional again. The workaround does have some bugs, though, so if you're having any issues, please leave a comment on this mod post over here.

With that sorted for the moment, read on for a list of all the current workarounds and hacks I've been able to find.

Custom comment pages:

Minimalism 'Georgia' workaround. This is what we're using for milliways_bar and ways_back_room. Changes your LJ style to show comments in an approximation of the old default look, along with subject lines, parent/thread links, etc. Some bugs have been reported (see the Known Issues list), but it's currently the best workaround we've been able to find. -- requires Paid/Plus for custom comment pages.

See here for a modified version of the above with layout sidebars.

Other Minimalism layouts are reported to also retain subject lines/parent & thread links/comment previews/etc. in custom comment pages - though obviously, these will not visually resemble the old default layout.


?style=mine fixes:

If you want to view comments in your style across LJ, see here for viewing other comment pages in your own style. -- requires Paid/Plus for custom comment pages.

Alternatively, see this Greasemonkey script which appends ?style=mine to all comment page links. You should also be able to install this in Chrome and Opera. -- Unclear if works with Plus - can anyone verify?

Thanks to remindmeofthe: 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';} -- works with Paid and Plus.


Other fixes:

Preview your HTML at W3.

Greasemonkey script for comment previews - should also work with Chrome and Opera. -- can anyone verify that this works?

Greasemonkey script for appending ?format=light to comment pages. Doesn't fix threading issues, but makes the new default slightly less headache inducing (example). Should also work with Chrome; see here for Opera. -- can anyone verify that this works?

-------------

This is pretty hodgepodge, and for that I apologise; I've got tabs open every which way trying to figure out what works, what doesn't, and for what account levels.

If you have any other tips or tricks, leave them in the comments here! If possible, please also state what account levels (i.e. Basic/Plus/Paid) they work for.

Thanks for your patience, guys!

Comments

[oxfordtweed]

In other news, DW is apparently changing their copyright policy, AKA working on importing communities over.

I know a lot of people are against this sort of move, as it would be a massive undertaking for this group, but if anyone runs any other communities, there you have it.

[sophistry]

We've actually been talking about that and keeping an eye on developments. C&P'd from a comment on the last mod post:

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.

Basically, at this point a full move is not terribly likely - but with so much uncertainty at the moment, we don't want to rule it out as a last resort.

[oxfordtweed]

I've just found this http://manonon.livejournal.com/6816.html which I'm not sure if anyone's linked to it yet.

I don't even know what to do with that information, but good lord.

[silveraspen]

Whoa. That is not good news. Thanks for the heads up.

[dynastessa]

Wow, there's change and then there's ... this.

[aberrantangels]

God's pyjamas and spats. Why do Art Lebedev not wantings me to giving him moneys?

[yakalskovich]

Thank you very much for doing this!! It really helps a LOT with threading. I finally arrive where I was after a reload again -- which is what sucked most with the new layout.

When the thread is long enough to collapse, it does that after tagging as it will on a normal custom comments page, but that is a small price to pay for having findable threads again.

Thank you ever so much!!!

[sophistry]

Okay, idk if it's just because I took a longer nap than I intended to and am still groggy, but I cannot make heads nor tails of this:

When the thread is long enough to collapse, it does that after tagging as it will on a normal custom comments page

Could you explain more clearly what the problem is?

(For anyone else reading, if you have any issues or problems with the current layouts, please leave a comment on this mod post over here.)

[yakalskovich]

Oh, never mind, it's in the Known Issues -- Also if you are in a thread view and leave a comment it spits you back out to the full comments page. This seems to be a problem with custom comment pages in general and probably isn't something I can fix.

I can live with that, considering all the other advantages.-

Help for accounts of all levels!

[ladyiapetus]

Work-arounds for comment pages, courtesy of bookish_blonde.

[spooky-lemur.livejournal.com]

Many thanks for awesome work.

[crabbycustomer]

Thanks for this. The increasingly-narrow comments in long threads were driving me batshit up the fucking belfry; it was probably the one change I hated the most. This is a huge improvement.

[death_gone_mad]

AHHHHHH! THERE'S A HUGE BULLYING BE GONE AD RIGHT DOWN THE MIDDLE OF THE PAGE

WTF, this wasn't happening with this style yesterday. ADBLOCK TIME!

[death_gone_mad]

Well, on the plus side, this finally got me to move my firefox profiles back over to my linux partition so that I can install and update addons without booting Windows first. I hardly ever use the windows partition anymore anyhow. Some day I'll format it. Some day.

[leeshajoy.livejournal.com]

The Georgia workaround now has an addition to bring back Verdana as the font for entries and comments. May I humbly suggest that this line of code gets added to the CSS pages for the Bar and the Back Room? Verdana's a lot easier on the eyes than Arial.

[vivien]

Awesome work! Thanks so much. Oh, little drop-down menu, you are so sweet.

[death_gone_mad]

ummm, for some reason the comment style in milliways_bar has reverted to the new comment style. Is this just me, or have the devs finally gotten around to applying the new style to minimalism themed journals?

[death_gone_mad]

Ah! Yay! Fixed!

From the Leesha's post, I am guessing the devs are going into a OMG STOP BLEEDING MONEY YOU STUPID THING panic. Pity that what they are doing is just opening the wound.

[lady_bols]

Thank you so much for this. I have enough bullshit going on in real life to have to deal with LJ's crap, too.

~goes to get a sledgehammer to fix my damned threads!~

[minkhollow]

Hey so uh what did you do to change the link text color? Because while I'm at it I might as well find a good goo-y purple for Claudia's journal.

[sophistry]

sfdjdfsksl oh lord, brb trying to figure out my gross, cludgey CSS. In my defense, I've been working almost exclusively with Flexible Squares since S2 came out, and Minimalism is a fucking mystery to me, but still - yikes.

To change the title:

.header h2 {color:#XXXXXX;}

To change LJ usernames:

.username a:link, a:hover, a:visited, a:active {color:#XXXXXX;}

To change other link colours:

.entry-text a:link, a:hover, a:visited, a:active {color:#XXXXXX;}

(NOTE: this one ssshhhhould change all the links in an entry, and all the links in the comments below. This wasn't a workable solution for Milliways, since orange and blue links disappear against the comment bars - and hence some really terrible rush coding to try and get around it - but if you're using purple, this might be the simplest solution for you.)

I can also point you to the default Georgia stylesheet, if you want to try finding the proper elements to change via custom CSS.

[jothra]

Over here: http://fail-fandomanon.livejournal.com/25251.html?thread=111010467

Someone has made some nice CSS for their comments page, that looks very close to the original LJ default.

[sophistry]

Oh, dang, that is the baddest of asses. I'm kind of in Christmas lockdown mode right now, but I'm definitely coming back to this when I have the time and figuring out how to Milliwaysify it.

[innerbrat]

You're straight up amazing.