MefiCSS Pony Request June 10, 2018 11:37 AM   Subscribe

For those of us who occasionally futz with Metafilter CSS styling (userstyles, Stylus, Stylish, etc.), would it be possible for the two "BR" tags following each comment (both in Classic and Modern) to be given a CSS style or id?
posted by WCityMike to Feature Requests at 11:37 AM (15 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: Poster's Request -- loup



Not physically impossible, but boy howdy is the historical practice of interpolated vs. literal br tags in the database a weird inconsistent mess, which means doing something like this so that it'd function retroactively would be A Bit Of A Thing and probably require more work right now than we can reasonably spare for a minor nicety. In which light, making a going-forward change to how those are handled doesn't feel like a good idea.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:40 AM on June 10, 2018


Less than ideal, but you can select them with .comments + br and .comments + br + br.
posted by michaelh at 12:05 PM on June 10, 2018


A pony rider request (subpony?): the handy buttons on the mobile site that let one jump to the bottom or back to the top of the page seem to disappear on the non-mobile site. Particularly for overly lengthy threads — about, say, narcissistic homunculi-matryoshkas filled with Cheeto-dust and spite — it'd be awesome to have those jumpy-buttons, especially now that I have the muscle memory to look for them.
posted by Celsius1414 at 4:03 PM on June 10, 2018 [1 favorite]


Home and End keys (or the equivalent) already do that, right?
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 6:50 PM on June 10, 2018


Unless you happen to be on a laptop keyboard sans Home and End keys.
posted by Celsius1414 at 10:39 PM on June 10, 2018


Those jumpy buttons for mobile navigation are still broken though no?
posted by kev23f at 10:55 PM on June 10, 2018


kev23f, give us some details on platform/browser/theme and we'll take a look; they shouldn't be broken in general, but there may still be some more specific issues out there we can chase down.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:12 AM on June 11, 2018


(Fwiw on the laptop end, I've usually been able to find a modifier+something key combo to do pgup/pgdn/home/end stuff even on laptops that have totally failed to communicate on the keycaps what that combo is. If your laptop has some And Hold This Down To Accomplish Alternate Task X button for things like getting double duty out of the F1...F12 keys or media controls etc, try that in combo with e.g. the arrow keys and you might get lucky.)
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:14 AM on June 11, 2018 [1 favorite]


Yeah, by "equivalent" I meant Fn+arrow key or Option+arrow key or whatever your machine supports. There's Always A Way.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:25 AM on June 11, 2018 [1 favorite]


Yeah, I’m aware of all of the above — the problem arises with never knowing if those key combos (or indeed actual home/end/page up/down buttons) will work on a given webpage because all too often insertion focus has been stolen by a random form element or advert or even the browser location field. So instead of going to the bottom of the page, the cursor jumps to the end of a search field accompanied by a sad trombone sound.

(And that’s assuming the stupid fn key has registered input in the middle of an emacs-like chord. There’s a reason I’m a vim user.)

This is not a MeFi problem per se, but it would be helped tremendously on long MeFi threads by keeping the jumpy buttons visible.
posted by Celsius1414 at 9:45 AM on June 11, 2018


(One of the many reasons I adored the recent retro MeFi theme SO MUCH was that key presses actually did what you wanted them to. I miss the web old days.)
posted by Celsius1414 at 9:47 AM on June 11, 2018


You should just get a laptop with a bigger screen so the whole politics thread fits on the screen all at once.
posted by aubilenon at 3:40 PM on June 11, 2018 [1 favorite]


(If it's any consolation, we've kept that Reader view active. But yes, I feel you.)
posted by cortex (staff) at 4:04 PM on June 11, 2018 [1 favorite]


Hi Cortex - sorry for the late reply. The 'jumpy' buttons don't work on my Samsung Galaxy S8+, android version 8.0.0. This happens when using Chrome 67.0.3396.81, and also when using Chrome Beta Version 68.0.3440.14. It happens whether logged in or out.

I decided to test a little further, and the button works fine on my device using Mobile Firefox version 60.0.2, and also works on the built in Samsung browser, version 7.0.10.46.

So the issue is limited to chrome it seems (for me). Hopefully some of that is helpful. The last time this was discussed that i'm aware of it seemed to be limited to Chrome also.
posted by kev23f at 9:22 AM on June 12, 2018


Also noticing the broken jump buttons, same Chrome and Android versions as kev23f, on a Galaxy S8. It didn't work the last time this came up in October, or in the few times I've tried it since. Chrome only, the default Samsung browser works for me, too.

Modern Dark theme: Tapping the down button causes it to change to the visited/active link color, no other result. Tapping elsewhere on the screen causes it to restore to the original color.

Modern theme: Tapping the button has no effect, no color change.

Classic theme: "skip to menu" link works as expected.
posted by yuwtze at 10:06 AM on June 12, 2018


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