[aur-dev] Stop limiting the height of AUR comments?
On Sun, 2016-03-06 at 22:09 +0000, Eric Engestrom wrote:
Hi all,
Every now and then, someone will post a huge dump (log, error messages, etc.) to the AUR comments. Besides being usually useless, those comments force everyone to scroll for a while before getting to the next comment.
What do you guys think about adding something like this to limit the vertical space taken by such comments?
#news div p { max-height: 10em; overflow: auto; }
If the idea is approved, I can send a proper patch ;]
About one year ago this change was proposed and committed to limit the height of comments on AUR pages. (If you're looking for it in your inbox, this post took place on the aur-general list, not on aur-dev.) I'm posting because I find this behavior more annoying than helpful. Take a look at the following AUR page as an example: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/linux-next-git/ The biggest issue that I have is that if a comment is truncated in height, there's no way to expand the comment such that the whole comment is visible. At least for me, seeing only a small portion of the comment at a time makes it much harder to fully grok, particularly when it comes to things like logs, error messages, patches, etc. Beyond that, try loading that AUR page on your phone, or try navigating the comments with one of the browser plugins for vim-bindings. On my phone, it's not obvious at first glance that the truncated comments are individually scrollable. I believe that multiple vertical scrollbars on a page is not a great experience in any browser. lfleischer suggested (on the thread quoted above) that one potiential solution could be a link towards the bottom of long comments that ties into javascript, where one could click to expand it. I think that's a much better solution-- provided that the full contents of the comment would still be accessibile in a browser without javascript. eg: page is served with fully visible comments, long comments are hidden by javascript after it loads. Personally, I think the best solution would be to just revert the change entirely. I disagree with the notion that long comments are "usually useless". I think that more often than not, the opposite is actually true-- longer comments typically are the ones that contain fixes/patches for broken AUR pkgbuilds. Not to mention, comments on aurweb are already paginated after 10 comments-- that alone keeps the page (relatively) short. I think trying to minimize scrolling is a misguided effort, especially when it can come at the expense of making useful content harder to read. (archive of previous post @ http://aur-general.archlinux.narkive.com/5bDpCkn8/rfc-limit-the-height-of-au... )
On 03/09/2017 06:58 PM, Nicholas Sielicki via aur-dev wrote:
About one year ago this change was proposed and committed to limit the height of comments on AUR pages. (If you're looking for it in your inbox, this post took place on the aur-general list, not on aur-dev.)
I'm posting because I find this behavior more annoying than helpful.
IIRC, we talked about this on #archlinux-aur about a week ago, and you said you posted something then (tried to?)...
lfleischer suggested (on the thread quoted above) that one potiential solution could be a link towards the bottom of long comments that ties into javascript, where one could click to expand it. I think that's a much better solution-- provided that the full contents of the comment would still be accessibile in a browser without javascript. eg: page is served with fully visible comments, long comments are hidden by javascript after it loads.
Indeed this is probably the most elegant solution. But CSS was easy I guess. ;) Do you have a patch to do it with javascript? :)
Personally, I think the best solution would be to just revert the change entirely. I disagree with the notion that long comments are "usually useless". I think that more often than not, the opposite is actually true-- longer comments typically are the ones that contain fixes/patches for broken AUR pkgbuilds. Not to mention, comments on aurweb are already paginated after 10 comments-- that alone keeps the page (relatively) short.
No, fixes/patches should be left as links to a pastebin. Trying to apply such changes from the comment block is incredibly awkward, and actual patchfiles provide a much nicer patch workflow as opposed to expecting the maintainer to copy-paste things into a file and then patch with that. Likewise with build errors, I would much rather people post a one-line error message with a pastebin reference to the full build log. -- Eli Schwartz
Le 09/03/2017 à 15:58, Nicholas Sielicki via aur-dev a écrit :
On Sun, 2016-03-06 at 22:09 +0000, Eric Engestrom wrote:
Hi all,
Every now and then, someone will post a huge dump (log, error messages, etc.) to the AUR comments. Besides being usually useless, those comments force everyone to scroll for a while before getting to the next comment.
What do you guys think about adding something like this to limit the vertical space taken by such comments?
#news div p { max-height: 10em; overflow: auto; } If the idea is approved, I can send a proper patch ;] About one year ago this change was proposed and committed to limit the height of comments on AUR pages. (If you're looking for it in your inbox, this post took place on the aur-general list, not on aur-dev.)
I'm posting because I find this behavior more annoying than helpful.
From my POV, it’s both. Because it has pros and cons.
Take a look at the following AUR page as an example: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/linux-next-git/
The biggest issue that I have is that if a comment is truncated in height, there's no way to expand the comment such that the whole comment is visible.
That’s the real issue, not the fact they are truncated.
At least for me, seeing only a small portion of the comment at a time makes it much harder to fully grok, particularly when it comes to things like logs, error messages, patches, etc.
Those should rather be pasted on pasting services though, but still…
Beyond that, try loading that AUR page on your phone, or try navigating the comments with one of the browser plugins for vim-bindings. On my phone, it's not obvious at first glance that the truncated comments are individually scrollable. I believe that multiple vertical scrollbars on a page is not a great experience in any browser.
Agree.
lfleischer suggested (on the thread quoted above) that one potiential solution could be a link towards the bottom of long comments that ties into javascript, where one could click to expand it. I think that's a much better solution-- provided that the full contents of the comment would still be accessibile in a browser without javascript. eg: page is served with fully visible comments, long comments are hidden by javascript after it loads.
That looks like a real solution, and what I was going to answer as a proposition after starting reading your post. But it’s already here. :)
Personally, I think the best solution would be to just revert the change entirely. I disagree with the notion that long comments are "usually useless".
Disagree, I think the AUR is cluttered with useless comments, but this might really depends on which packages you make use of.
I think that more often than not, the opposite is actually true-- longer comments typically are the ones that contain fixes/patches for broken AUR pkgbuilds.
Like I said above, those should belong to paste services.
Not to mention, comments on aurweb are already paginated after 10 comments-- that alone keeps the page (relatively) short.
Not if someone do what you says, i.e. pasting it’s full log of trying to build whatever program. Regards, Bruno
On Thu 09 Mar 2017 16:35 -0800, Bruno Pagani via aur-dev wrote:
At least for me, seeing only a small portion of the comment at a time makes it much harder to fully grok, particularly when it comes to things like logs, error messages, patches, etc.
Those should rather be pasted on pasting services though, but still…
I now believe that the AUR should have its own builtin pasting service for patches, logs and other attachments. It will make for a more seamless experience. I've come to despise when sites fetch resources from many other domains.
Beyond that, try loading that AUR page on your phone, or try navigating the comments with one of the browser plugins for vim-bindings. On my phone, it's not obvious at first glance that the truncated comments are individually scrollable. I believe that multiple vertical scrollbars on a page is not a great experience in any browser.
Agree.
Yeah the long-comment scroll box is horrible. Bad idea.
Hi all, I like the idea of expanding the long comments and an easy solution using JQuery could be adding link or button: Expand (on click) -> $(this).closest('p').css("max-height", "none"); Condense (on click) -> $(this).closest('p').css("max-height", "10em"); I tested in the browser console with: $($('.article-content')[0]).children('p').css("max-height", "none"); $($('.article-content')[0]).children('p').css("max-height", "10em"); On 09/03/17 23:58, Nicholas Sielicki via aur-dev wrote:
On Sun, 2016-03-06 at 22:09 +0000, Eric Engestrom wrote:
Hi all,
Every now and then, someone will post a huge dump (log, error messages, etc.) to the AUR comments. Besides being usually useless, those comments force everyone to scroll for a while before getting to the next comment.
What do you guys think about adding something like this to limit the vertical space taken by such comments?
#news div p { max-height: 10em; overflow: auto; } If the idea is approved, I can send a proper patch ;] About one year ago this change was proposed and committed to limit the height of comments on AUR pages. (If you're looking for it in your inbox, this post took place on the aur-general list, not on aur-dev.)
I'm posting because I find this behavior more annoying than helpful.
Take a look at the following AUR page as an example: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/linux-next-git/
The biggest issue that I have is that if a comment is truncated in height, there's no way to expand the comment such that the whole comment is visible. At least for me, seeing only a small portion of the comment at a time makes it much harder to fully grok, particularly when it comes to things like logs, error messages, patches, etc.
Beyond that, try loading that AUR page on your phone, or try navigating the comments with one of the browser plugins for vim-bindings. On my phone, it's not obvious at first glance that the truncated comments are individually scrollable. I believe that multiple vertical scrollbars on a page is not a great experience in any browser.
lfleischer suggested (on the thread quoted above) that one potiential solution could be a link towards the bottom of long comments that ties into javascript, where one could click to expand it. I think that's a much better solution-- provided that the full contents of the comment would still be accessibile in a browser without javascript. eg: page is served with fully visible comments, long comments are hidden by javascript after it loads.
Personally, I think the best solution would be to just revert the change entirely. I disagree with the notion that long comments are "usually useless". I think that more often than not, the opposite is actually true-- longer comments typically are the ones that contain fixes/patches for broken AUR pkgbuilds. Not to mention, comments on aurweb are already paginated after 10 comments-- that alone keeps the page (relatively) short.
I think trying to minimize scrolling is a misguided effort, especially when it can come at the expense of making useful content harder to read.
(archive of previous post @ http://aur-general.archlinux.narkive.com/5bDpCkn8/rfc-limit-the-height-of-au... )
On Fri 10 Mar 2017 06:12 +0000, Radostin Stoyanov via aur-dev wrote:
I like the idea of expanding the long comments and an easy solution using JQuery could be adding link or button:
Expand (on click) -> $(this).closest('p').css("max-height", "none");
Condense (on click) -> $(this).closest('p').css("max-height", "10em");
I tested in the browser console with:
$($('.article-content')[0]).children('p').css("max-height", "none");
$($('.article-content')[0]).children('p').css("max-height", "10em");
Really all this fancy formatting should be done in a separate client interface. I think that the AUR itself should remain as simple as possible.
On Thu, 2017-03-09 at 17:58 -0600, Nicholas Sielicki via aur-dev wrote:
lfleischer suggested (on the thread quoted above) that one potiential solution could be a link towards the bottom of long comments that ties into javascript, where one could click to expand it. I think that's a much better solution-- provided that the full contents of the comment would still be accessibile in a browser without javascript. eg: page is served with fully visible comments, long comments are hidden by javascript after it loads.
My only criticism is that if a comment is extremely long, then you would either have to refresh the stupid page to make it manageable again or collapse it (if that's available). I personally am in favor of limiting the length of comments entirely and just making people use services like Gist or pastebin for log/console output or patches.
Personally, I think the best solution would be to just revert the change entirely. I disagree with the notion that long comments are "usually useless". I think that more often than not, the opposite is actually true-- longer comments typically are the ones that contain fixes/patches for broken AUR pkgbuilds. Not to mention, comments on aurweb are already paginated after 10 comments-- that alone keeps the page (relatively) short.
The reason this was added was because people would paste in ridiculously long comments that made the comments section huge and unmanageable. And by ridiculously long comments, there was one I saw that is now deleted that was hundreds of lines long. If this change is reverted, I would like to see something replace it rather than just leaving it the way it was. Mark Weiman
participants (6)
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Bruno Pagani
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Eli Schwartz
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Loui Chang
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Mark Weiman
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Nicholas Sielicki
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Radostin Stoyanov