This is what a relatively short comment looks like. Do the top and bottom border rules end up too close together? Do they look ick?

And this one will be a longer comment.

Again, questions to consider: should the name be at both top and bottom? One plus is that it mirrors the posts themselves, where the authorname is at both ends (for reasons I have explained elsewhere at somewhat excessive length).

And suppose a commenter quotes some other comment, viz:

This is what a relatively short comment looks like. Do the top and bottom border rules end up too close together? Do they look ick?

How does the left border of a block-quote interact with the top and bottom rules of the comment itself? Do they engage each other in combat, or do they make a nice set?

The toughest combination would be a blockquote with an embedded list. Let me cobble one up:

Creating my own Movable Type blog has taught me a number of things:

• How XHTML works
• How to use cascading stylesheets (CSS) to separate style from content
• Dreamweaver, to create the non-blog parts of this website
• PhotoShop CS, which I used to create all the background and foreground images
• Movable Type 3.2 itself
• And of course, an deep, reptillian patience to tie all these disparate elements together into one gigantic, horrid mess!

So, any thoughts?

Dafydd

By the way, I am working on a way to get buttons onto the comments form, so that y'all will be able to simply select some text and click the boldface button, rather than laboriously typing <strong> and </strong>, <blockquote> and </blockquote>, and so forth. There will be buttons for bold, italics, block-quote, ordered and unordered lists (and list items, of course), and even strikeover -- IF I can finally get it to work!

So far, it won't; and the guy who created it isn't responding (see comments above about the kindness of, in this case, strangers, rather than subcontractors!)

But I hope to get it up and running eventually. It will make things much easier for you guys, believe me!

Dafydd

A bit confusing. It looks like there is a comment missing between each entry. I would suggest enclosing the comment by info within the lines.

Stephen Macklin:

I tried that; the double-rules looked horrible. So I snipped out the bottom rule and just used the top one, with the rule itself moved to the top of the words, rather than the bottom.

How does it look now?

Dafydd

Dafydd... your questions, my answers... (thanks for the input sought!)

Is it easier to tell who has left which comment?

Yes, if the red lines completely enclose (demark) each comment.

Is it confusing to see each person's name twice? Would a border without the commenter name be better?

Yes, two instances is redundant. The line at the top would be sufficient, if it read somthing like:

The following hissed in by: Stephen Macklin * on October 13, 2005 05:00 PM

(Where the * is the little box that links to the posters profile, etc.)

Is the border line too bright? Should it be a different, more muted color?
Or does it clearly demarcate each comment better than a brownish line
would?

The border line is fine as it currently is. It grabs the eye with finality, no mistake. The only thing wrong is the double name entry. Particularly on short comments, it looks funny - but on longer posts, the "hissed in" poster identity may be far back up the page, making easy response to the poster less 'easy' - requiring a scroll-up, to refresh one's mind, or copy/paste the name into a response.

That being the case, I believe it might be best to put the tag line at the bottom of each comment, only - but change the word 'following' to 'above.'

It should be up to the commentor to address his comment to whomever - not leaving the reader to guess whether they are commenting on the original post, or the comment of another. You can't program that too easily (auto population of the comment 'To:' at the top) - doing so would take more time and effort than need be, IMHO.

Just my 2 cents...

The change you just made helps a great deal!

Testing... Dafyyd buddy, you can go nuts trying to deliniate comments for the 'perfect' look - but, no matter what you do, you won't please everyone.

I'd stop right here - if I were you? (course, I've always been a lazy coding SOB too...)

8^)

humm - that question-mark in my last was supposed to be an exclamation mark! (nothing like confusing the issue.. ~grim chuckle~)

1. and 2. Name at top or bottom, not both, but I do like "the above comment by ____" (or "the following comment by", as required). Makes it easier to keep track.
3. No such critter as lines too bright. Remember, some of us are cursed with weakening eyes, and no spell to improve them. A nice red (or bright blue, or brown, or scaly green) line between comments helps reduce the confusion for us old folks,and that line beside a quote is good too.
Confusion is a curse. (Confusion to the enemy!) Anything you can do to reduce it here is a good thing.
One for you to think about: Do you intend to enter into the discussions after a post? If so, perhaps a different color to designate words from the master?

I like the change. On short comments it's redundant but on longer ones it will be really helpful. I'm sure as time goes on those of us who come here everyday will learn to recognize the names of certain people whose comments are usually worth reading and others whose comments usually aren't.

Until you get the buttons implemented to add html tags, maybe a list, right above the comment input box, of what tags are legal would be useful.

One nitpic... after hitting the POST button, the page that then appears doesn't have the post at the bottom - until I reload the page. Somewhere, there's a line of code that forces a reload at the beginning of the html document - but, danged if I can remember what it is at the moment.

I'm suffering from Ronzheimer's again today. (Uh.. that is, instead of Alzheimer's)

Nuts... I don't mind if my email address is known, and I click "share my email address" when logging in - but, I see my handle isn't underlined.

Can you (anyone) advise how to alter this?

Dafydd - making the same change on the main page would be great - just remove the bottom line, and bump everything (in the post) to just below the line at the top.

8^)

Thanks for hissing in, . Now you can slither in with a comment, o wise. (sign out)

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