Using DOM Scripting for Fixpert Comments
October 23rd, 2006
I want to be all spiffy and change the background color on my comments on Fixpert so that when I’m scanning the comments on a post, it’s easier for me to skip over what I said. Seems like it will be helpful for my readers too, I don’t expect that it will get in their way at all.
There is probably a PHP-based solution for this, but PHP is not my forte. Instead, my idea is to use DOM Scripting to look for any comments where the value of the href is http://www.fixpert.com. Then once that particular link is identified, I can walk up the DOM to its parent li and assign it a class of site-admin. Then tweak the background color in the stylesheet.
Thoughts? Is this a dumb way to attack this problem? Thanks guys!
October 23rd, 2006 at 1:37 pm
I use this for RtF:
http://inner.geek.nz/archives/2005/01/12/wp-plugin-official-comments/
Plugins are our friends.
October 23rd, 2006 at 1:39 pm
Oh and I also wanted to say, that anyone could appear as “you” just by putting in “fixpert.com” as their URL. Anyone mean, that is.
October 23rd, 2006 at 1:59 pm
That’s awesome, thanks Jake! Man, just checking ol’ fixpert on the PC — my site looks like crap on the PC, the fonts look like doodoo without font smoothing (or whatever they call it in Windows) turned off. But I digress.
Thanks again Jake!
October 23rd, 2006 at 2:43 pm
the site’s awesome. looks great on my PC. i’d scootch over and check it out on my Gf’s mac, but………..eewwww
October 23rd, 2006 at 4:19 pm
Got it! The plug-in worked, pretty easy too. I picked an ugly background color, haha. I’ll have to fix that later tonight. Thanks all!
October 23rd, 2006 at 7:46 pm
Alright, cool. Now I got the bike lady talkin’.
November 7th, 2006 at 11:43 am
The alternating background colors look weird. For example, on this post, I see a bunch of comments with white backgrounds (matching the page background), and only a couple with a special, highlighted light blue background — those appear to my eyes as special comments, likely by the blog author. Of course, that’s not quite right.
If you’re going to use alternating backgrounds, pick two colors that don’t match the page or comment area background and have roughly the same “highlight effect” to them.
November 7th, 2006 at 2:14 pm
Yeah, this is great feedback. Thanks Tim!! I’m going to have to rethink how I present comments. Think think think…