Expandable Comments
Good news everyone! I've just pushed out the first version of expandable comments! They may still be a little rough around the edges, but you are welcome to try them out below or on any other story.
As for the nerdy details, the scripts are using jQuery to pull the raw comments in JSON format from the server. The two HTML5 slider elements control the display thresholds. Comments that are under the "Hide" threshold are completely hidden. Comments that are under the "Expand" threshold are collapsed. The rest of the comments are shown in full. Collapsed comments show the subject text + the first line of body text. You can click on any collapsed comment to expand it.
For those that prefer to be script free, we will offer an "Enable JavaScript" checkbox in your user settings page. Unchecking this option will present you with server-side-generated pages instead of the JavaScript enabled pages.
As for the nerdy details, the scripts are using jQuery to pull the raw comments in JSON format from the server. The two HTML5 slider elements control the display thresholds. Comments that are under the "Hide" threshold are completely hidden. Comments that are under the "Expand" threshold are collapsed. The rest of the comments are shown in full. Collapsed comments show the subject text + the first line of body text. You can click on any collapsed comment to expand it.
For those that prefer to be script free, we will offer an "Enable JavaScript" checkbox in your user settings page. Unchecking this option will present you with server-side-generated pages instead of the JavaScript enabled pages.
It's possible to automatically cope with javascript (JS) being off.
You have a link with an href that points to the comment on a page of its own. In JS you then set the onclick event to a function that returns false, and does your ajax stuff.
This tells the browser to not follow the link if the function runs. This then automagically does the right thing if JS is on or off.
You can also use the jQuery event.preventDefault() call.
This is what I do on squte and it's got good feedback so far.