*spork*

[ratcreature]

Like almost everyone else I loathe LJ's new comment pages. I've always disliked the customized comment pages and preferred the site style, but I now had to turn the customization on in self-defense, because those are slightly less awful. For many years now I had used "Smooth Sailing" as layout but the custom comment pages there are worse than the "Minimalist" style ones, so I switched my layout and then spend almost two hours trying to get my basic requirements customized again. It should not be this hard to get the icons to display on the left of an entry. I'm still trying to figure out how to make that serif font go away that goes with that layout in some places.

Anyway, in wake of this mess I decided to turn on these crossposting footers linking to DW, to encourage people who so far follow me on LJ to comment elsewhere. I used to find them vaguely obnoxious, because I figured people who wanted to follow and comment on DW would just read there in the first place, but that was before LJ's continuous attempts to make their site unusable had reached quite this level. I'm still considering whether I should just turn comments there off entirely.

Comments

[isagel]

[random] I actually use the crossposting footers mostly for my own sake, because they make it so easy to switch from one site to the other while staying on the same entry. Also, I really like when other people use them with the "there are blah number of comments on DW" feature, because then I can easily click through an read whatever discussion the post has generated there. They make crossreferencing so much easier when you're equally active on both sites. So for me it's entirely about functionality for me, not about encouraging anyone else to comment in any special place.[/random]

[ratcreature]

I don't really see the comment numbers, because if someone is on DW I follow here. I admit that sometimes I had the suspicion that people might read on LJ to see both comment numbers, but I don't do that.

[sholio]

Did you figure out how to get the icons to display on the left? I know it's silly, but that's one of the big reasons why I don't use Minimalist -- it's too hard to read when I'm scanning my flist. But I agree that it's probably got the best custom comment pages of a really sad bunch. (Why is it so difficult for LJ to understand that we might have different needs for the front page of our LJ versus the page that we read large blocks of text on? Oh, wait ... because they don't care how we use the site at all. [/bitter])

(Obviously I haven't left for the airport yet *g*. And I don't have time to screw with my journal before I go - damn you, LJ! But I'm going to want to do it when I get back.)

Also, like isagel said, I find the crossposting footer quite convenient both for my use on my own journal, and for clicking back and forth between other people's posts when there are discussions going on at both places. Though obviously it's your journal and you should do whatever looks best to you!

[ratcreature]

yes, I did figure that out. I looked at the CSS of the style and then at the CSS of some minimalist customizations that moved icons, and then I c&p'ed sections into the custom CSS field and fiddled until it looked okay. It's still not quite ideal with the margins and stuff, and I got fed up with having to fiddle so I haven't tweaked further or looked up all the sections where I need to change that serif font I don't like.

I picked the minimalist Georgia theme and to make the icons display left I added to the custom CSS:
.content .entry .entry-title {
margin-left:130px;
font-size:2.4em;
line-height:1.1em;
}
.content .entry .entry-title IMG {
padding-right:.5em;
}
.content .entry .entry-text .author {
position:relative;
float:left;
max-width:120px;
margin:1.2em 1.2 1.2em 1.2em;
font-size:0.85em;
text-align:center;
z-index:10;
}
.content .entry .entry-text .entry-date {
margin:1em 0 1em;
font-size:1.1em;
font-style:italic;
text-transform:lowercase;
font-family:Georgia, serif;
}