Jonathan Rochkind <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Some of MJ's ideas sound really good as interface ideas. I probably
> wont' personally be hacking the planetplanet software to do it though.

Neither 1 or 2 involve hacking the planetplanet software and 3 might
be do-able anyway.  They're template changes.  Here's how to do them:-

> > 1. constrain posts to a maximum size with CSS like on planet sysadmin
> > http://www.sysadminblogs.com/planet/

Add the following to the planet.css file:-

.entry {
       max-height: 15em; overflow: auto;
}

> > 2. add a Javascript "Hide Author" to the template like on planet debian
> > http://planet.debian.net/

Copy http://planet.debian.net/hide.js /minus-8.png and /plus-8.png to
your host, then add

<script type="text/javascript" src="/hide.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
window.onload=hideHosts;
</script>

to the head section of index.html.tmpl, then

<script type="text/javascript">
document.write( "<a href=\"#\"
id=\"<TMPL_VAR NAME="link" ESCAPE="URI">_hide\"
onClick=\"exclude(
'<TMPL_VAR NAME="link" ESCAPE="HTML">'
); hideHosts(); return false;\"><img src=\"/minus-8.png\"
style=\"border: none;\" title=\"Hide Author\" alt=\"Hide Author\"
height=\"8\" width=\"8\"></a> <a href=\"#\"
id=\"<TMPL_VAR NAME="link" ESCAPE="URI">_show\"
 style=\"display:none;\" onClick=\"show(
''<TMPL_VAR NAME="link" ESCAPE="HTML">'
);  return false;\"><img src=\"/plus-8.png\" style=\"border: none;\"
title=\"Show Author\" alt=\"Show Author\" height=\"8\"
width=\"8\"></a>" );
</script>

to the main loop's <TMPL_IF new_channel> (or something pretty close to
that - I might be wrong on the ESCAPEs and they could all be HTML...)

> > 3. add "Skip to next" links to the top of each post (not seen this
> > done on planetplanet sites yet)

Not sure how to do this one in tmpl (I've done it in XSLT before).  It
might require hacking the planetplanet software.

Hope that helps,
--
MJ Ray (slef)
Webmaster for hire, statistician and online shop builder for a small
worker cooperative http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
(Notice http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html) tel:+44-844-4437-237