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Teh wavy brain stuffz

K, had an idea about ye olde news phader and randome news lynes. [/16th century]

At the moment, theme settings allow you to have both on at once. If you turn on the news fader, you have to manually disable the news lines if you don't want your news content duplicated. This seems a bit silly, and I think it would make more sense to have one or the other. Using a select in admin would make sense. Choose from off, random lines, or fader.

The next bit is..... why do we have two different locations? It occurred to me that we could put the news fader in the same location as the random lines. That way, if someone has seen the news and doesn't want it, the existing collapse for the header/user area still deals with the unwanted news. This means we can save some js and markup.

Also, when the user area is collapsed the php could completely ditch all the news area content, to save even more code processing. Yes, I realise that this would mean no news instantly if you expand the area and don't refresh the page. Three options here. 1/ Don't give a rat's, and assume they'll refresh the page or 2/ make it refresh the page for them if there is news or 3/ linky up teh ajax to the clicky thing and get news that way.

Any of those would be ok, IMO. This is worth some thought, because it would make for saner layout and theme options. It's also very easy to do (apart from mebbe teh ajax bit - me no savvy ajax). :)
Master of Expletives: Now with improved family f@&king friendliness! :D

Sources code: making easy front end changes difficult since 1873. :P

Re: Teh wavy brain stuffz

Reply #1

Never used the news stuff, so can't comment why it was done the way it is, or if its just another left over.  Seems to make sense to combine it all in to one thing / place.  The only downside I can come up with is, if you really wanted members to see a news item and we move it all to the potentially collapsed area, then it will be missed.

Re: Teh wavy brain stuffz

Reply #2

Yes but they can collapse the news fader anyway. ;) That's what you get for allowing members to make their own choices. Should be a law against it.

You could have an admin option that automatically resets the collapse when a new news item is added.
Master of Expletives: Now with improved family f@&king friendliness! :D

Sources code: making easy front end changes difficult since 1873. :P

Re: Teh wavy brain stuffz

Reply #3

 emanuele feels Ant is becoming old :P

You already suggested that in the past (about a month ago) and I answered saying I already proposed it in the theme I was playing with. :P
Bugs creator.
Features destroyer.
Template killer.

Re: Teh wavy brain stuffz

Reply #4

K, let's do it then.
Master of Expletives: Now with improved family f@&king friendliness! :D

Sources code: making easy front end changes difficult since 1873. :P

Re: Teh wavy brain stuffz

Reply #5

Ok is done on local. Had an idea. If there's news wot r news, presumably the admin wants you to read it. So, to save messing with floats I tried it as table cell display on the divs.

If there's news, that comes first, with av and stuff after it. If no news, av and stuff sit at the left where they wont look orphaned. Random news lines and news fader both have the same styling, with the obvious differences on how they handle actual news content (strong tags and fading in the fader, normal weight text etc in the randoms).

ETA: Or you can have the av and stuff at the left all the time, just by tweaking the css a bit. Easy to adjust, depending on preference.