Smoothing out the blogroll CSS and code

[scripting]

I installed the feedland-blogroll plugin yesterday on my main test site, the one I just write mindless test posts for to see how software I'm developing is working. I was able to get the blogroll installed easily, there were a bit of confusion, I wrote up a report for the team.

In this message and in subsequent replies, I am going to try to streamline the plugin so it looks great when you install it on a WordPress site. I don't expect to get all the issues dealt with but to start a process for us to discuss this as more people (hopefully) try out the plugin in the WordPress environment. It's the most important place at this time because WordPress is so widely used.

The plan

1. The first thing to do is to back up the current blogroll software, and release the new version, 0.4.6, which implements various fixes and the new Quiet Mode feature set.

2. Test the new release on blogroll.social, my test site and Doc's blog. Scripting News is already running the new version. There are a few other test sites out there using the blogroll software, and they should also be checked for any breakage. I will send emails to people who have been helping review the software as it's been developed.

3. Make changes to the CSS to make it fit better into theme used on the test site. When done, repeat the testing in step 2 above.

4. Ask the A8C people to review the changes, and the existing installations.

Once we're reasonably happy with the result on the test site, I will announce WordPress plugin on scripting.com, ask for people to try it out, and direct them to a thread on this repo to address any issues, feature requests, questions about further development.

[scripting]

The first thing to do is to back up the current blogroll software, and release the new version, 0.4.6, which implements various fixes and the new Quiet Mode feature set.

I've backed up v0.4.5 here in case for some reason I need to revert.

[scripting]

Test the new release on blogroll.social, my test site and Doc's blog. Scripting News is already running the new version. There are a few other test sites out there using the blogroll software, and they should also be checked for any breakage. I will send emails to people who have been helping review the software as it's been developed.

Quiet mode is the default in the new release. So the blogroll on my test site immediately is quieter, which I like.

Here's a screen shot of the blogroll on the test site.

What it looks like on blogroll.social with the new version. I was going to turn off quiet mode, but it looks so freaking good, I decided to keep it as-is.

What it looks like on Doc's blog.

BTW, this is a good place to mention that you can take 20 pixels off the width of the blogroll, going from 240 to 220, and it looks great either way, but narrower is somewhat better. Not sure exactly how to make the width conditional on whether you're using quiet mode. Not a huge priority right now.

[scripting]

Now we're up to step 3.

Make changes to the CSS to make it fit better into theme used on the test site. When done, repeat the testing in step 2 above.

A few obvious first problems to address in the test site.

1. There's too much vertical spacing between the blogs.
2. Horizontally the blogroll is centered within an arbitrary space that has nothing to do with the theme. It should not be centered within a container. Or the container should occupy 100% of the space allocated for it.
3. There's vertical space above the blogroll that should not be taken.
4. When you expand a story list and hover over a link to the story, some of the text is in a very large font.

Screen shot, after changes