a moment of nerdiness

[egypturnash]

Okay, there's this new 'quick comments' thing on LJ. If you like to use the user icons as part of the grammar of your replies, or if you semi-regularly reply from a secondary account, this is really annoying, because neither of these are options, and it means you have to wait for it to rehack the page, and then hit the 'more options' button. And there's no switch to turn it off, except for using a browser that simply doesn't support the Javascript hooks needed. Or turning off Javascript entirely. Or other similarly blunt-instrument solutions.

[ addendum: There are less... geeky... ways around it in the comments. Each has their own upside and downside. I added a filter to my chosen ad/popup/evilness blocker because it's what I already had running, and Privoxy works on MacOS, Linux, and Windows. Hopefully there will be a response to the suggestion that a switch be added. ]

Step 1: Install Privoxy. Follow the directions there. I can't help you set it up. It's pretty simple, if I recall correctly. It's nice to have, it does lots of ad-blocking and popup-killing stuff, too - it's a happy thing to have running.

Step 2: Edit the 'filter file'; you can find out where it is by going to http://config.privoxy.org/show-status once Privoxy's up. Use your favorite text editor.

Step 3: Paste this in:
#
# kill LJ's hideous new quick comment boxes
#

FILTER: lj-quick-comments Get rid of LJ's quick comment boxes
s/<a onclick='return quickreply\(.*\)' /<a /ig
and save the file.

Step 4:Go here and hit 'Insert new section at top'. Press 'edit' under 'actions' in that new sectton and hit the 'enable' button next to 'filter lj-quick-comments', submit that, then 'add' a new URL pattern of .livejournal.com. The dot at the front is, I think, important.

Works for me, at least. No more 'quick comment' boxes.

[ Addendum 2: In other LJ feature news, the ability to export comments has been implemented; now it's the turn of the people who write clients to begin implementing this on their end. Wow, having a local, fully-searchable copy of every LJ entry I made, complete with comments will be rocking. ]


[ Next day: Here's an improved hack, to make 'quick reply' a new option after the normal 'reply to this' URL. Use this instead of 's/<a onclick='return quickreply\(.*\)' /<a /ig':

s/<a onclick='return quickreply\((.*)\)' (.*)>Reply to this/<a $2>Reply to this<\/a>\) \(<a onclick='return quickreply\($1\)' $2>Quick reply/ig

You'll now have the (Reply to this) replaced by (Reply to this) (Quick reply), with the first link acting the old way.

]

Comments

[perlandria.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much.
My icons carry a lot of editorial weight.

[milkpanzer.livejournal.com]

I've never even seen a 'Quick Comment' box. What is it?

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

You use an S2 style, and might have LJ set to show all your friends page comment links in that.

If you're on an entry page that's in the old-school LJ default style, and hit the 'Reply to this comment' link, you get this stripped down 'reply' box popping up right beneath the comment. Which is cool in theory, except that it's not something you can turn off.

[mercurypale.livejournal.com]

woah, gross. i see it. this is lame!

[strredwolf.livejournal.com]

I don't know, I kinda like 'em. But then, I see your point. It does need configuration (aka "Add icon chooser" and "Just *!)# disable")

[403.livejournal.com]

Opening the comment page in another window/browser tab works as well.

[kinkyturtle.livejournal.com]

That's what I do, habitually, for two reasons:

1. Opera makes it easy. All the browser windows are contained within one main window.
2. LJ sometimes has this problem where the posting succeeds, but the "Success" page fails to load. This is why people sometimes post the same comment multiple times; they think the posting failed. So I like to keep the original comments page open, so if something goes awry like that, I can just reload it and see if the comment got through.

I didn't even know about this "Quick Comment" thingy until recently when I was using Mom's computer, which only has IE. (IE can do multiple browser windows, but it's a pain.)

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

The Quick Comment thing only appeared yesterday/today. I saw it noonish today, I think, and shuddered, and immediately set about figuring out how to get this ugly, uinfinished feature out of my life.

I use tabs all the time in Camino, but I don't use a new tab to comment on an entry - I've already opened up a tab to read it, and it feels cluttery to pop another one up just to comment. I'd rather not change my window and tab flow habits for this!

[pathia.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to figure out what exactly triggers them. They might just not be completely working with Firefox??

Sometimes they pop up, sometimes they don't, even when trying to reply to the exact same entry. Very weird.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

It only appears in comments pages shown in the system skin - the blue one with the "Livejournal" logo at the top, and the menus across there. And it only appears off of the '(Reply to this)" link beneath each comment.

[doodlesthegreat.livejournal.com]

I saw this feature about the same time you did, and disliked it immediately for the reasons you state. If they offer an option to disable it, I'll jump at the chance.