KNotations

We've just deployed a new method of handling comments by non site-members. If a comment is submitted 'anonymously', the email address given in the comment form is sent a confirmation email. If the special link in that email is not opened, the comment is not posted (see the screenshot). When submitting an 'anonymous' comment, a user can optionally ask to be registered as a member while the server is at it (by entering a username), in which case the confirmation email includes a server-generated initial password. Both anonymous commenting and joining-while-commenting are under control of site and blog properties. We're aware that some sites may have exotic registration policies or restrictions: in those cases the site manager should turn off the ability to join while commenting at the site level, using the KNotes tool in the ZMI.

I'm now beginning to experiment with having a one-form-fits-all add-comment form rendered directly into the one-entry views (most blogging systems do something like this). That form would cover all the cases: [I'm a logged-in-member; I'm a not-logged-in member; I'm not a member but want to join while commenting; I'm not a member and do not want to join].

We'll still include links for creating 'full-featured' discussion items (with extended text, categories etc), especially in the soon-to-come forums views. Watch this space ;o)

Sigh... I really didn't want to have to spend the time to implement this, but we decided it was made necessary by the nastiness of some of the trackback spam we've been seeing.

There is now a property in all KNotes weblogs, as well as a sitewide setting in the tool itself, for controlling whether trackbacks need approval before they are displayed. By default, this is set so that only approved trackbacks display. We will shortly be providing a weblog properties interface for managing this and other properties at the weblog level. The sitewide property is set through the tool in the ZMI - kndiscuss_sql (KNotes Config Tool). The sitewide property is acquired if the weblog property is not set.

There are new interfaces for moderating and managing trackbacks. See the screenshot for an example of the manage-trackbacks TTW (through the web) interface. If there are pending trackbacks, managers will see a portlet (in Plone content) or a sidebar (in KNotes content) for Managing Trackbacks. The number of pending trackbacks is listed there, along with a link to the TTW management interface. The manage-trackback RSS feed noe includes an indication of the workflow status of each item. We'll be adding links from there directly into setting the status - currently there is a link to delete each trackback but not for approving or rejecting. We'll also be adding interfaces for managing trackbacks wherever they are displayed ( in detail views, sidebars, portlets and plone-content comments views); and will also consider an interface for non-managers to report offensive trackbacks.

By the way - We've also been making a lot of progress on other aspects of KNotes recently, but that will have to wait for another entry here :O)

I've been wanting to do something about the print stylesheet in knotes or some time now. It's been functional and accessible, but far from pretty. But print styling is tough work, tricky to judge and hard to test.

Early this morning I started work on the issue, and after 5 hours or so it looked OK I think: I'm never confident about accessibility issues in print styling. But then it took another 2 hours fiddling to test it in Internet blinking Explorer, which did not want to purge the cached style. If you already have the stylesheet cached you may not see the changes except in my re-skinning testbed at elearning2.0. I'll step up the version numbering of the stylesheet across the product (to force the changes past caches) when I get a chance over the weekend. I think the new print style is quite usable: pretty but readable, stylish but accessible, totally generic.

I even did a bit of experimenting with using after: CSS2 to write in the urls for links and cites, but ran into weird problems so rolled that back. I'll have a look at offering a javascript/dom script to turn urls into footnotes when I've finished styling comments for screen and print (see my css/print tag for links).

I also got round to 'fixing' the problem whereby Internet Explorer would ignore the #wrapper{margin:0 auto;} rule and fail to center the main content area of the blogs. I didn't have time to chase down a real solution so I set the text-align of the body element to center, and the text-align of the wrapper div to left. Since in knotes ( and MT2 ) markup, the wrapper div is the only important child of body, this does the job just fine. In fact I'm perplexed ( and worried ) that I have not seen that workaround used before. Am I missing something I wonder? ...sigh : CSS really is a dark art :o)