eruthros: Aang from Avatar:TLA facepalming (Avatar - facepalming aang)
eruthros ([personal profile] eruthros) wrote2012-03-16 03:06 pm
Entry tags:

oh geez, lj

So LJ has just instituted a new kind of cut-tag-thing - "lj-spoiler" - which theoretically can be used for in-line expansion and in comments and will be all pretty.

There's just one problem: it's so javascript dependent that there's no indication that it's there if you don't allow lj.com to run scripts. Like, not, "the in-line expansion doesn't work," but flat-out "can see the spoiler text without even a header or indication that it was under a cut." And it also doesn't show up in (most?) email-notifications at all. And some people have suggested that it does not interact well with screenreaders. So that's fun.

I realized this because otherwise some comment exchanges I was looking at made no sense at all. So here are some screencaps + descriptions of how it looks:

I was browsing comments on the news post reading along when I came across this comment thread:

screencap of an lj comment thread with no javascript, described below

It reads:

[livejournal.com profile] blueymcphluey: I am a monkey

reply: [livejournal.com profile] blueymcphluey: oh cool, I like it!

reply: [livejournal.com profile] blueymcphluey: can somebody do me a favor and respond to this post with a spoiler, just so I can see what it looks like in the email notifications please?

reply: [livejournal.com profile] subsequent Hello! :)
ETA: Sorry! Ignore the first comment, I forgot to add the '-' and it broke the tag. This one should work now, though. :)

reply: [livejournal.com profile] blueymcphluey oh no... it just shows up as straight text :/ that's unfortunate
thankyou for your assistance though!


And I thought, huh, that's weird, that conversation makes no sense. And then I realized, wait, maybe they're trying out spoiler cuts and I can't see them!

So I allowed javascript, and this is what it looked like:

a screencap of an lj comment thread with javascript allowed, described below

It reads:

[livejournal.com profile] blueymcphluey: [Spoiler (click to open)] (clickable text)

reply: [livejournal.com profile] blueymcphluey: oh cool, I like it!

reply: [livejournal.com profile] blueymcphluey: can somebody do me a favor and respond to this post with a spoiler, just so I can see what it looks like in the email notifications please?

reply: [livejournal.com profile] subsequent: [I did want to test this out, may as well try it here!] (also clickable text)

reply: [livejournal.com profile] blueymcphluey oh no... it just shows up as straight text :/ that's unfortunate
thankyou for your assistance though!



So basically, it is an awesome idea and I would love to be able to put spoiler cuts in the comments! But if you use them, when I browse not only will I not see them, I won't even know you meant to use them unless you also say "this is a spoiler!" in the text. Ditto for people who receive text notifications (like me); I don't know what happens when people receive html notifications. But if the point of using spoiler text is to avoid spoiling the person you're commenting to, it may or may not work, depending on how they read/respond to comments.
neotoma: Neotoma albigula, the white-throated woodrat! [default icon] (Default)

[personal profile] neotoma 2012-03-18 10:59 am (UTC)(link)
Apparently the spoiler-cut doesn't work for tablets and smartphones either, which is just programming fail on someone's part.
justhuman: NCIS: Tony looking all Special Agent-like (tony-hat)

[personal profile] justhuman 2012-03-18 06:38 pm (UTC)(link)
It probably depends on the phone and how you're accessing LJ. I'm using an Android and was able to see and use the spoiler cuts when I was viewing the full version of LJ. In the mobile version of LJ I saw nothing - just as [personal profile] eruthros described in the post. The image place holders also don't work on the mobile site, but did work on the full version of LJ my Android browser.
Edited 2012-03-18 18:38 (UTC)