Link Feed Templates

[andrewducker]

After much faffing around with Javascript and the like, the templating is now in.

It's not for people that don't understand code at all, but I can't see much of a way to make it simpler.

The current default template looks like this:
<ul class="links">
#foreach($link in $links)
<li class="link"><A href="$link.URL">$link.Title</A>
#if($link.Description)<BR><span class="link-description">$link.Description</span>#end
<BR><span class="link-tags">(tags:#foreach($tag in $link.Tags) <A href="$tag.TagURL">$tag.Tag</A>#end )</span>
</li>
<BR><BR>
#end
</ul>

which basically says:

• Start a list
• For each link in the collection of links:
  • Create a new list item and put the link title in it, and make that title a hyperlink to the URL of the link.
  • If the link has a description, then put it in, on a new line.
  • Add a new line, and then put in each tag, turning it into a hyperlink back to the site that the links came from (i.e. delicious or pinboard)
  • end the list item
• end the list

If you're going to play around with it then use the "Test" input and output settings, so that you're not constantly scraping the source links/posting to your journal. If you completely mess it up then hit the "Reset Templates" button to restore the original template.

Next up - a template for the subject line/title.

Comments

[recycled-sales.livejournal.com]

More of a visual than usability question, but have you considered using @font-face to do some inline font replacement? Times can look a bit blergh.

[andrewducker]

Do you mean on the site, or in the post? Because I'm not changing the font that appears on people's friends lists.

[recycled-sales.livejournal.com]

Sorry, on the site.

[andrewducker]

In which case, yes, I'd love to make it look nicer. If you have any suggestions or tweaks to the CSS then that would be fantastic!

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

What happens if there are no links? Do you get an empty set of

tags issued? Should there maybe be an if ($links) before, or will there always be at least one $link? [Been bitten by this before in doing web stuff]

[andrewducker]

Nope, this code never gets called if there are no links.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

You don't need the BRs after each LI -- I was noticing the other day your link lists have gone a bit gappy!

[andrewducker]

The BRs aren't there in the default template actually, but I added them for the first time today, because I find it more readable if there's a gap between links.

The problem with the gaps last week was because the description being passed through by Delicious wasn't empty even when there wasn't one, so a line was appearing with " " in it, making odd gaps.

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

Could you do this with CSS :after ?

[andrewducker]

See comment on my latest post!

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Grumble grumble. Gaps between links is what CSS is for!

[andrewducker]

Hence my question in my current post.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

I didn't notice a question.

But anyway, my answer to what I assume the question is, is 'BRs between LIs bad!'

[andrewducker]

That's an entirely useless answer. Telling me what not to use doesn't actually help at all.

The question is the first comment under the post, and Sven has just answered it in a hopefully useful manner.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

li.link {
padding-bottom: 2em;
}

or something along those lines.

'Wrong. Crack' is a perfectly valid programming answer!

[andrewducker]

That's why I said I wanted to know how to do it without overriding the formatting on every other post on people's friends page. If I put the CSS in the post will that not affect everyone else's posts too?

And that kind of answer is negative, useless, offensive, and if I didn't know you personally the kind of thing that would get you swiftly booted.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Yes, CSS will appear in the post. But BRs are even worse, as there's nothing I can do with them at all.

The best way would be to accept that LIs are the way they are, and if you want spacing on them, put CSS into your own LJ's output, ie in your LJ theme.

And really? That sort of thing gets bandied about all the time in issue queues.

[andrewducker]

Yes, really. It got someone banned from Bugzilla recently.

I don't want patronising "Don't do it" responses. If I don't have something better to replace what I'm doing then I'm not going to change it just because you don't like the look of it. All you do is piss off the people you're ranting at without educating them or improving the situation.

As it is, Sven's given me an actually useful answer which will be in the post tomorrow.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Oh. Sorry.

For the record, I never say that sort of thing 'because I don't like the look of it'. I say these things based on experience and knowledge.

I don't see Sven's answer -- what was it?

[andrewducker]

I know you have experience and knowledge - and that's _why_ you don't like the look of it. It just doesn't help me much - because telling me something is wrong without giving me a solution isn't going to change my behaviour (unless you can show that I'm actually doing harm - i.e. crashing people's browsers).

I'm not sure why you can't see Sven's answer - it's about halfway down this page:
http://andrewducker.livejournal.com/2577217.html

If I've messed up security somewhere then please let me know!

[andrewducker]

(Of course, it might look rubbish when it posts at 11am, in which case I'll revert to the standard one for tomorrow's posting.)