Help for the slow ones (Comment dates)


thatgui

Advanced Member
Joined
Apr 2, 2009
Messages
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Could we have the "username on dd-MM-yyyy" comment dates back instead of the "username made this just now" (or something in that vain)? This is irrlevant if the thread/comment is rather new, but gets annoying if comments get older and it gets a lot more imprecise if you want to compare several comment to draw conclusion about their relevance.
 
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We used to have full dates. Now we have what's below.

Posted 3 hours ago

...and when there are several posts that were posted within an hour then they will all be dated as "X hours ago" without any indication of the actual time between posts.  

I too would prefer to see absolute time references in the timestamps.  (perhaps with the relative time indication given in parentheses)

-Neelix
 
Yeah, I agree. The old way was better and makes more sense. No one cares to see whether a post was posted mins or hours ago, lol.
 
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I've already done this to my local setup, take this (possibly overspecific) CSS:

.cPost .ipsComment_meta time::after {
content: " (" attr(datetime) ")";
}
Edit-2015-09-21T2124Z: Maybe this is a better format:

Code:
.cPost .ipsComment_meta time::before {
        content: attr(datetime) " (ca. ";
        }
.cPost .ipsComment_meta time::after {
        content: ")";
        }
 
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Well, it automatically updates. But that should be something I can change in the HTML code.
 
Whats with the T and Z?  they make it hard to read the timestamp at a glance.

-Neelix

Well, we can change format of the timestamp.
Anyone knows how to do that in CSS? :))
 
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I don't really understand what you're saying. Can you give me an example?

The T is the delimiter between the date and the time, and the Z means the time is in UTC+0.  Since CEST (i.e. German summer time) is UTC+2, that means your comment was posted on:

2015-09-21 (today, currently) @ 11:32 and 49 seconds CEST

represented as:
2015-09-21T09:32:49Z

It could certainly be prettified a lttle, but I personally think we should stick with UTC as the timezone to use.  The data seems to be stored in a time element, which has a title attribute which seems to be the local server time it was submitted, and a datetime attribute which is the string as shown.

Here is the CSS which formats that part of the page:
.cPost .ipsComment_meta time::after{
    content:" (" attr(datetime) ")";
}

You could presumably change that tp read attr(title) and that would print the time in German time, but also lose the date.  I don't know enough CSS to suggest how you'd reformat datetime to be humanly readable.
 
My mistake, the title element does contain the date, so that would be a simple fix to get the time to appear in German.

FWIW, I'm not 100% sure why it's putting the time there in German summer time.  How have you set the clock on the server - as UTC and then using a time zone modifier, or as the current local time then pretending the time zone is UTC?
 
Some forums will display the timestamp translated to the end users selected time zone.   If that can be duplicated here I think that would be good.

As for the format I liked the way the old forum software displayed date and time, which can still be seen in my sig.

-Neelix
 
As for the format I liked the way the old forum software displayed date and time, which can still be seen in my sig.

The current source looks like this:

<time datetime="2015-09-21T20:06:04Z" title="09/21/15 10:06 PM" data-short="53 min">53 minutes ago</time>As you can see, the only formats that are provided here are the lazy one, the highly specific one, and that strange middle-endian one with the days inbetween months and years that is easily misinterpreted in international settings.

To my knowledge, other formats would either require changes to the way that the server puts the page together (maybe there's a plugin or hidden settings for changing the time display), or would require a DIRTY™ Javacript code-mangling solution. However, web browsers are receiving so many changes and functionalities in recent times that I might have missed some recent (CSS) features which could be used instead.

That being said, i'll update my "answer" post with a different CSS now that should result in a slightly more easily readable presentation of the times. If it gets implemented, then comments will be appreciated.
 
As for the format I liked the way the old forum software displayed date and time, which can still be seen in my sig.

I liked that it gave the local time for users.  It helped to remind me that some people may not reply in the middle of the night where they are, unless it is someone like ED, DrHax or me.

I wonder if that can be added back easily.  Maybe it will be included by default in the next version.
 
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