Swing State Project

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Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Seeking Help for Our Strange Comment Box Problem

Posted by DavidNYC

As you may have noticed, the SSP's comment box is often buried at the very bottom of the page - totally separate from the line asking you for your URL and if you want the site to remember you (ie, the normal place you'd want a comment box to appear). It's also the case with this post. Just sign in with TypeKey and scroll all the way down - you'll notice the problem immediately. And we've been totally confounded by it. Nothing in our templates or CSS file seems to bear any relation to this oddity. And it happens in both Firefox and IE (which is to say, we think it's a site problem, not a browser problem).

One thing that is clear is that the comment box winds up beneath the bottom of the main left-hand adstrip - or, more precisely, below the Site Meter chicklet which is beneath the adstrip. If you have any thoughts on why this might be happening, we'd be extremely grateful for any assistance you can provide. Either leave a comment here (if you can find the box, heh) or send us an e-mail using the links in the right-hand column. Thanks so much!

Posted at 01:15 PM in Site News | Technorati

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Comments

You already came to the conclusion that it's not a browser problem, but I figured I would let you know that it also does the same thing with Apple's Safari browser.

Posted by: Fran for Dean at October 12, 2005 01:34 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Kinda hard to diagnose without seeing the code.

Posted by: Samson at October 12, 2005 09:32 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Samson, if this sort of thing is your forte and you are willing to help us out, please shoot me an e-mail at davidnyc -at- swingstateproject -dot- com. Thanks so much!

Posted by: DavidNYC at October 12, 2005 09:53 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Try taking out the
after the remember me radio button. It's unnecessary since you have it in a

, and it seemes to be causing the
to take effect after the last floated item on the page.

Posted by: epc at October 12, 2005 10:15 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Err, that's: try to take out the <br style="clear:both;">

Posted by: epc at October 12, 2005 10:21 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

I think that bit of HTML might actually be part of the [MTCommentFields] tag, which creates uneditable code automatically.

This site seems to have more to say on the subject, though.

Posted by: DavidNYC at October 12, 2005 11:32 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Some thoughts:

Step 1. Install this Firefox extension that will let you see all sorts of information about your style-sheets.

http://chrispederick.com/work/webdeveloper/

Step 2. From that toolbar choose Outline/Block Elements. You'll see that the DIV just above the one where you enter comments is where all the white space is coming from. It also lines up perfectly with the bottom of the right-side nav bar.

Step 3. Disable the CSS through the toolbar to confirm that, indeed, the comments box doesn't drop to the bottom when you take away the style sheets.

Step 4. Quick fix? I'd suggest putting some text (even if it's an amp;nbsp;) BELOW the Preview/Post buttons, to see if that causes the comments box to be the stretchy one instead of the URL/remember me section.

On preview: The comment box doesn't get dropped-down when doing a comment preview, so I'd check your MT preview template for comparison (note that there's no right sidebar in preview, either)

Hope this helps.

Posted by: RKB at October 12, 2005 12:59 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Well, at least it is back up...for awhile, couldn't post any comments.

Posted by: chuckles at October 12, 2005 02:14 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment