Comment Issues, and fixes (Score 1) 2219
Speaking purely from a look perspective, there are a mess of problems.
- Huge amounts of whitespace on either side. This is 2014, and there are a million tutorials on how to make a fluid design.
- Complete lack of contrast. I have no problem with the text contrast, but there's so little difference between comments, and between stories, no delineation or separation.
- Basic problems - Some fonts in the CSS are defined as "Helvetica sans-serif". There needs to be a comma in there, Chris!
- In slashdot comments, there are 3 levels of display: Open, summarized and hidden. In the new beta, there are again 3 options: Open, closed and hidden. "Closed" is not as versatile as "summarized".
- Using JQuery to get the comments I have little-to-no problem with. But slashdot's main point is the long list of comments. The current AJAX system is limiting, at the very least (only grabbing 100 comments), and while it does have some options, it seems that none of those are available here. I had some issues with sorting this out with pure CSS (the Javascript was interfering with it), but I believe it is possible to implement this comment folding properly.
I've done a fair amount with pure CSS (Userstyle for Stylish here), including fixing the acres-of-whitespace width issue (Though I could do more if the source was in a better order), and bringing back the nicely contrasting bars to comments. I'm sure there is more that could also be done, and I'm seriously considering playing with GreaseMonkey to sort out some of the more egregious Javascript problems, but that's going to remain something on the back burner for now. This is obviously a beta site, and a work-in-progress, and I'm only doing this as a personal amusement in my spare time. I'll gladly answer any questions on this, and I'm certainly more than willing to lend a hand to make one of my favourite sites better.
There is much potential here. Unfortunately, a cannonball at the top of the Eiffel Tower also has much potential. Only time will tell how this is going to work out. But for the moment, it seems, SlashDot Beta is not ready for prime time. Heck, at this stage I'd barely call it a beta.