Give comments a scrollbar?

[revenant]

I think someone has already suggested this but I'm not sure...  How about putting each problem's comments in a scrollable sidebar?  They'd still be in the left margin (i.e. to the left of the board), but they'd have a finite screen height and a scrollbar like the recently introduced variations sidebar in the right margin.

Since it's already true that the user has to click the "Show" button to bring up the comments, it probably wouldn't hurt to simply put the button near the top left corner, still beneath the "To play" symbol and the problem number (which are crucial) but move it to a position over the other static information such as Problem Rating and the tags.

Comments have feelings too, you see.  Especially the flowery ones with 60 branches of calculations and witty parenthetical remarks.  They like to be perused and studied.  Otherwise they get lonely.

Just the other evening, I saw three unread comments drowning their sorrows in beer in a local bar.  It was clear that one of them was already on the sad road to alcoholism.  Another comment whom I pass occasionally on the street, a simple two-move tactical question waiting for a sufficiently knowledgeable reply, recently confided in me that it doesn't feel like doing much these days besides sitting slumped in front of the TV and sniffing glue.  Its wife and children had already abandoned it several months earlier.

If also the javascript for making moves on the board could be augmented with an "experiment" mode that would allow the user to try out arbitrary sequences of moves, that might complete the picture as far as comments, because with the scrollbar, users would have enough incentive to follow the analysis on the board rather than just in their minds.  In fact, it would probably obviate my recent suggestion about making comment moves clickable (there will always be difficulties writing code smart enough to parse random comments).

[andreacoda]

I think it is a very good comment! Definitely something that should be considered for the wish list of future improvements... 

[richard]

LOL, Yes scrolling on comments was requested a while back, so it is on the todo list, however given other priorities several more comments may be driven to the bottle before the scroll bar arrives to save them from obscurity :-)

Regards,
Richard.