lex parsimoniae - Latest Comments in Callouts: I need a WordPress plugin

Re: Callouts: I need a WordPress plugin

D. Lambert — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 09:40:59 -0000

Note: see http://componentoriented.co... for more details on the plugin I wrote to address this need.

Re: Callouts: I need a WordPress plugin

D. Lambert — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:40:07 -0000

That is, indeed, the challenge. I'd love it if readers would support stylesheets where appropriate (like, for instance Google Reader), but they don't. I understand the issue you're raising about styles being applied across all feeds, which could be a problem, but I don't know that this is an insurmountable problem - merely one that the feed readers haven't elected to tackle.

I also understand the "content, not style" argument, but there's a point where that argument runs out of gas. When I'm paging through Google Reader, I'm seeing plenty of pictures, fonts, and colors in feeds -- everything up to and including embedded video clips. If we're really worried about some clients not being able to render all content, don't you think we should start with the youtube clips? Incidentally, I tried this out in Google Reader on a Windows mobile phone in WinMo IE, and it works fine. I'd love to get some feedback about where it's not working as intended - maybe there's a way to refine this technique a bit.

I'll be the first to admit that the approach I'm taking isn't ideal - in fact, I hope this is obvious given all the other techniques I tried first. Given that everything else failed, though, I'm pretty happy with how this is working right now.

Re: Callouts: I need a WordPress plugin

Steve Trefethen — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:18:21 -0000

The problem is that if your stylesheet were added to the reader then everything within the reader would gain that style which would be the real fail. The only way to get styles is to do what you've proposed here and place the styles into the content itself. Of course, you should keep in mind that not everyone is reading your blog through a read that supports this sort of thing, like a mobile device for example. RSS isn't really about styling it's about publishing content so you should really think about this carefully as you pour more CSS into a place that it really doesn't belong IMO.

Re: Callouts: I need a WordPress plugin

Chuck Brooks — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 11:55:29 -0000

Nice catch! And thanks for the heads-up. So far we've been lucky stretching/extending web stuff, but there have been a few...challenges with papervision3d (through Flash).