Thankls to Beth Mazur and her post on IDblog: Spotlighting comments that had the MovableType code for adding the excerpts of the 5 most recent comments to this blog, now visible on the right under the heading “Others Bark Back”
Just another small way to bring bits of information from within the weblog to the front.
I also extended this to have them appear iin my category pages, except these list just the comments within a given category, such as my ePortfolio category.
To do this, you need to add toyour Category Template:
<MTEntries lastn=”15″>
<MTComments lastn=”2″ sort_order=”descend”>
<strong><$MTCommentAuthorLink show_email=”0″$></strong> in
<MTCommentEntry>
<strong><a href=”<$MTBlogArchiveURL$><$MTCommentEntryID pad=”1″$>.html”>
<$MTEntryTitle$></a></strong>:
</MTCommentEntry>
<$MTCommentBody remove_html=”1″ trim_to=”150″$>…
<a href=”<$MTBlogArchiveURL$><$MTCommentEntryID pad=”1″$>.html”>«more»</a>
<br/><br/>
</MTComments>
</MTEntries>
The difference being you have to put the code provided by IDBlog inside the context of an MTEntries tag so it would only pull comments from entries within the category (by default, the MTEntries in a Category template will do that… I think).
It also takes some playing around with the lastn
One of the minor annoyances for me is the “disconnect” between comments, pings, trackbacks, etc.
To the best of my knowledge, you will be notified by e-mail when I post this comment, but I will *not* be notified if/when you respond to it.
That means I have to come back here to look. And that raises a small niggle of resentment or laziness or whatever; more often than not, I don’t bother coming back to look.
Comments are a sort of “second class citizen” in the weblogopia. It’s much more “productive” to actually post one’s comment to one’s own weblog and then keep up with a dialog (should one ensue.)
(It would also be great if these web form gizmos had spell checkers just as a courtesy to visiters, not as a tacit recognition of the dawning dark age of the new illiteracy. 🙂
Ed,
This is true about your comments not generating a reply when someone else responds. It is not really a feature of weblogs in general more of the way particular ones are programmed.
From what I have seen, unless a blog is one of the ones that are in the “big spotlight” (e.g. well known bloggers), the number of comments are rather small, and the discussions shortlived.
However, I am strongly suggesting to all bloggers or people just getting into it, to engage in the practice of providing comments, especially when you have something to add to the content. I frequently post comments to blogs where I can insert a link back to something relevant I have seen elsewhere or blogged myself. Invariably, I get some sort of followup message, or it does draw others back to my blog.
So it is my position that the “art” of weblogging is not just publishing your own stuff, it is being an active commenter and partiicipant at other related blog sites. That might build so-called “community”.
As far as the spell checker, I need it badly. I have poor typing skills. There are some add-ons that you might be able to use, see:
http://www.google.com/search?q=web%20browser%20spell%20check
although most of them are for the PC/Internet Explorer combo users only
Alan,
I’ve noticed this on your part, and it is much appreciated on my part. It does make a difference.
David
For those of you on MacOSX, there is a spell checker built into the system, and it works just fine on web forms… RIght click (or control click for mouse impaired) and enable “Spelling > Check Spelling As You Type”.
Done. Works in all forms, and gives you that nice red underline as soon as you mis-type anything.
That is a cool feature but would be those on OSX using Safari browser, this has no effect in Internet Explorer. I guess it is time I switch.
Regardless, spell-checking is pretty essential and it is hard to see why the folks that program browsers do not add the functionality.