Sidebar visibility in Ahimsa for WordPress

Bits of software inspired by little Ahren and Tanish

November 14th, 2008 by ravi

For Ahimsa for WP 2.0’s collapsible sidebar, I made a design choice to leave the sidebar visible by default on the main page (this is configurable), and hidden by default for posts and pages (this is not configurable). The thinking here was that when a visitor is reading a page or post, the browser real estate for the content should be maximised, and distractions minimised.

However, I have received quite a few requests to make the sidebar visibility configurable for pages and posts also, and far be it for me to question my users’ design choices ;-). So I have created a bug, which you are encouraged to track, comment on, etc. I have targeted this feature for the immediate next release (2.1).

In the meantime, here is how you can overcome this feature of mine, right now:

1. Visit your blog’s admin page and choose Design.
2. Click on Theme Editor.

Choose Design in WP Admin Page

Edit Page and Single Post templates
3. Edit the Page and Single Post templates one at a time, and remove the following section of JavaScript code (present at the top of the Single Post template and the bottom of the Page template):

<script language=’JavaScript’>
fadeSideBar();
</script>

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Peter writes:
November 17th, 2008 at 7:26 am

I got new ideas.

How about displaying sidebar when mouse moves above the label of sidebar? But it is invisible normally. Is it feasible?

Btw, Could you consider flip horizontal for admin’s comment? I mean put admin’s picture on the other side of single comment area. I think it looks markedly.

Big thanks for your Ahimsa!

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ravi writes:
November 17th, 2008 at 11:28 am

Peter,

its not difficult to toggle sidebar visibility based on mouse hover, but typically mouseover effects like that are very disturbing/distracting. You can file a bug/feature-request with this idea at:

http://ahrencode.16bugs.com/

and I can see if others find this interesting.

Regarding your second request, if I understand it right: you are talking about the Gravatar image in comments? You are suggesting that the Gravatar image for the blog admin should be displayed on the right of the comment, while the image for other commentors should continue to stay on the left?

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Peter writes:
November 18th, 2008 at 2:19 am

Thanks for your comment. I apologize for my poor English. Actually I don’t want to ask something, just talk about my ideas of Ahimsa, even not a suggestion.

1) I agree with that “the content should be maximised, and distractions minimised”. But people want to keep the sidebar visibility. If it is because of a little bothered to display sidebar with clicking. I suggest you can toggle sidebar visibility based on mouse hover. We put mouse on the label then sidebar shows, so that we can choose other URLs smoothly(without a process of clicking mouse). The label is too small to touch it by mistake easily, isn’t it? However, if people merely want to keep the sidebar. This suggestion is useless.

2) Yes, that is what I am thinking. It helps visitors to distinguish admin’s comment easily and quickly. How do you think of it?

Sorry there is no project in http://ahrencode.16bugs.com/

Bast Regards
Peter

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Ger van Vugt writes:
April 8th, 2009 at 4:10 pm

I olso agree that the sidebar doint have to be vissible when reading the content, but I see by users always olso the history on the leftside open.
Hm.. I give the advise to press F11 to clear the hole screen for webbrowsing and then later again F11 to restore

Poor creative PC users :-))

But sinds we have whidescreen like me iMac 24 inch it is not the first care to have a sidebar open or close.

So now I become to me question, how can I set op the width of the sidebar?

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