This guy has a Wordpress blog, and has implemented (using Yahoo! UI widgets) a BLOCK COMMENTING SYSTEM for his blog. So you can leave a comment that’s not just attached to the “post”, but to some given paragraph or heading or whatever INSIDE the post! I gather that it’s probably not that hard—probably even easier with EE, given the extension hooks!—for anyone who’s better at this stuff than i am. He doesn’t have the actual code posted, but i gather he’d be happy to send it to people to take a look at or use.

http://www.jackslocum.com/yui/2006/10/09/my-wordpress-comments-system-built-with-yahoo-ui-and-yahooext/#more-32

I’m poor, and this is more of a neato-keen-enhancement than a have-to-have, but i’d buy someone something off their Wishlist if that’s a (small, i know!) inducement. Mostly i’m hoping i can just capture the attention of someone who’s better at this who ALSO thinks it’s neato-keen!

—Adrienne

That is kind of cool.  Looking at his code, it seems a bit wild how many javascript and css files he is using to render his site.  Explains why it is a bit slow even on a cable internet connection and a new iMac.

This would likely require a new field in the exp_comments database and a bit of clever coding in a template, but I do believe it is possible with some hard work.

Oh, absolutely. Not holding him up as an example of how to render a personal site—it IS pretty slow to render. But i can think of places where THAT PARTICULAR FEATURE would just be awesome!

—Adrienne

I’ll agree that it’s a cool use of technology, though implementation is rather messy. The slooooooow load times are just the start. The page is remarkably busy and distracting to view, so having some way to “turn on and turn off” all that blocking for the reader would be handy.

Any way of doing the same kind of thing with a standard pop up window? The trick is to associate the Comment to a particular block of text, and then do it with visual cues that are subtle, rather than glaring.

I like the vertical navigation bar to the left. Perhaps that’s where the visual cues to the Comments in the blocks of text could be placed. One click turns on the visual cues, another turns them off.

Sometimes I think we’ve become very good at creating solutions for problems that don’t really exist.

Idea of per-paragraph commenting system is really cool.

Slocum’s implementation of this idea is perhaps most visually pleasing, but other implementations are more usable.

Institute of the Future of the Book released Commentpress, a WordPress add-on which implements per-paragraph commenting. You can find it here, and examples of it’s use here, here, here and here.

It would be great if somebody would consider porting this WordPress add-on to ExpressionEngine.

Just had a potential client ask about this a couple of days ago. Has anyone found a way of doing this?