How to hide Top News?

How to hide Top News from main page?

>1 CuriousLearner:
Depending on your browser, see and read about (or search topic)

"How do I get rid of the sidebars, on my screen"

(If you figure out how to do it and you use Firefox, please leave a note here as to how you did it. ;^) )

>1 CuriousLearner: The only way to do it is to shrink the usable space on the screen. There is no other way to turn it off.

Don't use your Home page.

I wish it could be removed like the other components!!

>5 CuriousLearner:

Agreed.

The source-code for the home-page must somewhere present this side-bar's configuration. For anyone familiar enough with that code, this could be removed. But, those who attempt that without knowing how to interpret the scripts could inadvertently mess up other "features" of the page presentation in the process.

When you're given a "free-access" to a web-site, you are the "product" being marketed. Let's be grateful that there are not yet crass commercially sponsored ads at this site.

One way to hide it in Chrome is to install the Stylus plugin and define a style like this:

@-moz-document url-prefix("https://www.librarything.com/home") {
 /* Insert code here... */
 #lt_altsidebar { display:none !important; }
}

This looks for the URL of www.librarything.com/home and tells it to hide the div container with an ID of lt_altsidebar.

James

>7 Keeline:

Note to the peanut gallery--
one thing I forgot to mention, and which James' kind instruction takes into account, is the factor of which browser one uses. Thus, the needed script may vary from Chrome to other browsers.
When I tried to find such scripts, I got nuthin' I could use in the results.
My browswer is Firefox (latest free vers.)

>8 proximity1: ,

I just tried it on Firefox (for Mac, latest version).

I started with the menu called Tools and selected Add-ons and Themes. Then I searched for Stylus and installed it.

Once it was running, I saw a puzzle piece icon on the right side of my browser on the same line as the address bar. This gives access to the Stylus plugin (or "add-on" as Firefox calls them).

Visiting https://www.librarything.com/home I could initially see the Tom Stories sidebar. Using the puzzle piece icon, I can get to Stylus and tell it I want to create a style for this full URL pattern. An editing window opens in a new tab. The code that works looks like:

#lt_altsidebar {
 display: none !important;
}

And at the bottom the URL pattern is:

URLs starting with:

https://www.librarything.com/home

Be sure to use the Save button in the upper left.

Return to the LT/home tab and the Top Stories should be gone. You can redisplay it by using the puzzle icon to get to Stylus and check the box on or off to make the sidebar hidden or default display.

James

Remember that this will hide the sidebar on ALL pages. Most pages use the right sidebar for actionable content.

A better, Homepage-specific, rule would be:

body.homepage #lt_altsidebar {
 display:none !important;
}

>9 Keeline: (James) >10 conceptDawg: cD

I tried this* and hit "Save" and closed the window. Looking afresh at the Homepage but "Top News" still loads as usual. Should I re-try it with James' script?

RE: ..."Most pages use the right sidebar for actionable content."

Yeah, well, I never use any of that "actionable content"-- (which is sort of the point of getting rid of it. That "actionable content" refers to ads, "come-on's" to join this, that or another thing I have no interest in joining.)

* (used cD's recommended script)

>10 conceptDawg:

I thought perhaps the method of looking for the URL pattern of www.librarything.com/home would narrow things down enough. But using a more complete selector is always good advice when adjusting a CSS property.

It occurred to me that since there may not be a website option toggle in the near future that this would be a relatively simple way to achieve it.

James

>11 proximity1: ,

I tried the more complete selector from conceptDawg. It works as well for me.

As far as figuring out what went wrong for you, proximity1, it might come down to seeing your screen on something like a Zoom call.

Perhaps I did not describe the method as well as necessary. It does work (Stylus on Chrome or Firefox) but perhaps the steps were not easily reproduced as I wrote them.

Did you copy-paste the text for the code or try to transcribe it? For example, if it is not spelled and capitalized 100% the same, there can be problems. Changing an l to a 1 would be one source of problems. They need to be curly braces { } not parens ( ). If I saw an image of the screen, for the code page, it might reveal an oversight.

James

>2 proximity1: For FF I highly recommend uBlock origin. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/

Excellent CSS element level blocking, easy to get rid of just the news feed.

>11 proximity1:
We don't have ads.
We don't do any of the other things either. And if you are looking AT the item/page, like a Group, Book, or member...then yeah, the most obvious action is to ask if you want to join the group, or add the book, or follow the member. These aren't "come ons" these are basic usability actions.

--- start mini-rant now, ignore if you'd like ---
And by getting rid of the right bar you're going to lose those functions. And then in a year you or somebody else blindly using this tip is going to be asking us why they can't do something. It will then take our staff hours of back and forth, debugging, and development time across various platforms and browsers to duplicate the issue and figure out why you can't see what we see. All of that time is time that we can't be developing new features and fixing actual bugs.

Ask me how I know this is going to happen.
(Kristi and I spend hours tracking down issues that happen because people are still using the original, unsupported LT UI from 15 years ago and don't mention that when they can't magically see the new things that everybody is talking about.)

>13 Keeline:

Hello again, and thanks, too, for your efforts here.

I thought your instructions were pretty clear. But I didn't go through them the first time without a hitch. In the end, however, I did get what I'm confident was the script page and, yes, I copied and pasted the script (as conceptDawg advised it --the homepage vers.) where the page indicated *insert (script) here*.

I wasn't sure whether to leave or to omit the * *'s so I tried removing them and immediately got a red flag on the left-hand column's indicator of validity. When I restored those asterisks, that red flag disappeared-- which I took as an indication that the script should go in between the two *s.

Well, well! Looking again at the page, it does not seem to have "saved" as I'd thought because I now see this:

Remove
Add

(line # 9) @-moz-document domain("librarything.com") {

(line #10) /* Insert code here... */
(I inserted between the asterisks, this:

body.homepage #lt_altsidebar {
display:none !important;
} (end of insertion)

(line #11) }

So, the problem may have been in saving and quitting the application.

>15 conceptDawg:

No,no,

I read your rant. I'm a user-member here and I joined at the full-rate membership of the time. I fully recognize that since then (that my puny pitance has long ago vanished into relative insignificance and that), this site has had to take a variety of rentable (profit-making) measures to develop and to afford to keep and pay the technical staff. That said, it has also added a world of things (with all the intricate and interrelated source-code these require)--each time necessitating elaborate efforts to make the new compatible with the pre-existing. At no time have I ever asked for any of that stuff. But it's been adopted and added to my LT *experience* whether I like it or not.

Members and their interests have for some time now clearly been second-in-importance to the advancement of what the management and technical staff deem highly desirable bells and whistles--esp. from a competitive social-networking point of view. You have what amount to investor/("stock-holders") interests and they and their priorities, it seems to me, take precedence. These are business decisions based on judgements made from business-interest points of view. I'm not a businessman and have no interest in becoming one or working for one.

A plain user's view of thing.

"K*I*S*S*"
"Keep
It
Simple
S'il vous plaît."

>15 conceptDawg: Out of curiosity but... why not finally kill the old UI? I know that there is a vocal group that refuses to use the new one but what is the end game? If these users had not been convinced in the last 10+ years, they won't get convinced in the next 2 or 3 either so if they are going to leave the site if you kill the old UI, does it matter if it is now or in a few years? It is not sustainable as is - it takes everyone's time, frustrates users and that will get worse and worse as time progresses. Just thinking aloud.

On the topic - I will love the ability to remove the news but I believe that was already shot down for .... reasons. I never look at them. The home page loses a lot of space because of them so I rarely even look at that page as I cannot get all the info I want on a single page (and as I am using a small-ish monitor on my laptop, the sizing constraint is indeed annoying.

And while I know how to change the CSS to remove it... I'd rather not - any time the site changes, that script may lead to weird results. But everyone decides on that risk on their own. :)

If the OP ever revisits the topic, I'd highly advise against Stylus in favor of uBlock Origin. Cross platform, multi-browser. Here's what my home page looks like with just the news feed removed (not the side bar)



One simple CSS element filter.

>18 AnnieMod:

While I agree fully with the spirit of everything in AM's comment, the truth is that the removal of "Top News", while a "plus" in my opinion, is not something that I'd lose sleep thinking about--and never have. I asked about it only because others brought it up and I agreed with their sentiments. I spend virtually no time at all dwelling on the Homepage here. I have no particular interest in it. I use extensively the Profile page when I want to "see something".

I'm not a computer scientist, much less a code-geek (no offense intended; that's a compliment: I admire code-geeks' talents.) But, as I understand it, every additional gee-gaw is more weight on, a further drag on, the site's facility and average operating speed.
That factor does matter to me. My pages load very slowly now and this doesn't "move" in the other direction.

>19 Taliesien:

Now, see? I like the looks of that page.

(P.S. With a user-name like "Taliesien" I thought you might be an architect and have an architect's aesthetic sensitivity). Eden Valley, Wales?

>21 proximity1: Been using it since 2015. Easy to block, easy to unblock, no additional lag. As an extension it's easily turned on and off for troubleshooting purposes. It's an excellent user empowerment tool to customize your internet experience. https://ublockorigin.com/

>22 Taliesien: One note though: while it hides the news, it does not release the space for other things - which is often the reason why people want to remove the news. If the column will stay empty and unusable, I can as well keep the news there for example. :)

That's something that users need to be warned about when that workaround is offered - while a web developer (or even an advanced internet user) will know how this kind of plugins work, if someone had never used one of these plugins, they may not realize what they actually do and it can be very frustrating to spend time and effort working out how to do it just to end up with blank space on the right. :) Just saying.

There is a talk group dedicated to suchlike: Hacking LibraryThing
if the above posts have sparked off wanting to get into details of customising user experience beyond what's being talked about (not intending to shut down discussion by saying this, merely if you want a more specialised audience it could be found there).

>23 AnnieMod: My response was tailored to the OP who originally requested to "hide top news from main page" and that is what I showed. It's also why I qualified my response with "Here's what my home page looks like with just the news feed removed (not the side bar)" in addition to an actual screenshot that would leave no uncertainty about the sidebar still remaining.

If the OP had asked to remove the right column completely, that's what I would have shown. If users make specific requests I will give them specific answers. I don't accept any responsibility for users who take instructions for ABC and try to apply them to DEF. I don't believe in "warning" users of something they should have the reading comprehension skills to grasp on their own. Just saying. :)

>25 Taliesien: That's a very narrow reading of "hide" - technically correct and yet too narrow. Especially with the addition of >5 CuriousLearner: by OP which compares the news to the other elements on that page - as we all know, that specific module is different but new users don't. Thus my comment. :)

Now adding the screenshot helps - and serves the same purpose as a warning on what will happen. :)

Anyway - all is good - there are options, it is clear what they are doing.

>26 AnnieMod:

"dear" or "clear"? or maybe both? I begin to lose the sight I need to distinguish these.

d... c... cl...

>16 proximity1:

I see that there is a bit of a discussion going on with alternate suggestions.

If you placed the content between the asterisks as you indicate, that would be a problem. In CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) the sequence of

/* comment goes here */

is used for comments to explain interesting bits of the code. Placing the CSS statements inside will make them unreadable by the browser.

You want to place the code on the line below the comment. You don't even need the comment line.

body.homepage #lt_altsidebar {
display:none !important;
}

In this example I have used cD's more specific selector for the CSS.

I used the display:none so that it is not only not shown but the space is returned to the display rendering engine. The rest of the content will fill the available width of the screen. This is not done by the other plugin. I think it changes it to visibility: hidden which holds the original space but hides it. Sometimes this is what you want. But I don't think it is appropriate here.

Turning on/off the change can be achieved with the checkbox in the plugin. Keep this in mind if features seem to be missing in the future.

body.homepage #lt_altsidebar { display:none !important; }

The selector is the body tag with a class of homepage. Inside of this is a div element with an id of lt_altsidebar.

The property display is being changed from block to none. The !important overrides any other CSS priority of definitions. I tried it without !important but it did not work.

While you probably won't be doing a lot of CSS work, I wanted to explain what is going on as a matter of disclosure.

James

(this post is slightly long and not directly answering you alone, but more of a behind the scenes look that addresses some general comments in Talk)

>17 proximity1:
How big do you think LibraryThing is?! Corporate overlords?

We don't have corporate overlords and we really don't "answer" to any "stock holders" or investors. We work on features that we think will get the most bang for the buck, as it were, based on our limited development resources. When you read about Twitter, Facebook, etc. laying off 10,000 developers at a time it's interesting to note that LibraryThing has our largest developer staff ever right now....at 5. Yes, five developers, which includes Tim, who is also the boss and often has other duties.

We make new features because they interest us as book people (and/or data nerds). We may make changes to the UI or to site structure for a variety of reasons—and some of them are long-term planning for features that we want to release a year or two down the road. Some are home runs, some aren't. Some eventually become home runs while others might eventually become duds. But we keep swinging.

We make most of our money from our Library Products side of the company, which is a healthy set of products and is doing quite well. For all the work you see here on LT.com there is an equal amount of work happening on other products that you don't see—but are keeping the LT.com site churning along without the need for ads, product placements, or corporate shills.

Additionally, our TinyCat product is a healthy product that is doing well and is seeing continual development.

Litsy—a company that we essentially bought to save it from being shut down—also takes up some developer and IT resources even though we don't make a penny from it.

Our Early Reviewers section makes us no money. In fact it is the opposite as it is an incredible amount of work to get publishers on board and organized for each round of books each month. But we aren't beholden to publishers either as they don't pay us.

We cater to mobile users now more than we ever have but that's just due to the facts of how people use websites now: a large number are using this site from their mobile devices so we need to support them and make sure the site works well for every user. If we don't our numbers will dwindle and eventually the site will die. And contrary to often-mentioned comments: we aren't forgetting desktop users. We develop EVERY feature for the desktop first. It's where we develop, work, and test every feature, after all.

We will never be able to make every user of LibraryThing happy all the time. That's just a fact. But for every feature that one user "hates" or "never uses" remember that there are, literally, tens of thousands of users that might use that feature every single day. And once we debut a feature we pretty much can never get rid of it, so we have to continue to support old, less used features.

We've been running in "startup" mode for about 17 years now. Developer "down time" is unimaginable at this point. We just have too much to do and too many projects on the burner. Each of us. But we juggle them well for the most part and I feel like we are always releasing new features and updating old features.

The LT2 project has taken much longer than I would have liked—or planned for. But once we are done with the transition in the next couple of months it will mean that we can start doing even more site-wide updates to layout, UI, site organization, etc. It also means that whole new features are a LOT easier to get out the door in quick and less buggy releases, using standardized styles and layouts. The new Recommendations feature took a little over a week from initial idea to ready to deploy. The new Notifications feature was about two weeks, mostly due to the code needing to be available on the remaining LT1 pages which didn't have the support for all of the UI.

And also remember that we are people. We have disparate likes and dislikes. We don't all agree on every decision. Tim and I often disagree about projects and features. But we also agree on many things that make this place great. Lucy and I agree and disagree about various other things. That's how we get to a better product. But that also means that we aren't a big corporate mono-culture. Sometimes a decision is made because one of us just feels so strongly that they "convince" the others. Other times we have unanimous consent that something is great (almost certainly a kiss of death for that product once it's launched to the public).

ETA: We also spend crazy amounts of time discussing features with members on Talk. More than pretty much ANY other large site. We take all of these discussions into account when we make decisions. The number of times that we've been in a meeting and somebody mentions that ONE member has a problem with feature A so we need to figure out a solution to it...well, the number is not zero, that's for sure. We take every member's comments to heart but that doesn't mean that we can cater to every one of them obviously, even if we want to.

This got long, but hopefully it gives some insight into our work and what drives the development of features:
Simply put: it's just us.

>18 AnnieMod:
Disabling "Salmon" LT
Those people using the old site are now down to just Work, Author, and Add Books pages at this point. LT2 completely nullifies the use of "Salmon" LT. So that's good. The end is near.

Setting for News
I have lobbied (and will lobby again) for a setting to show/hide the Site News section. Or, alternatively, making it a standard Home page module that can be moved/removed. The decision against this has been that it's the ONE place where we have control over announcements and we know almost every user will see them. Which makes sense and is important.

But now that we have the global Notifications system I think we might be able to convince our corporate overlords to let us move News items to their own page with Notifications of each one. We'll see.

>28 Keeline: Thanks for the in-depth info for others. Very well described. (not that you need my kudos)

>30 conceptDawg: Nice! Thanks for giving us status information on the state of LT (both 1 and 2) :-)

>30 conceptDawg:: Thanks for both the peek under the hood, and especially for the blood, sweat & tears of the LT team. I appreciate, and in fact am in awe of, the engagement with the users.

Now i wish that i had chosen "Corporate Overlord" as my LT handle. Damn.

>28 Keeline:

James, to be brief in what's becoming an extended side-bar aspect (But quite interesting to me!); thank you again:

Your post was a genuine (Homer Simpson) "Doh!" moment for me! Of course! the script should not have been placed in the "comments" section. What was I thinking?!

I'm going to try again and use the script you wrote and recommend and I'll try (soon) to implement this effect. Like you, I see absolutely no negative aspects for the site's health safety and general good-operations--all of which I endorse-- of my adopting strictly and solely on my own Homepage this change in page-aspect.

cheers.

STATUS REPORT: "HAPPY!!!!"

I am very pleased with the result:
I have the side-bar gone from the "Homepage" only and still have all the usual and desired functions and elements visible in the Profile page's side-bar. This is exactly the outcome I was looking for.

Many thanks to you, James, and to you others here for your patience.

Note to conceptDawg: Per Nevov's comment above at >24 Nevov:, I'll put a reply to your >30 conceptDawg: comments over at the group/topic "Hacking Library Thing".

Change of plan: see >39 proximity1: below.

>36 proximity1:

I’m glad we could work it out.

Small changes to website appearancs can be achieved in this way.

James

>30 conceptDawg: Yes, I add my thanks to your passionate exposition of behind scenes work, and the work itself. LT is a unique site, and some of us practically live here. We love you!

On second thought, I don't think that "Hacking Library Thing" is the proper venue for an extended reply to cDawg's comment in >30 conceptDawg:.

The proper venue for a discussion of the issues concerned is, I think, right here in "Talk About Library Thing".

So I'm opening a thread for that purpose.

>31 conceptDawg: But now that we have the global Notifications system I think we might be able to convince our corporate overlords to let us move News items to their own page with Notifications of each one. We'll see.

As someone who has never been offended by the news module or anxious to move/remove it, I think this change would be an improvement. It would actually increase the chance that I will read individual news items, which I do tend to ignore in the right sidebar.

>30 conceptDawg: Great post that exemplifies one of the many reasons why LT is a favorite interent corner for many of us