Flattened Conversations (9th April 2008)
About 3.5 years ago, I documented a nasty conversation with Demarest from GTA Forums.
It used Invision Power Board’s private message system which produced deeply nested [quote] tags. I recreated this with equally nested <blockquote> elements:
A faithful reproduction of a terrible design! I’ve now flattened it, like a forum topic:
Analysis
Each quote was attributed using a <p> before the <blockquote>. It now uses an <h4> before the <blockquote>. This makes the meaning clearer visually. It also implies each message is a subsection of the “Conversation” section, making the meaning clearer structurally.
It used to take 7 screens at 800×600, about 3,150 pixels tall. The flattened layout takes 6 screens, about 2,700 pixels tall.
The old markup took 5,956 bytes. The new markup takes 5,924 bytes. These changes slightly reduced the already lightweight filesize.
Conclusion
All in all, a successful piece of tinkering.