Issue: [4.1 Alpha 1] Changes to like action: 1) Look more like XF, 2) Unnecessary on Special pages

1) The abnormal order here was intentionally chosen because it was more aesthetically pleasing when there are other elements to compete with in .vw-content-after. As for the incorrect color, I will look into it. However, there are cases when we intentionally modify the color of the likesBar in other contexts.

2) Even though likes for special pages can't be attributed to a particular user, we did intentionally allow special pages to be liked.

Thanks for the reply.

1) Good point about pages where there are a number of .vw-content-after elements. The example I provided wasn't a great one in this regard. I do understand your position, but I wonder if another following approach would still be better. I've added a mock-up image as the second attachment to this issue. This avoids having a like bar divide the main content from the contributor details, and just feels more integrated into the XF system if I'm honest.

2) I see. In that case, I may request an admin feature to toggle this off for special pages. But I'll wait for 4.1 to progress along further first, and who knows... maybe I'll change my mind .

1) Something else in this block is broken and not rendering. It might have been a technical problem with getting both elements to work together. As we can't see the other element right now, it's hard to compare your mockup to see if it would work now. We will have to fix the broken element first before we can decide.

2) Yes, I think options to toggle likes for various features would be good.

So I think the choice for the positioning was mainly influenced by implied context. The closer the likesBar is to the actual content, the more obvious it is that it relates to the content, and the more use it will receive. By placing the likesBar under the contributors, it becomes more ambiguous -- am I liking the content or am I liking these contributions? -- and moving it lower will have it receive less activity anyway.

Because the contextually best place for the likesBar is immediately after the content, it is placed there, rather than after contributors.

However, the standard ordering of the actionBar and the fact that the actionBar only includes 1 link make it both inconsistent with the surrounding style and in a position (all the way to the right) where it appears to break vertical flow. With the likesBar first, this flow change is less jarring, because the bar can guide your eyes rightward.

There are some cases where content has no content in the contributor block, but the likesBar appears.

And when the content is empty and the only visible element is the likesBar, it looks pretty awful in my opinion, due to the break in vertical flow.

It looks even worse on XenForo 1.x, because the actionBar juts right up against the title rather than the likesBar kind of acting as a border.

With the standard order and placing it nearer the content, it increases the vertical space before the contributor block, which pushes the rest of the page further down ("Like" is on a line by itself). On areas/books/etc this can be a major issue, as the child content can get pushed out of view, so every pixel counts.

...

By reversing the order of the two elements, we thought we were able to resolve all of these issues at once, with the sacrifice of minor inconsistency with likesBars for other content-types.

I would prefer to let some others weigh in on something like this before making a change. Vertical positioning of various elements is important.

Thank you for the detailed reply and considerations for the issue. My comments relate to XF2.0 only, as I have not seen how VW4.1 appears on XF1.x.

I appreciate your rationale over the current order of likes + contributors and having likes closer to the actual content. But it is worth pointing out that XF positions the action and likes bar in posts after a poster's signature, not before.

Is the likes/action bar order something that can be XF template editable? I've looked in vw_node_contribs and see I can shift likes button & bar down underneath contributors (at least on regular wiki pages, not sure about special pages). I was just thinking I could add a template modification to switch the action/likes bar order on my site only, however it seems that this is baked in within the variable {{$likes|raw}}. This appears to contain the html for both the actionBar and likesBar. If this were split into, say, $actionBar and $likesBar, then I think I could use the following template modification. E.g.:
Even though the like action is for a piece of content, as you rightly point out, the association with a user is something that XenForo promotes, such as with "Likes received" (XF <2.1) and "Reaction score" (XF >=2.1). I mean I did receive an alert from before that someone liked my XF2 testing wiki page on VW.org . I guess this is why I personally don't think that likes belong on system-generated special pages ... but this is turning into a separate discussion.

For what it is worth, XFMG and XFRM content only has two actionBar links (report at the left, like at the right) for the average member.
E.g.: XFMG https://xenforo.com/community/media/design-mode.2172/
and XFRM https://xenforo.com/community/resour...ia-sites.5973/

All this said, it is great to have likes added. Happy to leave this issue in abeyance for now to not hold back development and for a chance for other people to comment.

Many thanks to you for the new likes/reactions toggle setting in Alpha 3

The position of the Like action and the reaction summary has been swapped to match the standard XF layout in the next release.

Note that this required some tricky CSS rules to avoid vertical whitespace and match your mockup, while avoiding text overlaps in certain situations, due to floats no longer being usable to achieve this. It is likely that many custom styles will need to tweak these rules to retain a decent appearance.