Feetneet

[jack]

[1] Preferably both at once.

I often use footnotes both for their intended purpose of conveying incidental or clarifying informtation, and for humour value[1], and have thought somewhat about the best way of presenting this.

For a book, at the bottom of the page is reasonable, you can easily see it if you want to, and not if you don't. I'm pleased to see that my wordprocessor, I'm sure since the last time I looked, has acquired the ability to do this automatically. The problem of footnotes too long for a page isn't really solved, though -- though they're only really a wonderful novelty, you should ideally have a different convention for that much supplementary information.

Many websites duplicate this, which mostly works, though it often involves scanning up and down. Some people htmlise the process, and make the footnote mark a link to the text at the bottom, and some cunning fellows have that have a link back to the right place in the main text.

[2] This text should appear in a box at the right side of the post, level with the main text paragraph.

[3] Or linked.

But an innovation that in retropsect seems obvious is sidenotes[2]. In book or website, having a box at the side of the page level with the note makes it easiest to track to, and the numbering nearly superfluous, if the word is underlined[3] and repeated in the box. But I more often have notes referring to paragraphs, when underlining the last word or the whole thing both seem odd.

I neglect dynamic solutions, eg. mouse hovering making text appear in a box, or autonumbering because (a) less compatible (often using javascript) (b) useful for definitions, but less so when people want to read all your footnotes (c) I don't like it.

Here I've had a go at making callout boxes, doing it simply with div style tags, and not bothering will colours. Please comment if it seems to appear correctly or incorrectly in your browser. If it doesn't implement styles, the footnote will appear at the start of the paragraph.

Comments

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

That's what I had first, but five minutes in google couldn't figure out how to align the top of the box with the previous paragraph, or preferably the footnote itself, so I decided to switch, and textonly people can work it out this once. (I wouldn't use it again until I sort something out.)

I've no idea if there are text browsers which could accept alternative

Actually, as a matter of interest, do any of you know how many people do use lynx/lj2news?

[stephdairy.livejournal.com]

Right. I've made it work, but only if you're prepared to work with percentages rather than with a particular width for the sidenote block.

See this temporary mockup thing. Note also that since margins and padding are still specified in units rather than percentages, there will come a point (if you narrow your window sufficiently) where the accumulated padding etc. exceeds the 5% of page width I've allowed for it.

(S)

[stephdairy.livejournal.com]

Erm, for "page width" read "containing element width".

(S)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Percentages is fine. In some ways it makes more sense, though looks surprising when you resize the broswer :)

See this temporary mockup thing.

Ah! That is cool.

Is it necessary to have the paragraph text floating? It works well, but (discounting the faff of having to have a "paragraph with footnote" class or "all paragraphs float" style) doesn't seem quite right: for instance, if you wanted an image specified further up to jut down into it and it to flow around it.

[stephdairy.livejournal.com]

I think it is necessary, sadly.

(And argh, it's hard to make the styling less faff because of the strictly forwards nature of CSS.)

(S)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

[sillytrippy.livejournal.com]

Don't know anything about lynx/lj2news, but I generally read livejournal from within w3m. Having the footnotes before the paragraph is a little annoying, but easy to put up with if there is no way of doing it the other way round.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Don't worry, I knew that was a problem (though not how many people it would apply to); I wouldn't adopt this technique until there's a system which isn't inconvenient to them. I presumed that changing it so it worked with postnotes would be an easy but googling intensive css excersize, so postponed it till later.