Changes to the way that comments are displayed on the site

Some of you have probably already noticed that we have tweaked the way that comments are displayed on the site.

Previously, these were displayed in a threaded style, meaning that a reply to an existing comment would be placed directly below that comment. This makes it easier to follow discussions, as you don't have unrelated comments interspersed within an exchange. However, for screen reader users, this format can make it difficult to locate new or unread comments (particularly in the case of high traffic content such as the Facebook entry in the App Directory).

So, we have now switched the default display of comments to a simple 'flat' list, with comments sorted from oldest to newest.

However, we also now provide the ability for you to select your own preferred format - be that flat or threaded, oldest first or newest first - simply use the form that is shown above any list of comments to set or change your selection.

You will see that you can also select the number of comments that will be displayed on a page. However, you should be aware that this may break the links to comments that we post to Twitter. If the comment is located on anything other than the first page of comments, you will be taken to the top of the first page - for example, if you have selected to have only 10 comments per page and the link is to the 12th comment, it will not work properly. However, it will work as expected if you have things set to display any higher amount of comments.

We hope that this change will make it easier for you to locate and follow what is happening on this site.