How do I see the full "comment" on xkcd comics?

Factual Questions
1

Some you know about xkcd (www.xkcd.com), a wonderful online cartoon strip.

Those who don’t, check it out.

However, I have a technical problem. (For background, I am using a Windows XP machine and browsing the web via Firefox.)

When you place the mouse cursor over the comic and leave it sitting there for a moment or two, a comment pops up, often accenting or expanding on the joke. Some of these comments are hilarious, and others are informative and interesting. The problem is, if the comment is longer than a certain length (not sure what it is, but it’s around 80 characters), the end of the comment is “chopped off”, and the comment ends in an ellipsis (“…”).

Here is an example: xkcd: Large Hadron Collider
Here is another: xkcd: Unscientific

Is there any way to see the whole comment? Sometimes, it chops off just as it’s getting to…

2

Use the Long Titles extension.

3

Use the Firefox add on Long Titles

4

If Long Titles does not work consistently, you may also right click on the image and select properties. It should be there under “Alternate Text.”

5

I’d recommend FF 3. I’ve been using it for months now, and had fewer problems than with 2.0.

The title text wrapping “properly” is just one of the many nifty things you get.

6

You can also go to the xkcd individual comic thread forum. One thread per comic, and they always have both the comic and the alt-text written to be plainly seen.

7

Ok, on this recommendation, I just installed it. How do I make the annoying page titles in the address bar dropdown go away? I just want URLs like the the previous versions.

8

Answered my own question. You can turn it off by accessing about:config and setting “browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped” to True.

9

A side note: Long Titles will also make the mouse-over thread previews here (and on other vB boards) show in their entirety too.

10

Thanks a lot!

-off to re-read all the past XKCD’s I’ve missed the coments on…

11

You can use Opera.

12

Ah, Opera. Forever the n+1 horse in an n-horse race. :wink:

(I remember when it was ad-supported, complete with the little ad box up in the top right of the window. I use it occasionally to this day and keep it updated, but Firefox has all the plugins and Konqueror is better for quick little jaunts. And Konqueror displays the full alt-text too.)

13

Wow, all of that sounds better than “view page source”, which is what I’d been resorting to.

14

:eek:

15

What? It isn’t like HTML is hard to read, and the full text is right there in the source code.

16

Plus, the alt for the image is usually on one of the longest lines of code, so I just scroll the window one jump to the right, then scroll down to the first line I see jutting out.

17 

javascript:t="";g=document.images;for(i=0;i<g.length;++i){if(g*.title.length){t=g*.title;break;}}r=document.getElementById("rnd_btn_t").parentNode.parentNode.parentNode;r.innerHTML=t;void(0)
18

Huh, I was pressing my fingertips on to the bit of my laptop where the RAM is, so I could feel the heat differences and reconstruct which bits were set and which were clear, and then converting that to text in my head.

19

You had to convert it to text? You’re not fluent in binary? luzr. :stuck_out_tongue:

20

Oh, yeah, good ol’ C-x M-c M-butterfly