Un-fade low-score answers on rollover or click

Question

Answers with low scores are faded out. This is good. However, it would be nice to have the ability to temporarily un-fade such answers should we want to have an easier time reading them (for example, maybe there's a status-declined answer with a score in the -50's that you're having trouble reading). Rollover seems like a reasonable way to do this, or maybe clicking the answer's text.

Answer 1

This is a good idea. We've now made it so that downvoted answers return un-fade on hover.

Answer 2

JQUERY TIME!

$('.downvoted-answer').on("click",function(){$(this).find('.post-text, .post-signature, .votecell, .comments').css('color','#000');this.clicked=true;});
$('.downvoted-answer').on("mouseover",function(){$(this).find('.post-text, .post-signature, .votecell, .comments').css('color','#000')});
$('.downvoted-answer').on("mouseout",function(){if(!this.clicked){$(this).find('.post-text, .post-signature, .votecell, .comments').css('color','#888')}});

This fades in/out on mouseover/out, and makes it permanent if you click it.

Userscript in two ticks.

Here it is; bundled in a nice userscript

Answer 3

Here's my version of Manishearth's user script fix:

$('#answers').on('mouseover', '.downvoted-answer',
    function () { $(this).addClass('downvoted-answer-hover').removeClass('downvoted-answer') }
).on('mouseout',  '.downvoted-answer-hover:not(.clicked)',
    function () { $(this).addClass('downvoted-answer').removeClass('downvoted-answer-hover') }
).on('click', '.downvoted-answer-hover .post-text',
    function () { $(this).closest('.downvoted-answer-hover').toggleClass('clicked') }
);

It's a bit klugey, but it has the advantage of not assuming anything about how downvoted answers are styled on each site (since that turns out not to be as consistent as one might hope).

I've included the code above in a collection of small user script fixes that I'm calling the Stack Overflow Unofficial Patch. Please feel welcome to give it a try!

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Ps. Actually, it would almost be possible to fix this purely in CSS by adding appropriate .downvoted-answer:hover rules to override the fading. The tricky part here would be figuring out exactly what to override in those rules, since, as noted above, the styling of both normal and downvoted answers varied between sites. Also, the "click to un-fade" functionality would still require JavaScript.

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Update: Since July 2015, the unfade-on-hover feature has been implemented using the CSS :hover pseudo-class. Since the current implementation still doesn't support the additional unfade-on-click part, I've replaced the earlier SOUP implementation with the following JS code:

$('#answers').on( 'click', '.answer.downvoted-answer .post-text', function () {
    $(this).closest('.answer').toggleClass('clicked');
} );

and the following CSS:

.downvoted-answer.clicked .post-text,
.downvoted-answer.clicked .post-signature,
.downvoted-answer.clicked .comments,
.downvoted-answer.clicked .vote > * { opacity: 1 }

This should be compatible with the new implementation.