setting up latest messages expand, and url for topics

#site-updates

after I switched this page to a more modular approach, I am now able to create 'versions'. The plan is to have it so you can see more recent posts, it will expand the recent posts to be wider and show more, and you can easily switch back to main view. Javascript was becoming unruly though, with 13 processes listening for mouseclicks. I needed to combine them into one listener, which meant rewrites.
I have just a little bit more to do on that, then i can continue.

after that I will make it so that topics actually have a url. It'll all work the same, it'll just update your url bar with the path to the topic so you can link to it directly. ETA is the next couple days, tomorrow if all goes well.

I completed the latest messages page. it seems to be all good.

I also adjusted the layout of topics so it fills more of the screen and gives more space for the text of the messages. if you don't see it, force refresh to purge the old CSS and it'll update for you.

I started working on having urls for the topics and it has been mostly fine for actually assigning the urls, but getting the right topic to load when a url is pasted into an empty address bar has proven a bit more challenging. I need to unify the topic loading sequence into one singular process so I'm not dealing with multiple variables each time.

OK... huge headache, but I have urls set up for topics. I think I've gone about it the wrong way, but it is nonetheless functional. I need to do more work on it though. maybe i can leave it for now...
I'll have to think on that and see how I feel.

anyway, you can now copy the url of the topic you are looking at and share it.