Remove white space beneath Facebook comments plugin

Question

Take a look at the this link. Scroll down a bit and you should see a Facebook comments plugin with an embedded Google map right beneath it.

My problem is, there is a ton of white space between the bottom of the comments plugin and the top of the map. Firebug indicates the white space is at the bottom of the comments plugin (as opposed to the top of the map). However, I can't seem to find a way to eliminate it.

I've tried just using relative CSS positioning to move the map up 50 pixels, but then it sits on top of the comments if there happen to be any. Also, if the user has turned FB comments off, it screws the layout as well.

Any ideas on how to get rid of the excessive white space?

UPDATE: While the answers provided here pointed me in the right direction, it ended up being too much trouble. I simply put the Facebook comments beneath the Google map at the bottom of the page which masks the problem somewhat. Apparently this is a bug according to one of the commenters below, so we'll just have to wait for a fix.

EDIT: Been toying with these styles for a while, no luck. I can alter the height of the box initially based on Jason's suggestions, but anything I do screws up the layout (new comments appear BEHIND the map since the comment area stays the same height as its original height, instead of allowing Facebook to dynamically grow the height of its IFRAME element when a comment is added). Any other ideas?

EDIT #2: It seems that the root of the problem is that Facebook automatically assigns a height of 200px to the IFRAME containing the comments box. When comments are added, Facebook dynamically resizes thie IFRAME to the appropriate height. I'd be able to solve my problem if I could find a way to make that default 200px start at 145px. Not sure if this is possible or why Facebook would think that 200 (arbitrary?) was a good height to start at.

EDIT #3: I realize the white space is coming from the IFRAME that Facebook generates and that there's nothing I can do about that, specifically. I started a bounty on this question because:

1) I find it hard to believe that I'm the only person that has an issue with the way this displays.

2) It's possible it's due to the way I configured something?

3) There's some other workaround I'm not thinking of.

Hopefully the bounty will encourage some creative replies!

Answer 1

Don't set the height to auto, set the overflow...

Set height:110px and overflow:auto on the Facebook iframe - then comments will expand the height of the iframe dynamically.

Pop these changes in your $().ready function - this works fine for me.

Answer 2

I had this problem on Mobile browsers. Facebook added this auto detect for mobile devices. It loads a different version of the plug-in that is full of bugs. Just set the mobile flag to false to force it to use the regular version that does not have bugs. This saved me. I hope it helps you.

Answer 3

There are several contributing factors:

• .fbFeedbackContent has min-height: 165px
• the loaded iframe has height: 200px
• there is an empty span tag within the fb:comment tag

Addressing any or all of these should get you started. You may need to use !important to override some of the CSS.

Answer 4

I was suffering from the same problem. The extra white space only shows up when there are no comments yet. So you just simply do the following:

1.) Swap back to the old markup, because step 2) is not supported by HTML5

2.) Make a new div #commentcount, in which you will load the count of comments. You can hide it with display:none;.

3.) Insert the following code to #commentcount: <fb:comments-count href=http://example.com/></fb:comments-count>, where example.com is the exact URL of where you're commenting. In most cases this will be $_SERVER["HTTP_HOST"].$_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"] (PHP), or the appropriate HTTP header variables in other languages.

4.) Store the comment count in a variable in JavaScript. You can reach the count easily, It's inside the #commentcount div in a span element. If you're not sure about this, check chrome dev tools or firebug, it will show you the rendered structure. (as facebook may change it eventually)

5.) Write a nice javascript code to update the facebook comment container div if(commentcount==0). Add a style of: height:110px; overflow:hidden;.

6.) Load the comment count frequently so if someone comments, you can drop the hidden overflow and fixed height, and they can see the new comment. You can do this using setInterval().

It works!

An easier alternative solution: You can set the style="background-color:#f5f5f5;" for the comments box if you have for example a site with F5F5F5 background color. The comments box colour will blend into your site. It looks nice.