Controlling comments and replies

No, there's no way to stop that. Facebook will always show 'x' main comments. Any replies to those comments are also shown and not included in the count.

I'm not sure how you're layout is getting broken. Regardless of whether it's 10 'small' comments or 1 really long comment, your template should be able to grow to accommodate them. The Comment box will automatically resize it's div as appropriate, and most templates/browsers simply respond by moving things down on the page. The width of the comment box will never increase beyond the setting you've specified.

Hope that helps, but if you have some specific issue, let us know,
Alex

Sounds good. Hopefully, it doesn't cause you too much trouble.

Just so you know, in the upcoming 4.1 release, if you set the Number of Comments to '0', instead of a comment box displaying, a language string like "There are 'x' comments for this article" will show. Should be great for blog views or other tight areas where you may want to show a snip of an article.

As always, good luck!
Alex