Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

He really is that stupid.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Welcome to day five of every-bit-as-bad-as-you-thought-it-would-be.

This is dead girl, live boy, a goat, two wetsuits and a dildo territory.  oh, and pink furry handcuffs.

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

A tremendous foreign policy asset… to all of our adversaries.

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

You would normally have to try pretty hard to self-incriminate this badly.

Trump should be leading, not lying.

This blog will pay for itself.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

Come on, man.

Stay strong, because they are weak.

Rupert, come get your orange boy, you petrified old dinosaur turd.

You are here: Home / z-Retired Categories / Previous Site Maintenance / New Stuff

New Stuff

by | 93 Comments

This post is in: 

If you are looking around the new digs, you will find all sorts of new functionality.

* Within a short amount of time, you can edit your posts.

* There is a bar for Share/Save, leading you to all sorts of social networking stuff (digg, fark, etc.)

* At the end of the timestamp on every comment, there is an arrow. If you click on that arrow, it will automatically start a new comment, linking to the comment you just clicked, so your comment will be auto referenced. And that explanation sucks. Example here. FAIL. This addon was causing carriage returns to be added to commenter posts. Maybe later.

* We have installed an addon that automatically formats long url’s that are not embedded.

* I can now add widgets to the sidebars at my leisure. Thinking about twitter.

* Yes, I know it is a new font, and as much as I hate change, I think the new font really looks good with the current design. And remember, when we were moving to Balloon Juice v. 1.0 to 2.0,the old font was the new font at one point. We all survived that transition, we will survive this one to Balloon Juice v. 3.0.

* Plus, I can now easily add audio clips.

There is a bunch more, and we are still addressing some bugs.

Have fun.
weird_science_stewwed

Reader Interactions

93Comments

  1. 1.

    Ned Raggett

    Really nicely done, all — it’s barely half a day since initial
    rollout and a lot of things have already been fixed or improved,
    above and beyond the general changes. Use the extra money from
    donations to get yourselves a round of high quality drinks!

  4. 4.

    Comrade Darkness

    I like the new banner. Nice mix of old and new, and right now, I
    really identify with the little guy puffing away there, trying to
    get the balloon to rise.

  5. 5.

    gbear

    Just testing. I tried to post earlier today and my comment was sent
    to purgatory because I was unauthorized. Things change so quickly
    around here. Edit: well I see my post is here but I still got the
    error message on my screen. What do I need to do to stop that?

  8. 8.

    jcricket

    Really nice redesign John. Way to inject some stimulus into the
    comment-based-economy (better than McCain and Palin’s rape based
    economy (hat tip, Patton Oswalt). My comment entry box (safari,
    mac) is a little wide – covers the blogroll on the right (scroll
    bar then doesn’t work right). Maybe fixed width a bit too wide? Do
    all the little buttons work? Nope – looks like ordered list,
    unordered list didn’t work right. That’s a bummer. Who doesn’t like
    lists of points? What’s the difference between link and ext link (both go to the great orange
    satan, fyi). Hmm, links seem not to be working right. Along with
    pre, code, ul, ol tags. Any way to remove the tag buttons that
    don’t actually format the comments?

  9. 9.

    Shinobi

    So many buttons! I’m overwhelmed…. (ETA: I’m editing this because
    I can. YAY for the new site!)

  10. 10.

    Andrew

    I’m freaking out a little bit. I’m not sure about tables in
    comments. The font is also a little weird. Edit: Tables don’t seem
    to work, so why not eliminate the useless HTML tag buttons?

  13. 13.

    Comrade Grand Panjandrum

    @cleek: Word. So far me likey. Will
    be nice when the Orkin man/boy/woman/girl gets here to fumigate the
    bugs however. All in all a pretty good launch. Interesting that
    little reporting of new violence in Baghdad now that the Shiite
    gummint controls the Sunni Awakening militias. Lets see how this
    mother holds up.

  19. 19.

    Comrade The Moar You Know

    Dude – links are totally f’d. Old site FTW!

    Word Press Error? No thank you. This is a vast
    improvement.

  20. 20.

    The Other Steve

    This is pretty cool. I’m so totally going to steal all of this when
    I launch my website. :-) Look at that! I’m editing! edit edit edit
    edit.

  21. 21.

    Brian J

    Since this thread is young and there aren’t a lot of responses and
    I’m always away when a prime opportunity like this happens, I’m
    going to make a few comments and ask some questions: 1. How
    encouraging are the latest poll numbers? Not only are we leading by
    five to ten points in some of the traditional swing states, but
    we’re down by six in Georgia, eight in Mississippi, and nine in
    Texas. Some of them may be outliers, sure, but I’ve read blog posts
    that say Chuck Todd on MSNBC, among others, is starting to say that
    things aren’t looking good for McCain right now. One example of the
    alarm sounding is that he’ll be in Missouri later this week, a
    state he shouldn’t have to worry about now. 2. Should I go and see
    Steve Doocy from Faux News and ask him about his ridiculous
    comments about Sarah Palin and Russia? I was walking past the
    Barnes & Noble near my work the other day and saw that he’ll be
    there in a few weeks. I’m tempted to, but I don’t want to look like
    a maniac. 3. One of the comments that I’ve heard when the financial
    crisis is being discussed is that one of our problems is that we
    don’t make anything any longer. All we do is push and trade paper.
    Overall, our economy has moved in that direction, but we now have
    services like Mobile Me from Apple that can sync all of the
    information on different systems the instantly one part of that
    system is changed, and it’s not free. In other words, we may not
    make things like cars or shoes as much we used to, but is that such
    a bad thing?

  25. 25.

    Comrade jnfr

    This is good. I can read your posts again. Looks like your comment
    box is putting a hard return at the end of each line. I use a
    larger font size due to my eyes not working so perfectly, and
    everyone’s posts are wrapped unevenly. But readable! Thank you. And
    I like the Optima-style font, myself.

  26. 26.

    reid

    Kudos on the new deal. Ees nice. And you even solved my biggest
    little gripe, the lack of the post name in the title! When I have
    200+ tabs open to BJ, it’s nice to see the title in the tab.

    I hope someone has mocked redstate unmerciful about this.

  32. 32.

    Patrick Lightbody

    John – I’ve figured out what’s wrong with links. One link works
    fine, but two or more breaks. I shall put on my nerd hat to explain
    why…. The cause is almost certainly due to a “greedy” regular
    expression, possibly due to one of the plugins you added that
    auto-links things. It is creating a link from the start of the
    first link all the way to the end of the second link. I suggest you
    try disabling some of your fancy new plugins and see if the links
    in the comments get better (use my “Link test 2” comment as your
    test). The good news is that the underlying content is likely not
    corrupt, so it can be fixed without loosing data.

  34. 34.

    Alan

    @John Cole: It could be because you
    are a logged in member of your own site. Evidently, there is some
    functionality within WordPress that strips down some html tags for
    visitors which messes up the formating.

  35. 35.

    JL

    IMO. Tonights drinking game should not contain words such as YEAH
    or ya. What we might consider is a shot for everytime Joe Biden
    grimaces at Sarah’s remarks but not a shot for every time that
    Sarah smirks and smiles at Joe’s response. Tomorrow is Friday and
    it is a workday for many of our fine folks. Of course, this is
    John’s blog and he can suggest what he deems appropriate.

  36. 36.

    reid

    @4tehlulz: I was going to say, a bit
    early to be hitting the sauce! Until the site settles down, best to
    speak in plain, short, single-paragraph, all-english, non-code
    sentences. There goes half the site’s charm….

  37. 37.

    Rob R

    I use the same Add To Any Share / Save button on my Web site, and
    there’s a simple, minor edit to the plugin you can do so it only
    opens when you click it. Those Javascript hover menus that pop up
    when you mouse over them can be irritating as hell. The fix is
    here, since embedding links is fail:
    addtoany.com/buttons/faq/#onclick

  39. 39.

    Comrade The Moar You Know

    does strikethrough work? Let’s find out: Sarah Palin is a
    smartextremely stupid woman. It works if you hand-code
    it.

  40. 40.

    reid

    I cringe that Palin is being directed to be more folksy and more
    base-inspiring sarcastically snotty. I feel a blood vessel in my
    forehead clamping down already. If you hear a distant wet pop,
    you’ll know what it is.

  41. 41.

    4tehlulz

    Testing strike: If only the coders weren’t so liberal, they can
    refs comments like Wonketteus!

  43. 43.

    Comrade The Moar You Know

    image button still fails. Hand-code?: <img
    src=”http://i526.photobucket.com/albums/cc342/arbiterusa/01th_OMG.gif”>

  44. 44.

    SGEW

    Just consider this an opportunity to practice your coding skilz.

    But what if I have no coding skillz? So embarrassing.
    Hell, back when I was a kid I used to have fun messin’ around w/ C,
    setting up B.B.S.’s, and grepping Autoconfig files. Then I got a
    Mac when I was 17 (personal disclosure: which was quite a while
    ago, but not that long ago). Now I just expect things to
    work immediately, in the easiest way possible. Serves me right, I
    guess. (imagine line break here)

    Tonights drinking game should not contain words such as YEAH or
    ya.

    I’m telling “ya,” tonight’s debate is not a
    good opportunity for a drinking game (take it from me: I’ve been
    hosting drinking games for (almost) every State of the Union speech
    and presidential debate since @2000). Biden and Palin are so full
    of either: ridiculously predictable patterns (“ya,” “’em,” etc.
    from Palin, “literally” from Biden); or so gaffe/flub prone that it
    throws th’ whole pacing out of whack before you even start. Damn
    you, V.P. candidates! You have ruined my game!

  45. 45.

    Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse

    @The Other Steve: Actually, I’m
    editing twice without experiencing total protonic reversal, but any
    text I copy and paste in here shows up as one para. I’ve put in
    line breaks twice, but it’s still a lump of text.

  46. 46.

    comrade scott

    John: All the stuff you’re talking about is gravy. The fact that
    the page actually FUCKING WORKS for more than 3 nanoseconds at a
    time is fanfuckingtastic.

  51. 51.

    jake

    So is the End of the Internons big black space I see in place of
    comments a special treat reserved for FireFox users? OMG and edit
    button. Someone get ready to tranq. TZ.

  53. 53.

    SGEW

    [Imagine that the following is in a blockquote:] The fact that the
    page actually FUCKING WORKS for more than 3 nanoseconds at a time
    is fanfuckingtastic. [Imagine that the blockquote ends here] . . .
    [imagine that there’s a line break here] . . . Bah. The
    WordPress>Error firewall used to kept out the riff-raff. I am
    feeling nostalgic! I shall now imagine that everything used to be
    absolutely perfect, a golden age, and that now everything has gone
    to hell. Why, in my day, our comments automatically self-corrected
    to be as erudite and concise as humanely possible. And everytime
    the site loaded incorrectly, I got a cookie. GET OFF MY LAWN! [at
    least the edit feature works, so that I can insert my imaginary
    codes]

  55. 55.

    Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse

    Oh. Editing twice IS bad because edit preview lies like a rug. I
    got in before the countdown was over, left a brief comment the
    second time I edited, but it left the last edit in place. Let me
    try copy and paste again. Maybe the text lump is associated with
    the back-link function. Dr. Egon Spengler: There’s something very
    important I forgot to tell you. Dr. Peter Venkman: What? Dr. Egon
    Spengler: Don’t cross the streams. Dr. Peter Venkman: Why? Dr. Egon
    Spengler: It would be bad. Dr. Peter Venkman: I’m fuzzy on the
    whole good/bad thing. What do you mean, “bad”? Dr. Egon Spengler:
    Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and
    every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light. Dr Ray
    Stantz: Total protonic reversal. Dr. Peter Venkman: Right. That’s
    bad. Okay. All right. Important safety tip. Thanks, Egon.

  56. 56.

    Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse

    OK, here’s how edit seems to work. 1. Editing shows your original
    unedited post to you after revision, making you think editing
    didn’t work. This makes you cry a little. 2. Then, after you make a
    new post about what an EPIC FAIL your editing attempt was, you can
    see that your original post was removed, but your edited post shows
    up as a new comment further down the streams. 3. Therefore,
    crossing the streams is bad. Feature or bug? (Seriously John and
    team, this seems like typical growing pains for a new
    implementation. It looks really good and I’m sure things will sort
    out soon.)

  57. 57.

    Nathan R

    I’m just stoked that there’s a link to the previous and next thread
    in the comments page. No more clicking back on my browser! Oh, and
    that the site has changed its name back to Balloon Juice. Much
    punchier than Word Press Error.

  58. 58.

    Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse

    Forget the VP debate drinking game. The BJ site test drinking game
    starts, like, NOW.

  59. 59.

    Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse

    Forget the VP debate drinking game. The BJ site test drinking game
    starts, like, NOW.

  61. 61.

    Tsulagi

    Site looks pretty good. Like it got a good cleaning and wax job and
    is now all shiny. Best improvement by far seems to have come from
    Annette. The site loads, and pretty quickly. Some bugs still. I
    can’t get blockquotes to work either manually putting in the tags
    or using the buttons. Line spaces don’t seem to work consistently
    either. I tried using Edit in a post in the previous thread to
    correct it. Looking at my comment in Edit there were line spaces,
    but not when it re-posted. Also, if using Firefox 3.x threads go
    black after 150 or so comments. But they show up fine with IE 7.
    But you probably know about the bugs and they’ll be corrected in a
    few days. Let Annette do it. Only style complaint I have is the
    text in blockquotes that do happen. The big-ass bolded font. I’d go
    with your default text font with the user being able to bold or
    not.

  62. 62.

    Tsulagi

    Still no fucking line spaces.

    And can’t fix it with Edit. I’m sure
    Annette will get to it later.

    Do like the Edit feature, though.
    I’ve changed this comment twice. But still can’t get a line space
    in Edit.

  66. 66.

    Kevin

    hey, yall. Q. What time is the debates tonite, central daylite
    time?

    it’s at 8:00 Edit: FAIL.

  67. 67.

    Jay

    Hot digs, John, although as a fellow cat owner, I have to ask if
    you cleared the move with Tunch first.

  69. 69.

    CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII

    Punchy, I have a brother who is a Rush Limbaugh dittohead and who
    lives in Wichita. I’m sure he is probably very proud of what this
    mayor is doing. OMFG!

  71. 71.

    Scott H

    I really like the new digs. I am not a big fan of design by
    committee (I am a survivor of that process, and those who are still
    employed in that kind of system know whereof I speak), but I
    appreciate BJers feedback taken in consideration.

    I trust John Cole to exercise restraint (however much I consider
    a single YouTube embed and a snark the lazy man’s commentary),
    but I much fear unfettered “rich” media in the comments.

    Can we drink through the Balloon Juice debugging and the
    Vice Presidential Debate both? I believe we can. Yes, we can!

  72. 72.

    The Other Steve

    Speaking of blawgs, dawgs, and hawgs, Polano “Nate” Silver really
    took Real Clear Politics to the woodshed today:

    RCP is a Republican group. If they aren’t clear about
    that on their website, they deserve to be taken to the woodshed.
    They’re take on politics is quite obviously slanted.

  77. 77.

    Comrade Napoleon

    Re Brian @21 Those poll numbers are good, they have happened in
    enough polls and ther is a big enough margin that even if they are
    off, its hard to imagine that they could be so far off that Obama
    is not going to win, if the election was today. But I hate to be
    this optomistic, because that always seems to happen right before I
    get crushed.

  78. 78.

    Comrade Napoleon

    The other steve said :Speaking of blawgs, dawgs, and hawgs, Polano
    “Nate” Silver really took Real Clear Politics to the woodshed
    today: That was great. Speaking of Nate Silver Brian who asked
    about the polls should look at Nates post today on how Obama can
    win today even if he throws away every state he does not lead by 5.
    test edit – test

  79. 79.

    CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII

    Awwww, I just read that poor widdle Ewizabeth Hassewbeck wants to
    leave The View… awwww. – Don’t let the door hit your ass honey..
    tata, so long, bye bye! :)

  80. 80.

    CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII

    Yes, comments are being sent down a hole never to be seen again, I
    fear.

    I noticed the XHTML Tags Available listing on another thread,
    what is “cite” and does it do the same thing as a blockquote?

  81. 81.

    CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII

    I noticed the XHTML Tags Available listing on another thread,
    what is “cite” and does it do the same thing as a
    blockquote?

    Well, let’s find out, I guess… Hmmm. Oh, it just turns the
    quoted text into italics?

    This is blockquote cite – Is this italics too?

    cite> Nope! Okay, got it now.

  82. 82.

    CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII

    well that’s strange, it looked like cite was italics in preview,
    but it comes out bold and in higher pixeled text, Aha! I’m
    learning.

  83. 83.

    reid

    That "View" dope should just get herself an AM radio talk show preaching to the choir. Obviously has trouble thinking outside of the Republican box.

  85. 85.

    Ryan S.

    I figured out what’s causing the black box problem…. I think

    When I reduce the size of the font the blacked out portion of the page is reduced, and by making the font small enough the black disappears all together. I suspect you’re running off the end of the page element. Not sure exactly how things are set up whether it uses a div element or something else but your running off the end of it.

    Likewise by making the fonts bigger ( ctrl + mouse wheel up or down) I can make the black appear even though normally it wouldn’t.

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