And I have absolutely no idea why. We have changed absolutely nothing to the page design, I have not upgraded WordPress, I have not changed any addons- it is simply inexplicable. Maybe there was an Internet Explorer update that is now causing the conflict.
But like I said, I have no clue what is causing it, and I don’t have the time over the next two weeks to deal with it. I have a complete site re-build scheduled for the first week of September, so hopefully that will be handled then.
I apologize for the inconvenience. Use this thread to share fixes or tell people which browsers work.
Omnes Omnibus
Actually, you might be right about the IE update. One happened over the weekend and the problem has now occurred. Still, because of it, I haz a sad.
On the other hand, everything was working until you came to my town, so it could be your fault.
licensed to kill time
♪♫ Firefox, Firefox, roly-poly Firefox, eats up FYWP yum! ♪♫
Sirkowski
I’m on Opera. The browser has not upgraded in over a month and it’s wonky.
peach flavored shampoo
Via Atrios: can you imagine if our pollys actually went thru with these threats? Talk about apoplexy.
Sirkowski
I’m on Opera. The browser has not upgraded in over a month and it’s wonky. Although on Opera you can turn the Author mode on, which destroys the page’s design but at least it’s readable.
debit
Never, ever have a problem in Firefox. Just saying.
NonyNony
So what’s wrong with the formatting?
The only problem I’m seeing is the extra whitespace between posts that cropped up a month or so ago and refuses to go away. But I haven’t seen anything change lately.
Scott Supak
Looks good in Chrome, and loads pretty fast too!
WereBear
Geez, I’m turning into one of those cranks who disparages IE at every opportunity. So consider it done.
Punchy
Might be a Vista thing. Works w/ company IE (Office ’03), but not at home on Vista lappy.
FireFox works like a champ, however.
kwAwk
If you ask me, its the embedded YouTube videos.
Everytime a front pager posts one on the front page I lose the ability to read the front page on my work machine. IE6.
If they’d embed a square video or a smaller widescreen it might quit screwing up the margins.
Silver Owl
I’m running firefox and everything looks fine.
ppcli
Google chrome working fine here.
Omnes Omnibus
I am on IE7 and, since Sunday, it has been wonky 75% of the time. Reloading the page sometimes helps. When I have used my wife’s macbook, Safari has work fine but IE in the VM has not. That is all.
El Tiburon
All systems normal here in the ATX, Captain Cole.
Full steam ahead.
PeakVT
We have changed absolutely nothing to the page design.
The site loads in quite a bit of content from elsewhere, and most likely one of those bits is the culprit.
birthmarker
I was running Google Desktop on Vista which I guess is IE. The right margins ran on and on and on. I quickly downloaded Firefox (which I use on another computer anyway) and the problem is miraculously gone.
Hugin & Munin
So you want me to send you an email about it?
OK. Done.
Mary G
Never had a problem with Firefox. latest version.
Davis X. Machina
@debit: Me neither. At least with AdBlock Pro and NoScript both engaged….
Cris
Not a vista thing. I see text overflowing out of the borders of the center column on IE8, WinXP.
But of course, I had to start up IE8 first. Firefox is fine. Safari/Win is ok too.
Dracula
Christ. Cue 13.75 days of continuous margin bitching.
jacy
I have reinstalled Firefox, again, just to read Balloon Juice. Firefox hates me and regularly won’t open up, which is just one reason I don’t use it despite all the Firefox fundies. I do a lot of work from my browser, and Firefox is not compatible with a great deal of it.
IE does everything I need with no problems, EXCEPT load Balloon Juice correctly. So I’ll just run with two browsers open. That’s my fix, such as it is.
Somebody here said a while ago that it was the display ads that are causing the wonkiness, which is why sometimes it displays correctly if you keep refreshing it. I don’t know how true that was, but they used a lot of high-falutin’ computery words, and being ignorant of actual coding complexities myself, it sounded like a good explanation to me.
Rosalita
I use Chrome at work and Safari at home. No problems.
IE is a pain in the ass.
mr. whipple
It’s not just an IE problem. It also does the same in Opera.
Also, it’s not an OS problem as it’s happening on both my XP and Windows 7 systems.
beltane
It looks fine on Firefox. I don’t know what the rest of you are complaining about.
DLew on Roids
I don’t know what the problem is, but I’m sure it’s Erik’s fault.
Bill Murray
The problem is clearly the posting of E.D. (Edge Destroyer) Kain. His reasonable conservativeness destroyed the right-wing of Word Press
Punchy
Just wait until ED Kain posts about it, and offers as solutions a: 1) flat tax, 2) scathing critique of Glennnn’s view of the matter, and 3) the right of Muslims to fly on airplanes despite this problem.
That, my friend, would be some bitching.
birthmarker
PS Firefox has screwed up my bookmarks, it seems.
Kristine
Latest update of Safari works fine. FF. Antique version of IE (6.0.2) at the day job is a mess.
licensed to kill time
@Punchy:
Well, he just posted his dissertation on the next thread…
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@Scott Supak:
Chrome is excellent.
Cris
For what it’s worth, IE8 is also giving me a warning that “A problem displaying balloon-juice.com caused Internet Explorer to refresh the web page using Compatibility View.”
Then it refreshes in Compatibility View (and the goggles they do nothing).
suzanne
On both Firefox on my laptoaster and on Safari on my iPhone, the site is a thing of beauty and a joy forever.
Omnes Omnibus
@licensed to kill time: I would read it if the margins weren’t all wonky. Maybe something could be done about that.
Dead Ernest
Firefox, Mac OS…
and always happy on this site.
Always, always, always.
…and now waiting for my consistently Kreepy Karma to kick in and kick me.
Omnes Omnibus
@suzanne: Look, you. It’s a blog not a freakin’ urn.
Cris
Oh, one more thing: moving IE’s Security Level to “High” for the Internet zone resolves the problem. It’s pretty clear at this point that the third-party content is the culprit.
So everybody make a PayPal donation so John can disable the ads for two weeks.
Cris
also a Nigerian has my bank routing number. pls fix asap
Morbo
@Sirkowski: This was my solution to the problem originally as well.
Dead Ernest
Further tempting Fate, no problem with Safari either.
Chat Noir
No problems with Firefox. I loaded it onto the new MacBook earlier in the summer. The new version of Safari takes way too long to load and refresh.
JBerardi
To paraphrase Office Space, why should Balloon-Juice change? It’s IE that sucks.
Morbo
And, using Opera’s “Inspect Element” function, I can see that the site goes to shit when there is an ad which features the style callout “span {white-space: nowrap}” and does not go to shit when that callout is absent. Might want to do something about that.
THE
In Opera,
I disabled Javascript in
Tools/Quick Preferences/Edit Site Preferences/Scripting
That fixes the problem for me.
duquesne_pdx
/delurk
I’m on IE8 at work and the margins run on forever.
I’ve been getting around it by copy+pasting into Word. It’s a PITA, but it’s a half-decent short-term fix.
/relurk
Morbo
@JBerardi: Interestingly enough, there appears to be a broken script named “ie6sux” when I load sometimes.
Butch
I guess it’s been suggested, but since I’m always willing to jump in with one of my pointless observations – the formatting is fine if I use Chrome instead of Outlook. I’m starting to like Chrome now that I’ve discovered it anyway.
Morbo
@THE: You win the internets for today. Granted I no longer have buttons for tags, and the link for “reply” is broken, but it’s worth it not to have to switch between author mode and user mode. Plus the ads are gone, win-win.
Jay S
For Opera, the “Page” menu toggle “Fit to width (ctrl – F11) ” worked for me.
Jay S
@Jay S:
Actually, “Fit to width” only worked from the menu. I can’t get the shortcut to work.
THE
@Jay S:
Yes, if I re-enable Javascript,
I can add “Fit to Width” to my custom buttons
It seems to work without impairing functionality
Jay S
@THE:
My problem with the shortcut was a keyboard option, not an Opera problem. Both the menu and shortcuts work.
SiubhanDuinne
I usually read/comment from the BlackBerry and don’t have a formatting problem. Well, at least not this formatting problem (there are many others, but they’re specifically ‘Berry glitches, I think.) But right now I’m viewing from a desktop monitor (IE — I don’t think I have a choice with that here) and OMG, I really understand why everyone gets so freaky about the lines running off to Infinityness. Really beyond annoying. I’m closing out of here and going back to the BB. Wow.
Allan
IE8 on Vista – margin hell.
Google Android on my Droid – fine, but don’t make me type with my thumbs!
Short term solution – read your buggy blog on my phone, fire up the laptop if I am moved to comment.
Cris
@Morbo: fascinating. I wonder if John could override that with one line of extra specificity:
#content span {white-space:normal;}
Though I’m a little skeptical, since the only content inside [span]s are the “Reply” links. Can you determine if those ads also set white-space:no-wrap for the [p] element?
LindaH
Firefox on a Mac is working fine for me.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
Strangely, the ten trillion other websites in the world seem to be handling the IE upgrade okay. But yeah, it’s IE that is the problem.
Sigh. Fuckin’. Programmers.
Allan
Webpage error details
User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/4.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0; HPNTDF; .NET4.0C; MSSDMC2.5.2219.1)
Timestamp: Mon, 9 Aug 2010 23:01:03 UTC
Message: Object expected
Line: 339
Char: 8
Code: 0
URI: http://www.change.org/widget_flash/PetitionScroller/change_embed.js
Message: ‘document.getElementById(…)’ is null or not an object
Line: 2
Char: 5
Code: 0
URI: https://balloon-juice.com/wp-content/themes/balloon-juice/ie6sux.js
Sirkowski
No problem with Firefox? Being slow as hell sounds like a problem to me.
Jay S
Here’s an IE8 workaround that works for me. Go to “Tools” “Internet Options” Select “Security”. Select “Restricted Sites” add “https://balloon-juice.com”.
I think that is the equivalent of setting high securtity but limited to this site.
Jay S
Hmm,
The restricted site thing seems to work, but I can’t see my last comment in IE8. Firefox can see it fine, the front page shows 62 comments and this page shows 61 in IE8. I’ve deleted history, refreshed, restarted the browser and it is still stuck on 61 comments.
I’m glad I don’t use IE8 on a regular basis.
Jay S
Ok,
I see my old comments after I comment, but they disapear when I refresh. IE8 didn’t retain my name and mail address. I can’t edit the comment in IE8.
I’ve turned off the restricted site flag. Let’s see how this does.
ETA I can edit and refresh when it’s not restricted.
asiangrrlMN
Google Chrome is just fine.
Dean Booth
fyi, In IE, the margin problem goes away if you turn off javascript (Tools>Internet Options>Security>Custom Settings>Disable Active Scripting). This is comparable to using the High security setting. My guess is that a specific ad is gumming up the works.
Be sure to enable Active Scripting for other sites like Amazon; standard features may not work without it.
Platonicspoof
Using XP SP2 and IE 8 (not updated couple weeks), active X controls not allowed, medium high for cookies, etc. = no problems with margins, dog photos in post above ok in both post and in comments, comment buttons and editing working, etc.
Maybe an admin could run one of the programs that analyzes web page errors at times like this and save the results for the experts to figure out later.
I’d be interested to know how often it’s one of the ads and a particular browser / OS.
Teejay
Bye, bye, so long, farewell. See you in September. BJ & IE
seems to be a marriage made in hell.