Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Consistently wrong since 2002

They don’t have outfits that big. nor codpieces that small.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

Celebrate the fucking wins.

Republicans in disarray!

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

The willow is too close to the house.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

Not rolling over. fuck you, make me.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

In my day, never was longer.

You are here: Home / z-Retired Categories / Previous Site Maintenance / Final Maintenance Open Thread

Final Maintenance Open Thread

by | 182 Comments

This post is in: ,

We’re going to stop for now and let things simmer for a while.

I’ve deactivated the plugin that opened external links in a new window, because of excessive whining. You want it to open in a new window, right click the link and choose to do so. Or press CTRL while clicking.

I removed gravatars because they suck.

We’ve enlarged the font.

Things should be fixed for you hopeless people who refuse to use a real browser and continue to pollute the world with IE.

Comment names should be fixed.

Removed the facebook “like” thing and replaced it with a whole bunch of social media options. None of which I use, so again, I don’t care, but I hope it makes you happier. If not, go drink DRANO.

And seriously, we’re both tired of this for now. Everything we fix for one person opens up a whole new bunch of WATB moaning by another group. I’m not Preznit, I don’t have to juggle all these whiny special interest groups.

The only thing left (that I know of) is to add ABL to the email.

*** Update ***

It is impossible to have the banner return you to the main page and to have the rotating tagline. Just click on the damned rotating tagline, for the love of everything holy. “OMG- I HAVE TO MOVE MY MOUSE A QUARTER INCH AND AIM FOR THE TEXT JUST LIKE EVERY OTHER FUCKING HYPERLINK IN THE WORLD. THE INJUSTICE OF IT ALL”

Reader Interactions

182Comments

  1. 1.

    Sko Hayes

    You poor guy, LOL. You can’t please everybody, nor should you try.
    I like it so far. No, I really like it, I do.

  5. 5.

    Yutsano

    My personal opinion: your blog, do what you want. If the format is enough to keep folks from commenting fuck them. They’re probably Unserious People anyway.

  6. 6.

    liza

    Everyone, if you middle-click on a link, it will open in a new tab. Much faster than right-clicking and selecting from a menu. As far as I know, this works in Firefox, Chrome, and IE. Just fyi.

  7. 7.

    jl

    I can’t find the dioramas.

    But I’ll leave that for later. I have to go watch ol’ Rex whoop the Pats all by himself, and I am late tuning into the game. That will be quite a thing to see. Looks like he is doing OK so far. Probably the fancy footwork.

    Edit: what is a gravatar? I assumed it was an exotic supermassive swarm of subatomic particles on a chip, designed to counterbalance the gravitational influence of Tunch, which was stripping electrons from the site and causing the blog problems. But maybe not. After the game I’ll run down to Good Guys and ask about it.

  9. 9.

    Rommie

    I think you were less surly when you smushed your shoulder blade. But it’s all good – we know Tunch will make you pay if you get out of control.

    I have no complaints using Firefox.

  11. 11.

    Violet

    For those of you who get text scrolling off the right instead of wrapping, it seems to be some script interference problem. If you keep reloading the page, eventually it goes away.

    I think it has something to do with whatever ad is running at the time. When that ad switches out, the problem disappears.

  14. 14.

    Buck

    John C,

    All that work… and you’re staying with the same lame-ass color scheme??? JESUS CHRIST, MAN!

    (hehehe, j/k!)

  16. 16.

    Allan

    There! It officially loaded right on the most widely used OS/Browser combo in existence. TYJC for conquering the mighty FYWP for us.

    ETA: Until the moment I commented, then text went soaring off into infinity again.

  19. 19.

    Alison

    Yay, it looks great now!

    Also, I’m using Firefox and not IE so I was not one of the hopeless losers even when it was all effed.

    People who still use IE as their main browser really confuse me.

  20. 20.

    Three-nineteen

    People don’t like links opening in a new tab? Weird. Don’t worry, I can right click. Site looks great.

  28. 28.

    RSA

    The only thing left (that I know of) is to add ABL to the email.

    Clicking anywhere in the banner should bring you to the blog home page.

  31. 31.

    Violet

    @MBL:

    What the hell is a middle-click?

    Click the wheel on your mouse. Or, if you’re on a laptop and don’t have one, click the left and right touchpad keys at the same time. Takes a little practice to get that right but it works the same way.

  32. 32.

    gogol's wife

    This looks better — but only on Safari. I don’t get why everyone is saying it looks great on Firefox. For me it’s illegible on Firefox and only looks good on Safari. On Firefox everything’s smushed up together, and the stuff that should be in the margins is down at the bottom.

  34. 34.

    quaint irene

    It is impossible to have the banner return you to the main page and to have the rotating tagline. Just click on the damned rotating tagline

    What are you guys talking about?? Banner? Tagline? I’m just happy if I get the homepage to load.
    *********
    Temps supposed to go down to the single digits tonight. Gotta put antifreeze down the shower drain so it doesn’t freeze.

  36. 36.

    MonkeyBoy

    @Three-nineteen:

    People don’t like links opening in a new tab?

    Some sites have a little checkbox labeled “force links to open in a new tab”. Maybe that could be integrated into FYWP.

    That way people who always want to do just that one thing out of the like 8 different things you can do with links would have their life made simpler.

  38. 38.

    sal

    Not looking right on Firefox. V. 3.6.13, Windows 7 Pro. Posts look blocky, sidebars all on left, bottom of the page. Comments look like a list in Excel.
    Looks okay in IE, Chrome.

  40. 40.

    eco2geek

    Thank you for the blog redesign, Mister Grumpypants. The site appears pretty much the same on Firefox 3.6.13 and Google Chromium 8.0 running on Ubuntu Linux — as well as IE 8.0, Firefox 3.6.13 and Google Chrome 8.0 running on WinXP.

    My sole request would be to make the links and blog posts a darker shade of blue, but you’ll probably tell me to go DIAF.

    ETA: Could you make the site set more cookies and add a few more ads? Good God. Adblock!

  41. 41.

    MonkeyBoy

    Remember,

    If things don’t look right, try refreshing the cache.
    __
    In most browsers this done with Ctrl-F5 and Ctrl-Shift-R and Command-F5.

  42. 42.

    BGinCHI

    Everything looks great, Cole, and it was a fun day of trying on avatars and seeing new colors and stuff.

    And it’s obvious the grumpy charade is just a mask for your deep love for the commentariat.

  43. 43.

    General Stuck

    Ho Hum. I never saw the need for an upgrade, or whatever this is, in the first place. I like my blogging and platform a little kinky. Things that run smooth make me nervous.

    But of course, this is all quite academic from someone not knowing what they are talking about

  45. 45.

    Villago Delenda Est

    “OMG- I HAVE TO MOVE MY MOUSE A QUARTER INCH AND AIM FOR THE TEXT JUST LIKE EVERY OTHER FUCKING HYPERLINK IN THE WORLD. THE INJUSTICE OF IT ALL”

    My only possible reaction to this is something about blood libel.

  47. 47.

    Anne Laurie

    Thank you, Mr. Cole, and also Ms. Webmistress (Stacy?).

    Boy, am I glad you guys didn’t try this when originally planned, right before the November elections.

    ABL, love the Ellison crack. Once you’re added, of course, your email will be at the top of the list; in return for which honor, I suspect you’ll be making a whole bunch of new friends with lazy/hasty reading habits…

  51. 51.

    mistermix

    @John Cole: On my phone (Motorola Droid) it’s showing up as the regular site. Looks OK, but usually WordPress sites with the mobile theme have a more compact look (e.g., Yglesias’ site).

    If you look in the administration interface, under appearance, the mobile switcher is disabled. I think you just need to enable it and tell it to use one of the mobile themes when a mobile browser hits the site.

  55. 55.

    sherifffruitfly

    It is impossible to have the banner return you to the main page and to have the rotating tagline

    Whoever told you that is simply lying to you. Or else too stupid to realize they have no idea what they’re talking about. It is NOT impossible. Just a point of fact – I don’t actually give a rat’s ass either way about that feature.

  58. 58.

    suzanne

    I love the pissy Cole.

    Though all y’all must be OLD! The type is *huge*… I have to press Command- in order to not feel like I’m reading a book for old people.

    I too miss the large elegant post numbers on the left, but I can deal. Only other suggestion I have is to make the commenter’s name and post number offset even more to the left, or bold the commenter’s name, because right now, some of the names show up in the same type weight and size as the text of the comment itself, and I’ve found I’m missing the name.

  60. 60.

    alwhite

    your place, your rules. I’m not unhappy with any of the variations so far (although I am kinda bummed I created a gravitar & now can’t use it)

    Again, I am sure you sweated the details on all this so thanks.

  62. 62.

    eemom

    On behalf of myself and all other similarly situated commenters, I demand recompense for the time we all spent this morning obsessing over the avatar thing.

    Also, we can haz FB group page? SOME of us like FB. Takes like five seconds to set one up.

    And no, we don’t care if John Cole is a member. We don’t want to have a drink with him either.

  63. 63.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    Things should be fixed for you hopeless people who refuse to use a real browser and continue to pollute the world with IE.

    What would Billy Gates do without stupid people? ;)

    This is what you get for trying to make teh libruls happy, misery.

    Looks fine to me on SeaMonkey (2.0.11).

  66. 66.

    Linkmeister

    I’m using Firefox 3.6.13 and there’s no spacing between comments. No separator lines, but that would be okay if there was a double space between each comment.

    If I’m the only one seeing this, I’ll shut up.

    ETA: Never mind. Refreshed and it now looks fine, with separators.

  67. 67.

    Joshua Norton

    It’s beautiful! It’s wonderful! It’s a major achievement in blogging history! A testament to the brilliance that is modern technology.

    I wouldn’t change a thing.

    Except maybe the color……

  72. 72.

    Left Coast Tom

    I see when I’m on the main page there’s a rotating page title in addition to the rotating tag line (and that they’re different). For example, the main page loaded in the next tab over has the title “Balloon Juice. Also, too.”, and the tag line “Verified, but limited!”.

    The page started looking a lot better once the old CSS cleared itself out of my browser cache. It was really broken before that (post titles large enough for the legally blind, no real formatting, etc.).

  75. 75.

    Rommie

    I’m reading and posting from my IPod. The site is readable, but it is not loading a mobile version.

  77. 77.

    Phoebe

    I’ve always clicked on the rotating tagline. I didn’t know I could just click anywhere on the entire banner. It’s not going to stop me from complaining about the change, though.

  78. 78.

    Mystical Chick

    John, I’d probably hate your “what-the-fuck-ever” attitude in real life but reading it on your blog? Makes me love you even more.

    (Well, the thing you have about loving your pets to pieces and your amazing feat of strength last year popping your shoulder back in to place are also bonuses.)

    Okay, I probably *wouldn’t* hate you but we’d have to retreat to separate houses in order to get along full-time.

    :)

  79. 79.

    Rommie

    Just tried it again, mistermix – getting the mobile version on the main page and comments on my Ipod. Yay.

  80. 80.

    mikej

    Site looks fine on droid. No nonsensical special format. My screen is big enough that the standard layout looks fine. I can’t stand sites that remove all the helpful stuff to make it fit on some retarded miniature screen.

  82. 82.

    Alex S.

    I liked my David Broder avatar. I demand that we have the option to show them. I want the public option! NOW!

  83. 83.

    Joseph Nobles

    If there’s meant to be a mobile version, it’s not loading onto my Android phone. WPTouch is the mobile plug-in I use for my two little vanity sites. The free version is verra nice all by itself, but with the traffic this joint gets, you might want to spring for the pay version with all the extra doodads. It’s not that expensive.

    https://www.bravenewcode.com/store/plugins/wptouch-pro/

    Thus endeth my unpaid testimonial for the day.

    ETA: After two reloads, the Android still isn’t seeing a mobile version of the site. It’s no big thing to me, but if you’re looking for it to happen on Android phones, it’s not.

  85. 85.

    gnomedad

    “OMG- I HAVE TO MOVE MY MOUSE A QUARTER INCH AND AIM FOR THE TEXT JUST LIKE EVERY OTHER FUCKING HYPERLINK IN THE WORLD. THE INJUSTICE OF IT ALL”

    OK, OK, OK. White People Problem. I get it.

    And to be fair, thanks for all the upgrade work.

  88. 88.

    MonkeyBoy

    Cole:

    The only thing left (that I know of) is to add ABL to the email.

    Is blockquote fixed yet? Or is the FYWP double underscore multi-paragraph blockquote hack, ©MonkeyBoy 2009, still needed.

    Let’s test:
    Blockquoting multiple paragraphs with a blank line between gives:

    1. The reign in Spain

    2. goes mainly down the drain.

    With a double underscore line instead of a blank gives

    1. The drain in Spain
    __
    2. Is plain.

    I haven’t tested the cases where if you don’t do the stuff correctly before and after a blockquote tag the whole contents go bold.

    P.S. The ‘blockquote problem’ is really a problem where the parser ‘helps’ by closing any open tags when a blank line is found. You can bold two paragraphs with one pair of b /b tags if blank line between them is changed to a double underscore.

    So still at least one fix before there can be a final maintenance thread.

    Ta Da!

  90. 90.

    bago

    CSS for comments needs headings per comment. The alternating row coloring is insufficient.

    Which just happened.

  91. 91.

    Martin

    It is impossible to have the banner return you to the main page and to have the rotating tagline.

    FYWP! This isn’t fucking 1995!

  92. 92.

    A Ghost To Most

    looks good here on Chrome and IE on XP, and Balloon Juice has never looked so good on my Crackberry.

  94. 94.

    Comrade Mary

    Ooh! The mobile site is AWESOME on the iPhone. (Well, as long as I turn the phone sideways when I comment.)

  95. 95.

    Cat Lady

    I still miss the ability to preview comments from one of the earlier iterations, but I assume that’s never coming back, and it’s a a minor quibble anyway. The separation between comments isn’t as easy on these old eyes either. Get off my lawn! Also.

  97. 97.

    Kristine

    ::loves grumpy John::

    Things look fine on Safari 5.0.3. I’m stuck with AIYEE 8 at the day job, and am hoping text stops running out to infinity and beyond. Won’t know until Tuesday.

  98. 98.

    Chris Grrr

    FYWP.
    That was a cumulative FY for old irritations.

    Lily will never sell personal info to corporations. Probably.

  101. 101.

    Tom Hilton

    You know who else forced his readers to click on a text link to return them to the main page?

    Well…he would have, anyway, if he had had a blog.

  105. 105.

    Yurpean

    Looks good, nice clear crisp design. One minor request: is it possible to make it so the social networking icons only appear if you click on the little button, rather than when the mouse passes over them, as they can be quite distracting.

  107. 107.

    David Fud

    FYI: My Chrome has all of the contacts, Pages, ads, recent posts, etc. all below the “leave a reply” form. It looks nice in IE, but is really broken in Chrome. Weird since it seems others are not having this problem. I didn’t have this problem before.

    Oh, well. Guess I’ll miss out on the ads and the nicer design.

  108. 108.

    WaterGirl

    @David Fud: Have you tried the suggestion above:

    If things don’t look right, try refreshing the cache.
    __
    In most browsers this done with Ctrl-F5 and Ctrl-Shift-R and Command-F5.

  112. 112.

    suzanne

    On the mobile site, there are no lines between the comments, and you can’t directly reply to another comment.

    It looks good, though.

    (On iPhone 3GS)

  113. 113.

    RSA

    It is impossible to have the banner return you to the main page and to have the rotating tagline. Just click on the damned rotating tagline, for the love of everything holy. “OMG- I HAVE TO MOVE MY MOUSE A QUARTER INCH AND AIM FOR THE TEXT JUST LIKE EVERY OTHER FUCKING HYPERLINK IN THE WORLD. THE INJUSTICE OF IT ALL”

    You sound like a software developer, John.

    For what it’s worth, it’s not for me. It’s for someone who finds one of these pages through a search engine and thinks, “I’ve never read such an interesting blog! I wonder what’s on the front page? I guess I click ‘Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!'” It’s basic usability–making Web pages usable even for people who might be relative novices.

  114. 114.

    MazeDancer

    Eternal gratitude for minimizing any FaceBook anything.

    Just wondering if it is possibly to tweak the typography of the comments – and the numbers if possible – so that the name of the poster is bold, a different, color, font, any or all of the above, to separate it more distinctly from where the comment begins. Would increase readability. Makes easier skimming. Helps separate comments.

    There is a sort of simulation of that enhancement by the folks whose names are blue indicating clickability because they have blogs. Change of color makes it easier for the eye to move from one comment to the next.

  116. 116.

    suzanne

    @asiangrrlMN: OK, on the mobile site, you can reply to another commented if they have their name link to their own site, but you can’t otherwise.

    Blar.

  118. 118.

    geg6

    Heh. The Team Which Must Not Be Named loses ugly. Couldn’t happen to a better bunch. I hate them with the fiery heat of ten John Coles.

    Love, love, love the site on my iPhone, I must say. Looks great, loads quickly. Many thanks, Cole and his Tech Minion.

  119. 119.

    jbb

    It is impossible to have the banner return you to the main page and to have the rotating tagline.

    Not to send John into a tailspin, but this is really not true. It can’t be done with the way the markup is currently structured, sure (that would be true if the rotating tagline were there or not), but all it requires is pulling the “Balloon Juice” text out of the headerimg div background and throwing it as a separate image with alpha transparency into its own tag inside the headerimg div.

  125. 125.

    slag

    Wow. Not having kept up with any of this maintenance discussion, I was viewing it in Chrome for Mac and thinking, “This can’t possibly be how it’s supposed to look”.

    Holy cross-browser compatibility problems Batman!

  126. 126.

    Frank

    John, it’s your damn blog. Do what you want.

    I don’t read it several times a day for the theme. I read it for the content.

  127. 127.

    stormhit

    @Alison:

    What’s so confusing? At the moment IE 9 seems (and is, according to benchmarks) the fastest of the big 3 browsers.

    Should that change, I’ll use a different one.

  130. 130.

    gbear

    ..you hopeless people who refuse to use a real browser and continue to pollute the world with IE.

    The borders are still broken. If you want to have the only site in the blogosphere that doesn’t work for people using IE, that’s up to you. It’s kind of a fucked up decision though. I don’t care if your site never lets me make a comment again, but at least set it up so that I can READ the thing using the same settings that I use for EVERY OTHER SITE that I have ever visited. Fucking snob.

  131. 131.

    geg6

    Okay, couple of complaints. I have to put my email address in every time I post a comment. And I cannot for the life of me figure out how to reply to other commenters. Oh, and this all on the iPhone. Will have to wait for tomorrow to see it on the computer at work.

  133. 133.

    Catsy

    @jbb: Thank you, I was about to quote that and ask exactly why he thinks it’s impossible, because unless the administration of WP is made of even more fail than it already seems to be, it ought to be a dirt-simple change. The header may be currently designed in a way that makes it prohibitive, but that’s a problem with the design, not an issue of it being impossible to do.

    Okay, I just took a look at the markup, and you’re right–instead of making the header image a background image for the element, just turn it into an IMG tag and wrap it in an anchor. It is a simple change.

    And contra John’s whining, it’s not about anyone being too lazy to move their mouse an inch one way or the other, it’s about UI standards that just make the web easier to use for everyone, including and especially disabled and mobile users. The cutesy rotating tagline gimmick might be easy enough to hit with a mouse, but it’s a pain in the ass to reliably do with your fingertip on a touch screen, and having the website logo on the header function as a “home” link has been a proven and common UI convention since before half the commenters here were born (ETA: I exaggerate, but not by much).

  134. 134.

    MikeJ

    @Comrade Mary:

    Ooh! The mobile site is AWESOME on the iPhone. (Well, as long as I turn the phone sideways when I comment.)

    That’s what I would have written had I wanted to parody Apple fans.

  135. 135.

    dogwood

    I’m a complete computer dunce. I use a Macbook and Safari 5.0. The front page is fine, but the formatting of the comment section is pretty unreadable. I doubt I’ll stop reading the front page entries, but I’ll miss reading the comments which are part of the fun here.

  136. 136.

    dogwood

    Ok. I told you I was a dunce. After I posted my comment (136) the page reloaded and the comments look fine now. Don’t know what the problem was before.

  140. 140.

    Zuzu's Petals

    @dogwood:

    Interesting. Just ordered an iMac and wondered what the dif might be using Safari (currently Firefox on my PC). Glad to know it turned out okay.

    PS, I think I can use Firefox on my iMac, yes?

  141. 141.

    Perfect Tommy

    Not sure if this is a Firefox issue – but the formatting of this blog just went from being one of the most readable, to being on par with a credit card privacy disclosure insert.

    edit: Must have been a transient thing, The formatting is now readable again at 20:54

  143. 143.

    Ash Can

    So which of our current troll menagerie is going to be the first to post here to say “YOU CHANGED THE FORMAT JUST TO KEEP ME FROM COMMENTING HERE DIDN’T YOU?”

  144. 144.

    Mike S

    Using Google Chrome: At first the comments were run together and very hard to read also the front page had no side bars, but I followed the suggestion to clear the cache and now it looks great! (But ABL is still missing from the contact list :-(

  148. 148.

    jTh

    You changed the format just to keep me from commenting here, didn’t you?

    Seriously, looks really really good on the iPhone. There’s no Reply function, and this comment box is a little weird, but the net gains are huge.

    One request after some dust has settled would be only for tweaking a couple (hopefully) easy variables out front: more entries listed by default (10 or 20 instead of 5), and longer blurb copy out there (say, a whole paragraph rather than just 8-10 words). These are minor low-priority requests, but I hope you’ll put them in the queue (espec. since they should be easy and non-controversial).

    Again, props on a hell of a transition!

  149. 149.

    Zuzu's Petals

    @Ash Can:

    I’d bet on Lorna. She insisted the moderator was deleting her very first comments only because she didn’t agree with him. Never heard of new commenter filters I spoze.

  152. 152.

    Ron

    A couple of weird things I’ve noticed on my droid. While the mobile version comes up on Dolphin, the standard browser gets the full version. If the comments get above 100 the first digit gets chopped off. Finally, the reply function doesn’t seem to work right. Still, overall I’m happy with it.

  153. 153.

    Steeplejack

    My reaction to the redesign is still a little mixed but settling down. I did do a full Danny Thomas spit-take when I saw it on my Droid earlier today. It was really messed up earlier, and it is still not quite satisfactory on there. The main thing–on the Droid–is that “clicking” on the link to a comment to which another comment is replying does not take me back to the previous comment. I will try reloading the browser and see if that fixes things.

    On the PC, things are much better. I guess my complaints are mostly aesthetic. I liked the previous look well, and I’m not sure the new look is better. Glad I missed the avatars and gravatars earlier. Shudder. My main whine is that I wish the “Link” link beside the commenter’s name and time stamp would be flush right, so they would line up vertically. One of my almost unconscious habits is to click the “Link” link to pull the current comment up to the top of the page, and now I have to hunt for them a bit. But I’m sure I’ll get used to it.

  155. 155.

    The Other Chuck

    It is impossible to have the banner return you to the main page and to have the rotating tagline

    Yep, still WordPress.

    Love your blog, Cole, but you’ll never get me to like WordPress.

  157. 157.

    Shadow's Mom

    Not sure I like the font, but I’ll get used to it. I am long used to clicking the rotating tagline to return to homepage so no change there is just fine.

    Like the share option feature.

    Good job all!

  158. 158.

    srv

    The Share/Save button thingy is really annoying. It pops up whenever the cursor near it, and I don’t know how to make it go away – sometimes the “comment” hypertext is under the popup, and then I have to click somewhere else to make it un-popup, and then go back to comment. Half the time I click somewhere else, I hit an add border or something and off we go somewhere else.

    I should have to click the damn thing, or expand it. It shouldn’t popup all the time.

  159. 159.

    trixie larue

    good luck with the transition. I don’t know what it’s all about. It all seems the same to me. I don’t know about the font; it looks the same.

    I like your blog anyway,, no matter what.

  160. 160.

    Ron

    For those who have been having problems on a droid, I can only suggest downloading a different browser than the standard one. I have yet to see the mobile version load on the standard browser that comes with it, but the Dolphin browsers work fine. (I tried Skyfire and it came up with the standard one as well. I have no idea why dolphin works and the others don’t.)

  161. 161.

    Kay Shawn

    Sorry, but the comments are harder to read, and thus, not as much fun to chew on and respond to…no offense, it ‘s just feedback. I will go drink my Drano now.

  163. 163.

    IronyAbounds

    Is this site run by John Cole or John McCain. Both would score 9.9s from the judges in the Olympic “GET OFF MY LAWN” competition (perhaps even a 10.0 from the Russian judge).

  164. 164.

    Wile E. Quixote

    Eh, I suppose it’s OK. I didn’t find anything wrong with the old design that couldn’t be explained away by the utter suck that is FYWP. One question: Where’s the easter egg that when clicked on opens the “John Cole Hot Naked Mopping Webcam?” C’mon Cole, you promised!

  165. 165.

    mb

    Can I just say, I fucking HATE those MOTHERFUCKING social media FUCKING pop-ups?

    Can I?

    I’m taking your silence as a “yes.”

  167. 167.

    Pseudonym

    What plugins are you using for the rotating tagline and for comment formatting? I am familiar with all WordPress plugin traditions and would be happy to take a stab at fixing some of the problems.

  168. 168.

    Vlad

    When looking at the mobile site (Safari on a first-gen iPhone), the “disable the mobile site” link at the bottom is broken, and does nothing.

  169. 169.

    brent

    @jbb:
    @Catsy:

    Okay, I just took a look at the markup, and you’re right—instead of making the header image a background image for the element, just turn it into an IMG tag and wrap it in an anchor. It is a simple change.

    Actually, I don’t think even this is really necessary. Not that I really care much, but you should be able to create an empty anchor tag, positioned relative to the current link on the slogan or against the 200 px margin on the headerimg class that is sized to fill the space where the current logo is. You could even just put a transparent gif or png right in that space and put an anchor tag around it. Wouldn’t have to change the background.

  171. 171.

    Comrade Mary

    Do any other Windows people using Firefox see the blue headers for each post (in H1) as slightly eroded-looking Helvetica?

    I can see that your headers from H1 to H6 are set to use font-family: Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif. Does anyone object to changing the order to font-family: Arial, Helvetica, Verdana, sans-serif?

    Mac users will still get lovely Helvetica, and Windows users like me, who somehow wound up with half-assed Helvetica, will at least get clean Arial headers.

  173. 173.

    jTh

    @mistermix, I woke up this morning to the happiest surprise! YES, you have optimized my Balloon Juice reading experience on the iPhone. It’s marvelous now.

  174. 174.

    HeartlandLiberal

    IE 8 displays the site with the left and right sidebars in place. IE is set with standard trust, I did have to allow Adobe Flash addin to run, oddly had to click to allow three times.

    FireFox 4.6.13, the latest, is a total mess. The left sidebar decides to appear on the left starting at the very end of the last post on the page, and spacing is odd, and there is 0 left marging, the text is dead flush to the left side of the browser. The ride sidebar elements start in the middle section below the central posting area, and are spread at wide and scattered points downward from there. With Firefox, I am using NoScript and Ghostery, FWIW, but with NoScript choosing to trust all elements on the page.

    Pretty much a total mess at the moment.

  176. 176.

    HeartlandLiberal

    Might have your designer check this out.

    With FireFox, I choose to look at source of the main page. I find this css code: id=”sidebar-right”.

    I look at the standard stylesheet (style.css), and that id is nowhere to be found. Instead, the sidebare style elements are sidebar and sidebar2, apparently. No right and left.

    I then look at the alternate style sheet for IE, ie.css. And there is the sidebar-right nomenclature.

    Problem is, FireFox is trying to render and use the IE stylesheet. Ergo, since there is no “sidebar-right” or “sidebar-left” to render, the sidebars just drift to the bottom of the page.

    According to the code in the page as rendered, the style sheets being used are:

    href=”https://balloon-juice.com/wp-content/themes/balloon-juice/style.css”

    and [if IE]

    href=”https://balloon-juice.com/wp-content/themes/balloon-juice/ie.css”

    Yet another reason to hate cross browser compatibility issues, and wish that all browsers had stuck to standards as was the original goal of this web thingy.

  177. 177.

    HeartlandLiberal

    @HeartlandLiberal: I discovered that Ghostery addon in FireFox was preventing the sidebars from displaying correctly. I turned it off, and the display worked correctly. So I will have to finer tune it, just as I do NoScript, for the site. FWIW if anyone else is actually trying to secure their browsers.

  178. 178.

    HeartlandLiberal

    @HeartlandLiberal: Well, I take back my remark about Ghostery as sidebar issue cause. FireFox is now loading the correct css style sheet file, and getting the correct sidebar and sidebar2 commands, that appears to be what fixed the display for me. I turned Ghostery back on, apparently turning it off was just coincidental with FireFox loading the correct style sheet when I went back and forced a page refresh.

  179. 179.

    Roxy

    Lurker here. I’m using chrome, and the comments are unreadable. Posting a comment helped before, so I’ll try it again.

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