Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

You cannot shame the shameless.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

Everybody saw this coming.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

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

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

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

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

The GOP is a fucking disgrace.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / A Quick Tour of the House

A Quick Tour of the House

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I thought a quick tour might be in order as everyone gets the hang of the new site.

The Right-hand Side

If we move over to the right-hand side, you’ll find a big button. Right now it says Site Feedback; we thought there might be a lot of that for awhile! Pretty soon, though, that will likely say Pet Calendar and will takes us to the call for photos, instructions for submitting the, how to order, when to order, etc. If we had a time machine and could go back a year or so, when our friend was in need, it would have said Leto GoFundMe.

The search box. Once the new site is indexed, we’ll be able to search for things in the comments as well as in the original posts. It takes hours and hours and hours to index, so indexing has not even started at this point. We’ll need to fine-tune some things once we start using it – we can choose how heavily to weigh finds in comments vs. front page posts. So not to worry if search results aren’t exactly what we want right out of the gate.

Not much to say about Recent Comments, except to say they are back.

Balloon Juice Posts gives you 3 different windows to BJ posts since the beginning of time. Every post is assigned to at least one Topic; if a post was assigned to Politics, Open Thread and Climate Change, you will find that post under three boxes in the grid. The author page speaks for itself, I think, and the rest is self-explanatory. Who am I kidding, there will be questions!

Featuring is a fun one. The 5 links under Featuring will change regularly, maybe not like clockwork, but typically about once a month. Except for John Cole, of course. I am making him stay there forever. (Translation: I told John that as blog lord, he should stay in that slot forever, and he grudgingly agreed. Or, alternatively, John wasn’t paying any attention to what I was saying, which might mean that he has no idea that he agreed to that!) But I digress. Any author, current or past, and any category or subcategory or sub-sub-category can be featured over time. By popular demand, our first change will surely be the addition of duck blogging, which means that one of the existing items will be swapped out. But hey, it’s Penelope, we all have to make sacrifices for the greater good.

What’s the thinking behind featuring? For one thing, we want it to be timely. During ACA Open Enrollment, David Anderson will be under Featuring. When Tom Levenson’s next book comes out, he will be featured. We can feature TaMara’s Recipe posts when her new cookbook comes out. Right now, we want everyone to be able to easily find their beloved On the Road posts. Once you get the hang of the new site, you will know that it’s always at your fingertips under Photo Blogging on the View by Topics page, and something else will be featured. Featuring will almost never include a top-level category; it’s intended to call attention to particular authors or to subcategories the would never see the light of day otherwise, unless you happened upon it in a front page post.

Enough about Featuring. (Two paragraphs!) Hmm. I guess this one makes three!

Calling All Jackals! I’ll say more about this in a separate thread but you will be able to see upcoming meetups and see meetups that have already happened. I put 3 past meetups in there as quick examples, but any past meetup can be included in there if anyone wants to send details and photos. I think John was kind of excited at the thought of an archive of all our past meetups, but it will be up to you guys to supply information if we want to do that. We’ll have to see how it goes with Balloon Juice News – it could be a big hit or land with a dull thud. If you want to know about an upcoming Writer’s Chat, or about upcoming Guest Posts or if you missed the news when Subaru Diane broke her wrist (stop doing that, SD!) you could find it there. Any front-pager can add information to Balloon Juice News, if they are willing. Oh, and Site Feedback is here in addition to up top. This is its permanent home; the top button is only a temporary home for Site Feedback for a few weeks.

The last stop on the right is John’s twitter feed. Just think how much better that will look when front-pagers start adding featured images to their posts!

Let’s not forget the Header and Footer

Balloon Man is back, baby! I missed you, Balloon Man! Rotating tags are back where they belong, in the header. Oh, and if you click on balloon guy from anywhere, you go straight to the front page. Not much more to say about the header, but the footer gets a shoutout. That’s where the blogroll lives. The blogroll is bracketed by lists of published Balloon Juice authors and Balloon Juice artists and artisans who have websites. You can see that work has already started on the author file. Cole will be putting out a call for artists and artisans.

We will be pleased to add your blog, your books and your artist websites to the appropriate lists – more details on how to do that will follow later, because we want information in a certain format so we don’t have to make creating these files our life’s work.

Please read the Comment Policy for the Rules of the Road at Balloon Juice. (As soon as John finishes it.)

Edit: I thought you guys would get tired or ask for cookies if I gave you the whole tour at once.  Additional tours this weekend or next week.

Reader Interactions

107Comments

  1. 1.

    Zelma

    I want to thank everybody for all the work that went into the site update. Of course, being an old fogey, what I like best is that it looks and apparently operates pretty much like the old site. The explanation of features is great and maybe should be made available somehow for a while.

    I really missed Balloon Juice yesterday. Too bad that the update and the first day of impeachment coincided. I shall now try to catch up.

    Again. Thanks.

  7. 7.

    UncleEbeneezer

    My phone, yesterday:

    “Hi John, I’m Candace, a volunteer w/Yang2020. Andrew Yang is running for President with over 100 ambitious policy proposals to build an economy that works for us. On a scale from 1st to 5th of your top candidates, where would you rank Andrew?”

    Me: Somewhere between 9 and 12  ? ?

  8. 8.

    WaterGirl

    @NotMax: Sorry, NotMax, considered, discussed and decided months ago. For possible consolation, please take a look at meetup dot com.

  12. 12.

    Quaker in a Basement

    Thanks, WaterGirl. The new site is pretty and quick. Congratulations to you and the rest of the project team. Great work!

  15. 15.

    zhena gogolia

    I’m enjoying Cyrillic and colors and emojis. Огромное спасибо! Долой Трампа!

     

    ??

  16. 16.

    Sab

    How do I put people in the pie filter? Only one of my five blockages survived the transition to the new site

    ETA: I love the new site so far.

  17. 17.

    WaterGirl

    @Just Chuck: Can we put you in the arena with the people who say blogrolls are dead and definitely don’t put it on the right-hand side?   We can alternate that with the the people who think the font is too big and the others who think the font is too small.  The third layer can be the people who think the white space is just right and the people who think there is too much.

    I am not mocking in any way.  The french have a phrase, that loosely translates to “tastes and colors”.  Apparently those are not things governed by reason or logic.  They are what they are.  The same thing is true for the things I mentioned above.  It is simply not possible to please everyone.

  18. 18.

    LanceThruster

    Is the pie pic and the number an indicator of who has me filtered? I clicked on it but did not see 16 names.

    Great job all on the new site, btw.

  21. 21.

    WaterGirl

    @Sab: Click on the cherry tart that is above the comments, hanging out with the circle that shows # of comments.

    There are 3 tabs: the first one is where you choose who to pie, the second is where you can un-pie someone, the third is where you can choose between images (my favorite!) pie sayings, and just having the comment removed but nothing in its place.

    Your selections are saved immediately. Just close the box and you will find your pie settings will have become the new reality.

     

  22. 22.

    JGabriel

    Compared to previous roll-outs, this has gone remarkably well.

    Kudos, Watergirl. Thanks for all the work you and the rest of the team put into redesigning the site.

  24. 24.

    Just Chuck

    Whereas I think blogrolls are awesome, and the main reason they haven’t continued to be fashionable is because they tend to accumulate dead blogs, if not outright broken links, due to being edited infrequently.

     

    If the blogroll here is like that, then we may as well keep it in the footer.

  27. 27.

    JGabriel

    Minor Request: Some of the slower or more error-prone typists (and I’m both) might appreciate lengthening the edit window from 5 minutes to 10 or 15 minutes.

     

     

  28. 28.

    LanceThruster

    Never mind. The number is comments and the pie lists individual commenters in a given post I take it?

  32. 32.

    WaterGirl

    @LanceThruster: I don’t believe it includes all commenters – they are alphabetically listed until they stop.  You can search for a commenter by typing the first letter – if the one you want to pie comes after the list stops.  The # in the circle is the number of comments when you last refreshed.  The # circle & the pie filter hang out together, but they are not directly related.  Maybe cousins since they are both related to comments.

     

  34. 34.

    Mallard Filmore

    Please consider one more minor tweak: put the front page author’s name in bold, or bigger, or something.

  35. 35.

    Avalune

    If we had a time machine and could go back a year or so, when our friend was in need, it would have said Leto GoFundMe.

     

    Awe that’s sweet but definitely not a time machine destination I’d want to take. ?

  37. 37.

    WaterGirl

    @Just Chuck: John does not believe the blogroll is dead.  We updated it before adding the blogs to the site, and John is adamant about keeping it up to date and about using it to help promote other bloggers. The plan is for us to go through it together every 3 months, though John doesn’t know that yet so mum’s the word.

     

    John, in fact, has plans to expand on it as time permits, including adding other resources besides blogs.

     

  42. 42.

    JaySinWA

    @WaterGirl: John should just cut and past his resent recent rambling post on it for now and then revise it when he gets it into the perfect mess he is looking for. Which I expect will be never

    ETA Maybe someone could do that for John (the cut and paste) behind his back maybe?

  44. 44.

    JGabriel

    @WaterGirl: Have you noticed that the 5-minute window resets every time you edit?

    I had not. Thank you for pointing it out. That should help.

     

    You seem to have anticipated nearly everything. Again, Kudos.

     

     

  45. 45.

    Avalune

    @WaterGirl: No no that’s unnecessary. I appreciate the thought and how it led to the design element. I was just thinking what a shitty ride that would be!

     

  47. 47.

    AJ

    Watergirl and everyone else who’s worked on this I think it looks and works freakin GREAT! Thank you so much for all the time, effort, attention, and laboring over the things which some might think are small but about which there will always be many (and differing!) opinions.

    I think the whole thing looks fantastic and runs really well.

  50. 50.

    WaterGirl

    @Avalune: I was about to write that I’m sorry I made you think about it, but I know you guys are living with the aftermath every single day.  Leto has made an amazing recovery, but just my broken ankle last year has given me a tiny window into knowing that even mind-blowing progress still feels way too slow.

  51. 51.

    Amir Khalid

    I have no idea how to use emojis. Can someone show me? You can have my eternal gratitude in return.

  52. 52.

    stinger

    Thanks for the tour! One thing that is probably intuitive for most people, but took me a while to figure out, is that the blogroll and other footer items can be quickly accessed using the down arrow in the UR. Scrolling, especially in a long comment thread, was never going to get me there!

  53. 53.

    WaterGirl

    @JaySinWA: I actually did that, and it was in golive for the past few weeks. It was the wonderful rant that Mary G dug out from 2011 or something.  It was perfect!  I encouraged him to use it for part of the policy,  but I don’t think he is.

    John should just cut and past his resent recent rambling post on it for now and then revise it…

  54. 54.

    WaterGirl

    @stinger: I think people are really going to like the navigation items in the top white bar, as soon as they remember they are there and learn the best ones to use when!  They are even there on mobile devices. I tried really hard for the same functionality on all devices.  It’s not perfect, of course, but that was a serious goal.

     

  55. 55.

    Aleta

    Another well done (???) : All current comments show up the first time I look at a post, so far.

    No more forced ritual (click post, click ‘comments,’ then refresh 1x-3x) to get the current # to appear on top and that same # of comments to show. ? ?

    Maybe with ads, the loading and timing and the space itself will change, but even so, a nice gift this week. Thanks Watergirl. Air+Safari

  56. 56.

    JaySinWA

    @Amir Khalid: It depends on your system I think. I can get a limited set on my Chromebook by turning on the onscreen keyboard in accessibility settings. I think you can do that in Windows as well.

    ETA if I recall correctly Windows support varies from release to release. I’ll take a look at Win 10 now.

  61. 61.

    Redshift

    Loving the new site!

    A couple of very minor things – would it be possible to get the author names into the RSS feed? I feel like they used to be there in the old site, but I could be wrong. If not, consider it an enhancement request.

    Second, while reading through the part of your post about “on the right” I scrolled to the right in my phone, and discovered that the page will scroll over to show about 1 1/2 screen widths of blank space. (Android 10, Chrome.) Not at all important, but could be confusing to someone who got there by accident.

  63. 63.

    Redshift

    I really like having a meetups link, if we can all remember to use it. I’ve had plenty of times of going back through the posts hunting for the latest meetup announcement.

  65. 65.

    JaySinWA

    @JaySinWA:

     

    @WaterGirl:

    This may be the relevant portion.

    Obviously, and this is no mystery to anyone here, I don’t read the comments as much as I used to. For years, I responded to almost every comment directed my way, and spent hours upon hours mixing it up. I just don’t have the time to do that anymore, and some times I just get burnt out with it all and need a break. We’re coming up on 20 years as a blog, and I don’t know if you realize it, 20 years for a blog is A LONG FUCKING TIME. Most digital magazines only last a year or two, to give you an idea. So I do what I have to do to stay fresh, or as close to it as reasonably possible. A lot of times I go to write posts these days, and Betty Cracker or Mistermix or Anne Laurie or someone else has already not only addressed what I wanted to talk about, but did a better job than I would have.

    I’m rambling. At any rate, I want to talk about how we treat each other in the comments. As always, you are free to say, within limits, whatever the fuck you want in the comments. Obviously there are some things we will not tolerate, like racist, sexist, and other wise bigoted bullshit. But my overall philosophy has been you are, within limits, able to post whatever you want, because it only reflects on you. When you say stupid shit, you’re the one who is standing out in public with your pants around your ankles looking the fool, not me. We’re not going to delete comments, we’re not going to censor you, and if people don’t want to hear your rambling nonsense, well, that’s why we have the pie filter (ALL HAIL CLEEK!).

    Having said that, I do want to caution you that it appears we are all strung out from year 67 (that is how long he has been President, right?) of the Trump Presidency and the never-ending cavalcade of nonsense and the ceaseless barrage of mean-spiritedness and overall nastiness, and appear at times to be taking it out on each other. I’d like you to think about how you treat your fellow commenters, and try to, in the words of Melania, BE BEST. There’s no reason for pile-ons of decent people who you just happen to disagree with. Just because you don’t value one person’s insight doesn’t mean there aren’t others who love them. I’m speaking in general, but more specifically I saw MomSense take a heap of abuse and there have been others. There’s just no need for that. It’s not your job to tone police the comments, or to drive off people who don’t agree with you. There’s no need to assume that because someone lurves them some Bernie or has a full on crush for Biden (both positions I personally find mystifying) is just a troll or trying to hurt Democrats or what not. Just stop it with the bad faith stuff.

    This place is supposed to be a community and a safe haven. Try to be good to one another. Try to keep that every person typing, even if their screen name is LordFartDaddy, is an actual living, breathing, sentient human being, with feelings and emotions and a life of their own. You don’t know how bad their day has been. You don’t know what they are struggling with on an hourly basis. Try not to fuck with them. Let’s use this space to help each other, help liberal causes, and vent when we need to. Let’s try to be better about not tearing each other down and getting at each other’s throats. And this goes for commenters and front pagers.

    Or else I’m gonna have to fuck one or more of you up. Steve hasn’t eaten since noon, people. This is not an idle threat.

     

  73. 73.

    Just Chuck

    @jeffreyw: The side tabs are definitely redundant, and I’ve already used my adblocker to remove them.  But apparently they were a highly requested feature, so there they are.

     

    I might restart the Better Balloon Juice stylesheet and make those hidden.  Not as any knock on the current style, but just as a “personal preference others might share” thing.

     

  74. 74.

    WaterGirl

    @Just Chuck: Maybe!  For now, just take the bullet train down to the bottom (down arrow in the white bar at the top).  The blogroll holds center position in the footer, a place of honor. :-)

  76. 76.

    Just Chuck

    @WaterGirl: Needs a bigger font.  And a different one.  And the kerning is off.  Could you make it blink?  I also want the logo to flash when loaded.  Also, could you, yunno, zazz it up a bit?

     

    Sorry, had to be a sin eater for a client there … ;)

     

  77. 77.

    WaterGirl

    @Just Chuck: I am laughing. “I might restart the Better Balloon Juice stylesheet and make those hidden.”  Now you can have the battle with the people who say NOTHING should ever be hidden and only available on hover.

     

  79. 79.

    WaterGirl

    @jeffreyw: Yes, but in the fly-outs, you can see the name of the next thread and decide whether you want to stay where you are or head to the next thread.

     

    I swear, everyone on BJ does something differently than everyone else.  It’s kind of cool if you think about it.  But that does make it hard to please everyone.  I apparently misspelled “hard”. It should have been spelled impossible.

     

  81. 81.

    WaterGirl

    @Redshift: Thank you!  I am so exhausted and am about to take a break, maybe for the whole evening, so if you could go to the Site Feedback link and make your suggestion there, that would make it easier for me to not lose track of that.

     

  83. 83.

    JaySinWA

    @Amir Khalid:  I haven’t used Firefox in a while, but it looks like it has emoji addons work that far back, but you may only see them in black and white. The ones you add should be visible in color on other systems though.

  84. 84.

    Just Chuck

    We’ve always had emoji, as long as you used unicode emoji ?????.  It’s not turning text into emoji otherwise :) :( ;)

    edit: that missing “@Nym” thing on the first click _is_ getting fixed, right?

  88. 88.

    WaterGirl

    Guys, I am checking out for the evening.  Unless I lose my mind and my good judgment and come back this evening, which I hope I don’t.  Gotta be fresh for tomorrow.

  89. 89.

    Miss Bianca

    @WaterGirl: ooh, double-click and there you are!

     

    Just wanted to say “thank you” again before you depart. I love the new look, and it seems you and the team are ironing out the problems as they come up, so yay, good on ya!

     

  90. 90.

    Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)

    @Steeplejack (phone):  I didn’t know this and just tried it. You were right the 1st time for Win 10 it’s “Windows + ; ” ✌?? or

    “Windows + . ” ✔?

    (And this is probably the last time I’ll ever think to use them, which is probably for the best.)

     

  91. 91.

    jeffreyw

    @WaterGirl: If the fly outs didn’t obscure text they would be fine!  I like the functionality!  The ones from before worked well but there are issues with these when I switch monitor sizes.

     

  93. 93.

    Just Chuck

    @Amir Khalid: Depends on your operating system.  On a Mac, you hit Ctrl-Cmd-Space.  On Windows 10, you hit Win-. (that’s Win-Period).   On Windows pre-10, you hit google for the emoji name, copy it from the results, and paste it in.  On Linux, you hit someone else until they tell you how your distribution, selected window system, foreground application, enabled daemons, and current mood ring color interact to provide the keyboard shortcut for that configuration.

  95. 95.

    SteverinoCT

    I am on an iPad/Safari that on the old site got the full version; now I only see the mobile site (which is great!). Is there some link I don’t see or some other way to see the full site?

  98. 98.

    SteverinoCT

    @SteverinoCT:  Hunh. I’ve been holding the iPad upright (portrait).  When I hold it sideways (landscape) I get the full “right column with stuff, and fly-out tabs”. In portrait, no tabs, and all the “stuff” is at the bottom. IOW, the same as I see on my phone.

     

    Maybe this is some automatic thing triggered by the iPad?

     

  100. 100.

    Kattails

    Haven’t even read the comments, because I really need to get to my desk in under 2 hours. HOWEVER I need to say that I am always happy and proud to recommend this site to anyone, even before all this fancy-pants ok gorgeous new formatting. I’m in a semi-public position to have the occasional political conversation & have been asked where i’ve gotten so much information on whatever. (It’s not me, for sure.) I’ve sent several people here & my only warning is “it’s opinionated”, which no one  no doubt someone will dispute so sue me. Look at this spiffy visual thing here! I just did a strike-through!

  101. 101.

    Mousebumples

    Love the pie filter images! ❤️

     

    I just discovered that I can use my fingers to zoom in and zoom out on my phone which was… Unexpected. Not bad, just took me longer than it should have to figure out why only part of the page had text!

  102. 102.

    frosty

    @WaterGirl:  The nav arrows are fantastic, I’m so happy to be able to move between posts on my phone now.

    Kudos from me (again).

    PS First post on the laptop not the phone, so far so good.

  106. 106.

    Carol Van Natta

    The site rebuild and redesign is fabulous. Job well done to everyone involved in the concept, coding, rollout, and inevitable aftermath. I came here for the politics and master-level curmudgeonry (that’s a word because I say so) and stayed for the pets. ? ? ?

    It’s a wonderful community, so thanks.

  107. 107.

    cleek

    The “click below” thing (aka ‘More’) on the bottom of long posts doesn’t work with Firefox (71.0b7, Win 10, desktop) ?

    Unless it’s telling me to click the ‘comments’ button?

Comments are closed.