Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

We still have time to mess this up!

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

The willow is too close to the house.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

The GOP is a fucking disgrace.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

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

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Twitter & Facebook, embedded tweets, status of @nym in replies, and more

Twitter & Facebook, embedded tweets, status of @nym in replies, and more

by | 177 Comments

This post is in: 

This post will be a bit of a hodgepodge of items that are all related to the new site.

Twitter & Facebook

I will be working on testing images this afternoon – as they relate to sharing Balloon Juice on Facebook and Twitter.  There are two reasons for mentioning this 1) to ask whether there might be 3 or 4 or 5 of you who are experienced with sharing sites on Twitter and and Facebook) and might be willing to test it out as I make changes this afternoon, and 2) to alert anyone who might already be sharing Balloon Juice posts on twitter or facebook that images that show up in social media for Balloon Juice will be changing this afternoon as we are testing.

If you are an experienced as social media sharing and are game to assist in this testing, please speak up in the comments or send email to watergirl at balloon-juice.com – thanks!

Embedded Tweets

As of Friday afternoon, it appeared that we had all of these twitter issues resolved:

  • Front pagers unable to embed tweets in front page posts
  • Twitter embed issues for front pagers in comments  (You are blocked!!)
  • Twitter embed issues for commenters  (You are blocked!!!)

Additional Issues

We believe these issues were also resolved on Friday afternoon

  • Images showing up as ? in a post
  • Nyms sometimes not showing up in the reply box the first time you hit reply
  • Occasional comments not showing up until you posted a follow-up comment or manually refreshed
  • Back arrow not working as expected

Before we close the book on those issues, I am asking for confirmation from you guys that those are indeed fixed for you.

If you have experienced one or more of those problems since Friday at 7pm Eastern time, please let me know that, too.  Please include  specific information about the device(s), operating systems and browsers where any of the specific issue might still be occurring.

Site Feedback

Thanks to everyone who has been clicking on Site Feedback and either submitting feedback or reporting a problem.  I really appreciate it.  I read every one as it comes in, and I tend to follow up immediately if I have a follow-up question or there is a quick answer.  Other than that, I prioritized based on fixing things that affected the most people.  Today and tomorrow, I will be making a second pass through everything that has been submitted so far.

Edit: I had out-of-town company here on this weekend, so while I was checking email and Site Feedback submissions, I wasn’t able to read Balloon Juice, so I am not up-to-date on anything the was in the comments.

On The Road - Wolvesvalley - Birds

 

Reader Interactions

177Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    Occasional comments not showing up until you posted a follow-up comment or manually refreshed

    Back arrow not working as expected

    Still a problem on the mobile site. Android.

    Also, edit comment box disappears too soon.

  2. 2.

    FlyingToaster

    Lessee if a comment posts from the laptop…

    ETA:  Nope, still had to hit refresh.

    Plus: Edited version didn’t have an “edit” button, nor did the edited version show up until I hit “refresh”, when everything then went normal.

    MacBook Air, High Sierra, Firefox 70-something.

  3. 3.

    O. Felix Culpa

    Like our favorite presidential candidate at #1, my nym sticks and the @Reply nym showed up on first try. Yay to you and the tech elves!

    However, my reply didn’t show up until I manually refreshed. Android, Chrome.

  4. 4.

    JaySinWA

    <blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>New Post added at Balloon Juice – Twitter &amp; Facebook, embedded tweets, status of <a href=”https://twitter.com/nym?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>@nym</a> in replies, and more -<a href=”https://t.co/LgTXYAi5Mj”>https://t.co/LgTXYAi5Mj</a></p>&mdash; John Cole (@Johngcole) <a href=”https://twitter.com/Johngcole/status/1196120457935765507?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>November 17, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>

  5. 5.

    Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)

    @Baud:

    @commenter appeared on first click.

    (Chrome/Win 10/HP laptop)

    eta: page automatically refreshed and my comment was present and editable. The countdown clock seem accurate, but keeps going while I’m editing.

  8. 8.

    HumboldtBlue

    @Baud:

    That’s weird, I clicked to check and see if the nym appears in the reply box and it does. I then closed the reply box because I didn’t want to reply to Baud because they didn’t bring me coffee and then I saw Baud’s nym was in the regular comment box.

    Firefox 7.0/Win10

  11. 11.

    HumboldtBlue

    I just tried to edit the comment above (#8) and while the editing window did open and I did make some changes they did not register but the comment remained unchanged when I clicked to update and came back to the main page.

    And now the changes are in comment #8. I’m going back to bed.

  12. 12.

    WaterGirl

    @JaySinWA: It looks like you may have used Visual mode?  For tweets, you need to use text mode.

    If you were in text mode, please tell me about the device, etc.

     

  16. 16.

    WaterGirl

    @HumboldtBlue: That’s not a bug, it’s a feature. :-)

    That’s how you can reply to more than one person in a single comment.

    If I want to reply to Baud and satby, I click reply to Baud’s comment.  At that point I can type in what I want to say to Baud, before I click X to close the box. Or I can simply click the X, go to satby’s comment, click reply, and then add what I want to say to both of them.

    If you changed your mind about replying to Baud, then you can delete his name when it’s there the next time you reply or comment.

     

  20. 20.

    Humdog

    When I hit the read more button, it opens the page at the top, not where we left off reading before the jump. Safari on iPad.

     

  22. 22.

    WaterGirl

    @JaySinWA: It really sounds like you are using Visual mode when you paste in the tweet.  You have to click the text tab to embed a tweet, because it contains html code.

     

  24. 24.

    germy

    Front pagers:  Please label any links that go to facebook, so that those of us (me) who don’t want to go near them can know not to click.

  25. 25.

    AM in NC

    The back arrow button issue that I reported seems to be resolved now. I’m using Safari on a MacBook Pro.  Thank you, and thanks for all of your work on the site!

  27. 27.

    WaterGirl

    @HumboldtBlue: It sounds like you and Baud are both experiencing the issue where your comment and/or changes don’t show up until you manually refresh the page OR you post another comment (because posting a comment refreshes the page, also).

     

  28. 28.

    HumboldtBlue

    @Humdog:

     

    Yes, I noticed that as well, if I’ve already read all the intro stuff on the front page when we hit “read more” is should put us at the place we stopped reading not the top of the entire post (which as you are aware can be rather lengthy).

     

  30. 30.

    WaterGirl

    @CapnMubbers: Yes, that is how private browsing mode works. It also won’t remember your nym if your browser is set to not allow cookies.  That’s the tradeoff.

     

  31. 31.

    HumboldtBlue

    @WaterGirl:

    It’s hit or miss, I had an issue with the first reply I made today but since then each one has worked fine.

    And my Firefox is 70.01, not 7.0

  32. 32.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: I am really surprised to hear that.  Generally, visual mode is much better behaved than text mode.  But I believe you, of course. :-)

    edit: The Comment window remembers your last selection, so if it’s not doing that, please let me know.  The reply window always defaults to visual.

  33. 33.

    Ohio Mom

    Dear WaterGirl,

     

    1) if I see a comment where the commentator is replying to someone else, and I click @name, it goes right to where it should. But if I click the back arrow to go back to where I started, I don’t get there. Maybe that is what you mean when you say the back arrow isn’t working?

     

    2) When I try to reply to someone, I can’t see the box where my typing shows up. It scoots above, off the screen. I tried sending you (WaterGirl) a screen shot, did you get it? I am not in a rush, I can wait my turn on this.

     

    I am on an older iPhone, if that helps. I know it isn’t helping that I have no technical vocabulary with which to describe what is happening to me.

     

    Anyway, good luck, thanks and Godspeed to you, WG!

     

    P.S. seeing my Nym and email waiting for me gives me a thrill every time.

  34. 34.

    waysel

    @waysel: And my comment showed without having to refresh. Yesterday I had problems with not-showing comments until I refreshed. MacBook Pro, Mojave 10.14.6, Safari, Google Chrome.

     

  36. 36.

    WaterGirl

    @JaySinWA: A script is HTML code, which you are not allowed to enter directly in Visual mode.  To include raw HTML code, you must use text mode, because it allows raw HTML code.

    The two modes absolutely have to different behaviors – that is the purpose of having the two different tabs.

     

  38. 38.

    debbie

    @Baud:

     

    Seconded.

     

    Also, is there a way to get one’s post to appear immediately after posting it? Sometimes it takes one or two refreshes for it to appear. I think this is only in “Visual.”

     

    Also, and more importantly, will you be opening a category for your website posts under “Featuring”?

     

  39. 39.

    John Revolta

    Have to hit the back arrow twice to make it work. Safari 11 on an old iMac

    OTOH it works the first time in Firefox.

    I like that when I edit a comment the timer starts again at 5 minutes.

  40. 40.

    JaySinWA

    @WaterGirl: Okay, I am starting to understand, Visual is WSIWYG and takes text that would be HTML and transforms it so it shows as text and does not function as HTML. Any HTML posted in Visual mode will be transformed, so you have to enter HTML in text mode if you want it to perform as HTML. That’s good if you want to show others how to code, but a bit confusing to what we were used to (having to manually defuse HTML when trying to explain code).

    Text mode also strips script HTML (for good reason), so we don’t have to strip it manually from the cut and paste.

     

  41. 41.

    WaterGirl

    @Humdog: Yep, that was a deliberate choice, and I’ll tell you why we made it.

    Embedded tweets are wonderful, but they are also troublemakers. :-)  Twitter embeds load more slowly than the rest of the page. If you’re in a post that has no embedded tweets in the post itself or in the comments, if you click @Baud in someone’s reply to Baud, you will be taken precisely to Baud’s comment at, say #17.  But if there are embedded tweets, the programming takes to you #17, but then the tweets finish loading so you end up somewhere below #17.

    And man, do we ever love our tweets at Balloon Juice.  So if “read more” tried to take you to the part you hadn’t seen yet, it would be unlikely to drop you in the right place because of the tweets.  So we felt it would be better to be consistently taken to a particular place rather than possibly being left in the middle of nowhere.

    This twitter issue is not a Balloon Juice problem, it’s a twitter/internet issue.  It’s only our problem on BJ because of all the tweets.  So yes, it’s a trade-off, but we surely don’t want to be tweet-less on Balloon Juice, so the choice seemed crystal clear.

    Does that make sense?  Would you have made a different choice?

  42. 42.

    JaySinWA

    @WaterGirl:

    This is a comment in text mode. Will the editor remember for next time? I seem to have seen it revert to visual. Let’s see

    ETA edit reverted to Visual, as I remembered.
    Switched back to text to reply. Will my next post be text.

  43. 43.

    WaterGirl

    @waysel: I am nearly 100% certain that issue has been resolved.  But it’s still smart to ask.

    Disappointing to learn that a few people still have the issue of their comment not seeming to show up right away. I would not be at all surprised if it’s mostly Chrome users.  Chrome seems to hold  on to cached information FAR LONGER than other browsers do, so I think that’s the issue we are seeing here.

  44. 44.

    grammypat

    @WaterGirl: But the old version of the site *did* go to the unread (remainder) of the post instead of to the beginning.  What doesn’t make sense is the Twitter embeds *now* have an effect.

    I may be missing something here.

     

  45. 45.

    WaterGirl

    @Ohio Mom:

    I received a screen shot of a phone from someone, but I don’t recall whether that was you.  That was one of the “this can wait til we put out the bigger fires” items, but I plan to get back to those today and tomorrow.

    2) When I try to reply to someone, I can’t see the box where my typing shows up. It scoots above, off the screen. I tried sending you (WaterGirl) a screen shot, did you get it? I am not in a rush, I can wait my turn on this.

    In the meantime, if it’s only on replies, you can click reply on each person you want to reply to, click the X one final time after adding your last person, and then hit COMMENT to go down to the comment box, and then you can add whatever you want to add from there.  Does that make sense?

  47. 47.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: Okay, let me make sure I understand correctly.

    In the comment box – not the reply box – it does not default to whichever tab you had selected when you made your last comment.  It always defaults to Visual mode.

    TRUE or FALSE?

  49. 49.

    WaterGirl

    @debbie:

    Also, is there a way to get one’s post to appear immediately after posting it? Sometimes it takes one or two refreshes for it to appear. I think this is only in “Visual.”

    Debbie I think I recall from testing that you have multiple devices.  Can you remind me what device/operating system/browsers you use?  And if it’s not too much trouble, can you make note of which device/browser/comment mode combination it works properly in, and which it doesn’t?

    As for your other suggestion about a location under featuring, I hadn’t seen that before (I had out-of-town company here from Friday evening until this morning), but that’s an interesting idea.  I will give that some thought!

  51. 51.

    WaterGirl

    @JaySinWA: You are correct, sir!

    This is a matter of competing priorities.  On the old site, we operated in text mode, all of the time.  But people wanted WYSIWYG, for creating comments and for editing, and you cannot get that in text mode.  We initially went with ONLY visual mode, but that went out the window when some people made it clear that they wanted to enter HTML code manually.

    Hence the offering of two modes.

    See also: you can please some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot please all of the people all of the time. :-)

    The laws of physics win every time.

  55. 55.

    Martin

    Ah, that explains why I could embed a tweet, and then I couldn’t embed a tweet. I wasn’t supposed to be able to.

    I would suggest that commenters be able to embed tweets because in an age when it’s an official form of presidential communication, that’s very handy. If that’s permitted, having a widget that lets you just paste in the link and the site handles the embed bits (so we can’t abuse the embed for other purposes) would be good. Tweets seem to be the most common links that we put in comments.

    Given that we have a proper commenter policy, having something in the policy regarding tweet appropriateness would be certainly appropriate in that case

    Regarding the loading issue, I wonder if that couldn’t be ameliorated by having you control the embed? Wrap it in an iframe, or maybe there’s a clever way to defer/async load it?

  56. 56.

    debbie

    @WaterGirl:

    First, answering for Baud, it ALWAYS defaults to Visual.

    For me, this is all on a MacBook Pro with Chrome. I’ve read others having the same issues, though. I’ll have to check my other laptop (Chromebook).

    FWIW, I still catch myself looking for the little checkbox asking to remember my nym for the next few minutes!

  57. 57.

    WaterGirl

    @grammypat: Twitter embeds have always had that effect – for a very long time the old site has been displaying these behaviors:

    • refresh didn’t leave you in the place you were before refresh
    • @replies didn’t always line up properly
    • anchoring on the date/time stamp, going somewhere and coming back didn’t always leave you in the right place

    I know this is true because it used to make me crazy.

    It may be true that “read more” took you to the right place on the old site.  I never read from the front page so I have no personal experience there, so I can’t speak to that directly.

    No guarantees, but we can look at that again when everything else is working as it should.

  59. 59.

    Another Scott

    A few threads back, but after Friday AM (I think), there were embedded tweets from Jay and germy (I think) that included the Twitter graphic.  Since they’re not FPers, they shouldn’t be able to do that (according to the old rules).  But there they were.

    I assume it was a buglet since I wasn’t able to figure out how they did it.

    FWIW.

    Can anything be done about the differences between paragraph breaks in Visual and Text mode? The spacing is giganitic in Visual mode and too small in Text mode.

    Thanks again for your efforts here.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  60. 60.

    Baud

    @WaterGirl: Visual is not really WYSIWYG.  I was playing around with it last night, and special formatting codes applied to text appears in the Visual box but gets taken out when posting.

     

  61. 61.

    WaterGirl

    @Martin

    Ah, that explains why I could embed a tweet, and then I couldn’t embed a tweet. I wasn’t supposed to be able to.

    1. I would suggest that commenters be able to embed tweets because in an age when it’s an official form of presidential communication, that’s very handy. If that’s permitted, having a widget that lets you just paste in the link and the site handles the embed bits (so we can’t abuse the embed for other purposes) would be good. Tweets seem to be the most common links that we put in comments.

    2. Given that we have a proper commenter policy, having something in the policy regarding tweet appropriateness would be certainly appropriate in that case

    3.Regarding the loading issue, I wonder if that couldn’t be ameliorated by having you control the embed? Wrap it in an iframe, or maybe there’s a clever way to defer/async load it?

    Martin, re: #1, on the old site, everyone could paste in the full twitter embed code. for front pagers, it displayed the full twitter embed, image, video and all.  for commenters, it posted what I call a “pared down” tweet, which shows text and links, but no image and no video.

    The new site works exactly the same way, it’s just that the pared down tweets show with the green colored background instead of the box that was used on the old site

    If EVERY commenter was allowed to post images and video in tweets, the site would quickly become unreadable and unusable because of slowness.

    re #2: I don’t quite understand what you are getting at there.  would you mind explaining?

    re:#3: i don’t understand what iframe would get you in this instance, given that it’s not practical for commenters to be able to post tweets with full images and video, for the reasons expressed above.

     

  62. 62.

    JaySinWA

    @WaterGirl: I think read more usually worked, though I don’t recall the specific issue for tweet heavy posts. I suspect that for most browsers, once it renders that portion of the post, it is cached and doesn’t generally have the race conditions of subsequent tweets or embed material.

     

  63. 63.

    Ohio Mom

    @WaterGirl: Yup, that was my email.

    My current work-around when wanting to reply is to type a couple of words, post and then hit edit to write the comment. That’s what I’m doing now.

    Like me I said, not an emergency.

  64. 64.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: Can you tell me which of the formatting buttons you apply that are taken out after pressing POST COMMENT?  That should not be happening, and that is *fixable.  Does that happen in the Visual tab or the Text tab?  I see you mentioned that it happens in Visual mode. Which formatting options are not sticking for you?  On which devices/browsers?

    *The only exception to that is the “special character” option.  It behaves well for some things – copyright, etc –  but does not do well with Greek characters.  The decision was made to leave that in for ease of adding some special characters in spite of certain special characters not working properly, because some special characters were better than none.

  65. 65.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    Occasional comments not showing up until you posted a follow-up comment or manually refreshed

    This was still a problem this morning, resulting in my posting the same comment twice.

    I still cannot post links nor can I put a link into the Website field. They show up in the Recent Comments but not in the thread. Windows 10 desktop, tried in both Firefox and Chrome.

  66. 66.

    WaterGirl

    @Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: I was hoping you would show up!  You had something like 5-7 comments all in spam this morning.  The cause, I believe was that you had entered a really wonky looking URL in the URL field, which will get you spammed. I believe everything else was spammed because of the first comment.  I marked you as “not spam” and released all of your comments except the one with the offending URL.

    edit: was that first URL something you just made up, by some chance?

  67. 67.

    grammypat

    The other issues that you listed were of no consequence to me, either in the old or new versions of the site.

     

    The “read the rest of the post” worked every time in the old version  (i.e., it went to where the front page left off).  Now “read the rest of the post” goes to the beginning of the post and it’s necessary to *find* the place where the remainder of it picks up.  It’s like reading a newspaper and the “continued on” page contains ALL of the prior information.

     

    It’s a nuisance that was never an issue for me on the old version of the site.  Others, without keys to the front page, may or may not feel the same way.

  69. 69.

    Baud

    @WaterGirl: Not a formatting button.  I was trying out different html style codes to mess with the font.  It worked in the Visual editor, but all the formatting was stripped out in the post

     

  71. 71.

    jeffreyw

    I posted #70 ussing Twitter code w/o stripping script coding from the text tab.  It posted right away with no issues and the page took me right to my comment.  win 10 chrome.

    ETA testing testing

  74. 74.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Occasional comments not showing up until you posted a follow-up comment or manually refreshed

    This is still a problem for me, even in the work around of posting from the ‘Text’ box. Last times this AM.

    I am a computer idiot and my wife isn’t here to help:
    Computer is a lap top, it says “acer” on it. I suppose that is the brand
    Operating system is Windows, I don’t know what version tho I do know Windows still supports it.
    Browser is Firefox.

    I’m pretty proud of myself for knowing this much.

  75. 75.

    jeffreyw

    My #73 comment, the post comment button took me to the top of the page.  Scrolled to the bottom and the comment was not there.  Refreshed and the comment appeared.

  76. 76.

    Another Scott

    @Another Scott: 

    BTW, I had to refresh about 5 times before I was able to see this parent’s reply.

    (Are coding changes being made right now? This reply edit window doesn’t have the Visual or Text tabs, and the formatting buttons are blue.)

    Chrome on MBP.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  77. 77.

    jeffreyw

    My 75 comment took me to the top again when I pushed the post comment button.  Scrolled down and refreshed to see the comment.  The comment showed after refresh but sans the edit bar.

  78. 78.

    WaterGirl

    @grammypat: I hear you.  Different things are important to different people, and I get that this is important to you.

    This wasn’t a choice we made because we thought it was awesome or better than on the old site. This was a less-than-ideal compromise that was made as a result of the way things were functioning. As I said above, we can look at that again when other things that affect people more globally are working as they should.  Is there something more you think we should do in response at this time?

  79. 79.

    jeffreyw

    My #77 worked as intended.  The site to me right to the comment I had just made and everything seemed correct.  I just now realized that I was in the visual tab during the last several tries.  I will go to text and try this comment posting.
    ETA while in text worked for the comment, now for the edit…

  80. 80.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: Thanks.  I’m trying to figure out which of these formats you might have been applying:

    bold

    italics

    strike

    quote

    link

    bullet list

    numbered list

    color

    special characters

  82. 82.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @WaterGirl: I’ve tried two links today. The first was the URL for the YouTube channel for Maysie and Loki videos, copy-pasta’d straight from the address bar. The second was a link to SiloHome, again copy-pasta’d. No invented URLs.

  83. 83.

    HumboldtBlue

    @OzarkHillbilly:

     

    If you click on the little gear icon at the top right of your browser it will take you to settings and there you’ll find whatversion of Firefox you’re using.

     

  84. 84.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @HumboldtBlue: Firefox doesn’t do the gear. There’s a hamburger menu in the upper right, then click on Help, then About Firefox.

  85. 85.

    WaterGirl

    @Another Scott:  Chrome on MacBook Pro:

    BTW, I had to refresh about 5 times before I was able to see this parent’s reply.

    Chrome seems to hold on to cached pages MUCH LONGER than other browsers.

    Are coding changes being made right now? This reply edit window doesn’t have the Visual or Text tabs, and the formatting buttons are blue.

    There is a test server where they test things out.  Once they think they have a fix, it gets moved to the list site. So it’s possible that you might see something odd if you catch something in the middle of an edit, which happens occasionally.

  97. 97.

    JaySinWA

    In visual mode:

    <p>I am normal</p>
    <p style=”color:red;”>I am red</p>
    <p style=”color:blue;”>I am blue</p>
    <p style=”font-size:50px;”>I am big</p>
    In text mode:

    I am normal
    I am red
    I am blue
    I am big
    @Baud: I wonder if you were hitting the earlier release issues.

    ETA I see.

    Enter style code in text mode, switch to visual and it shows the style, but post it and it is striped from the post (at least if you post it having switched to visual.

  98. 98.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: I added underline in text mode, saved it, and it was there. Then I edited, went into visual mode, and the underline was still there.  Can you send me the html codes you were using for style and font size?  You can either send it to watergirl at balloon-juice.com or you can submit it through site feedback.  Then we can test it out and see what’s happening.

    thanks.

     

  101. 101.

    HumboldtBlue

    @Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:

    We obviously have different setups, I have a toolbar above the tabs on my browser that includes: file — edit — view — history — bookmarks — tools — help — then the magnifier to make the page larger or smaller, the show history icon and the gear that takes you to options.

    Saves a click

  104. 104.

    JaySinWA

    @JaySinWA:

    I am normal
    I am red
    I am blue
    I am big

    Even saving styles in text mode didn’t work.

    lets color some text
    save in text mode. Note that the visual editor adds color with a span tag and not a p tag.

  108. 108.

    StringOnAStick

    Funny, I never had trouble with missing comments or anything else on the old site, and so far not on the new site either.  4 year old HP Pavillion running Win 10 and Chrome, 4 year old Kindle running whatever the browser is that comes with a Kindle.  The only problem with the old site was how a lot of embedded tweets in a front page post would take a long time to load and then bounce around my location, but I learned to remember the number of the last comment I’d read so I could get there again. It must be a real challenge to write code for all the different browsers, devices, etc out there; kudos.

     

    I like that the pie filter is an actual image of a yummy looking pie!

  110. 110.

    JaySinWA

    @WaterGirl: I think I see

    @Baud: ‘s problem you can enter html that isn’t supported in the final rendering, but can be displayed by switching from text to visual mode before posting. Paragraph style is one of those. This is a bug, and one that might have serious security implications depending on what the visual mode will allow to be executed before posting.

    I also think we need a help tab or page that explains visual mode and what is allowed or disallowed HTML in text mode.

     

  111. 111.

    grammypat

    86.

    JaySinWA
    November 17, 2019 at 3:00 pm

    @grammypat: It is particularly annoying  since there is no indication where the page break was after you press the button.

    Reply button fail, hence the blockquote.

     

    Thank you.  I know that I’m not the only one who views this as an issue and am irritated that it’s considered as unimportant.

  114. 114.

    WaterGirl

    @StringOnAStick

    It must be a real challenge to write code for all the different browsers, devices, etc out there; kudos.

    No matter how good you are, it’s impossible to make everything work perfectly in every browser or on every device/browser combination.  Especially for a blog where you’re not just reading, but are also commenting and interacting.  It can still be a great site and not work perfectly on every combination.

    I like that the pie filter is an actual image of a yummy looking pie!

    Happy to hear someone say that!  I had fun with the pie filter, finding images, etc. My favorite image is catcake.

     

  115. 115.

    WaterGirl

    @grammypat

    I know that I’m not the only one who views this as an issue and am irritated that it’s considered as unimportant.

    I’m not sure why you say your issue is considered unimportant. Is it because I said it would have to wait until we have addressed issues that are affecting more people globally?

    I asked this quite sincerely at comment #78, and I would love to hear your answer:

     Is there something more you think we should do in response at this time?

    WG

  117. 117.

    JaySinWA

    @WaterGirl: I for one, would appreciate a visual marker for the start of where the post continues below the fold so that I could scroll quickly to where I left off, as a hopefully quick and dirty workaround.

     

  119. 119.

    JaySinWA

    Speaking of workarounds, If I do a page refresh with browser commands to find my last post I don’t get an edit option, but if I use the BJ refresh button at the top of the screen, I do apparently.

    ETA nope, I just used the browser refresh and got edit options, so it must be random.

  121. 121.

    germy

    Late to the party here, but…

     

    Is there something buggy with the “Recent Comments” function?

  124. 124.

    waysel

    @WaterGirl: Not addressing your original post, but I keep seeing gobbledygook nyms in ‘recent comments’ at upper right front page, supposedly posting to This Life Aint Good Enough thread from Nov 14. They are dated with todays date and time, and they aren’t actually in that thread. It was happening yesterday, too. Anyone else seeing this?

    I see germs mentioned it as I was typing.

  126. 126.

    J R in WV

    @CapnMubbers:

     

    My nym and email do not show up for comments or replies when I’m in private browsing mode.

    That is because Private/Incognito mode cannot have access to your cookies, in order to be Private. If you want autofill to work, the browser needs to know who you are, which isn’t Private nor Incognito.

     

    Don’t think our developers can change basic browser behavior…

     

  128. 128.

    germy

    @WaterGirl:

     
    there have been times when I’ve clicked on a “recent comment” and didn’t see it.

    Also, what does nbsp stand for? It appears whenever I switch from visual to text mode.

    Overall, this place is great. Very quick (much quicker than the old balloonjuice) and an excellent design. I want to thank you again for your efforts.

  130. 130.

    Jay

    @waysel:

    Robo spammers that are attacking that one thread for some reason that keep getting flushed by the system.

    on the theory that all threads are open threads,

    Katy Ryan from the Appalachian Book Project, explaining the trend toward charging people in prison by the minute to read books on “free” tablets that are increasingly replacing access to books. “Can you imagine reading Don Quixote at 3-5 cents per minute?” #NCHEP2019 pic.twitter.com/0jTLTrApx7— Amanda Klonsky (@amandaklonsky1) November 15, 2019

  132. 132.

    waysel

    @Jay: Ah! Thanks. I have avoided clicking on them, fearing a virus download.Odd that that one thread has an open door of sorts.

  133. 133.

    something fabulous

    @WaterGirl: (Look at me, using the reply feature! and it called up the “@” on the first try!)

     

    Yes, specifically to the “read more” from the front page issue, another vote for it would be great to have that fixed. Unlike the bullets you mentioned that all are to do with the comments area, finding your spot to pick up reading the post itself after the break was not an issue (for me anyway) on the old site. I’d love that to come back. Isn’t it funny (well, “a marvel”– probably not yet a laughing matter for you all!), all the different reading types & behaviors we have here?

     

  135. 135.

    WaterGirl

    @waysel: There were a lot of spammers who were posting on that thread.  You can’t get to comments that are in spam, so clicking that comment apparently takes you to the right thread, then it apparently takes you to the top since the comment is not there.

    There are competing issues at work here.

    It doesn’t make sense for there to be comments in recent comments that you can’t get to

    but testing every comment to see if it’s spam before it goes into recent comments slows things down

    on the positive side, people will likely comment right away that a certain comment in recent comments doesn’t work, which will be an immediate clue to any frontpager who’s around that we have a spam comment. if you catch the first spam comment from an IP address, then you can Trash & Ban that email and IP address, which means they won’t be able to post 10 or 50 more that you will then have to get rid of.

    This will be discussed and a decision will be made.

  136. 136.

    J R in WV

    @HumboldtBlue:

    If you click on the little gear icon at the top right of your browser it will take you to settings and there you’ll find what version of Firefox you’re using.

    Not for me. My version of Firefox, on Linux Ubuntu 18.04, Firefox V 70.0.1 has a “hamburger” icon, three horizontal lines stacked up in the upper right corner, which opens a long menu. The “Help” option near the bottom of the menu list will open another menu, and the “about” option shows the current version data for your browser.

    I have seen the little gear shaped icon in other situations.

    ETA:

    I think this difference is a Linux based (OS) difference.

  137. 137.

    Jay

    @waysel:

    I would guess that a post title of “This Life ain’t Good Enough” has enough of the right number of keywords in the right order to attract robospamming software selling p€nis pills, time shares, vag eggs or Marianne Williamson’s Cantidacy,….

  138. 138.

    J R in WV

    @J R in WV:

    After making the first edit to my previous comment I am replying to, the edit didn’t show up until I refreshed, and I got no edit capability after making the first edit, which is why I’m writing this reply. Ubuntu / Firefox 70.0.1

    ETA test edit function persistence

    ETA2 test edit function persistence 2

    ETA 3 test edit function persistence 3 still working!

    After making the ETA3 edit to the comment, the apparently functioning edit did not appear until the 3rd or 4th time I refreshed the window, so I’ve seen two bugs in editing in just the past couple of minutes… perhaps related to other new comments showing up while I was doing the 3rd edit?

  140. 140.

    O. Felix Culpa

    In re the bugs and all the little buglets: I blame Obama.

    P.S. How do I do the sarcasm font? #firstworldproblems #goodnewsforjohnmccain #thankyouwatergirl

  141. 141.

    WaterGirl

    @germy: That stands for non-breaking space.

    Thanks so much for the kind words. Human nature being what it is, people tend to focus on a few things that are issues and can lose sight of the hundred things that may be right.  Twas ever thus.

  142. 142.

    WaterGirl

    @germy: Use the damn form!  :-)

    edit: I thought more jackals would be excited about the new features, but I haven’t seen much of that yet. Maybe next week as the kinks get worked out.  Ever hopeful!

  143. 143.

    something fabulous

    @germy:

    @WaterGirl:

    Seconded! [also testing fanciness options

    OK! replying to two people, color and italics all work! Immediate posting! Edit window also (so it seems) working! huzzah!

  146. 146.

    germy

    @WaterGirl:

    I really don’t know much of anything.   I should poke around this place more.  There’s all sorts of things to see, but I’m usually just goofing around in the comment section.

     

  147. 147.

    Jay

    @WaterGirl:

    It’s not so much the bugs, or the new features,

    It’s the new. We are poking around, ‘sploring nooks and crannies, trying to turn new ways into habits,

    maybe next week excitement?

    Thanks for all your and others hard work.

  148. 148.

    JaySinWA

    @WaterGirl: Speaking of using the damn form, I just used the site issues report to document the visual v text entry of paragraph styles, the email I got back has just the first word of the description of the problem. all other fields appear to have been returned correctly. Did it come in complete or was it truncated at submission?

    ETA I used Site Feedback, but you know what I mean.

    BTW a disappearing Edit comment sometimes comes back if you refresh the window

  151. 151.

    something fabulous

    [first time using “comment” button at the top!]

     

    At 4:55 BJ time :), I went to the flickr stream in comments to the transport post above and can’t get back to the post. This seems to be an intermittent problem, as I think I was able to go to Raven’s flickr earlier and get back? (MacBook pro and Safari, so you don’t have to rely on memory).

  153. 153.

    WaterGirl

    @JaySinWA: All I see is “Entering”.  First one that hasn’t come through properly and I have received 75 of them!  Thankfully, some are compliments about the site. :-)

     

  154. 154.

    something fabulous

    @something fabulous: …and now it works!? Tried again when I went back to reading that post, loaded in a new tab. Maybe chalk down to another “must be done twice to work” thing? I’m stumped.

     

  155. 155.

    WaterGirl

    @something fabulous: Yep.  That is a known issue..  So far only seen on MacBook Pros with Safari as the browser.

    The developer asked if we could compare settings, as they have at least 3 MacBook pros where that can not be replicated.  I told them I thought there was a good chance that you might be willing to do that with me on the phone sometime this week. :-)

    Was I wrong?

  156. 156.

    JaySinWA

    @WaterGirl: OKay okay, the site is mostly good. I don’t complement enough.

    It might have been user error, but I don’t see how I did it. Ah, I remember, after the word entering I started to enter the paragraph tag to explain the issue. The html stripper must have ripped it and the remaining text (the tag was not complete).

  158. 158.

    WaterGirl

    @JaySinWA: Thanks.  I’m not fishing for compliments.  But sometimes these threads can get brutal, and I begin to understand why John pretty much thinks it’s a mistake for me to do them.

     

    John has felt that way pretty much throughout this process, but I think communication is important, even if it’s not always pleasant. And I think the site is better for the threads we have had.

     

  161. 161.

    JaySinWA

    @JaySinWA:

    @WaterGirl:

    You are not the only one who reminds me.

    I was editing the comment while you were replying. So I think what happened was entering raw and incomplete HTML buggered the text. Might want to think about that for problem entries.

    ETA

    @WaterGirl:

    And again we cross commented, gotta stop meeting like this. And I was missing a not above.

  162. 162.

    WaterGirl

    @JaySinWA:

    BTW a disappearing Edit comment sometimes comes back if you refresh the window.

    It’s not that the comment has disappeared. It’s that when you post a comment, the page is refreshed to show you your comment. With caching, sometimes you get the page from before you commented, so the new comment is not displaying.

     

    It’s caching that adds speed, so you want that, but it can complicate things, so you have to work out all sorts of details.

     

    And as I’ve said, some browsers hold on to cached information longer than others, as it seems to me that Chrome is the worst about that.

     

     

  163. 163.

    something fabulous

    @WaterGirl: You are not wrong! ?

     

    Big report for my PROJECT is due Tuesday so Monday will likely not be very available; but let’s look for a time!

     

  164. 164.

    NotMax

    Occasional comments not showing up until you posted a follow-up comment or manually refreshed

    Still happening (Win 10, Firefox) as of Saturday night/Sunday morning. Getting bounced to top of page after clicking Post Comment, then multiple refreshes before the comment shows.

    Couple of other things noticed recently;

    1) Zombie comments showing up with some frequency in Recent Comments, and then disappearing. Clicking on any of those takes one to the top of the page, as there is no such actual comment to go to. Always an unusual string of letters in the zombie nyms, along the line of “baggavrumgaxiz.” Spammers or bots?

    2) Funny glitch in the way the text for a FP post shows up in the elephant ear tab if the first word of the title is struck through. See this in action on the comments page immediately prior to or immediately following TaMara’s food post yesterday. A screenshot showing how the text is deformed in the tab when extended (also some of the zombie comments showing in Recent Comments on that screenshot).

  166. 166.

    J R in WV

    The new site is a miracle. Smooth, functional, attractive, easy to read and write on for the most part. Relatively bug free for a brand new complex system. Easy to repair bugs are being fixed quickly, intermittent bugs that occur more or less rarely will be very difficult to fix, and will take serious thinking to puzzle out why they happen by someone with a ton of web and WordPress experience. I have confidence that things will improve for a while.

     

    Thanks to the hands-on developers who appear to wish to be anonymous, and to Steeplejack and WaterGirl for all their work putting the specifications together, picking a shop to do the work, and guiding them as they created a new web site. I know how much work this whole thing was, so consider this a great compliment!!!

  167. 167.

    JaySinWA

    @WaterGirl:

    That’s not what I am experiencing. I can see the comment or the last edit, but not the edit comment bar. Sometimes even later comments. Then after a refresh the edit bar comes back but intermittantly.

     

  169. 169.

    WaterGirl

    @JaySinWA: Ah.  Either that’s a new one I have not heard about before or else I have heart it before and thought the person was talking about their comment not showing up.  Thanks.

     

  171. 171.

    Redshift

    I am also still seeing comments sometimes not appear until after a refresh. I’ll send feedback; I’m mostly posting a comment to test if it happens again, and test if I see a noticeable a difference between comments and replies.

  172. 172.

    NotMax

    Shall also mention (it is a minor annoyance but an annoyance nevertheless) that the new site overrides the browser setting to display any visited link in a different color, instead keeping the unvisited link color persistent. In all honesty, have never seen this behavior on any other site anywhere.

    Win 10, Firefox.

  175. 175.

    NotMax

    @WaterGirl

    Look at the text of the right side flyout tab on that screenshot, how the struck out word “Friday” is strangely showing vertically.

  176. 176.

    WaterGirl

    @NotMax: Ah, yes.  I see it now.  I have seen that on two or three posts before, when formatting like that is used in the title.  I have never asked the developers to address this – this is very rare, and if the front pagers want to do something like that in the title, then we can live with the weird formatting in the fly-out. We try to be respectful of the fact that the developers don’t need to accommodate every oddity we display here at Balloon Juice.

    edit: not that there’s anything wrong with our quirkiness! It’s part of our charm. It just wasn’t written into the contract. :-)

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