Just a quick programming note to say that the site interruptions this evening were not the result of a problem with our site – they were the result of problems way further up the networking chain. So there’s that, at least!
Since John thinks that all/most/some of us are insufferable pricks who complain all the time, maybe you guys can use this thread to comment about the things you do like about the new site?
Surely there must be something!
Baud
I hope it’s fixed. It’s so dark and lonely where I am.
Baud
I like the return of recent comments. That’s very useful.
WaterGirl
@Baud: I will start things off by saying that one of my favorite things about the new site is that Baud 2020! is commenting. My second favorite thing after that, besides balloon man being back in the header where he belongs, with rotating tags… is Catcake, who is the happy cat cupcake image in the pie filter.
Baud
I like the new design too.
Catherine D.
The new contrast is working better for me.
mattH
I love the “View by…” section, prominent and a nice division, so I don’t have to hunt down a poster to sift through their old stuff.
Major Major Major Major
I like the new site a lot! Fast and pretty and reliablish and the pie filter works while I’m logged in.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
I actually also like the navigation buttons up top, which the mobile site didn’t have.
raven
I just come here, read stuff, comment and that’s it. Screw all the bitching and moaning.
Another Scott
I like the variety of topics, and that (almost) every thread can be an open thread without too much disruption of the conversation.
And while the software has issues, we can (usually) work around them without too much trouble.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Major Major Major Major
@Baud: oh yeah! Left and right arrows on mobile are my favorite part after the pie filter.
Baud
And who doesn’t love magenta.
Another Scott
@Major Major Major Major: I really like the refresh button on mobile.
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
Chris Hayes does stand up on Friday’s now?
dexwood
What’s not to like? I trust all bugs will be worked out and people will move on to complaining about other things eventually. My nym and email address don’t stick from day to day. but auto-fill works. Minor issue easily worked around. Just because – fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck.
Roger Moore
The new site is amazing. It is much better than Cats. I will post here again and again.
spudgun
I love the fonts and I really just love the clean, organized look overall. And at the time, I didn’t really see what the big deal was about Recent Comments, but now that it’s back I totally get it. Love Recent Comments!
So appreciative of all the work everyone involved put into it, especially WaterGirl.
Major Major Major Major
@WaterGirl: catcake is great, I do hope they paid for the artwork.
Ohio Mom
My Nym and email are always waiting for me. I like that very much.
WaterGirl
@Baud: The developers thought I was crazy when I asked for those, but to their credit they made a face and did it anyway, with just a “really, are you sure?” and a virtual raised eyebrow.
spudgun
@WaterGirl: I haven’t had to pie anyone (yet…), but I’m tempted to pie someone randomly so I can see the pix!
I mean, I can unpie them afterwards, right?
Ruckus
I’m fine with the new site. It is nice but different, and that’s a good thing.
It keeps the feel of the old place but it’s like getting a new car, same model as the last one without the oil leaks, the wondering all over the road, the constant breakdowns, the frustration of owning a pos.
debit
@Roger Moore: I suppose it shows my age that I understand and appreciate that reference. Well done.
WaterGirl
@Major Major Major Major: Yeppers! The developers pay shutterstock some amount per month, so with one exception, all our images on the site are either Shutterstock or our own photos. All legit. I ?Catcake.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Looks pink not magenta
dexwood
@spudgun:
It’s my understanding you can pie yourself. How great is that?
Baud
@spudgun:
No, pieing someone destroys their soul on the new website.
WaterGirl
@spudgun: Yep, un-pie-ing is easy as pie! (sorry, I couldn’t help myself)
Tim C.
My favorite part of the new site is that it’s still filled with jackals. Sorry if that’s too glurge positive for some people, but I likes this place.
Major Major Major Major
@WaterGirl: then I shall enjoy catcake guilt-free!
NotMax
I call foul. Ample evidence of sufferable pricks.
:)
debit
I mentioned when the new site first went live that I really liked it. Faster and a little cleaner, but still with the feel and flavor of the old site, so I find it really comfortable and homey. You guys did a great job and I appreciate the effort that must have gone into the design.
Joy in FL
I like the site overall.
The arrows that send me back to the top of the page are so convenient!
I like the titles just under the Balloon Juice banner. It was easy for me to re-find the post about funding transport for Merlin.
And it remembered my nym : )
Marcopolo
Once again enjoying Chris Hayes’ live Friday show. Opening topic is addressing the Republican disengagement from empirical reality & how that relates to impeachment.
Mary G
It loads in an instant and navigates a million times faster between posts. I love the header photos on the categories up top, particularly Nancy SMASH shaking her finger at Twitler in Politics and Ellie with Walter in his Christmas reindeer antlers smiling with all his teefuses out of the page. I don’t have to fiddle around removing hashtags from tweets I want to embed because we can have more links now. Haven’t been in moderation since the changeover, huzzah!
Also, missed two or three threads reading other things and answered late to an inquiry about HBM here. TL, DR he and I have lost touch, but he posted on FB for Thanksgiving and is still with all his family.
Ruckus
@Baud:
I have the nav buttons on my phone.
And I’m used to the buttons on the bottom right and I haven’t taught my self to go directly to the top yet. Maybe some day, birds will fly, ducks will waddle and my brain will work. Lofty goals and all.
WaterGirl
@dexwood: Is it possible that you use private browsing (or whatever your browser calls it) or you don’t accept cookies? Both of those things make it so your nym isn’t saved.
donnah
I like the new site and it’s very quick. My fave part is that it’s remembered my name and email. That alone is worth the relaunch.
Nicely done, and thanks very much.
spudgun
@dexwood: @Baud: LOL!
spudgun
@WaterGirl: Okee-dokee, I’m going to give it a go!
Ruckus
@Mary G:
Good to hear about HBM. Glad you brought him to that meet up, he was a hoot to talk to.
Armadillo
I love the new site. Balloon Man is back. Okay, I just love the patriarchy. Lol. I do think the new site is amazing. I haven’t used many of the new functions, just use it the same way I used the old site, but I think it’s great. It works just fine, it’s beautiful, and faster.
dexwood
@WaterGirl:
Don’t use private browsing. Will check my cookie settings.
planetjanet
I love the refresh button that stays at the top of the page. I can refresh the comments and not lose my place. Also, I loved the blue box around the blockquote that everyone was using the other night. Squeee!
spudgun
Ok, the pie filter pix are cute! Obvs catcake is the best.
Baud, how ya doin’? Soul still ok? I used your name because your name came up the most in the comments and I wanted to see as many pix as I could…
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: I know the feeling.
schrodingers_cat
I made a lol for the first time in Marathi on the Onion Lady. English explanation is also attached.
Baud
@spudgun:
????
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: He has Bernie on again?
spudgun
@Baud: Oh, dear…
Sorry! :-)
dww44
I very much appreciate the recent darkening of the text and the subduing of the white space. My eyes like it very much. Thanks.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Roger Moore: That’s what Lawrence O’Donald said.
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
A studio audience.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: What if you have no soul, or sold it?
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I don’t think anyone here works for Trump.
debbie
The new site doesn’t crash my iPad Mini; the old one did every single time.
ola azul
Gotta small linguistic request, opt in or out as you please:
Would dearly love to see the term “meddling” get shot in the fucking head n buried inna shallow grave. Specific point being:
What was done in ’16, rightly understood, imo, was an attack. Deliberate. Premeditated. Successful. If you cannot bring yourself to use such forceful language, the Latinate interfere will, I suppose, suffice, altho it lacks specificity and punch. Sabotage would answer better, imo. But:
“Meddling” is the big reveal at the end of an episode of Scooby Doo. “Meddling” is an insulting and cowardly way of dodging the gravity and import of what happent, of what is *presently* happening. “Meddling”, in the “Lakoffian frame”, is, imo, a way of unknowingly or “bend-over-backwards-civilly” ceding the rhetorical ground to people who do not, in any fucking way, deserve such consideration.
It’s like consenting to use the word pro-life. Fuck off.
debbie
@Catherine D.:
Seconded, though sorry to see the sea foam go away.
zhena gogolia
@Ohio Mom:
Me too. And I love magenta.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@ola azul: Agreed, I think Adam has pointed this out several times.
Suzanne
I like that it works well in portrait mode on my iPad.
I’m in Pittsburgh right now. Had an extended job interview. I really hope this works out. This is a rad city and I really like the firm a lot. Fingers crossed.
randy khan
I love the navigation arrow buttons at the top of the page, when I remember to use them
(You said one thing. That’s the one I picked.)
zhena gogolia
@ola azul:
I agree.
Martin
Huge if true.
John Cole
I’m going to think you all are insufferable pricks regardless what you say here.
Gin & Tonic
@John Cole: We love you too. Asshole.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: Me, you fuck.
Martin
I like that John is too much of a fucking coward to tell that to our face.
Seriously, my quibbles with the new site are too minor to mention. Great job everyone.
[Edit] Jesus, John. You’re bigfooting comments now?
eclare
@Suzanne: Good luck!
Omnes Omnibus
@?BillinGlendaleCA: You should check with Steve in the WTF. He’d know.
Omnes Omnibus
@ola azul: You have a linguistic request?
Omnes Omnibus
@zhena gogolia: GAHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ola azul
@John Cole:
The man in the mirror reflects it’sa winsome comfort to know one can rely upon the evergreen verities of life.
Gin & Tonic
A little musical interlude for the season. One or two of you may have heard a little ditty called “Carol of the Bells.” It was written as “Щедрик” (Shchedryk) by the Ukrainian composer Mykola Leontovych and became popular after the Ukrainian National Chorus performed it at Carnegie Hall in 1920. This is the first known recording, cut in 1922 in New York. It was actually intended as a New Year’s carol, not a Christmas carol, but that’s what it has become.
Melusine
Like having the Comment and Refresh buttons right at the top. And the arrows – I was always accidentally hitting them on my phone when they were at the bottom right.
Also, many thanks for staying true and abhoring the barbarous threaded discussion layout. HATEHATEHATE that format as much as I loathe Discus in general. Very glad there is no Dicks Us here. I appreciate being to switch to another tab and then come back where I left off.
I am agnostic on the “tres trop” periods after the numbers, but I am glad that the numbers are there. I will occasionally check during a long thread in case I lose my place, and it’s very handy when switching between devices mid-thread. Very useful when a T-Bogg unit is looming so you can gauge how many caffeine-xanax-vodka cocktails it will take to finish the thread. I hate tossing xanax in the blender if it’s under 200 comments on refresh.
Thank you very much to our graciously grumpy host and the fortuitously flame-resistant WaterGirl.
Ruckus
@John Cole:
Well in that case………
FOOD FIGHT!
ola azul
@Omnes Omnibus:
Surprise attacks on linguistic norms is my specialty.
Omnes Omnibus
@ola azul: The lack of subject/verb agreement was intentional, wasn’t it?
ola azul
@Omnes Omnibus:
Always is. Less I fuck up my fucking up of the English language.
Which happens.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: Literally.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ruckus: I think more of this instead.
raven
@ola azul: I’m recovering from a trashed knee when something hit my bait and my rod and reel flew out of the holder into the water. Being that it was a Penn reel and expensive rod I had no choice but to dive for it and landed squarely on my knee. Dude was stripping line and heading for Mexico but I managed to turn it and get it in! I turned out to be a ray but it was fun until I knew what it was.
Ronno2018
@WaterGirl: The whole new site is awesome and nice to look at. Thank you for working on it!
rekoob
All of it has been an improvement, and I’ve been using f.lux since John Cole recommended it. Probably the best feature is having links open in another tab automatically. Very handy for keeping place.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I like the way my name etc. sticks. And I like that Recent Comments is back because I can tell where people are commenting.
Wag
@Ohio Mom:
me, too!
Barbara
I love the site. I especially like all the sleek navigation features. Well done!
daize
@WaterGirl: I so appreciate how patient you are with folks like me who don’t read your posts carefully and then ask idiot questions. You are always so gracious about it.
I love the new site design. Thank you for all of your very hard work.
crosspalms
I like the new look. Clean, similar enough to the old one to not rattle my senses, loads faster (especially embedded tweets). I don’t comment enough to have an opinion on how that differs, but my hat’s off to everyone who worked on this. Thanks!
batguano
I like that the new site smells like lavender.
ETA: plus how is it possible that it barely drains my phone battery on Chrome Android 10.
trollhattan
No, and stop calling me Shirley.
mvr
To be honest I was already thinking about how to send along a comment of thanks for the new site. The up and down arrows on the right were great. The lack of skeezy advertising is a definite improvement over the previous iteration. That I only had to fill in the comment form once is a blessing. And it looks pretty good too.
Thanks for all of your work!
Baud
I really love the hidden camera feature that let’s me see the other commenters.
WaterGirl
@Baud: I ?Baud.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
You’re looking ravishing tonight, WG.
kindness
John thinks that all/most/some of us are insufferable pricks who complain all the time.
Pure projection and honestly many of us came to this place because John was an insufferable prick back in the day. But we loved it.
ola azul
@raven:
Saw that! Responded. Quite enjoy hearing your adventures. Misst you, was one thread behind you for a piece.
Thing about ocean fishing, tho (in the words of my Norwegian boss of long ago up in Lake of the Woods, Minnesoooota): “You yuss never know!” Plus, yer injury is all in the game, right? Can’t be giving fishing rods to the ocean.
Was fishing on the pilings of the Cape Coral Bridge at night one time with a buddy (illegal, course; i.e. fishing on the bridge, not the fishing with my buddy, tho that prolly by all rights oughtta be illegal, too). Had the water-mule stowed close by case got into sumpin big. My buddy hooks up to sumpin powerful. We clamber into the canoe n give chase. Never jumps. Don’t even run much. Got plows n plods. Me: “It’sa ray, Tom.”; my buddy (hopefully): “Might be a tarpon.”; me: “Din’t jump.”; him: “Sometimes they don’t.”)
So we followed that fish all over the Caloosahatchee River for the better part of an hour n a half, till my buddy finally pumps it close enough to see it shimmering with purple phosphorescence in the gloaming light of the banks of the city. It’sa ray. Big’n.
Me n my buddy got lotsa histry, and knowing how he once got stung/barbed in the leg by a sting ray n his buddy generously offered to piss onnit to make it better (iodine! not entirely insincere offer!), I allowed as how if he was to stop “meddling” with the rays, we might could go back to try’nta getta tarpon or snook and he wouldn’t have to find out to his cost that you can’t tap a dry keg.
mrmoshpotato
@Baud: Put some damn pants on!
Baud
@mrmoshpotato: No.
Bill Arnold
My favorite thing about the new site is that commenters are including more links. Both the visual mode buttons and your tutorials have been helpful. (Now to get people to include author names when appropriate. Search engines are things. :-)
and
Dan B
I luuuurve the new!!
Okay, time to mellow out. I like how the changes seemed subtle at first but kept revealing how pleasing they were: nym saved, refresh, blue box, text, etc. And Watergirl for hanging in admirably through all the gnashing and glitches! Many kudos and hugs (as desired..).
laura
The new site is spiffy. Everybody but mostly Watergirl did a great job. And Baud is back right where we need him in the run up to the primaries.
mrmoshpotato
@Baud: I have no response.
mrmoshpotato
@Bill Arnold: Haha
Aleta
I like the dream I had last night after I exited. It was vivid and semi-real just like the new site.
WaterGirl
@Bill Arnold: The pictures at both links were great.
Mike in Oly
I am loving the new site. So well thought out and it looks great. I really appreciate all the hard work of everyone who worked on it.
schrodingers_cat
I like the recent comments feature.
sukabi
Appreciate all the work that you guys have done on the site. The comment, refresh and other nav buttons are fantastic. ?
Aleta
The design is thought-out and beautiful and navigation is fast and friendly. WaterGirl ⛩ ??
eta And I admire very much that you made room to list authors and artists and blogs.
Aleta
del test
Suzanne
Although WTF with the ads.
Cowgirl in the Sandi
Thanks to Watergirl and all for a great job. I love the Refresh button and especially the fact that the balloon man has returned up top. Thanks to John and all for such a great, educational, funny. amazing site!!
Also, I’ll have to try out the pie filter to see the pics.
joel hanes
This site nice content, much informations.
Keep it up!
ola azul
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Dead thread, but: Watching news, someone sez “meddle”, got irritated, then curious.
Adam’s an incisive human, no doubt, but just for shits n giggles, did a b-j search to see when I first expressed my ire at that insipid euphemism “meddling”. Earliest I could find was inna comment about the efficacy of removing Moscow Mitch not just as Senate Majority Leader but also from the Senate itself. Was a disgusted interjectory aside made inna diff point at Comment 59:
https://balloon-juice.com/2019/01/16/our-goose-is-cooked-our-reputation-is-shot/
Jan. 16 of this year, twere, back when poleaxed was still my nym.
mrmoshpotato
@ola azul: *shakes head* Scooby hater.
ola azul
Also, too: The site redesign is fab. Still learning its ways, but a wonderful job onna gargantuan task.
J R in WV
@Suzanne:
Oh, yeh, Pittsburgh is a really nice city, I love the rivers and steep hillsides. Great museums. AND you will only be about 50 miles from Balloon Juice HQ at Cole’s house.
I love B-J mostly because of the news you all round up, and it’s my main social contact, as we’re hermits in the deep woods. We have lots of great friends and neighbors, but we don’t see them every day like you would neighbors in the city or even in the ‘burbs.
I feel like you guys are my friends, even those of you I sometimes fuss with. Not the trolls, the real people. I can count on the Jackals for emotional support, as needed. For which I thank all of you, and esp. Watergirl and Cole.
We went to see Ford V Ferrari this evening, a great movie with interesting real people and fabulous cars, from streets filled with period cars of the ’50s and ’60s to the incredible GT sports race cars built for 24 hour endurance racing. Then pizza and beer and home already.
ola azul
@mrmoshpotato:
Ruh-roh! Them’s fightin words!
Notta Scooby hater at all. But will say: If there’s any justice left in this misbegotten world, which is very much an open question, then “deliberate bad-faith Scooby misappropriators” surely must be added to the formal articles of impeachment.
ola azul
@Suzanne:
Echoing J R, best wishes. Share the good news if it comes; always cheers the heart to hear when good peeps get good news.
Jackie
@Gin & Tonic: @Gin & Toni: @Gin & Tonic: @Gin & Tonic: I love clicking on a link and not losing the place I was at?
tomtofa
@Ruckus:
That’s a great analogy – exactly how I feel.
And when nested comments goes live it will be perfect!
Oh, wait . . .
Albatrossity
Albatrossity
I like the author and topic banner pictures :-)
WaterGirl
@Albatrossity: I do, too! Especially the one on Photo Blogging.