Dear Watergirl,
Does Tunch show up on every post, everywhere? It seems like I see him a lot. He’s the perfect choice, so I’m not complaining! I’m just trying to make sense of it.
Dear Just Trying to Understand,
No, Tunch is not on every post. That awesome picture of Tunch is the default for some things, but not for everything.
Dear WaterGirl,
I see images everywhere, even in places where I didn’t know they existed! Imagine my surprise the other day when I saw an image when I clicked on one of the wings to take me to another thread. Where else might I see images?
Dear Surprised,
I may not be able to think of all of them at the moment, but I’ll give it a try. Sometimes there are images in the post. Sometimes there are images that show up in the the wings, and it’s not even a picture that’s anywhere in the post. There are images on Twitter feeds, images on Facebook. Images that show up with a post in a RSS Reader. If I think of any more, I’ll add them in later.
Dear WaterGirl,
What’s up with images on the new site? I don’t understand the logic of what images we see where. Are you using some kind of image randomizer just to mess with us?
Dear What’s Up With Images,
I would never do that! But this is a classic example of a situation where if you know the rules, it makes total sense. But if don’t know the rules? It’s difficult to reverse engineer and figure out what the rules are. The short story is that it’s pretty much up to the front pagers to determine what pictures show up where.
Dear WaterGirl,
If everybody doesn’t have to use the same images, and front pagers can do what they want…
Could Cheryl always use that map I’ve seen a couple of times?
Could Betty use a picture of Badger?
Could Mayhew use an abacus?
Could Tom use a printing press?
Could TaMara use a duck?
Dear My, You Have Given This a Lot of Thought!
Yes, if they wanted to, each front pager could have a standard featured image on most or all of their posts, that could be a brand, of sorts. Their posts would be known by the company they keep could be easily recognizable from the image that shows up.
Dear WaterGirl,
I saw that a couple of commenters had added an image directly into their comment, and they weren’t even front pagers. How come they get to do that and I can not?! It’s not fair! Or can we all do that, and I just don’t know how?
Dear It’s Not Fair!
Only front pagers can add images in the comments. That’s the plan, anyway! I turns out that we have some clever commenters who like to test the boundaries, and sometimes they find a way around things. That’s okay, that just helps us make the site more secure. They find ‘em, we block ‘em. :-)
THAT’S ALL THE LETTERS FOR TODAY. I’LL CONTINUE TO DO THIS FOR A BIT UNTIL EVERYBODY IS UP TO SPEED.
Please feel free to snack on some cake while you read.
WaterGirl
There were so many image questions in a thread I was reading on the train on the way back from Chicago, I thought it might be helpful to have a Dear WaterGirl thread that is all about images.
mrmoshpotato
@WaterGirl: I hope you enjoyed our windy city on a great lake!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@mrmoshpotato: Great Lake, it’s still not an ocean and NOT a coast.
WaterGirl
@mrmoshpotato: I grew up in Chicago, or in the closest suburb, at least. I could see the Sears tower from my house. I’m not much of a big city girl, but I do love the lake.
When I saw the ocean for the first time, I thought “it looks just like Lake Michigan!” :-) (although it doesn’t really)
edit: the above was written before Bill in #3.
WaterGirl
No image questions at all? Maybe everything was asked and answered on the “train” thread.
Another Scott
“From rags on up to riches fifteen minutes you can fly…”
I took Amtrak from Chicago to Cincinnati once. An interesting experience!
Thanks for the Q&A. And for keeping us in the loop, so to speak!
Cheers,
Scott.
debbie
@WaterGirl:
I didn’t see the ocean until my first year in college. I couldn’t get over the immensity of it.
It’s not like Lake Michigan was small. This is a poorly shot photo of my parents shortly after their marriage along the shore. The shoreline seemed to stretch forever, but the Atlantic sure dwarfed that misperception!
Redshift
Mmm, cake…
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: You might have recognized one fo the (slightly edited) letters!
WaterGirl
@debbie: Good looking parents! Your mom had a lovely tan, and such nice legs. :-) If you inherited those, I am jealous.
WaterGirl
This is what I see in the fly-out wings for this post.
That’s because it’s the “featured image”. You can set a featured image, and that has nothing to do with whether you will see the image in the post itself.
If you want it to be the featured image AND show up in the post itself, you add it in both places.
Another Scott
@WaterGirl: Indeed! Thanks for cleaning it up. :-)
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
This is what I see in my RSS feed for this post.
That’s because it’s the only image in the post itself.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: I do take a bit of poetic license in my Dear WaterGirl letters, but I try to stick to the spirit, in any case.
sab
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Not an ocean, but of course it’s a coast. Across the northern U.S. border, states from NY to Minnesota have been referring to themselves as the North Coast at least since my grandmother was young, and she was born in the 19th century.
On the south shore of the Great Lakes you can only see water to the horizon, and on the other side ( beyond the horizon) is a foreign country. Of course it is a coast.
WaterGirl
This is what I see in my RSS feed for last night’s post about rotating tags.
If you saw my post, you might remember that it contained a picture of my tree. So why doesn’t the tree show up here?
Because I forgot to add the picture before I pressed “Publish” on the post. I added the image later, but once you press Publish, there’s no going back on what shows up where.
satby
Dear WaterGirl,
you’re a saint.
WaterGirl
This is weird, and I only discovered it last night. This is what I see in John’s twitter feed on the right, when i am in Safari.
Okay, never mind on this one. I was going to show you that in Chrome, the picture only shows up at about 2/3 of the size that it does in Safari, only of course today it isn’t doing it. :-)
WaterGirl
@satby: Dear You are So Sweet To Say So,
thank you, satby!
Jay
WaterGirl
@debbie: I didn’t see the ocean until about 10 years ago.
I fell in love with it. I walked down to the ocean one last time before I left Maine, and I cried when I said goodbye to the ocean.
I’m sure that sounds stupid, but I am WaterGirl, after all.
SiubhanDuinne
@Another Scott:
Me, I would have done exactly the opposite.
Yarrow
This post is confusing to me.
Can you give us info on which things? Or is that a state secret? Or we’re supposed to guess? Lack of clarity is part of the plan? It’s supposed to be a fun surprise?
Why are the rules not made clear to commenters? Is that part of the plan? As an end user I find the images confusing. They don’t really add anything except for a random image being there. They don’t inform the viewer about the post. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to which image appears, so it’s not like you see an image and think, “Oh a post about Tunch.” Nope. Just some random image, unrelated to the post. I like the idea of an image being tied to a front pager so at least you know whose post it is when you see it in John’s Twitter feed, for example, but that isn’t happening. I also like the idea of an image being related to the post somehow. Also not happening. From a communications standpoint the images confuse more than help.
I’m still not on board with the front pagers getting to post images and video in comments. I understand this ability was something they had before the rebuild. Didn’t like it then and still don’t. I still don’t understand what it adds to comments, I don’t see why it’s a perk for them, it heightens the class differentiation between front pagers and commenters and it bogs down the thread. At least one other person in that thread the other day agreed with me so I know I”m not alone.
All my complaints being said, thank you for the thread. I appreciate your patience and all the time you spend to get the site working.
debbie
@WaterGirl:
I did not. Later in her life, she weighed twice what I did, but still had those damn skinny legs. ?
SiubhanDuinne
@satby:
Quoted for fuckin truth.
Duane
@WaterGirl: Can you help with the images I see that aren’t on this site? I have a lot of questions about them.
debbie
@WaterGirl:
Not at all. When you don’t grow up around the ocean, it can be overwhelming, in a good way.
WaterGirl
@Yarrow:
Well, I figured that if I packed too much in up top, no one would read it, so I was hoping someone would ask for a followup. :-)
Tunch is set as the “social media default”. So he shows up in various places, if the front pager hasn’t set an image. I’ll put some examples below.
sab
@debbie: I grew up on east coast of Florida, and remember looking at the Atlantic and thinking “Wow, the other side is Africa.” Later, I looked at Lake Erie, and thought “the other side is Canada” ( where Grandma’s cousins live.) Not quite the same.
WaterGirl
This is what shows up in John’s twitter feed for Betty’s This is better! post.
That post had no image and no featured image, so it got our beloved Tunch.
NotMax
I realize it’s not going to change but the side tabs seem superfluous at this point as they replicate the function of the arrows in the fixed white bar at the top.
As for images (and this is strictly a personal preference observation, not a criticism), would find it navigationally helpful if front pagers who include lots of images would take advantage of the opportunity to place the bulk of them below the fold, utilizing the first two or maybe at most three as a teaser on the front page proper.
Also too, is there at play more than one method for front pagers to add or designate images? Have noticed, with javascript disabled, that some images on the front page, when right-clicked, offer an option to be viewed separately in a new tab while others do not. For example, the cake image in this post does not, while the image in Mr. Cole’s Chuck Todd post further down the front page does. Put another way – and this holds regardless of whether javascript is enabled or not – some front page images, when hovered over by the cursor, display a link while others do not. Win 10, Firefox.
Yarrow
@WaterGirl: Is there going to be some kind of “explainer” somewhere on the site as to why certain photos appear certain places?
Also, can front pagers set a photo as a default for themselves–like John could be Tunch, etc.–so if they forget to change a photo it defaults back to that one? Or do they have to set a photo every time, which honestly sounds like a pain and I don’t blame them for not wanting/remembering to do it.
Baud
I was thinking of the server issues we’ve been having. If I were the Russians I’d be trying to take down websites that oppose Trump. Like Balloon Juice. It makes me wonder whether they got to WaterGirl. I mean, who donates $100,000 of her time because she likes us? Have you seen us???? The whole thing is suspicious. I bet WaterGirl isn’t even her real name.
So, Dear WaterGirl, what’s really going on with the website? Come clean.
WaterGirl
@Yarrow:
I thought the rules might make more sense once you guys had seen some examples.
Twitter feeds:
If you have set a featured image for the post, you see the featured image in the twitter feed. See the image in #18.
If you have NOT set a featured image for the post, you get Tunch. See the image in #30.
Yarrow
@NotMax:
Yes! I agree! It used to be that Alain’s On the Road posts had zero images above the fold. I asked him several times if he could please put one image above the fold as a sort of teaser. I’d see one of them in John’s Twitter feed and it would remind me to click through and see the rest.
Now Alain’s On the Road posts have ALL the images on the front page/above the fold. It’s just too much. It would be great if ONE image could be on the front page and the rest after the click through. Also it would encourage people to click through to see more.
WaterGirl
@Duane: That could be tough to answer, without knowing whether you are hearing voices as well as seeing things. :-)
Yarrow
@WaterGirl: I understand a post with no image getting a set image as default. As an end user whatever an “image” vs. a “featured image” is opaque to me. I don’t get why something would be one or the other.
WaterGirl
@Yarrow:
That’s what I’m trying to do here. :-) Are you looking for something else? I’m sure I could pick and choose from this tread and make a document about images if anybody would want that.
satby
@Yarrow: I agree about the On The Road images. All above the fold takes up way too much space, and honestly, why even open the post after seeing all the pictures anyway?
WaterGirl
@Yarrow:
Unfortunately, you can’t set a default featured image. But it’s super easy to do what Cheryl did. She decided on that cool map image for her featured image. I suggested she name it something really obvious.
Then you click “featured image” as you are creating your post, go to the image library, and type in whatever you called it, that image pops up, and you select it. That’s no more difficult than picking out your categories or snark tags.
I think the trick is figuring out what you might want to use for your featured image if there’s not something you want to use for that post in particular.
Scott came up with a lot of good ideas for that on the “train” thread about images. I have no idea whether anyone will consider doing that, but I thought his idea was brilliant, and I liked his suggestions.
satby
@WaterGirl:
God, no. Please don’t. Yarrow is making it harder than it is.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@NotMax: The side tabs(or wings) provide the post title, the directional arrows don’t.
The Dangerman
So, apparently, taking the under on LSU/Oklahoma was a bad call.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@satby:
To read my insightful replies to comments on my pic, of course.
Omnes Omnibus
@satby: Agreed. Either that or you and I were left out of the secret message club again.
Mary G
WordPress is now and always has been a giant mess. There is no way John & WaterGirl can make everything work the way everyone wants. If I don’t like something, I scroll on by it. The planet is dying and crooks are in charge of America. Flaws in something I get for free just don’t matter that much.
NotMax
@satby
It’s also an unfair usurpation of space from other front pagers (IMHO) as it inevitably pushes one or more recent FP posts onto page 2 of the site, making those posts less immediately accessible to visitors who may be trying to catch up with things.
@BillinGlendaleCA
Sure they do. The title shows up as a part of the link URL.
Another Scott
Our friend Mr. 502 (bad gateway, but it’s actually not a bad gateway, is it?) hit on my first attempt at posting this.
@WaterGirl: It was Cheryl’s idea – I just thought that making it more universal would be helpful and less confusing as we adjust to the new homestead.
The things the Front Pagers have to go through to post here remind me of a certain Monty Python sketch…
Cheers,
Scott.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@NotMax: They do, but that’s pretty non-intuitive. Most folk never look at the link.
zhena gogolia
OT, but cinema depends on images, so — we just saw Little Women. Great acting, scenery, costumes, cinematography, music. I’m kind of sick of the story, but she does a good job of mixing up the time frame so it stays interesting. I was so proud of my husband for being one of the three men in the theater. James Norton has a somewhat larger role than I expected, but he’s doing an American accent so it’s just not the same. (Along with Ronan, Pugh, and Watson doing their American accents with varying degrees of success. Ronan is great.)
ETAL Nobody sounds as if they’re from Concord, Mass.
WaterGirl
@Baud: Hey, it was more like 50 or 60, not 100, so let’s not exaggerate! Unless we start counting the time since the rollout. :-)
I like WaterGirl better than my real name, anyway.
What’s really happening with the website is the stupid query that’s built into WordPress, It assumes that there are more posts than comments. That may be true for most sites, but it most definitely not true for us!
We have 60,000 posts and 5.5 million comments.
The query starts with the comments and then goes through the posts, which is totally ass backwards for us.
What the developers are doing now is eliminating as many of the places that “call” or execute that query, as possible.
But it’s more complicated than just that, because it doesn’t happen every time. So we’re still trying to identify the various components that might be in on the shenanigans.
So when you get those Cloudflare errors, it’s not that the server is actually down. It’s unreachable because it’s trying to process the query and whatever else is going on.
So I’m sorry to break it to you, Baud, but when you get that error the server simply doesn’t have time for you, or any of us, because it’s super busy churning away. Until it’s not.
WaterGirl
@Yarrow: That’s a tricky one, because during the site rebuild, lots of BJ peeps rebelled at the idea of not showing the full post on the front page. So for as many people who don’t want all the images up front, there are probably as many people who DO.
In any case, we will continue to let that be the choice of each front pager.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@WaterGirl: Does this “server” know who Baud is? Obviously not or it’d provide better service.
Baud
@WaterGirl: I noticed you didn’t deny the Russian thing.
Have they tried using Ctrl + F to search the code?
WaterGirl
@Yarrow:
That’s the way it works in WordPress, and we have no control over that. Some things about WP are just plain stupid, but it is what it is.
Example:
Let’s say Mayhew wants to take Scott’s suggestion and use the abacus as his featured image, which could make his posts instantly recognizable. That’s what would show up on social media. That doesn’t mean that he would want the abacus to show up in the post itself.
NotMax
@BillinGlendaleCA
Not looking at where a link is going to go before clicking on it puts your computer at risk of nasties. Just sayin’.
Jackals, being profoundly perspicacious, know better than to blindly click. ;)
Yarrow
@satby: Okay. Message received. Sorry my questions are such a bother. I’ll shut up now.
Laura Too
@Baud: Awesome comment.
WaterGirl
@Baud: Re: the Russia thing. Yeah, I was in the middle of writing up what the problem is when the problem occurred. Once it came back up, I was just thrilled that my comment was still there, and hit Publish.
I am not now, or ever was, a Russian. Though I do love Rocky and Bullwinkle, so I am surely suspect.
Perhaps if we move the server to Ukraine, the problems will stop!
The ass backwards query even gets called all the time by RSS readers, which is most definitely not under the developer’s control. Though I guess we could make the comments off limits to the RSS feed. I wonder if people would care about that?
WaterGirl
@Baud: I could be like Rudy! Work for “free” but really get paid on the down low by the Russians. I am clearly doing it wrong.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@WaterGirl:
Good news! They’re coming back to Sunset Blvd.
Wait, it’s not in Ukraine? I figured that would be why it didn’t know who Baud is.
WaterGirl
@satby: Maybe I’ll take a poll at some point and see how people feel about that, just for On the Road.
I will have to check with the developers, but I’m fairly confident that the default could be changed to just one picture above the fold, but only if that’s what pretty much everyone would want, or could be happy enough with that.
raven
400 yds and 7 td’s in the first half! Geaux Tigers!
Laura Too
@WaterGirl: This is becoming my favorite front page posts. I love the new site!
Baud
@raven: I’m starting to think they’re pretty good.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott:
Well, if we want to be totally accurate, I was the one who suggested to Cheryl that she could choose an image and always use that one as her featured image. Then she mentioned that on the “train” thread.
I was crediting you with the ideas for how each front pager might do that. So let’s just call it a group effort! :-)
trollhattan
Kid just had a nice chat with the Cal Poly SLO track coach, so I guess that makes fourteen schools she’s applying to. Or is it eighteen? What day is this, Sunrsday? Dad lose count.
Her early application friends are racking up some nice acceptances, but we’re not on that track so lots of nail-biting time ahead.
Baud
@WaterGirl: Do it! Let them complain.
WaterGirl
@Laura Too: I’m so glad!
WaterGirl
@Baud: Do what? Remove comments from the RSS reader?
If I’m going to make people unhappy i would at least like to know what I am being asked to do. :-)
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Splitter.
J R in WV
On this issue, we agree. I think the photo features, like Sunday Morning Garden and On the Road should have the pictures below the fold. TaMara’s ducks, as well… as much as I love the ducks, there may be folks who would rather see them later.
This should also make the front page load faster…
Baud
@WaterGirl: Yes. Or whatever else makes people unhappy. You are a God now. Time to act like it.
WaterGirl
@satby:
Well, it wouldn’t be my favorite thing to do, for sure! But I am willing to consider anything that would be super useful to people.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Yarrow: Images in a post to social media increases engagement, so bloggers are encouraged to include an image in an announcement post to FB/Twitter/whatev. The featured image function allows a blogger to designate that image for social media even if there’s no real reason to have one in the body of the post.
Let’s say that for my genealogy blog, I’ve done a post involving lots of screenshots of newspaper articles. An SEO guy would tell me that I need something more colorful and eye-catching for the image that automatically gets pulls in when someone shares it on FB so that it doesn’t pick a blurry old newspaper clipping. The longtime masthead for the newspaper that I work with the most is attractive and colorful; I’d probably use a featured image of that masthead but not include it in the post itself.
WaterGirl
@J R in WV: I wouldn’t want all the on the road or garden chat pictures to be below the fold, for sure.
WaterGirl
@trollhattan: It was an unbelievably long time ago, but I still remember making my best friend open my college letter because I was too afraid to open it myself.
WaterGirl
Yarrow, are you still here? I’m not sure whether I answered all your questions. The site interruption kind of interrupted my flow.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Baud: God, root, what is difference?
NotMax
@WaterGirl
Back in the day one didn’t need to hire The Amazing Kreskin, you could tell right away from the size and/or weight of the envelope.
Lapassionara
@WaterGirl: Thank you! I don’t know how you stay so cheerful! And helpful!
satby
@Yarrow: oh, c’mon! No one asked you to shut up. But she had explained it three times by the time I wrote you were making it hard on yourself.
WaterGirl
@Yarrow:
Part of it is an education issue, so front pagers understand what images will show up where. I thought this post could be a first step for clarifying things for commenters and front pagers alike.
One of the great things about BJ is that John lets the front pagers do their own thing, and he will not require them to have a featured image. That’s part of what makes BJ so great, but it also has a flip side.
WaterGirl
@Lapassionara: That’s very kind of you to say!
trollhattan
@WaterGirl:
That’s legit adorable. I get it, because with these apps they have so much at stake and understand how hard and stressful it is for one another.
WaterGirl
@NotMax:
You said that some pictures display a link and another does not. Pictures can be added to the media library or, I believe, they can be added using a link. Just a guess, but that may be the determining factor re: hovering or opening in a new tab.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: oh my gosh, I had never seen that before. That’s hysterical!
WaterGirl
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Baud is my #1, so it would if I had anything to say about it!
WaterGirl
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
What’s this about Rocky & Bullwinkle coming back to Sunset Blvd? I know nothing about this.
OzarkHillbilly
Dear WaterGirl,
Thank you for the fact that I no longer have to renew the page repeatedly until I see my comments. I know you and your team(s) have been working hard to solve this problem and for the past 2 or 3 days it has been solved.
different-church-lady
Dear WaterGirl,
Have you ever looked at your hands? I mean… really looked at your hands?
debbie
@WaterGirl:
Would that mean that Ann’s posts would only show the first tweet?
How about something in between, like 5 images, before the jump?
WaterGirl
@trollhattan: It’s really complicated emotionally, I think. You are happy for your friend, but jealous because she got accepted and you didn’t. Or you’re happy for your friend, but they got their notification already but you didn’t, does that mean you didn’t get accepted? That you won’t get to go to the school you want to go to? So happy you got into school in CA, but that means I’ll never get to see you. So complicated!
WaterGirl
@OzarkHillbilly:
Dear Mr. Hillbilly, (still giggling about that)
You are most welcome! It’s human nature to be really upset when something isn’t working, but to barely give it a second thought once it is fixed.
It’s the rare person who remembers, so thank you!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@WaterGirl:
This explains the story of Rocky and Bullwinkle on Sunset Blvd.
WaterGirl
@different-church-lady: ha!
WaterGirl
@debbie: I was only talking about the possibility of changing that for On the Road, because that was a custom form and the posts are created automatically by the custom programming.
So we could theoretically make a change to the programming so that the first photo always showed for On the Road, and to see more you would either have to expand with the clickable button from the front page or you would have to click on the Post itself and see the comments.
For everything else, it’s totally up to the front pager who creates the post. Each front pager has total control over that for each post.
I do think Anne Laurie tries to do that on her longer posts.
WaterGirl
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Love the jaunty bent knee on Bullwinkle.
debbie
@WaterGirl:
Didn’t Alain used to put all the photos after the jump? I feel like he did, but I also feel like this is a gnat of an issue, like some others in this thread.
WaterGirl
@debbie: Alain might have done that, but we didn’t want to do that anymore.
Plus, I don’t know if you recall the Sunday all those months ago when I did the Sneak Peak of what the front page was going to look like, and people HATED that they couldn’t see the full post on the front page.
So we made sure people could see the full post for On the Road. That was part of the thinking anyway.
I believe this would be an easy change, but can only be done if there is an overwhelming desire for it from a lot of people. Otherwise we would spend all day every day changing things back and forth, because no one agrees on everything.
BruceFromOhio
Mmmm, cake!
…no forks?
WaterGirl
@BruceFromOhio: Since when do jackals have opposable thumbs?
Besides, everyone gets their own cake, so you can dig right in!
joel hanes
Let’s see if I’m blocked from posting images now …
nope
NotMax
Another Scott
@WaterGirl: It’s from “Monty Python’s Meaning of Life”. My favorite movie of theirs. YMMV!!
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@joel hanes: I took the liberty of taking your photo down because I don’t want people to see how to do that. :-)
The developers have been focused on the bigger site issue so they haven’t even looked at that To Do item on the list.
joel hanes
@WaterGirl:
Gotcha.
I won’t do it again.
joel hanes
@BruceFromOhio:
The cake is a lie
Mo MacArbie
Dear WaterGirl,
Thanks for the series of explainers. I’ve been enjoying the rollout of the new features, even the ones I don’t use. It’s good to have a few different ways of doing the same thing to suit one’s individual preference. Even the 502 errors serve as a reminder to get off the f#cking computer once in a while or at least get back to colorably “productive” pursuits. I do like the fly-out arrows (is that the term?), as the appearance of the one on the right is generally my first indication of fresh thread to gobble. RSS has always lagged a bit. I haven’t noticed if the right arrow up top disables/enables depending on need.
One thing I do notice is that the page text always resizes itself on page load and refresh. The first flash is that everything shows up bigger and then shrinks. I have my own view size set at the default 100%. I’m not particularly bothered by this, but it seems curious or that maybe there’s a step that could be removed somewhere.
I also quibble with the suggestion upthread of a regular image for Tom Levinson’s posts. Surely, our resident “Pretentious Art Douche” doesn’t need our input there! His style of art selection is almost a non-brand brand now, and I’m grateful for his turning me on to J.M.W. Turner. That aside, if the notion does catch on with the front-pagers, it may just motivate me to adjust my RSS reader settings to actually see the things, since it doesn’t want to display the authors’ names.
Anyway, back to learning python. In that spirit, here’s my dictionary:
{ 'pronouns' : ['he', 'him'],'generation' : 'X'
'device' : 'PC'
'os' : 'Windows 10',
'browser' : 'Chrome',
'browserversion' : '79.0.3945.88 (Official Build) (64-bit)',
'adblocker' : True,
'scriptblocker' : False,
'readvia' : 'RSS',
'rssreader' : 'Netvibes',
'readmode' : 'Lurk'}
Edit: huh, code tags don’t preserve my leading space. Thought they would, or maybe I’m not using them right.
Mo MacArbie
Rats, left out a couple commas there. My inner perfectionist requests an infinite edit window ;)
WaterGirl
@Mo MacArbie:
Yep!
WaterGirl
@Mo MacArbie:
The existing RSS feed I had for Balloon Juice never showed the author’ name, and it still doesn’t. But if you subscribe to the feed anew, you will see the author’s name in the RSS feed.
WaterGirl
@Mo MacArbie:
That will be up to the esteemed Mr. Levenson!
WaterGirl
@Mo MacArbie:
I don’t think that happens to me, but I will watch for it. What device/browser combination are you using? If you have access to another device or another browser, can you check there and see if you notice the same thing?
Mo MacArbie
@WaterGirl: I’m on a Win10 PC using chrome, as my lovingly formatted code snippet above attempted to make clear. Not the first time that my alleged clarity wasn’t, alas. It seems that a lifetime of cultivating irony and double entendré does a number on one’s attempts at directness.
Anyway, I have only the one laptop, but just pasted this post’s link into firefox, and it did the same thing. I noticed that the post title started out slightly bigger and then quickly adjusted itself.
On the RSS thing, I did try replacing the feed with a new one, but it didn’t seem to help, at least on netvibes. Granted, I usually have it set to the condensed display, which may not display the author anyway. Another variable: I still had the old feed present on the page when adding the new one, and maybe that bajanxed the whole endeavor.
Mo MacArbie
Just tried adding the rss feed anew, with no authors. I’m chalking it up to that particular reader, netvibes. I deleted the old feed, signed off, logged back in, and added a new one. I neglected to close the browser, shut down the computer, and walk widdershins around the block, but I doubt the efficacy of all that.
WaterGirl
@Mo MacArbie:
Yeah, I noticed that after I asked, but left it since I had also asked about alternate devices or browsers. :-)
WaterGirl
@Mo MacArbie: I would tend to agree. Author shows on Leaf Reader, and after the developers added the author to the RSS feed, I notified all the people who had asked for that.
I got only “yay”s in return, so I think it likely is your reader.
WaterGirl
@Mo MacArbie:
You’re right. I have seen that! I never gave it a second thought since it rights itself immediately. I can ask about it, though.
WaterGirl
Interesting, but maybe only to me!
Anne Laurie’s Garden Chat from this morning. No featured image. John’s twitter feed used the first image from the post, which I expected.
My RSS feed (obviously still no featured image) used the second picture from the post.