Add them here, and I will tally them and put them on a list and Tommy and I can cross them off as they are attended to.
If you see your issue has already been addressed by another commenter, there is no need to second it or say it again or blockquote it. Try to keep this thread short and sweet for maximum utility.
*** Update ***
For the love of everything holy, stop asking questions about the comments. They are working with a plugin author to deal with that. We’re talking about other shit.
MomSense
Lexicon link(s)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
links to next and previous posts at the bottom of a threads, if possible?
still a little bright for me, the more subtle grey is easier for me to read, but I don’t know what others think
Also, snacks. I like cheese flavored carbs. And none of that honey-roasted, or honey-mustard shit. Honey is biscuits, and anyone who disagrees is a Debbie Wasserman Schultz loving HillBot.
p.a.
Blogroll links. (If they’re there, I don’t see them.)
eMail links to front pagers. (If etc…)
schrodinger's cat
What is the photograph of trash supposed to signify?
Suggestions:
1. The rotating tagline did not need to be named, calling it random quotes of wisdom is particularly lame.
2. Bring the Balloon man back.
3. Bring back the comment numbers
4. Blogs we mock have merged with the blogs we follow in the Blogroll.
5. PayPal font size is bigger than the blog’s name.
dr. luba
The text on the formating buttons is still barely visible.
p.a.
@MomSense: dropdown on desktop. On mobile: dropdown > links. Guess I answered my own issues too!
Alexander
A link to comments at the bottom of each post, as well as at the top.
Kazanir
The /-separated metadata under the title is weird:
– Nothing visually differentiates the list of tags from the rest of the stuff, and with lots of tags it gets long and unreadable.
– The author name coming after the tags makes it hard to see who posted what at a glance.
– The comment link is in that spot instead of at the bottom where I would expect it to be on a blog.
satby
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Agreed, it’s a hair better but still way too bright and still way too much blank space making the brightness worse. Since you asked if others agreed.
Tommy Young
@MomSense: Done, here. Located in the top navigation under About Balloon Juice.
benw
Comments on the mobile site expanded to fill the screen (right now on iPhone iOS 9 they just take up the middle 3rd of the screen).
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: it took me a little while to see them, but the previous/next links are little grey boxes with arrowheads in them that stay fixed on either side of your browser as you scroll up and down. They’re pretty sweet, actually.
Upon loading a new OP, the site should override all user settings and autoplay Metallica’s Harvester of Sorrow at full volume. Thanks!
JPL
The site is bright for me also. I could dim the screen but that would also affect other sites.
Tommy Young
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Been here since day one. To the left and right (if it isn’t the last post) is a gray box as you scroll with either a < or >. Mouse over it.
Warren Terra
1) The vertical space between comments is … e n o r m o u s ….
2) Also the vertical space between name, email, and website in the comment box, and a bunch of other places. Really, just in general the vertical spacing is weird.
3) The buttons in the comment box are now white-on-light-grey unless you hover over them. The dividers between comments are also nearly invisible.
4) Comment numbers.
5) At least some simple html commands like angle-brackets-i no longer work. This probably should be numbered higher.
6) What is the point of the new entry page, except to force us to add “/blog” to the URL?
Malaclypse
It seems the only Random Quote of Wisdom is “How has Obama failed you today?”
Feature, or bug?
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
pics don’t load for me
Trabb's Boy
The giant flash of white scrolling past the pictures is kind of hard on the eye — if the blue bubble could pop up without the white, I’d be less nervous about getting caught reading BJ at work. :)
Generally, it looks great, though!
Tommy Young
@p.a.: Both here since day one. Right sidebar as a dropdown menu item.
Gremcat
1. A down arrow to get to the bottom of the comments section rather than having to scroll.
Tommy Young
I DON’T NEED ANYBODY TO TELL ME THE COMMENTING BOX IS BROKEN. WE KNEW THAT BEFORE WE LAUNCHED. So anything related to that please stop posting it.
MomSense
@Tommy Young:
Thanks!
Roger Moore
@schrodinger’s cat:
I think it’s cleaning up after a party.
The formatting buttons could also use some work; they’re still white on light gray when you aren’t hovering over them. I would also prefer if there were a few more formatting tools, e.g. strikethrough text.
There is insufficient differentiation between the names of commenters who have links with their names and those who don’t.
Insufficient differentiation between post categories and poster’s name.
scav
Along with the “Random Quote of Wisdom” being useless and above a static quote of wisdom, I don’t see the need for a “Use Paypal to support us!” immediately above “Donate with PayPal” (The “Balloon Juice Store” above the Tunch icon is needed as there’s no info on the image itself)
Roger Moore
@Warren Terra:
There’s a short list of recent posts at the top, so you can go directly to them rather than having to scroll down. Once the temporary stuff related to the redesign is gone, that will be the main difference.
RSA
@Trabb’s Boy:
I’ll add clarity, if it’s not obvious what this means: When the pointer is over an image, the image gets washed out so that you can’t see it (in order to highlight the center button to expand or go to the image). Really annoying.
Tommy Young
@Warren Terra:
Well it is a good, honest question. The reason is there are a number of other things we can do with this front page. This is just what we did at launch. For example see here and here. IMHO this stuff is kind of cool. These pages are not active yet because we need to get the Front Pagers using “Featured Images.” But we have the ability to do a lot of stuff moving foward. Present the post and information in general in different manners. You might not like it, or you might love on of these others layouts. But options.
Tommy Young
@RSA: Click on the image when this happens. There is a reason behind this.
Faction
When a comment links to a previous comment upthread, I click the upthread poster’s name and the screen scrolls up to that person’s comment. But now I’m unable to get back to the downthread comment where I just was…the Back button on my browser (Firefox) will take me back to the BJ frontpage, not back to the comment. The alternative is just scrolling down down down and hoping I can remember where I left off.
Also, frontpage posts should have the post time, not just the date.
benw
@Tommy Young: THE SITE REDESIGN IS PRETTY GREAT, TOMMY, THANK YOU
Roger Moore
@scav:
Also, too, that image appears to be vertically stretched rather than at its natural aspect ratio; at the very least, it’s a different shape from the similar image at the bottom of the page (which lacks a link).
skerry
If I click on tweets by @johngcole, it takes me to the TwitterDev page not John’s.
dexwood
@Tommy Young:
Love that little feature. Thank you, Tommy, for all your work. Second Faction’s comment re: the back button for comment tracking.
Roger Moore
@Faction:
This is working for me, also on Firefox. I’d rather have it jump to the other comment, though, rather than scroll.
Tommy Young
Other changes made that I was going to post in a comment this afternoon, but this seems as good of a place as any:
I am working on the overall color and type treatment as we speak:
There is some more work to be done here …. then I am off to address the comments related to the content under the title of a post. Like making the authors name first, add the time of the post, make the font different then the body text (yes in fact I did listen and take notes last night).
There are about 25-30 other things I could mention but to type them all out, well I am typing them out and not actually, you know doing them :)!
PurpleGirl
Tommy, thanks for your work in the redesign. I think we now understand what you do professionally.
I’d like to have comment numbers back.
And have the print a little darker. To my eyes, it looks like a dark gray. (But that a complaint I have with lots of places, such as the user manual for my TV set.)
Tommy Young
@skerry: I can’t seem to replicate that. You were pretty clear where you clicked. Any chance you could take a screen cap and link me to it?
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
1. A few weeks ago, TY mentioned that we’d have the option of nested / flat / threaded / etc. viewing options. Is that still in the cards?
b. When the page refreshes, the whole window goes black for an instant before new content appears. (Chrome on Win7) It’s a little disconcerting. Is there anyway to optimize around that. (Very low priority)
III. If there’s any way for us to have more than 3 links per Reply, that would be like Christmas.
iv) I haven’t looked at B-J on my phone (Nexus 4) in ages. Let us know when we should begin beating on the mobile version.
Thanks for your efforts!
Cheers,
Scott.
RSA
@Tommy Young:
Okay, I’ve clicked on the image. In this post, the image expands; in Mistermix’s post, I go to a different page. I guess I don’t understand the reason behind the image becoming harder to see (or read, in the case of Mistermix’s letters) when I hover over it.
dexwood
@RSA:
When I clicked on the picture it pops up with a smart ass caption.
raven
Nice job man.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Tommy Young: Thanks for all your work. As one with a pair of, um, older eyes, I’d have easier reading with a slightly darker background, though the reduced white level is noticeable. Do bolded comments need to have a different color. I fall for the “hyperlink – let’s see to where” with that design. Do/will the hyperlinks be distinguished by color without a hover? Some of us old folks expect links to look different from static text (see immediately preceding sentence). The new typeface weight is greatly appreciated. I’m trying not to be repetitive. : – ) But, please reduce white space between… – for me, it’s an age of eyes thing.
low-tech cyclist
Do something with this stuff to make it more readable:
I’d recommend rearranging it like this:
That way, we can see the author and the number of comments quickly and easily.
Also, I’ll second the request for the return of comment numbers. Ditto reducing the white space between comments.
father pussbucket
@schrodinger’s cat:
Sorry about quoting, but I had to add my assent to this. “Lame” covers it nicely.
sara
larger font please
skerry
@Tommy Young: I’m having trouble with an image, but here is the link that shows when I highlight “Tweets by @johngcole” under “Twitter Feed”. I don’t see any tweets under this heading, just the link. Should I see tweets? I hope this is helpful.
https://twitter.com/twitterdev
(Great job with the redesign, btw)
Tommy Young
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
I want that in the site so much, but somewhat of a disgreement on this end. Server taxing issues. Once we’re up and running and everything is working, I can assure you we’ll be testing that because I don’t think it will be a problem.
I know the current commenting system is at least a few steps back, if not many steps back from what we had and I am SORRY for that. But we do have a new system that does some pretty kickass stuff. Stuff that will make people stand up and clap. But then it has some downsides as well. John seems to have some faith in me and my partner Alain (a long time lurker here) and we plan to just turn it on one morning in a day or so, know we are going to have to hack the heck out of the PHP, and well just see what happens.
That should be interesting …..
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
iPhone specific (and if there’s a separate “mobile site” button like before, I can’t find it):
* Scrolling is very slow, much slower than the previous site.
* Comments are very narrow, with only about 4-5 words per line. This makes the scrolling problem even more annoying because all of the comments are much longer on the page.
But the font is scaleable now, for which my eyes thank you.
Tommy Young
@RSA: Sure you won’t want to expand every image. But many like in the posts about food, events, home improvement, gardens, meet ups, vacations/trips, cooking ….. well you might.
Roger Moore
@RSA:
Changing the appearance of the image when you hover lets you know that something will happen when you click it. If you notice, hovering doesn’t just change the ease of seeing the image; it overlays it with a symbol. That symbol is different for images that are links (a curved arrow pointing right) and ones that expand (two arrows pointing to the lower left and upper right), so you get a hint of what clicking will do.
Tommy Young
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Well my partner and I in this project are testing the reworked mobile site tonight. I am Andriod and he is Apple. John kind of jumped the gun posting this.
Dr. Dave
My browser’s back button (Safari on Mac OS X) takes me to the old site design rather than to the home page on the new site. Maybe I need to clear a cache or something? Or is this a bug others have found?
BGinCHI
Great work, Tommy. I hope Cole isn’t paying you in Bitcoins.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
The Mobile Theme button magically appeared at the bottom on my screen and I clicked on it. Nice! Much better than the previous one. The font is smallish but still legible for me and it seems to scroll faster than the “regular” site.
WaterGirl
Move the lexicon from under “About Balloon Juice”
Get rid of “About Balloon Juice” completely
Forward/back arrows in my browser don’t work. If I want to anchor my place in a particular comment, I click on the date/time stamp. Then I can use find to search for something (for example) and then click the back arrow to take me back to the comment where I anchored myself by clicking on the date/time stamp. That no longer works. Please fix.
Also, if someone replies to a comment from someone else, I used to be able to click on the name to see the original comment, then press the back arrow in my browser to get back to the reply/comment I was reading before I clicked the name to see the original comment that was being replied to. FIX, please.
Agree on the too much brightness issue, although the gray is moving in the right direction. Also suggest that there be less white space between comments. All that white space makes it all feel very impersonal to me.
Second the “random quote of wisdom” lameness – just leave the rotating tag lines hanging out there. With the title it’s not cool anymore, just lame.
Balloon Juice is a blog, so the big link to the Balloon Juice Blog is straight from the Department of Redundancy Department. * I see that you said it can be more than that, but until/unless it is more than that, I suggest removing Balloon Juice Blog. Also, I think balloon-juice.com should still take us directly tot he blog.
Amir Khalid
@Tommy Young:
Put the numbers back on the comments. Other than that, leave them alone.
Ruckus
@Tommy Young:
Keep up the good work young man.
Looks pretty good, as you and John and well most of us have said, it needs some polish here and there. It looks better than it did last night, progress.
Must be fun to have a few thousand bosses, most I’ve ever had was a few hundred at one time.
Roger Moore
@Tommy Young:
I disagree. The new commenting system is functionally identical to the old one; the only complaints at this point are aesthetic. That said, I’m not happy with the idea of a commenting system that is nested for some users and flat for others. People who read in nested format will tend to reply without quoting because they think the thing they’re replying to is obvious, which will confuse the hell out of people who read in flat mode. And nested modes suck for rapid comment systems unless there’s a good way of seeing which messages are new and which are old.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Mobile site notes for later (more important to get the main site up):
It still has two annoying behaviors — if you try to edit your comment, it kicks you back to the front page, and when you comment, you have to refresh the page to see it, which also takes you back up to the top, so you have to scroll all the way down to see your comment.
But, like I said, notes for later since getting the main site up is more important right now.
The Golux
@Alexander:
Seconded.
ETA: I think the new design is quite handsome. No problem with the light grey (I never saw the pure white).
Redshift
@Tommy Young:
Yeah, it looks great! Thanks for the quick turnaround on that.
jheartney
I see you are cleaning up the CSS choices, which is much appreciated. Still some way to go with that, but it’s much improved since launch. In particular I appreciate closing up the letter-spacing on the post headers. Some thoughts:
1. I’d vote against keeping the categories with the date, comment link and byline under each post. If you must show them on the front page, I’d rather see them at the bottom of the post. Category discipline is lax here (as Cole has complained), so you end with a mass of uninformative text before you get to the body of any post.
2. The PayPal widget dominates the page when you load on a desktop. Why? It’s ugly as sin, too. Can you take out the credit card logos? They are a lot of what’s making it hideous. Also, the version of same on the footer is wrong for use on a dark background. You need a white reverse for the footer, again without logos.
3. Formatting of the top level headers (“Welcome to Balloon Juice 3.0” “Our Most Recent Posts”) doesn’t really work on the page; it clashes with the formatting of post headers (both are the same font size, color and weight). In addition, the rule between top level sections is smaller and lighter than the rule between posts. Why? Shouldn’t the page organize visually with division between top level sections more important than divisions between sub-elements like posts? I’d rethink the top level divisions, making them more obviously different than the between-posts divisions. You could keep the top-level headers all caps, but smaller and married to a thicker rule, maybe centered and/or with larger initial caps.
4. Logos for the “Follow Balloon Juice” widget are unnecessarily large and horsey. I’d use smaller versions of the logos with no text. (We all recognize Facebook, Twitter and RSS.)
Ruckus
Also, last night you mentioned that apple devices have some issues of their own. I think I found one. If i use the browser back button (FF) I go back in comments, if I double click and get the apple popup that back button takes me to the main page. No idea why this is treated differently, and I’m sure I don’t want to know.
Starfish
Do the Facebook, RSS, Twitter icons need to be as big as they are? Does the right column really need to have so much padding? The thing about the Paypal thing having weird dimensions that someone mentioned above.
Why is the black section at the bottom so huge? If we swapped the position of the CC crap with the PayPal crap at the bottom, would that black box become smaller?
How does the Categories section differ from tags? I do not like the categories section.
Howard Beale IV
So far, so good.
Tommy Young
@Roger Moore: The new commenting system gives me total and uter control of everything. I mean everything. From the size of the images you can upload to even the number of characters (clearly we’d never do that). But when I threw it down on the ground and had three computers, phone, and tablet in front of me and I pounded it as hard as I could, which would be nothing like it behing “live” here, it didn’t fair so well.
As I said in other comments I am working on all these edits. Partner working on it. When I am done I’ll go help him and well see what happens.
RSA
@Roger Moore: Thanks. That’s what I thought.
Seanly
@dr. luba:
Yes, that is one of my issues also. Some good comments all around.
And how did you get a picture of my late K9 Ginnie’s adventures in why her humans should secure the garbage better?
One other quibble – some of the posters go a little nuts with the tags. Might I gently suggest no more than 5 on a post?
Another Holocene Human
I guess we can’t have upvotes without registration (too many problems). Too bad, because not infrequently I just want to give an upvote instead of posting “me too”.
Upvotes can change the dynamic in a weird way too, I acknowledge that.
Another Holocene Human
@Seanly: Why does it matter how many tags they put on a post?
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Tommy Young:
Another small mobile site “yay” — I can now click on the “reply” name and jump up to the comment being replied to, which for some reason had vanished as an option in the last version of the mobile theme. It’s the little things …
Mike J
Stuff that is supposed to be bold (in a b tag) is blue, so they look like hyperlinks.
I prefer fonts with serifs for reading, but that’s personal preference.
Last night block quoted text was actually readable, but that’s been fixed now.
Tommy Young
@Starfish: Your comment is a perfect example of why we shouldn’t design by committee like we are doing right now. Those social media icons are too big. I make them smaller than somebody will say why are they so small?
I have on my list to fix the PayPal graphic. It wasn’t formatted that way when I did it, but when you attach the PayPal code to it, well this is what we got. Don’t know how to fix it off the top-of-my-head, but could have figured it out if I was responding to everybody here.
How does the black section at the bottom of the page being large affect your experience here? Are you maybe trying to find something to bitch about? Also, could you maybe not know other stuff is going into there at a future date? Just asking.
And Categories and Tags are two very different things from a SEO point-of-view. You don’t like Categories, well even if I wanted to get rid of them (which I don’t), I couldn’t because the Front Pager have never, well almost never used tags. But in a very dumbed down manner think of Categories as a main way to organize content and a tag a sub-set under that.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
I also find that the commenting system works and I actually like the white on gray for the formatting buttons as they turn blue when you hover over them. Lets you know easily which one you’ve got.
All that said there a a lot of different computers/browsers/ad blockers/script blockers being used, I’d bet some of the combinations, in concert with the site changes, are not working properly. Maybe some of the changes being made will fix some issues but I’d also bet that some will always remain. Such is life.
ETA And of course the formatting buttons now turn red when you hover. As does the submit button. I like, it gets your attention before you do something you might not want to do.
Belafon
If you click on the link to the comment that is being replied to, it doesn’t change the browser address. Because of this, there is no way to navigate back to the original comment. What I mean is
Belafon: Here’s a comment.
JoeBlow: @Belafon A reply.
Clicking on @Belafon takes me to the first comment, but I have no easy way to get back to JoeBlow.
Mike E
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): test…gonna see if “jump to” last comment happens after I refresh…
Mike J
@Another Holocene Human:
It did matter how many categories each story was put in. In the pre-tag days, people would go nuts and add 20 categories to each post, each category requiring another hit to the DB. Tags are basically free from a performance standpoint, so the jokes can go in those.
Rolf Olmsted
Where are the pictures of Steve?
henqiguai
Commenter nyms, links, bolded text, and emphasized text all share the same color – blue. Extreme youth, and other species, may easily see the slight differences in shade; but a quick glimpse, flaky color scheming of the monitor, or bad eyes don’t necessarily see those subtle differences. Care to set different colors, not different *shades*, for each?
And yeah, where’s them comment numbers?
Another Holocene Human
@Tommy Young: oops, sorry
Tommy Young
@Belafon:
Fu*k me, I had not noticed because not had a chance to get to the suggested changes where that would make a difference. THANKS for mentioning that, you just saved me at least a few minutes and maybe a lot longer if my mind was functioning well (which is always a possibility).
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Belafon:
I don’t think there’s ever been an easy way to get back, though. I’ve always just scrolled down.
Mike E
…and, no. iirc it sorta happened for a panda’s estrus when upgraded last, then stopped working on my droid. I’ve devised my own tricks for navigating to the end o’comments on the mobile site, but a next/previous/top of the thread nav bar at the very bottom of comments would be huge and seemingly simple. Too.
schrodinger's cat
2 more suggestions
1. Making the formatting of the author’s name distinct from the formatting of the categories.
2. Author’s name before the categories
Tommy Young
@Another Holocene Human: No worries. When I went for my long daily walk this morning I thought of the irony of all the people telling me the commenting system was unusable by leaving me a comment with said system :).
Tommy Young
@schrodinger’s cat: Both already on the list …..
Amir Khalid
@Tommy Young:
It’s not like we had some other way of reaching you.
Roger Moore
@Belafon:
Actually it does; look in the URL bar in the browser and you can see that there’s a /#comment-xxxxxxx appended. The problem is that the back button still takes you back a full page even when you’ve clicked on several links that change the xxxxxxx. My suspicion- based on my general understanding of browsers rather than anything about this site in particular- is that this is connected to the way that clicking on the intra-page links now smoothly scrolls you to the new location rather than jumping. My guess is that this is handled by JavaScript rather than by the regular browser link following routine, so that the browser loses track of the full history of link following. Note that if you post, the back button will take you back to the same page, but not to the point you last anchored to by clicking on one of the @username or timestamp links.
jnfr
Your RSS feed only shows seven stories which is really not enough for keeping up with you guys. I hope you at least double that.
mclaren
Bold comments incorrectly show up as blue, which makes them look like links. Bold comments are NOT links. They should up as heavy black text, not blue.
Bold + italics used to show as bold + italics on the old design. Now the italics get lost and they only show up as blue text without italics. Bold + italics should show up as bold + italics.
Comment numbering. Put it back. Without it, we can’t tell where the fuck a comment was.
Christ on a minibike, it takes forever to load the comments after you click on the article header. Much slower than it used to be before. What are your coders using, Javascript? Cold Fusion? Drupal? Use some real actual CGI gateway code that runs in less than 5 minutes, something like PHP.
henqiguai
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Sure there was; right-click to display the context menu (the pop-up) and click on the left-pointing arrow – returned you to the comment from which you clicked. Now, as someone pointed out last night, the returns you to your point-of-origin. Me, I check the actual comment number and put that into the address bar.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Roger Moore: But, again for us slightly over 55 types, the rolling swoop back to earlier comments to see what someone has replied to is, well, trying. The straight jump from the previous system worked fine, as did numbered comments. A nested/flat based on user combo sounds like a nightmare, but I don’t like nested comments in any event. As you note
AndyG
@Tommy Young: While I do agree that those viewing options is cool/more tumblr-ish, they don’t give you much information about what each post is about. So at the moment, it would just be easier to scroll down. But I’ll keep an open mind and will jump between the home page and the /blog page (which I prefer right now, but realize it’s all a work in progress).
Overall, looks really sharp!
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@henqiguai:
I’ve been doing 90 percent of my commenting on a mobile device (phone or iPad), so no right clicks for me.
Suzanne
Would be nice to have a button to jump to the bottom of the page.
Tommy Young
@jnfr: How many would you like. I did seven because that is about, and of course so days more, posts there are in a day.
Starfish
@Tommy Young: What I said about the icons being too big is not a design by committee issue. @jheartney made the same point in a nicer way next to number 4. Basically, if you are going to follow a blog on Facebook or RSS, you are going to do that once and never again so I feel like giving this feature space at the top of the right hand column is giving it too much prominence. The PayPal feature should probably more important than this feature.
The black section on the bottom of the page seems to stretch out the page further without adding much value. No one is going to scroll down there unless they want to to comment. Usually, I use the size of the scrollbar to figure out if I have time to read this which may be an odd thing that I do, but really small scrollbars are usually my queue to bail because there was probably some comments flame war. In this case, I think you have more important features to fix than to worry about this.
What you are saying about Categories and Tags and SEO is interesting, and I do not know anything about that. Is the Category section at the top there for SEO purposes or for people to try to find things? Because there are so many Categories, I am not sure how useful it is for site users to click on the Categories link at the top.
I consider my quibbles to be super minor, and you have done a really good job with this overall.
dr. luba
Tommy Young: The site is looking light years better than it did late last night, when it first went live. Good work. It even looks pretty good on whatever antiquated version of Explorer I have to use here at work, and not much does.
And I realize now the logic behind the formatting buttons–I hadn’t thought to hover over them before, so didn’t notice the color change.
One tiny little request, no hurry, whenever you get a chance, and if you don’t, whatever, no biggie–a strikethrough button for those of us who can’t remember what little HTML we used to know…….
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Roger Moore:
There are plenty of people who Reply here without doing any quoting. Some regulars here (more than occasionally) don’t even use the Reply button but make a naked comment. We survive. As long as a Reply has a pointer to the previous post, readers can easily figure out what it was attached to. When we talked about our various wish-lists a few weeks ago, some of those saying they didn’t want threaded comments said that some of the charm of this place was the schizophrenic nature of the “conversation” when read linearly. ;-)
Giving the reader choices is a good thing. If the overhead is too much, well, the option can be dropped without losing anything (other than the coders’ time and aggravation). Let’s not veto it before we see what they come up with, eh?
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
(Who is a big fan of threading, and who realizes the vocal majority thinks they’re evil here.)
Gravenstone
@Faction: Same behavior on Chrome.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Tommy Young: Dumb question: why is SEO optimization an issue for a non-merchant blog? Asked with sincere curiosity, and if it affects UI, it would seem to be superfluous. Commenters being users and all that. I’m not being bitchy just to prove I can (we all knew that already; note to HRC: we all know you’d bomb the fuck out of the first thing that moves, so please skip that demonstration. kthxbai)
Roger Moore
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
I think it’s a waste of time, and if my guess is correct, it’s interfering with the way I like to use the site. It seems like some unnecessary whiz-bang. And nested mode comment systems can work, but only if there’s a good way of differentiating read and unread comments. The system on Linux Weekly News is about the only one I’ve ever used that makes nested comments work well, but that requires logins and doesn’t handle the commenting volume we have here.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Belafon: Have you tried Tab? That works for me in Firefox! A habit I think I can pick up quickly/
Roger Moore
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Not if we lose our ability to jump back and forth between the current post and the one it’s replying to, which seems to have happened.
Suzanne
I’m not sure if this pertains to the comments plugin or if it’s a general formatting issue, but the width of the comments is still ridiculously short, and the leading is too much.
Kropadope
A way to get back to the comment from which I had followed the reply link, the way I might previously had done using the back browser button.
Simon
The link to view the old site is doesn’t bring you back to the way it looks.
The margin is just bizarre and everything is spaced out to the extremes. What is going on here?
Line spacing is tooooo much. there is too much scrolling.
Also, I hate that the whole picture whites out when you hover over it. what is the point. it is just a distraction as you are scrolling down.
Please bring back the old site, newer is not always better! Digby’s site has had a redesign in a long while and keeps the idiots and ‘ooh and ahhers’ away.
Humboldtblue
What all these motherfuckers said, plus, what happened to the dude with the balloons? He was far more interesting than most of the other content. Also, darken or color the author’s name so it’s easier to find on this glorious fuckschnizzle of a re-do you have foisted upon us.
Marmot
Using the desktop version on an iPhone, there’s a slight hiccup when you first scroll up or down.
What? I usually avoid mobile web pages!
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
Teeny-tiny request: add a little more space between the mobile theme on/off button and the Publish button for butterfingers like me who keep accidentally hitting “off” when I’m trying to scroll to the bottom. A “scroll to bottom of comments” at the top of the screen would also help. KTHXBAI.
WaterGirl
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): If you were just scrolling down before, you were doing it wrong. :-)
The back button is your friend. Well, it was, and hopefully it will be again soon!
SiubhanDuinne
Would like to see front-page author names more prominent.
Please put some contrast in the labels for the formatting tags.
Also, could you please add a tag for a text strikeout?
Thanks! The new design will take a little time to get used to, but all in all I think it looks great. Good job, Tommy and Team!
WaterGirl
I am really missing the scroll bar on the right – it allows me to know where I am in a thread. I had no idea that was even controllable on a website – this is the first time I have not had it on any page. I guess it’s technically there, but it’s so skinny that I really can’t see it at all.
schrodinger's cat
Am I the only one who doesn’t like the way the block quotes are formatted?
WaterGirl
Can we please pretty please get the block quoted comments in an actual box? I find the heavy bar at the left doesn’t do the job nearly as well. I find it quite unreadable the way it is at the moment. :-(
WaterGirl
@schrodinger’s cat: As you can see from the comment I was apparently still typing while you were hitting post, No, you are not alone!
WaterGirl
Dear Balloon Man,
I miss you terribly. It was one thing to miss you on the previous site design, but now with the new site redesign… well, I miss you so much that I can barely go on. :: sob ::
I love you, Balloon Man!
signed, WaterGirl
amk
The back button going back to the post where I was before instead of going to the FP.
Previous and next threads linkys on top and bottom of the page as before.
Click to edit text is dead. Only the icon works, not the text.
eta: Thanks Tommy for doing this thankless job.
rikyrah
The links to the previous posts.
Blogroll.
How do we contact the Front Pagers?
Brachiator
On my PC, using Chrome browser, the bold, italic,link, and quote buttons have white text as the default. You have to hover over the button in order to read it.
The overall design is kinda cool, and obviously represents a lot of work. Thanks.
schrodinger's cat
Other redundancies
Above the Comment Box
Leave a Reply
Want to join the discussion?
Feel free to contribute!
One of these three is enough. I would stop at Leave a Reply.
Obvious heading is obvious:
Front page posts
dww44
As an over 55 type who’s been gone for about 3 days and just returned home to my desktop, I’ve got a lot of acclimating to do. Am I mistaken in concluding that all of the site redesigns across the web that I’m encountering of late seem to be designed with a distinct preferential nod to mobile device users versus desktop users?
My initial reaction to this redesign is there’s too much white space in relation to text which is hard on my eyes. I don’t know enough yet to comment about commenting, which maybe will keep me off JC’s miffed-at list. I was also very much a fan of the posts going down the center of my screen with other stuff on the left and the right. The Paypal button font is way large in comparison to the posts and the comments themselves. Throws off my sense of balance.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@rikyrah:
On the right, under the giant Paypal, is a dropdown labeled “Contact”.
And for my own complaint that I haven’t seen in these comments:
If I disable javascript coming from Facebook (which I usually do), I get a message that Firefox has blocked a redirect attempt.
Poptartacus
Hey what about the comments?
Just asking
Keith G
I will be one who states that I like the extra space between comments. I think it is rather calming and adds a contemplative vibe – yeah, really. I hope the space stays.
But, Tommy I am fucking impressed with the reach of this project and the creative thinking in evidence here. Thanks to you and those who helped.
PS…Folks are actually ragging on the Paypal button? I had to scroll up to see. I seldom look at the sides. Doesn’t seem to be a worthy issue.
amk
“Our Most Recent Posts” in the FP is a confusing redundancy.
BAtFFP mobile
site doesn’t work (links won’t open, formatting borked etc) on Opera, which is the only browser my Galaxy S II will run. But it’s possible I am the only person on the planet who uses Opera.
amk
That was quick. ‘Click to edit’ text is now alive.
eta: bummer, gone now.
Yatsuno
@Tommy Young: My bugaboo is once and forever recent comments recent comments recent comments and oh yeah RECENT COMMENTS!!! I know they made the old server go completely meschugnah but we have new stuff that should be able to take it right? RIGHT?
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
Not nuts about having to scroll past “Our Most Recent Posts” to get to the first full post. The “Most Recent” would be better as a sidebar — as it stands now, when I first visit the site, my screen is almost entirely taken up with stuff I don’t want or need and I have to go looking for a post I can actually read.
I’ve noticed subtle changes since last night, though — it’s definitely coming along. I have to add my voice to the choir, though — still too bright, with too much white space.
LT
Nice job, gang. Looks space-y and sharp.
Tags on top? No. Shut up and no. But nice job.
SG
Tommy, thanks for all the improvements since last night, most especially the return of the zoom feature.
I’d still like to see the restoration of the time a post is published. I think it’s important on an active blog like this one.
If I were doing the header for each post, it would be more like this:
A Complete List of Pesky Site Design Demands [in headline font & size]
by John Cole | Nov. 2, 2015 at 3:57 p.m.
in Site Maintenance, Placating the Rabble
127 Comments [and repeat a link to comments at the bottom of the post]
Yeah, it’s an extra line, but it’s worth it for clarity. And it’s not like there isn’t white space that could be turned to better use.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@WaterGirl:
Back button never really worked on mobile, and the mobile is much less likely to be sat on by a kitteh when we’re sharing the couch, so I’ve been using it a lot.
Big Picture Pathologist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
+1
Elizabelle
@Tommy Young: Thanks for everything you did here. Old dogs, new tricks.
19th old dog saying: please number the comments. Which I know you are working to do. Puts Balloon Juice ahead of the NYTimes there.
Carry on.
Big Picture Pathologist
@Big Picture Pathologist:
Crap. Iz bad wif reading direkshins. Sorree.
NotMax
Read through the thread, so will express agreement and attempt not to repeat what has been said, except when affirming same.
First, praise for removing the word “says” from replied to comments. Neglected to mention that yesterday.
Affirmations:
Background at least looks clean now rather than sterile, but would still suggest going slightly into the beiges to tone it down some more. Snow FFFAFA or Papaya white FFEFD5 spring to mind.. (Larger monitors on PCs are common nowadays, and the vast amount of empty background on those being so bright must be extra incommodious.)
Desperately need better contrast between the shades of blue for links/non-links. Barely discernible difference still. Make what is a link obvious without having to move the cursor hither and yon to discover whether or not it is a link. Treasure hunts are fine in their place; this (IMHO) isn’t such a place.
Otherwise:
Adding a Refresh Comments button after last comment and above reply area would be great.
Ditch the cutesy-wutesy little pictures on the Previous and Next pop-outs. They’re not only distracting (and ugly) but extend the pop-out so much that it obscures parts of a comment.
Less “cool” stuff that involves having to hover. Hovering is (a) not intuitive and (b) forces the viewer to do stuff besides read, interrupting what in theory is what people come here for.
Blue bar for blockquoted text is neither helpful nor attractive. Setting blockquotes off with their own box background being different and in a smaller scaled font much preferred.
Solid and darker delineation lines between comments, please. Also, no logical rationale for the delineation line to run past the left edge of a comment all the way to the margin
Videos on the front page are coming up (on my view) showing totally different videos than intended.
Add Read Comments link at bottom of front page posts, same line as where Facebook and all that other goop is.
Rotating quotes were, but no longer are, loading on my view.
Add a new category – something along the line of John Cole vs. Life for those particular types of posts, which seem a favorite among many readers. (Realizing there is no extant tag for such, may involve creating a new tag to accommodate such posts made from now on.)
Thanks for removing the Last Referers [sic]. Who other than the site owner and ad companies cares?
@Tommy Young
Does not occur with post titles on the front page nor any of the links across the top (excepting the Balloon Juice ink at very top left, which becomes black when hovering.
Shall stop there as don’t want to inundate with minutiae.
mclaren
@Roger Moore:
Yet in response to “As long as a Reply has a pointer to the previous post, readers can easily figure out what it was attached to” Roger Moore says:
So which is it? Functionally identical, or not?
Everyone with a nervous system realizes the comment system is not functionally identical. Lots of functionality has been lost in the new design.
FUNCTIONALITY LOST:
1. Comment numbering
2. Comment tag @[whatever] making it easy to go back to previous comment from current one.
3. Proper display of bold text.
4. Proper display of bold + italics text.
5. Ability to see lots of text without scrolling forever (wayyyyyyyyyyyyy too much interline whitespace & too wide margins in new design).
6. HOME key used to take you to the top of the blog, now you must mouse-click on an icon. Rule of thumb: keyboard shortcut is always better since it doesn’t interrupt your typing.
7. Wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too much blackspace on the bottom bar. It now gobbles up half the screen!
Mike J
Can I complain about something that has absolutely zero impact on UX? The source has too many html comments. There are easily 100 chars that are repeated for each user comment. 100 chars for a 100 comment thread is 10k of useless cruft. Serve 10,000 page views with 10k of cruft, you’ve just paid to send 100MB of data that nobody ever even saw.
Related, but not fixable with a script, is html overkill. for instance:
ON EDIT:
Wordpress doesn’t like the pre tag, and not only didn’t render the example, but eated it too.
Are the itemprop, itemscope, and itemtype actually being used anywhere, front end or back? If you don’t need them, chuck ’em.
All of this stuff is of course, not a priority for users.
Patricia Kayden
Why is Cole trying to blind me with such a glaring white white white screen? Oh my eyes!!
Lalophobic Insomniac
@LT:
Yeah, I’d rather the tags were back on the bottom. There’s nothing much to differentiate them from the content of the post and it just looks odd.
I’d also rather the posts were centered like before but that might be too big of a request and it’s just a personal preference thing anyway.
John Cole
@mclaren: For fuck’s sake read the post. The comments are not being dealt with yet. They will b e dealt with tomorrow after the rest of the site is going.
tybee
@dexwood:
third on the back button for comments.
Swiftfox
I would like to see the time the blog was posted.
Ahasuerus
Some of the categories do not seem to appear when the Categories tag is clicked. Specifically the Clown Shoes category does not appear.
(Sorry if this has been/is being addressed, or if I confused Categories with Tags)
ETA: Overall, nice clean redesign. Strong work!
Roger Moore
@Mike J:
Repeated wasted characters are less of a bandwidth problem than you think. Almost everything these days is sent compressed, and repeated boilerplate compresses really well.
middlelee
Nice job Tommy. Any complaints I had/have someone else has covered. I’m already used to the new, can barely remember the old. I like it.
groucho48
I’d like the ability to Like a post.
I’d also like to be able to go to First Unread comment when I re-visit a topic after a few hours.
MomSense
Tommy, I like the way the new site looks and works. Well done.
redshirt
Hey Tommy,
Thanks for your efforts.
I just noticed that the Balloon Juice home page title listed in a tab has a trailing “|”. This works when you’re in a thread (for example, the tab for this thread reads “Balloon Juice | Complete List of Site Redesign Requests”.
The home page reads as “Balloon Juice |”
Gex
The text on the tag buttons near the comment box for bold, italics, a, and blockquote are really difficult to read on Firefox on my Mac. Light gray button with white text? I have really good vision, I have no idea how the visually impaired will handle those.
Also, and this is probably just me, I’d kinda like to see the Quote Rotator named the Quotator.
pat
The blogroll links seem not to work all of a sudden. Worked the last time I tried to get to Charles Pierce, not now.
Also one more vote for numbered comments, and being able to go back to the comment that was a reply to the comment you are now on….. Others have said it better.
As an Old, I don’t like new things but I think I will get used to this once the bugs are gone. Good work, Tommy.
J R in WV
I think the trash and garbage photo at the head of this thread is John’ kitchen, most mornings!
Again, with all the others,
Great Job Team!! You too, Tommy… ;-) really, especially you, Tommy!
Thanks, everyone, John, what leadership, fabulous!!
SIA
Thanks for making page expandable for IPad. That’s a big deal for me, as the text is still quite small for my eyes. I have to blow up the page to read even wearing glasses. Would love to have the text a similar size to the pre-update size. Also, I have screen light dimmed to a third brightness and the background/brightness/contrast? still makes my eyes tired. So far the mobile site on my android is unchanged and I’m good with that. You must be pulling your hair out! A valiant effort to improve the site despite change-averse curmudgeons like me.
MazeDancer
Tommy, you and your partner should know that for a Balloon Juice re-design the reception the site has had is like the Royals are getting in Kansas City right now. (The other re-designs had non-stop grenade launches thrown at them.)
Still find the Front Page confusing and hard to read. BJ front pagers use very long quotes all the time. Having a fat, blue rule signify “this is a quote” when multiplied by all the posts, just looks like some kind of odd design stripe along the left side. It’s difficult to tell what’s post and what’s quote. Especially with the quote type being the same as the post.
Without a box, or type differential, or background color shift, there is no significant visual or mental separation from original thought by front pagers and work created at other publications and sites. Quoting from other sites, IMHO, should always err on the side of making sure credit is clearly given in all possible visual and verbal ways indicating carefully that this is a quote, and here’s where it’s from. And not blend in with a post. One should always be aware while reading: This is from somewhere else.
And the tweets don’t look like tweets anymore, so one has to look hard for the @ sign to decipher that they’re tweets, not short quotes.
Please consider, on the Front Page using some other very clear and elegant way to show what’s a quote from a different source and what’s a tweet and what’s new posting copy from a BJ author. (Doesn’t matter in the comments because we’re mostly quoting each other, not some other publication)
Thanks for your excellent work. The site is working remarkably well.
Simon
What is wrong with this site redesign? It is total utter trash. Sorry, but I will not be the good liberal and give A’s for effort. The old color palette and the spacing were just about perfect. What exactly about the old site was so bad that you had to trash it? I want to know out of curiousity. This is one of the worst redesigns I have seen. I love this site and the FP’ers and the commentators, but I have to do so much scrolling now due to the increase “space” everywhere: between every line, between every comment, etc. I would really like to know what functionality it serves and the thought process behind it.
jnfr
@Tommy Young:
I think it used to be 20. But 10-15 would give some slack for those busy days.
Nutella
Can I just say that, as a web app developer, I’m glad I’ve never had to deal with UX demands from a hundred snarling jackals (aka site users) on go-live day demanding more changes or fewer changes that must be done or undone right now? I usually have 2 or 3 clients sending me bug reports and feature requests and that’s plenty to deal with. That the site is
1. up,
2. FPers can post new articles,
3. existing users can make comments with replies, and
4. old posts and comments are reachable
is an achievement. Thanks.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Nutella: I second your comment, Tommy has done a fantastic job on this site.
Ruckus
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Third on this. I likey. Sure it could be different, if it was my blog. Sure it would be nice to be “perfect” on day one. But I’ve been involved in too many complex projects to expect anything close to perfect. Ever. At some point people will get used to what it is (many seem to be doing that already) or hate it no matter what. It works better as a blog for me already and there are still things that could be better. I’ve changed some of my browser preferences to see what it could look like and that improves it even more. Changing the background color was the best change and that helped with all the empty space and comment separators as well. But I had to force it to always change and that screwed up every other site. So I’m back to what it is. Which is not bad, not bad at all.
David Koch
We want to embed photos and videos in the comment section, just like you can on DKos.
Thanks.
satby
Meh
Cervantes
@satby:
I like the white space and the brightness.
I don’t like comments that disagree with me about the re-design!
Cervantes
@benw:
Even in landscape?
dagon
Liking it so far.
Zeecube
@SG: agree with every suggestion.
ShadeTail
A cut-and-paste of my post from the Tunch test thread:
1) When multiple block quotes follow immediately after each other within the same article, they are way too hard to separate. A single line break and a small interruption of the vertical blue stripe on the left side aren’t enough visual clue to casually pick up on it. The break between block quotes needs to be more clear.
2) The “read more” links take us to the top of the article rather than to the page break.
3) The text on the formatting buttons above the leave-a-reply box is white-on-light-grey, which makes that text nearly impossible to see. Change the text to black, please.
4) Please return the numbers to the comment posts.
dww44
@Simon: Well, Simon, thanks for saying what I wanted to say upthread, but didn’t, for fear of being labeled an old curmudgeon. Whatever was broken about the previous design was not visible to my old eyes from my desktop. I liked it. It didn’t hurt my eyes and was easy to navigate. And, there was way less glaringly white space.
demit
The excessive leading (line spacing) is making the text more uncomfortable to read.
Shantanu Saha
Verdana, blech. I feel as if I’m looking at an Excel spreadsheet from 20 years ago.
Other than that, the redesign looks good.
debbie
Tommy, if you’re still checking here, the buttons for FB, Twitter, etc. on the left are really, really close to the text of the posts (I’m on Chrome).
scav
@debbie: On my ipad, the new buttons are entirely obscuring the GoToPreviousPost pop out, so are not only overly bright in color (compared to the subdued palette and clean design of the rest of the site) and highly distracting, they also interfere with basic navigation. Honestly, if a post is important enough to share, I’d think the effort of scrolling to a fixed portion of the page is not too much effort to ask. (But that may be entirely old hat in this success measured by linking world, so I’m off for coffee and not expecting much. But I would like the navigation back if possible.)
ETA: Thank You! Hope it sticks!
Bison Burgher
Wasn’t going to go full UX Pedant on y’all, until I read @Tommy Young’s comment about “design by committee” and offensive blame-the-users attitude. As a usability engineer, experience architect, and WordPress developer, asking users to fix your design for you, then complaining about their feedback, sends me right over the edge.
The interactive design and WordPress implementation on this site are, frankly, amateur hour. The redesign ignores and measurably degrades web usability, accessibility, readability, and core functionality in more ways than I can count. Responsive/adaptive behavior (probably one of, if not the only, primary design goals?) is a joke, given the development tools available today. The approach of providing a separate, device-specific WP theme was in vogue around 2009 — and abandoned about a year later.
My request is the same as @Simon’s: to see the prioritized list of issues that were supposed to be addressed by the redesign, and whether or not real users were included in the design process. If you can’t get the fundamentals of web design right, like making static text look like hyperlinks and vice versa, maybe “design by committee” would have been an improvement.
SiubhanDuinne
I just noticed that the front-page posts no longer show what time they were put up. Is it possible to restore the time-stamp up top?