Hey everybody!
John will tell me this is crazy – never ask people for complaints! In fact, if Cole were Leroy Jethro Gibbs, that would be Rule 1-15.
But, even it it is crazy or stupid, I feel the need to do it anyway because I plan to have a conversation with the developers this week about any issues that remain, so I need to be clear about what those issues are, how frequently they occur, and just how many people are being affected by them.
To reiterate, my primary goals are to determine the following:
· What problems remain?
· How frequently do they occur?
· How many people are affected by each issue?
If you you talk about an existing issue in the comments, it will be most helpful if you include the Identifier, eg A-1 or B-3.
Confirmed That these Issues Have Been Resolved (yay!)
- A-1. Sometimes comments do not show up until a manual refresh, or multiple manual refreshes.
- A-2. Sometimes people lose the ability to Edit their comments.
- A-3. Sometimes people bounce to the top after making a comment.
Top Tier Issues That I am Currently Aware Of
- B-1. Clicking @nym in a reply no longer anchors you in the way that clicking the date/time stamp anchors you.
- B-2. Back arrow no longer reliably takes you even one step back. The back arrow took you back many steps during testing before the rollout.
- B-3. When clicking on Reply, sometimes @nym does not show up in the popup reply box.
Second Tier Issues That I am Currently Aware Of
- C-1. Visual and text tabs are not always visible; when that happens it defaults to text with no tabs showing. (Question: is that true in the comment box only or also in the reply popup?)
- C-2. Recent comments not updating properly for just a few people.
More Obscure Issues That I am Currently Aware Of
- D-1. Titles with quotation marks: open quote is correct; close quote is missing or shows as an apostrophe. (Google Font Library Issue)
- D-2. Balloon Juice pages resize after/while loading.
- D-3. RSS issues with SharpReader.
- D-4. Line spacing in text mode adds an extra line between the final two lines. (Firefox issue)
- D-5. Strange problem with videos in Safari – when trying to enlarge videos to full screen, instead the entire web page enlarges to full screen.
- D-6. The navigation bar items (comment, refresh, & arrows) at the top are not working most of the time (one person Sony Xperia X: Firefox)
- D-7. Nym and email not sticking for one person (I have sent email asking if private browsing or no cookies is a possibility, but no reply yet.)
- D-8. One-time Safari phone problem, the site suddenly rendered as a long blank page.
- D-9. Twitter embeds not showing up in posts in Firefox (may be a configuration issue).
These Should Never Happen (If this ever happens to you, please share details below)
- E-1. You should never be able to post an identical comment that has already been posted.
- E-2. Comments should never get eaten for no reason. Please report it if that happens, so I an look into it.)
I was going to post this later this evening, but since posting is light this afternoon, I thought maybe earlier would be better.
Edit: I kind of have a crush on John’s new girlfriend, so I used her for the image.
Cheryl Rofer
I’m not sure if this is the same as A-3, but when refreshing the page or commenting, the new page is not at the right comment. For me, this seems to land at random comments, sometimes close to where I expect to be. I’ve had complaints about this from others.
Also, when I click “Reply”, sometimes I get the address of the comment I’m replying to in the popup box, sometimes not.
Headed out now, will be back in a couple of hours if you need clarification.
Central Planning
I have not had that obnoxious ad that puts a frame around my entire screen for a few seconds and then disappears.
I have noticed that sometimes clicking on the date/time always anchors me to the same spot, but that spot isn’t always the date/time I clicked on. It’s close though, usually within a comment or two. That’s a super low problem on my priority list.
WaterGirl
@Cheryl Rofer: Not the same as A-3, but what you described was on my radar, but it wasn’t on my list!
The page doesn’t always line up properly because of the embedded tweets. What happens is that the page loads and takes you to the right place, but then the tweets fill in so what had been the right place before the tweets filled in. no longer is.
The @reply issue is B-3, and I would love to hear how many people are experiencing this, how often it happens to each person, and whether it’s a major annoyance or not a big deal.
joel hanes
WG, thanks for all you do.
WaterGirl
@Central Planning: That “frame” ad was bad! Glad you’re not seeing it anymore.
Thanks for the info, and it’s especially helpful to hear whether something is a big deal or super low on your priority list.
NotMax
B -1
B-2
D-1
D-2, intermittently
D-4
Dorothy A. Winsor
Water Girl, your patience, thoroughness, and knowledge are amazing.
Nicole
I am experiencing A1 a lot. I tap on a post to go to that page to read the comments, and I get a blank screen. I then have to refresh, which takes me back to the main page, and then the second time I hit the post to go to it so I can read the comments it’s fine.
Also, for the first time in a while, my name and email aren’t automatically filled in the boxes below. I just noticed that.
NotMax
@NotMax
And FYWP cooperated by providing a perfect example of D-4, to wit the extra line space it inserted before the final item listed.
WaterGirl
@NotMax: Thanks.
D-1 (the close quote either not there or showing as an apostrophe) will be with us until Google updates their font library. There has been a correct version of that for 2 years, but they haven’t updated. Annoying!
D-4. I still don’t exactly understand what the problem is. In text mode, if you type the numbers on thru 7, each on their own line, am I correct in thinking the line spacing looks correct after posting EXCEPT the #7?
zhena gogolia
I constantly have the “B” issues — I don’t even try to use the back button any more. I keep memorizing comment numbers to be able to return to where I was when I’m trying to catch up on a discussion.
Sometimes when I click on a tweet, it tells me that nothing was found, but then it always works on the second try. This doesn’t bother me as much as the back button.
Otherwise, all great (except for some commenters).
anarchoRex
I still have that issue with DuckDuckGo in Android, on a motog7, where the visual comment editor acts wonky, like if I hit space in front of a word it will jump to the end of the word.
Also, in the last couple weeks all tweets embedded in posts do not show up at all, while in the comments sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t.
I tried on chrome and could not replicate either of these issues.
I have cleared my cookies, etc, several times without any improvement.
WaterGirl
@Nicole:
Hmm. A-1 is that you post you comment but it doesn’t show up on the page that comes up after you post your comment. That should be gone.
Hoping you wrote A-1 and intended something else, because what you are describing doesn’t sound like A-1 to me.
NotMax
@Watergirl
Yes, you are correct about the extra line space. To give another example, I’m going to type the following two lines single spaced, but that is not how they’ll appear when posted.
“Hello, I must be going.”
– Groucho Marx
WaterGirl
@Nicole:
Two things can cause the nym/email not to save:
Is either of those the case?
Ruckus
Mac/Safari/all current updates
B3 [Ruckus meant B2] – I never get taken back to where I was using the popup back button, have to press it twice and sometimes that doesn’t work either. Using the back arrow at the top sometimes does work.
D5 – I’ve had this happen once, hasn’t happened since and has been a bit.
iPhone XR/all current updates.
Seems to work pretty good except for owner’s fingers and especially thumbs. I’m putting this down to operator error, fat thumbs and old fartitus.
WaterGirl
@NotMax: I still don’t see what you are referring to, which might explain why I still don’t understand! :-) Perhaps what you see is so subtle that I can’t detect it?
West of the Rockies
First, thank you for your effort, WG!
Second… Open thread, so…
I watched episode 1 of Hunters, the new Amazon show with Al Pacino as a Nazi hunter team leader.
Seems like it should be called Nazis killing everybody and spiking the ball. Way over the top villains.
Do things improve? In these shit-encrusted Trumpian times, I don’t want to watch vile people kicking ass.
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia:
Interesting. What device/browser combo? What is the exact wording of the message?
answer: Chrome on a Mac laptop. I think it says “Sorry, nothing found,” or something like that, under a blue twitter heading. It always works the second time.
edit: P.S. forgot to add that your comment made me laugh.
Another Scott
I think you’ve listed all the various items (most I haven’t seen). B-2 is the big one for me (Chrome on Winders).
If I could make a 1.01 feature request (once the backarrow is finally fixed). Please, please fix the refresh issues on pages with lots of embedded tweets. It’s maddening to get to the bottom of a thread, hit Refresh to see if there are any new replies, and end up 35 comments up the thread and have to scroll/page down to get back to where we were.
It shouldn’t be that difficult to:
a) Note visible comment number at the top of the visible “viewport”. Save it.
b) Refresh the page
c) Automagically scroll to the same visible “viewport” on the page as was saved in a).
Or if that is somehow impossible because FYWP, maybe configure the Refresh button to have 3 options:
i) Return to top of the page after refresh (like Twitter’s web pages)
ii) Return to bottom of the page (approximates sensible behavior if you’re at the bottom of the page before refreshing)
iii) Return to who knows where on the page (default behavior – exciting!)
If John or the developers need money to do this, then let us know. Having this actually be fixed is worth paying for, IMHO.
Thanks!
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@NotMax: Got it.
They actually are single spaced, it’s just that the line height is taller than you expect/desire it to be.
NotMax
@WaterGirl
You don’t see that, in #6 above, there is a double space between D-2 and D-4? Or that in #14 there is a double space between the quotation and the attribution?
In neither case was the comment originally typed with a double space at those locations.
Baud
@NotMax: You sunk my battleship!
WaterGirl
@Ruckus:
I may not have described B-3 very well. For B-3, I mean that I click on the reply button for a comment by Omnes, but when the popup box comes up, it’s empty. There is no “@Omnes” in the box, waiting for me to add my comment.
Having said that, can you try re-explaining what you said here. Sorry if I am being dense!
piratedan
when using chrome on my desktop, I note that tweets embedded by front pagers do not display, yet I see them in chrome on my phone (suspect that’s my work network doing the filtering…)
on the phone, the banner ads that display on the top of the screen block the site navigation buttons, even when reduced…
jeffreyw
I often copy a line from a comment that I want to reply to, paste it into the reply, and then select it to apply block quote around the line. If I forget to click within the reply box to deselect the line I’m quoting before hitting enter to advance cursor out of the block quote the entire line deletes. This is in the default visual mode. I wish the cursor would automatically advance out of the block quote when the button is pushed.
Baud
The visual pane continues to not work well with autocorrect on Android 9 Pie (on Samsung Galaxy S8) when using the Google keyboard. It’s probably a problem that’s unique to me, but it’s a large contributor to the typos in my comments.
debbie
I am A-3-tangent. I post and get returned to some random spot on the page, never the same place twice if I post more than once.
Another Scott
@NotMax: #6 is all uniformly spaced here (Chrome on MBP). Similarly with the quote and attribution.
I thought maybe it was a scaling issue, but going to 150% or 75% window scaling didn’t change anything.
Dunno.
It seems like something weird on your end. Maybe send her a screen shot with the details on your system?
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott:
During my months of testing, that all worked perfectly. But it doesn’t work perfectly once you throw embedded tweets into the mix.
The page doesn’t always line up properly because of the embedded tweets. What happens is that the page loads and takes you to the right place, but then the tweets fill in so what had been the right place before the tweets filled in. no longer is.
My workaround is to note the comment #, then as soon as the page resets, I hit Ctrl-F (Cmd-F on a mac) and type in the comment number.
That makes it a lot less annoying to me. Maybe we can talk by email about what you mean in a and c.
Jinchi
This site works great for me on the PC and Mac. My only problem is when I try commenting using a smart phone. Typing the comment is not a problem. but I typically have to scroll down to hit “Post Comment” and about half the time the scrolling affects the background screen, with all the other comments, but not the comment screen.
iPhone and Safari.
Bill Arnold
Sometimes, maybe 1 in 10 to 2 in 10, the edit window does not appear until another comment appears after the last comment. Last record of seeing this was February 18, 2020 at 4:13 pm, where I commented ” [temp to get an edit window]” to get an edit window for the previous comment.
I saw it subsequently to that but fortunately somebody else’s comment showed up a minute later and the edit window then appeared.
ETA Firefox, with a few ad and script blockers, with enough enabled for this site to work.
zhena gogolia
@WaterGirl:
Chrome on a Mac laptop. I think it says “Sorry, nothing found,” or something like that, under a blue twitter heading. It always works the second time.
WaterGirl
@NotMax: I’m sorry, but I really don’t. This is what I see.
WaterGirl
@Dorothy A. Winsor: That’s very kind of you to say! thank you.
jeffreyw
@Another Scott:
+10
This, and the back arrow issue are the biggies for me.
Baud
Also, on the mobile site, if a commenter has a large word in the comment, it screws up the left/right margins, which causes the page to shrink.
Like this.
Heh3heuirhrhrheu3yehvbruehrhehrhehhrrhehrhhrhrhru3u7dhehebrhduduerrhrhuruehehr
debbie
@zhena gogolia:
I think that might be a Twitter thing. Sometimes, even when I’m signed into Twitter, it will ask me if I want to sign in, and if I just wait a second or two, the tweet will show up.
WaterGirl
@piratedan:
Very often, that is a setting in your browser. Have you checked for that?
But I should probably clarify what you mean by “do not display”. I assumed you meant they they aren’t displayed in full tweet format. But maybe you meant that they aren’t there at all? Not even the words?
NotMax
@WaterGirl
No, they are not single spaced. Will try another example, every line typed single space.
“Hello, I must be going.”
“Did someone call me schnorrer?”
“Swordfish.”
“In Alabama the Tuscaloosa.”
“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it.”
– Groucho Marx
WaterGirl
@piratedan:
I talked with John about those, and it seems the ad guy is away on a skiing vacation and won’t return until sometime on Tuesday, so we just have to live with them until then. :-( Or use an ad blocker.
debbie
@NotMax:
FWIW, the linespacing on your #6 and #40 look the same on this MacBookPro/Chrome.
Another Scott
@WaterGirl: a) and c) are implementation issues for the coders to figure out.
Yeah, there are work arounds for the reader, but it shouldn’t be necessary. There is too little time in the day to waste it with things that are (relatively) easy to automate and reduce annoyance for readers.
I accept that embedded tweets throw a monkey wrench into the way FYWP has always worked. But it’s a known issue on other platforms and ways have been found to address them. I accept that some coding/hacking/porting may be necessary to fix it on FYPW and B-J. I accept that it may cost some $$. I’m willing to help pay for it.
:-)
I hope this is clear. Thanks again.
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
@debbie: Same here on the mobile site.
WaterGirl
@jeffreyw:
I copied & pasted that from your comment. I applied the block quote.
THEN I clicked twice just to the right of the word “line.” That doesn’t make anything disappear, and it takes me out of the quote box and lets me go on my merry way. Does that work for you?
NotMax
@WaterGirl
Give me a few minutes and I’ll throw together some screenshots for you.
WaterGirl
@Baud: I can see that would be annoying!
Does anyone else use the same or similar device? If so, do you experience the same thing?
The developers aren’t crazy about fixing something that might be a weirdness that only one person is experiencing, but if it’s more than one person, we’ve got something to work with.
NotMax
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
WaterGirl
@debbie:
It’s definitely not an A-3, but we now have a B-4. thanks.
BruceFromOhio
D-2, mobile on iPhone 7/Safari with iOs 13.3, though I attribute this to the persistent embedding of endless Twatter boxes by certain front pagers rather than the site itself. Gaia forbid if that service ever went down, I expect this site would go almost completely dark. The occasional twat doesn’t seem to do it, it’s when there are 16 in a row that it goes cattywumpus.
Windows 10 on Firefox 73.0.1 has not presented any of the other defects as you have them inventoried. The site has been pretty awesome since Upgrade +1 or whatever iteration you are on now.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: It’s just the blog telling you not to reply to me.
I am still getting B-1 and B-2. Also the ads are intrusive as fuck on the mobile site.
Baud
@NotMax: Looks single space to me.
WaterGirl
@Jinchi:
Well, that’s a new one. What device and browser combination?
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: stop saying
Heh3heuirhrhrheu3yehvbruehrhehrhehhrrhehrhhrhrhru3u7dhehebrhduduerrhrhuruehehr.
WaterGirl
@Bill Arnold:
i saw your “temp to get edit window” in that thread and wondered what it meant, and then it was gone.
Do I have this right? You post a comment, and it shows up but you have no edit window. But if you refresh (which you would have to do in order to see someone else’s new comment) then you get your edit window?
Peter
With apologies if this has been covered before, the way tweets appear (lacking images, requiring clicking through to Twitter to see what stories/links/pictures they’re referring to) in the mobile version is sub-optimal.
zhena gogolia
So we really are going to commit political suicide. I can’t believe it.
Another Scott
@Baud: Using Brave on my V35 (Android), your comment doesn’t screw up the margin (the excess characters are just not shown). Pinch/zooming the page lets me see the rest of the characters (sometimes via scrolling the page laterally).
It works the same way on Chrome on the V35 as well.
(But I know what you mean (in other contexts). Sometimes printing e-mails in Thunderbird shrinks things to a microscopic size because of a long word (rather than wrapping it) – and it’s not clear how to fix that behavior there.)
Does it happen to you with Chrome? Maybe there’s some obscure setting you can change?
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia: Thanks. I copied your answer and put it in my previous comment to you so when I go back and read this, i will have my answer.
zhena gogolia
@debbie:
Oh, maybe that’s it.
NotMax
@NotMax
Okay, screenshot made. I put them both in one image, the upper one showing the actual text and line spacing in the comment box, the lower one showing how it looks when posted on the page.
WaterGirl
@Baud: That’s a weird one. Next time you see that and you see me in that thread, can you alert me to that so I can peek inside their comment?
A screen capture would work, too, if I’m not around. thanks.
Omnes Omnibus
@zhena gogolia: I am not sure that problems with the blog update, however annoying, constitute political suicide.
Baud
@Another Scott: To be more precise, when there aren’t such large words, I can’t scroll left or right in the mobile site, just up and down. That difference really affects navigation and UI elements on the mobile site. It’s much easier when the left/right margins are locked.
WaterGirl
@NotMax: I see this before your last line.
 
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus: Don’t try to silence my voice.
zhena gogolia
@Omnes Omnibus:
No, but nominating Sanders does. Sorry but there are no new threads.
Jinchi
@WaterGirl: I-Phone and Safari.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: You’re not the boss of me.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott:
Yeah, I got that much. :-) But if I am going to try to explain it to the developers, it helps if I understand what you are suggesting.
Thanks for the link. I’ll look into it.
CarolPW
@WaterGirl: @NotMax:
I see NotMax’s lists improperly spaced (Win 10, FF), where it seems to add an extra hard return before the final entry in a list or between a quote and the author.
Another Scott
@NotMax: It’s gotta be one of your extensions/plugins/whatever for Firefox.
That’s not happening here (Chrome + uBlock Origin).
Good luck.
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
@WaterGirl: I’m not a web coder. I know enough of the jargon and how things generally work to be dangerous, and that’s about it. ;-)
Thanks for checking. I appreciate it.
Cheers,
Scott.
NotMax
@WaterrGirl
That’s a non-breaking space I’m in the habit of putting before the hyphen when making an attribution, as I find the slight indentation it provides a more pleasing look. Whether or not I include that has no bearing whatsoever on the line spacing dilemma. Did not include the non-breaking space coding in the example shown in the screenshot.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus:
Is that always the case? Or just for a couple of days a few weeks ago (before John nixed those with the ad guy) and starting a couple of days ago (ad guy away on vacation and can’t be reached until probably Wednesday).
If they’re always really intrusive, then please let me know and supply screen shots. That is super helpful, thanks!
smintheus
I have never been able to figure out a way to get the quotation box to close (or permit me to move the cursor to the line beneath it). I’m using a macbook and safari.
WaterGirl
@Peter:
Just to clarify, do you see images when a front pager puts a tweet in the post itself, and even in the comments? You just don’t see the images if regular commenters in crude tweets?
Or is it more than that, and you don’t even see the images in front pager tweets?
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia:
I’m kind of afraid to ask what this is about. But now I have to.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: It’s the second one. Glad to know it is in hand. Thanks.
something fabulous
Hello!
I don’t comment much, so don’t have input on many of these, but as a reader, yes, B2 is getting it seems worse. I was getting along ok with hitting the back button twice to return to the comment I had been reading, and it would generally get me back to where I was: once to jump back up to the top of the comment itself and then once to go back down to the previous comment. Now though, i notice, hmm, as of maybe a week? sometimes I have to hit it as many as 4 times, and a few times that has ended up moving me back to the previous post altogether. Does that make sense?
Scout211
@NotMax:
Very interesting. Your line space (shown in your screenshot) does not show in your posts on my computer screen. Your list in #48 shows single spacing. Your other posts also show single spacing on my computer screen. As some of the other commenters also stated.
Very interesting that your screen shows something different than we see.
NotMax
@CarolPW
Deeply thank you for the confirmation.
@Another Scott
This is the only site where this bugaboo occurs for me. If it were an add-on problem it would occur more universally. Did not happen on the previous version of the site, and have not changed add-ons in any way since the switchover to this site version.
divF
In case you need theme music
(Courtesy of Roger Ruskin Spear, ex-Bonzo).
WaterGirl
@NotMax: That’s really helpful. That is definitely not what I see, and apparently not what others see – at least those who spoke up.
to everybody who is not NotMax:
Can you check out the link in NotMax comment #61 and tell me if you see what he sees? thanks.
West of the Rockies
@Baud: Nobody puts Baudy in a corner.
piratedan
@WaterGirl: I see the text from the front pager, but the actual embedded tweet… not at all… yet when a commenter in the thread embeds a tweet, I see those… quite peculiar and I have no doubt that its likely my work network preventing the display… the weird item with the phone and chrome is that pop up ad at the top of the screen, even when reduced, the banner prevents the navigation buttons from being used (mostly the one to move to the next most recent thread)
West of the Rockies
@WaterGirl:
Sanders has an early lead in NV.
Omnes Omnibus
@West of the Rockies: Watch it, bub.
HRA
The only problem that is ongoing is when a FPer uses a lot of twitters in the beginning of their introduction. Then I may or may not go to the first comment when I click on comments or if I use the down arrow I will go to previous threads. The twitter material is obvious since when the FPer that does not use them never gives me any problem.
WaterGirl
@smintheus:
Click to the right of the last word in the last line in the blockquote box you just made. Press return, and then press return again.
That takes you out of the box and moves you down to an empty line outside the box. Try that – does it work for you?
Another Scott
@Baud:
Here’s what I see (in Brave on my Android V35):
1) In this thread (with the long word), I can scroll left and right. The Comment, Refresh, Up, Down, Left arrows move with the scroll too.
2) In the previous thread (Playing to Win:Day 3), no long word, I cannot scroll left and right with the default view. If I pinch-to-zoom, then I can, and the C,R,U,D,L,R buttons are zoomed and move with the scroll as well.
I’m not sure what you’re wanting to have happen if a long word is present. It sounds like you “just” need to do some pinch-to-zoom to counteract whatever your browser is doing.
If you just quickly double-click on some text, does it resize the page properly for you? (You might need to do it twice.) Android has a fairly intelligent “automatic zoom” feature – it will maximize the width of the text in the current viewport, so if that long word isn’t present then you should get the view you want.
HTH a little.
Cheers,
Scott.
Scout211
@WaterGirl:
I do not see an extra space in any of NotMax’s posts.
Mac Mojave/Chrome
WaterGirl
@something fabulous:
I do understand what you are describing, yes. :-)
janesays
@WaterGirl: Sanders is going to win Nevada, probably by at least ten points. And it’s very likely he’ll either win or come in close second in South Carolina (he’s basically tied with Biden in the polls there now).
Unless at least three of the six people who were on the debate stage the other night drop out in the next week, Bernie Sanders is probably going to be the Democratic nominee. If it’s still a six-way race on Super Tuesday, he wins California, he wins Texas, and that’s the ballgame.
WaterGirl
@NotMax: It looks like you and CarolPW both see it the way you see it, and the rest of us (so far) see it without the extra line.
On the positive side, we both know that we aren’t crazy.
Seems like you and CarolPW both use Firefox. Maybe that’s a clue?
CarolPW
@NotMax: I figured you could use some confirmation that you were not barking mad! Glad to help.
Baud
@Another Scott:
The standard width should be the maximum width, so that you can’t zoom out.
jeffreyw
@WaterGirl: Yes, that is what I have to do. Grab the mouse and move it, then click and then <CR> <CR> to get out of the box. Not a big deal. Just an example of something that worked better on the old site where a click on the boxquote icon closed the blockquote and moved the cursor to the first line out side of the box – all without needed the extra mouse click and the two carriage returns.
Not a GBCW issue but it’s not nothing.
WaterGirl
@piratedan:
If you don’t see the twitter formatting and images in a tweet when a front pager posts them, it’s almost certainly that you are blocking social media in your browser and/or in a program like Ghostery.
Yeah, we are aware of those ads but the ad guy is on vacation until sometime on Tuesday, so we have to live with those until probably sometime on Wednesday. Or use an ad blocker and throw some coin in the kitty for John.
Omnes Omnibus
Not necessarily true.
WaterGirl
@West of the Rockies: Thank you.
Sanders people know they will vote for Sanders no matter what. Some other people are being cautious and waiting to make sure nothing changes before they cast their ballot.
I don’t think we need to slit our wrists just yet. Even if Sanders does well in NV and others do not, we need to remember that a lot of those votes were cast before the debate, and that this thing is not over yet.
Another Scott
@NotMax: I just fired up Firefox on this MBP. I see:
===
B-1
B-2
D-1
D-2, intermittently
D-4
===
Firefox is broken.
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@HRA:
When you “click on comments” what are you using to do that and where are you when you do that? are you hitting “x comments” or the “Post + Comments” button, etc?
Are you on the front page when you do whatever that is, or are you in the thread itself?
WaterGirl
@jeffreyw: Thanks for clarifying.
No One of Consequence
· What problems remain?
Baud keeps posting.
· How frequently do they occur?
Seemingly, everyday. Often many times per.
· How many people are affected by each issue?
I know I am, however, there may be others to polite to speak up about it.
( I kid. )
Thank you for all you do. (In case no one else mentions it.)
And thanks to Baud too. It saddens me that often he *is* the best choice for whichever office he is pursuing at the moment.
Peace,
– NOoC
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Laughing. You’ve got me there.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: Thank you!
janesays
@WaterGirl: The problem is there are too many not-Sanders candidates still in the race right now. And it does us no good when it’s a different candidate every contest who emerges as the strongest non-Bernie contender. In Iowa it was Buttigieg. In New Hampshire it was Klobuchar. In Nevada it looks like it’s going to be Biden. But in all three it was also Bernie. He hasn’t had a bad contest yet. He underperformed in New Hampshire, but he still did better there than every other candidate. We cannot beat him unless at least three of the not-Bernie candidates stand down and get out of the way. If Sanders, Biden, Warren, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and Bloomberg are all still in the race on Super Tuesday, it’s over.
So how do we convince three of these folks to quit now while there’s still time? And who are the three we need to convince?
WaterGirl
Is it fair to say that fewer than 5 people have this problem?
If you have that problem, please sound off in this thread and tell me how frequently you have that issue. Thanks.
WaterGirl
It’s perfectly fine to use this as an open thread as long as people who haven’t yet spoken up about any site issues still continue to do so. :-)
West of the Rockies
@WaterGirl:
Agreed. I voted Warren here in CA. If it ends up being Sanders, I’ll drive off that bridge when I get to it.
West of the Rockies
New experience today here at BJ. I click on Reply and get the box, but it’s enlarged and off-set with only a portion visible and the background slightly shadowed.
I’m using Chrome on an Android (not sure it’s Chrome).
WaterGirl
From Dorothy Winsor:
“Hey, hey, look at the way Warren’s support increased from the early vote in Nevada to today’s.”
It’s not over til the fat lady sings.
West of the Rockies
God, I wish someone would break Steve Kornacki’s big board.
WaterGirl
@West of the Rockies: That’s weird. Can you refresh and try to reproduce that? Can you try it in another thread and see what happens?
WaterGirl
Even if this thread turns to politics, I will still monitor it for any site related issues.
JPL
@WaterGirl: Now that Clint Eastwood came out in support of Bloomberg, Bloomberg might as well just spend his money down ballot.
NotMax
@WaterGirl
If it’s of any help, OzarkHillbilly mentioned a while back he sees/experiences the same thing. Also, this strangeness did NOT crop up while the site was in testing, so would attribute it to something tweaked in FYWP since then.
Ruckus
@WaterGirl:
Let’s see, “I was just trying to see if you were paying attention….”
“I can’t type worth a damn.”
“Can’t you read!”
I’m going with “See, I can’t type worth a damn. B3 should be B2.”
WaterGirl
@JPL: Bloomberg needs to get out of the race and go home. He clearly understands the pitfalls of so many not-Bernie candidates, since he suggested that some of the actual democrats should bow out.
Bloomberg needs to put his ego aside and do the right thing.
J R in WV
@WaterGirl:
Sometimes when I click on a link into Twitter I also get “Sorry, nothing was found. Perhaps something is wrong with your browser??” It usually works to retrieve the proper stuff on a second click within Twitter…
I rarely get the proper action from the back arrow in B J — I too have taken back to remembering the comment number when I depart from my current location in a thread.
I have seen others on the list, but since I’m not tryping to debug things, I don’t recall exactly which ones, how often, etc. Sorry to be such a bad bad user!
Not Max is telling you that single spaced items frequently have a double spaced inserted. Mostly on lists at the end, but even just a quote followed by the person being quoted. Ie a very short list…
WaterGirl
@Ruckus: Thanks for clarifying! I went back and added a correct note to both of our comments so it will be more clear when I go over this again on Monday.
WaterGirl
@J R in WV: Thanks!
For the NotMax spacing issue, we have determined that only NotMax and one other person see it that way. Not exactly true, when Another Scott loaded the page in Firefox, he could see it, too.
So I’m gonna consider this a Firefox issue, not a website issue to be pursued with the developers.
J R in WV
@Baud:
How can you tell? ;-)
J R in WV
@Another Scott:
But for me, NotMax’s comment at #6 is all single spaced, but the last line is double spaced. Linux Ubuntu 18 current release and Firefox 73.0 current release. Odd that you don’t see that double space while I do. NO wonder the developers are having trouble fixing the problem if they can’t see it !!!!!
Adam L Silverman
B3. Happens a lot. Some posts over 50% of the time.
Also, B3: you sank my battleship!
NotMax
@WaterGirl
Cop out. Ensuring and testing that the site content displays as close to identical as possible across platforms is the developers’ job.
And has always been a PITA, but that’s the way the pixel crumbles. Show them the screenshot.
WaterGirl
@J R in WV: So far, 4 people see it with the space. All use Firefox.
J R in WV
@WaterGirl:
I see what you posted, all single spaced. But what I see at comment # 6 is different:
Interestingly, when I pasted NotMax’s comment into this reply, it was single spaced, unlike how it looked to me at # 6 comment near the top of the thread. Now I’ve put the pasted comment into a quote box, and had trouble getting out of the quote box, which took lots of fooling around. It all looks as I want it to look now, but I will ont beet a cent that it will look the way I want it to after I post this reply.
I was right, not appearing the way I intended it to. In my edit window right now, D-1 and D-2 are single spaced, but in the comment before I clicked for the edit box, D-1 and D-2 are double spaced and D-2 and D-4 are also double spaced. But here in the edit window it is how I wanted and expected (not really,I expected it to be hosed somehow which is why it isn’t frixed already!) it to appear. So hard to discuss things that are moving behind the scenes !!!!!!!!
I’m not going to try to change the text in the quote box. Let’s see if it hosed differently when I click the update post button !!
It now has 2 double spaces, while in the edit window there was only one double space… so strange. So glad I’m not responsible for fixing this flexibly wrongness for a big professional user community!!!
WaterGirl
@NotMax: I think we’re gonna have to disagree on this one. These days with so many different devices, even more browsers, with zillions of different settings, it is simply not possible to build something that works perfectly with every permutation of all of those things.
That say, I will of course explain the issue to them – now that I have seen what you are seeing – and show them the screen capture. But no guarantees. I’m not sure what they would even fix, if Firefox interprets something different than everyone else.
But we shall see! And I am thrilled to finally see what you are seeing and understand what the issue is.
J R in WV
OK I see that while I was posting my agreement with NotMax you were talking about it with him. All Firefox? OK , weird but OK. And I’m getting two double spaces while NotMax was onlu seeing one double space…
NotMax
@WaterGirl
Now, if they could reconfigure so that visited links show in a contrasting color, as is standard practice across the intertubes, that would be even more ducky.
Unless this is also behavior others don’t experience here?
Bill Arnold
@WaterGirl:
No, if i refresh and my comment is still the last comment in the thread, I do not get an edit window. The edit window only appears when there is at least one more comment. Could be somebody else’s, or mine.
WaterGirl
@NotMax: Nope. That was a functionality / design choice. Everyone sees the same thing.
WaterGirl
@Bill Arnold:
Okay, that is super clear, which is good, because now I can explain it to the developers. I assume you told me upthread what your device and browser combination is, but if not let me know. thanks.
NotMax
@WaterGirl
Pardon my bluntness: silly choice. Wait 30 years until they’re old enough not to automatically remember whether or not they’ve already clicked on a link.
NotMax
@NotMax
Also makes it immensely easier to go back and find a link which was visited should one want to view it again later on.
Another Scott
@NotMax: Agreed. There’s a reason why there are standards…
Cheers,
Scott.
Omnes Omnibus
I just got the 525 error again.
HRA
@WaterGirl:
I have opened BJ. I read the introduction. I click on comments and have to scroll down to read the comments. I do not automatically arrive at comments if the introduction is full of tweet material. I even have tried the down arrow to get to comments and that is a hit or miss option for me. This is not a complaint. I can get there my way. I sent to you it for formation only that you may want to know. I am on a desktop with windows 10 and use Google. PS I am not at all tech savvy. As what I was once told in testing I am more academic. :)
WaterGirl
@HRA:
I’m trying to understand. Are you clicking on comments in the byline as seen below? Are you on the balloon juice front page where you can see many posts, or are you in a particular thread?
It helps if I can try what you’re describing, so I can see what it’s doing. I appreciate that you are not intending it as a complaint, but I want to make sure it’s working as it should. Thanks.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Can you send me email or submit to Site Feedback if you see it again?
debbie
@WaterGirl:
No.
debbie
@J R in WV:
As with NotMax and CarolPW, Firefox seems to be the operative word.
debbie
Okay, now when I post, I am taken to the top of the page for a second or two, and then down to some random spot. I’m beginning to feel a little seasick…
Another Scott
Well that’s interesting. I just got thrown in Moderation in another thread for no obvious reason. That hasn’t happened for a while.
https://balloon-juice.com/2020/02/22/election-year-open-thread-nevada-caucuses-end-today/#comment-7594274
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Adam L Silverman
@WaterGirl: I have the same thing happen too. But it happened on the old site, so I’m used to it.
Redshift
The comment editor seems to be working much better for me than it was at first with the Android GBoard keyboard and swype word entry/autocorrect. It occasional gets in a weird state where it accepts the words but they don’t appear unless I switch windows and back, but it no longer does the thing of putting the word in the wrong place or replacing a word instead of inserting the new one.
I know there was a component that wasn’t fixable that was related to that problem. If something has been updated there, the new version is much better.
Mousebumples
The ad issues (bottom and top ads the can be closed or minimized) are my primary concerns on mobile. The pop up (or what I think of as the mobile version of a pop up) is most annoying, and I even had one earlier when I clicked to an old post on this same site, versus (most commonly) when coming back from visiting Twitter.
I sent in website feedback earlier this week, which should have had some screenshots.
Thanks for your efforts!
FelonyGovt
Sorry, just saw this. Water Girl, you are a saint. I can’t even conceive of having your patience.
My only remaining issue is B-2, the “back” button doing unpredictable things. Sometimes it takes me back to where I would expect, sometimes it just seems to give up and takes me to the very beginning, or somewhere random.
Other than the fact that I’m an idiot and still have trouble with embedded tweets. But that’s no one else’s fault.
smintheus
@WaterGirl:
No, it didn’t work. But (maybe because I’m replying to a comment?) I now had a blue menu ribbon at the top with a button that allowed me to close the “b-quote”. I have never seen that menu ribbon previously when I commented.
smintheus
Ok, here I’m going to post a comment without replying to anyone.
Ok, a double return did close the quote box. Thanks!
smintheus
@janesays: I could imagine Biden and Warren being willing to step aside to as to create a two-way race (which is what is really needed to have any chance of stopping Sanders’ coronation). Maybe even Steyer too. But there’s no way Buttigieg would step aside given his boundless ambition and lack of alternatives; almost no chance Bloomberg would admit defeat; and not very much chance that Klobuchar would leave the field in the hands of Buttigieg.
To me, the best way forward (nearly impossible as it is) would be to get all the leading rivals to agree that the winner of a random lottery would continue with the support of all the others. The long straw (or whatever) decides who becomes the single remaining not-Sanders candidate.
The field of rivals didn’t get together to act in ’72 when there were doubts about McGovern, or in ’76 when the underwhelming Carter took control of the primaries, or in 2016 when Trump took the lead; or ever in the past. So it almost certainly won’t happen now. It looks like we’re stuck with a field that’s too large, and therefore stuck with Sanders.
WaterGirl
@Mousebumples: The ad guy is on vacation until sometime on Tuesday, so we can’t do anything about the ads until then. :-(
WaterGirl
@smintheus: It sound like you are in Text mode. What I described is Visual mode.
WaterGirl
@smintheus: It works in replies, too. But somehow you were in Text mode earlier, I think. The Visual and Text tabs are in the upper right when you are creating or editing a comment.
JAFD
OK, I clicked ‘Reply’ button to comment #4, but the ‘reply box’ has no reference to that comment. Will hit ‘Post Comment’ now, see what happens.
I’m using Firefox 53 with a bunch of extentions (not just luddite, but idiosynchratic luddite) so possibly just my problem…
(Edit) OK, comment came thru fine, but nothing indicating that it’s a reply.
BTW, guess this comes under B-3. But you know better than I.
JaySinWA
Two items I see,
Clicking on a timestamp in a thread with active updates sometimes sends me to the top of the post and refreshes the page with new posts showing up if I scroll down.
In replies where I paste quoted text, sometimes the text is inserted next to the nym and sometimes on the next line. When it is on the same line the quote box includes the nym otherwise it is on its own, which is probably expected behavior.
JaySinWA
I can only remember seeing this in replies, but it has been infrequent and my memory may not be that good.
NotMax
Oh, by the way, WaterGirl, something occurred to me that might work a tad better than what we discussed on another topic.
That is, using Medium Coolness rather than Medium Cool.
Retains the flavor of an homage whilst being descriptively more on point?
TomatoQueen
Just to be helpfully late, I saw everything NotMax did exactly as he described them. On latest iteration of Fireyfox, Ublock Origin, Win10 (the free upgrade worked), Lenovo Thinkypad.
Also, too, who is John’s new girlfriend, where’s the explanatory post, does she like peanut butter or ice cream? She’s almost too good to be true.
Planetjanet
I do have odd ad behavior. It looks like the evil Proper ad is back but in a new form. It is at the top of the page instead of the bottom. This can cover up the refresh button and navigation arrows. You can click a tab to make it retract mostly. I try not to click it at all. But sometimes when it is there, I will click the Post+Comments button and a full page popup appears. It is usually an ad related to Facebook. I just back out and start over.
O. Felix Culpa
True confession: I have not read the comments, so apologies if I’m repeating what others have already said. So here goes:
ETA: I do contribute financially and would gladly pay a bit more to get rid of the @#$%^& ads.
Peter
@WaterGirl: Sorry for the delay in responding. I don’t see any images in any front-pager tweet embeds in posts. I see them on my desktop, but not my iPad or iPhone.
Melusine
Not a hot current issue, but a link to the home page on the top bar like Comment and Refresh would be very handy.
Thanks to you and your developers for all of the site improvements. Especially Catcake.
Another Scott
@O. Felix Culpa:
Unless Google changes its spots, Chrome on Android is always going to have ads. You need to use a different browser on your phone.
I use Brave on my phone, and it blocks all the annoying ads by default. But note, I don’t comment much on my phone (just a general phone issue, not the browser – cut&paste is a pain, etc.).
(I too send B-J Intergalactic Industries some cash every month in exchange for blocking the ads.)
HTH a little.
Cheers,
Scott.
O. Felix Culpa
Thanks for the browser suggestion. I’ll give it a try.
@Another Scott:
Mousebumples
@WaterGirl:
About what I figured but just wanted to make sure the ad issues I am having are on your radar.
Strange thing happened with this reply – the box popped up but was cut off initially. Have to make the text tiny (zoom out) to see the whole text box. Chrome, Android 10,if it matters. And I can send in screenshots if needed too. I’ll try to check back on this thread later today.
debbie
FWIW, the full-page ad on my iPad mini happened again this morning.
WaterGirl
I’ll check in on this thread throughout the day in case anyone who missed it has anything to add today. I haven’t yet read the last 20 or so comments, but I will com e back to those, as well.
WaterGirl
@JAFD: Yep, that’s B-3. Thanks. Can you give me an idea of how often this happens for you? Once in a blue moon? 1 out of 10 times?
WaterGirl
@JaySinWA:
That’s a new one. What device and browser?
WaterGirl
@JaySinWA:
You are exactly right. You want to make sure your quoted text is on a separate line from the @omnes, otherwise you get exactly the behavior you described.
WaterGirl
@NotMax: Interesting thought!
WaterGirl
@TomatoQueen:
We have determined that that’s a Firefox weirdness.
WaterGirl
@TomatoQueen:
John’s girlfriend is the adorable white retriever in the picture up top. He introduced her maybe a month ago? He sometimes posts pictures of her in his twitter feed.
She is a sweet, beautiful dog that Cole passes on the street as he drives by, and sometimes he stops and talks to her. I have fallen for her, just from the pictures.
WaterGirl
@Planetjanet:
Yep. I let John know about that earlier this week, but the ad guy is away on vacation until sometime on Tuesday, so we are likely stuck with them until Wednesday.
WaterGirl
@O. Felix Culpa: Yay on the BJ love from the laptop!
Sorry to hear about the BJ frustration on your phone. I have an iPhone and the new site behaves at least 100x better than the old site was on my phone. So I was feeling pretty good about the mobile version.
Do you have another browser on your phone that you could try? Not asking you to regularly USE a different browser than the one you like, but it would be helpful to know if the experience is the same or substantially different on a different browser on your android phone.
WaterGirl
@O. Felix Culpa:
I feel you. The ad guy is away on vacation, scheduled to be back on Tuesday, so we are stuck with those probably until Wednesday.
WaterGirl
@Peter: I see the embedded tweets perfectly on my iPhone and iPad, using Safari. Can you send me a screen shot of what you see? And let me know what browser you use?
WaterGirl
@Melusine: Thank you so much! I ❤️ CatCake and was so happy when I found her during my search for images for the pie filter.
I wonder if you know that you can click on Balloon Juice or on the balloon guy up top, and that takes you directly to the home page?
WaterGirl
@Mousebumples: Screen shots would be helpful, thanks!
WaterGirl
@debbie: Yep, whoever told the ad guy he could leave on vacation for a week is in big trouble with me! :-)
Hopefully the evil ads will be gone shortly after he returns on Tuesday or Wednesday.
WaterGirl
Okay, so I am caught up to this point. So if I haven’t replied to an issue you posted, please add a note directing me to your comment #.
I will check back throughout the day, so it’s not too late to chime in.
JaySinWA
@WaterGirl: Chromebook Chrome browser, for random page refresh clicking on timestamp. Ditto for random placement on reply text paste either on same line as nym or next line (comment 173)
ETA I think I may understand the “random” placement. It seems that if I copy to end of the paragraph but not beyond, the pasted text starts with a new paragraph on the next line down, if I copy text without going to the end of paragraph it inserts as text following the nym on the same line/paragraph. So there appears to be an invisible paragraph character that gets sucked in with the last character in a line when you copy, and paste interprets that as pasting a new paragraph rather than adding a string of characters to the existing paragraph.
Mike in Pasadena
Thank you for working on the site. It works well on my Samsung Android tablet, my LG Android phone, and my Dell Windows 10 desktop. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
WaterGirl
@Mike in Pasadena: I appreciate you saying that!!!
JaySinWA
@JaySinWA: I just replicated the copy paste end of paragraph thing in Win10 Chrome.
Copy to the end of line get a new paragraph in paste, copy up to last character, paste as added to existing paragraph.
JaySinWA
@JaySinWA: And I am seeing page refreshes when clicking on nyms in replies as well, probably more often than clicking to pin timestamps. I saw one on Win10 Chrome a bit ago, but it went to the top and then to the proper post instead of just going to the post or sticking to the top. Probably a cache thing, chrome has marked the local cache dirty for some reason.
JAFD
Hello again, Ms. Water Girl,
Re comment # 171:
Happens all the time, clicking ‘Reply’ button brings up comment window, but ‘Post Comment’ does not have link to commented-on comment.
(First time I’ve tried ‘text color’)
Sorry not back to you yesterday, ’twas glorious day Sunday, I walked a mile and almost volunteered for fence-painting work along way.
WaterGirl
@JAFD: Thanks for getting back to me about how often that happens.
Go you for trying something new with color.