Housekeeping

July 18, 2005

So, as regular readers have probably noticed, we made a few cosmetic changes here at The Carpetbagger Report over the weekend, just to spiffy things up a bit. We made the blogroll a little easier to read, made the comments section a little easier to distinguish between comments, and a few other behind-the-scenes improvements that should make the site better in subtle ways.

But some of you have written in to mention that you’ve come across a few bugs with the new system. Some, for example, see the ads bleeding over on top of the text. Others are having trouble posting to the comments section. One of you wrote in to say you can’t see the new-and-improved site at all.

With this in mind, I’m hoping to get a little help from readers. Are you having any trouble with the site today? Including some of the issues raised by others? I’m interested not only in the problems, but also how widespread they are. The more detail the better — for example, browser and operating system info is helpful. Please use the comments section for any and all feedback.

That is, unless one of the problems is with the comments section itself. If that’s the case, please use the contact page, which appears to work just fine.

Thanks.

Update: We appreciate all the feedback so far. It appears the most significant problem is the ad bleed-over problem, which seems to be affecting more people than we had initially realized. Rest assured, we’re aware the situation and will resolve the problem as quickly as possible. We just need to figure out how. Thanks for your patience.

Second Update: Just to be clear, I’m going to keep up the usual posting schedule, despite these glitches. (I can’t prove that Karl Rove is partially responsible for these problems, but I won’t let the Man keep me down…)

Yes, CB, I’m having the bleeding problem, and I also don’t
like the large type font when I compose my comments. The
last time I saw type this size was when we used double height
letters in first grade. It also seems slow, and I find I make more
errors. And God knows I make plenty!

So, thanks for asking.

  • Testing…testing…123… Everything seems hunky dory on my XP/IE box.

    As a side note, thanks for the great site. In the last couple months, this has become my #1 favorite dialy read. Kudos.

  • I was sad to see the list of recent entries go. That was handy in terms of being able to navigate between the stories of a day all from one place rather than doing a lot of back and forth, or referring back to the RSS reader for the next story. No offense to the rest of the political blogosphere, but I’d much rather have easy access to other recent CB stories than access to two dozen other blogs.

  • Ditto on the daily “table of contents” column. It’s a handy feature. And the headings, when read as a group, often have a gestalt of their own.

    On my screen, the Blogad’s box is bleeding a bit into the text.

    I guess I must agree as well that an undistilled Blogroll can end up being a long blur.

    Gracias

  • You know, I had no idea folks used the recent entries feature. I’ll bring it back soon.

  • Everything seems fine on Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger) and Safari. Appreciate the Javascript changes in the bloglist mouseovers, that was kind of a pain.

    Basically, just fine with this combination of computer, software, and browser.

  • I notice the Blogads box is a fixed size – so anyone using a particularly small screen and/or low resolution will have positioning problems as the rest of the page is of a relative size.

    But while I’m posting, just wanted to say thank you for what has become one of my few truly daily reads. Your efforts mean a great deal.

    Best wishes

    Rai

  • No problem here at home with XP and Firefox, but I do get the bleedover from the ads/blogroll at work. I’m pretty sure it is Win98 and an earlier version of IE there but I’ll check the particulars in the morning.

  • The ads bleeding over was a problem for me — I use Firefox, which is usually the culprit with stuff like that — but now all looks good. Which takes away my excuse to not visit eight times a day. whoopee. thanks.

  • I think we’re more Mac than the general public is. A good thing in my book. Means a bunch of us value graphics and music. I know that’s an old and increasingly out-of-date comment — Windows is almost as good as an old Mac — but I sense it.

    Anyway, things are fine on a Mac “cube”, OS 10.3 (Panther), using Firefox. The “Blogads advertise here” does extend over the nearby text, but the rest is harmless. I like the older “archives” format – month and day. I don’t like having to go to “June” and then scroll and click through the “next” links until I find what I’m looking for.

    But I’d try to find a way to read all this if you wrote it in medieval Latin quatrains, using a goose quill soaked in anemic bat’s blood, on rough parchment , by beeswax candle light in a windowless cell … if I had to. Best political blog whatever the format.

  • I’m having the same problem with the Blogads that a few people have already mentioned. I’m using WinXP with a Maxthon browser. I checked and I don’t have the problem with Firefox but I’m stuck on the Maxthon browser so I will deal with the difficulty, although I’m not sure that I would go to the lengths that Ed does. It’s the anemic bat’s blood that would kill it for me.

    CB – I double checked and noticed that the Evolve TV ad box gets cut off on the right hand side of the box using Firefox, It looks like there might be a small problem with the CSS, I think that the middle column is overlapping the column on the left-hand side of the page. If you need to know what it looks like post back here or use my email address and I will send you a screenshot so that you know what it looks like.

    Other than the things that I have mentioned I like the changes, the comments section is a lot easier to read.

  • Thanks for the feedback so far — keep it coming.

    The weird thing is I designed the site using Firefox and IE on XP with 1024×768. Forgot that people still use 800×600 — oops. I’m working on figuring out how to get it to look right in 800×600, but unfortunately it doens’t look like an easy fix.

    But for those of you who are on XP at 1024 and still having the bleeding problems, and your browers are maximized, I have no idea what is going on. Looks totally fine on our computers, and others I’ve asked to check the site. I’ve made the blogads less wide, so hopefully that will help in the meantime.

    I’ll be the first to admit I’m not a professional, so anyone who is and has any ideas, please let us know!

    Hark – I have no idea why the text in your browser for comments is so large, so not sure how to fix that. One suggestion I can make is to type your response in Notepad/Wordpad or the like and copy and paste it into the comment text field. I know that is not ideal, but until I figure out why that is happening it’ll prevent you from going blind while commenting.

  • Ms. Carpetbagger – I’m not 100% sure of the minutia but I think that it may be possible to set up some DHTML scripts that will read the client browser resolution and adjust the page elements accordingly. You could probably Google something like “javascript browser resolution” to get you started. I’m sure some generous programmer has posted the code somewhere out in cyberland.

  • Yes, the “evolveTV” ad bleeds onto the text.

    Otherwise I like the changes.

    But in comments, I too often receive a “posting closed” warning.

  • I am running Windows ME.
    When using Internet Explorer I have bleedover of blogads.
    When using Firefox, page looks fine.

  • Hi there. Bringing back the RECENT ENTRIES would be great.

    Other than that, no issues experienced with page display. (Using FireFox, Win2003).

  • I’m using IE 6.0 on XP and I find that as long as my browser window is at least 843 pixels wide I don’t have bleed-over from the ads. Adjusting the width of my browser window I notice that as soon as it is smaller than 843 pixels wide, I begin to have bleed-over and it gets worse as the window gets smaller. In particular it is the “EvolveTV” ad and the “blogads Advertise here” boxes that first begin to bleed-over. When the browser window reaches about 695 pixels wide the search box begins to bleed-over, then at about 679 pixels wide the “Recommended Blogs” title begins to bleed-over.

    Unfortunately I don’t know enough about how the site is designed to tell you how to do it, but it seems like you ought to be able somehow to define the position of the main content such that it doesn’t slide any further to left than 200 pixels from the left edge of the browser, this would keep it from sliding under the sidebar as the window shrinks.

    It looks like right now the main content is designated to take up 70% of the page. The right 70% is fine until you reach window sizes below 843 pixels. At that point 70% of the page = 590 pixels leaving 253 for the sidebar. Since the EvolveTV ads are about 200 pixels wide and the margins on the page and the window border add up to about 25 pixels on each side, any window smaller than this will place the left edge of the content too far left (ie overlapping the EvolveTV ad).

    Note that if I increase my screen resolution to 1600×1200 and maximize the window I have the opposite problem in that now the main content is SIGNIFICANTLY to the right of the sidebar, leaving a rather large gap of empty unused space between the EvolveTV ad ant the left edge of the main content.

    Again if there is some way to define the side bar as being about 200 pixels wide and leaving the rest of the space for the main content, or alternatively if there is some way to indicate that the left edge of the main content should always begin about 200 pixels from the left edge of the window, it would solve both these issues.

  • I have ad bleed as well–but have absolutely no idea why type of server etc. we use.

  • Ok at work we are running Win2000 and IE5 and getting the bleedover.
    Good luck with the fixes and I am sure my boss will be happy to have me working during the day anyway…

  • I’m glad it is better. I have enlisted the help of a professional, and hopefully all will be fixed very soon! (have I mentioned I don’t know what I’m doing?)

    Thanks, everyone, for your patience while we clean it all up. And sorry for any incovenience!

  • Wow, the changes were so subtle that I never even noticed. (That’s the finest kind of change, in my opinion.) Looks fine in XP with Firefox 1.04. The text when I’m making this comment is noticeably bigger, but for these tired old eyes, that’s not a problem.

    Keep up the sharp and astute work on this blog. It’s one of my “must reads” every day.

    • Comments are closed.