Today, we’ve replaced the existing Daily Kos commenting system with new comments that… look remarkably like the old ones. We in tech are extremely excited about this. For us, it’s the end of a long project to modernize some code and make it easier to maintain and improve. But what’s in it for you?
The issue of the long comment threads is the biggest and most important part of this release. Depending on the type of device or computer you have, stories with over 500 comments can get very difficult to load and read. On a phone that number could be as low as 200. This prevents people from participating in long, active comment threads.
The new software does a mostly invisible paging, with an infinite scroll, to let you access all the comments — even thousands of comments — without annoying page breaks. We have tested a story with nearly 10,000 comments on some very tiny devices, even phones, while new comments were being posted to it, and they are completely readable and usable. It’s much better memory management that should result in lower bandwidth and less memory use when you read Daily Kos, wherever you read it. For people using lightweight, portable hardware, this should make the site much more accessible. Remarkably, it should still work to let you jump to the next unread comment or to a new comment that has just arrived, even in a very long thread.
The keyboard submit was possible via a workaround in the old comments, and only on Chrome. Now it’s available to everyone and fully supported, which is especially important for users who don’t use a mouse.
Here’s how you submit comments from the keyboard alone:
(legend is between the story body and the comments area)
Select the comment you want to reply to, say by navigating using the j/k keys, or by clicking on it.
- Type `r` to open the reply box. Your cursor should be ready to go.
- Type your comment
- Press the escape key `esc` to leave the comment box
- Type `P` to preview the comment
- Type `c` to cancel or `S` to submit
You have the new comments now if you’re logged in, and you’ll get them next week if you’re not.
Today, we are turning on the feature as the default comment view for logged in desktop and tablet users only. Next week, we’ll make this view default for all desktop and tablet users. Mobile users will get the new version as the default sometime this summer.
“But elfling,” you say. “I want my old comments back!”
With a little magic, we are able to run the new comments and the old comments simultaneously and have been for some time. For what it’s worth, I’ve been using the new comments nearly exclusively for months now, and they’re working really well for me. I’ve also been encouraging people to beta test them with many diaries on this very site. For A Limited Time Only, we will leave in the option to toggle between the old style comments and the new. This will allow us some time to handle any large issues that might be present for specific users that have not yet become apparent.
These links set a cookie that will remember your preference on a desktop or tablet device for that specific browser. (You can’t view them usefully on a phone yet, sorry.) You can use different browsers or an incognito/private window to see old and new side by side.
Your comments will be saved etc exactly the same in both. Note however that they track which comments are read differently, so when you switch over, it will think all comments are unread.
Our new version is not yet available for phones — those will still go to the old m. codebase that displays a simplified version of the site. But once we’re confident these are working well on the desktop, we’ll be retiring the separate mobile codebase and these comments will be there.
I posted a total of 7 beta comment diaries, and got great feedback. Thank you all! I promise every comment in those diaries was read, and that every one in this diary will be read too. We added many items to our to-do list from the comments, some of which are still in progress. I can’t promise that we’ll do everything that you ask, but it will be noted and considered.
You can beta test our new comments
Experiment with our new beta comment adventure
Give our new beta comments a try
Pssst--Come play with our sekrit new comments
These new comments are coming to a blog near you
New comment software, passing ruffians, will there be pi?
Please try out Daily Kos’ new comment software
As always, please leave your comments, suggestions, effusive praise, stinky tomatoes, delicious pie, and wish lists below.