Last week, after three months of public beta-testing (and many many more months of work behind the scenes) we set our new comment design to load as the default mode. We had generally positive responses, with a few new and comparatively minor issues to add to our post-launch queue of tickets. But we also encountered one significant issue related to Front Page stories that necessitated turning the Lazy Comments OFF until we identified that problem and ensured we had a reliable fix for it. Our stalwart developers wrestled with the bug, pinned it down, and got it to yield. So we are now setting the new comment system back to ON by default for logged-in users.
Since February, elfling has posted 8 stories about the progress of this new comment system. Her latest, You May Have Already Won The Chance to Use Daily Kos’ New Comment System, contains considerable detail about the less-obvious but important ramifications of the redesign. Highlights include:
One of the most popular innovations so far is the autosave feature for comments in process, something that I’ve already had a chance to appreciate more than once. I also can’t tell you how happy I am to have the 1 & 2 keys for jumping to the top and bottom of the thread! You may have your own favorites, and we’d love to hear about them.
We’re also pleased to have implemented the ability to create and submit comments entirely with key commands for people on all browsers, not just Chrome users. To use this new feature:
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
If you’re not quite ready to go all-in with the new-fangled comments, it is still possible to turn them OFF (and ON) with this process (see below). We know we still have some wrinkles to iron out—in particular, the scrolling issue for certain mousewheels and the odd page loading behavior for some IE users—and we do want to be confident we’ve dealt with just about everything before we eliminate this option.
To turn the new comments ON, visit this URL:
https://www.dailykos.com/comments_beta/true
To turn them OFF, visit this URL:
https://www.dailykos.com/comments_beta/false
Also quoting from elfling’s post:
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.
As always, we sincerely welcome our users’ feedback while we continue to fine tune this new, more nimble and efficient comment system. Please continue to add your observations about the system in the comments below, or if you have something you’d rather discuss privately, open a Help Desk ticket under the “New ‘Lazy’ Comments Issues” category.
We might not be able to count on fair weather and following seas all the time, but we definitely appreciate the chance to work with such a fine crew of staff and site members as fellow travelers. Thanks for being here to make all our efforts worthwhile!