Help Us Debug the All-New Reason.com and ReasonTV!

So here it is, ladies and germs, the new-look Reason.com and ReasonTV!

Please roam widely and freely and take in the new features, especially our 24/7 Newsfeed, which consists of constantly updated and curated stories from all the World Wide Web offers. Our crack staff of aggregators - J.D. Tuccille, Matthew Feeney, Ed Krayewski, and Scott Shackford - will be bringing the most important stories of today and every day, around the clock, with a Reason-style POV.

See something buggy? Make sure to send feedback (good, bad, ugly) and word of any and all glitches you encounter to [e-mail]. We need your help to make the site better.

And don't forget to check out ReasonTV, now a fully integrated part of Reason.com, and our blog Hit & Run (still offering up continuous news, views, and abuse from Reason staff). While you're at it, cruise the archives of the print editions of Reason, too. Soon enough, we'll have fully searchable archives of the nation's only magazine of "Free Minds and Free Markets" dating back to the very first issue in 1968. Reminder: It's always a good time to subscribe (just $14.97 for 11 issues - and you get a better deal on a multi-year sub or renewal)! 

Register in the comments section to get the full experience of the new Reason.com (go to the bottom of any page - including this one - for info).

Comments

[The Unknown Pundit]

Sorry, not into buggery.

[The Unknown Pundit]

Sorry, I meant to say that I'm not into de-buggery. Sorry for the confusion.

[Carston]

Is this SharePoint 2010?

[Fluffy]

Bug Report:

AM Links were 12 minutes late.

[Auric Demonocles]

Resolution:NAP (No Action Planned)

[Fluffy]

Bug Report:

Friday Funnies never funny.

[Auric Demonocles]

Resolution: Not a Bug or Feature

[Groovus Maximus]

Friday Funnies is the equivalent of a tail if a human being happens to be born with one: vestigial, rarely harmful, and at most, merely an annoyance and general spectacle.

I would use the appendix as an example, but unlike Friday Funnies, the appendix does have a legit function.

[Francisco d Anconia]

Bug Report:

Preview button doesn't work.

[Groovus Maximus]

Seconded.

[darius404]

Ditto.

[Rasilio]

Can we start with your friggin page performance?

You have some script or something that hits after the page loads but before it completes that causes the page to freeze for between 5 and 30 seconds. If I had to guess it is something in your web service calls that load the content but it makes for REALLY piss poor performance.

Next, um, I know you guys are a magazine and not tech professionals and all but you know SOP on the web is to release your beta test at a different URL from your main one (preferably on different hardware as well) and then request your frequent users to hit that page and submit bug reports, you don't release your new codebase to production and then announce to the world that "hey this is still buggy roam around and let us know if you find anything". I am also certain that you have more than a few dedicated fans with decades of development and test experience who would be more than willing to assist you on a volunteer basis from time to time if you'd just ask them to and provide a way for them to do it.

So the question I am left asking is do you even have a professional system architect/Developer on staff filling the role of CIO? If not then I highly reccomend you either find money in your budget to hire one or you stop playing around redesigning your website cause what you are doing now ain't working.

[Auric Demonocles]

I cannot understand how a text based page loads so poorly. What the heck are they doing?

They also really need to do something about the mobile experience (either add comments to the mobile page or stop redirecting you to the mobile version of an article).

[Mo]

It's the 9 million embedded videos and stupid widgets. I haven't run a diagnostic on the new site, but on the old site when I ran it HR made over 1,600 requests for over 3.7 MB compared to something like Ars Technica with only 120 requests and at 185.99KB.

[kinnath]

This causes no end of problems for me when visiting H-n-R at work. Our corporate security measures add lots of delay for each of these requests. The initial load of H-n-R can take 30 or 40 seconds in the morning.

[Rasilio]

Page load is slow because they are grabbing content from multiple locations.

So when you hit the URL you get back the page framework pretty quickly but then it starts making a bunch of web service calls to pull back content, one or more of those web service calls is not performing properly, someone mentioned apis.google.com as the culprit and that appears to be a Google web tools service which would make sense and it means that either they have their web service call to google misconfigured or they are using it improperly preventing it from performing properly

[Cdr Lytton]

Preach on! It's worse than ever. Some articles you can't even get to View Comments because it reverts back to mobile even when desktop version is selected. And clicking on desktop at the bottom should show the desktop version of the current page instead of starting over on the main page.

The squirrels said they were working on it two ago but still not fixed. Interestingly (since I've never contacted them before), they call themselves squirrels. I always thought that was a diminutive bestowed by the commentariat. Or they actually are squirrels with standard english names.

How about the ampersand too?

[Auric Demonocles]

Some articles you can't even get to View Comments because it reverts back to mobile even when desktop version is selected

Some? I haven't gotten it to work at all.

And clicking on desktop at the bottom should show the desktop version of the current page instead of starting over on the main page.

That would be one simple way of working around this issue.

[Warren]

Page takes too long to load
No formatting buttons
No edit feature
Kill Friday Funnies and Steve Chapman - The Stupid, It Burns!

[deified]

What's wrong with Stephen Chapman?

Seriously, I always considered him a highlight.

[Auric Demonocles]

Bug report: The edit button is invisible.

[Auric Demonocles]

Enhancement request: Highlight unread comments when you log in as a registered user.

[nobody]

This is the best feature of the Chrome plug-in reasonable.

[Zeb]

They should just have amadukari (sp?) design their site.

[Auric Demonocles]

I personally love doing a bunch of Ctrl+F when I'm on a different computer.

[brec]

"ladies and germs"

Sorry, Nick, but I can't help asking: is this as amusing to you when you're not stoned?

[Richard]

When loading the HampR main page, there's a HUGE pause while reading stuff from apis.google.com. How many megabytes of scripts does it take to render some text and pictures?

[Auric Demonocles]

The correct nomenclature is H*squirrel*R.

[np]

testing
?
Hit Run

[Fist of Etiquette]

My wife is a slut.

[wareagle]

feature or bug?

[Fist of Etiquette]

That's a complaint.

[Auric Demonocles]

Depends on your point of view.

[np]

what html is allowed? Reason removed the blockquote tag, which was pretty useful

[Fist of Etiquette]

Reason removed the blockquote tag...

Although it doesn't show up in preview, it appears to be still allowed.

[np]

Ah ok. Isn't that a bug?

[Nonov Yorbisnis]

Bug report:

This design is butt-ugly.

[Source: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/facebook_likes%5D

[Zeb]

I have to agree with most of the criticisms here. Some of the new features are nice, but it is important to remember that not everyone has new computers or reliably fast internet connections. The priority in designing a text based site like this, in my opinion, should be to make it fast, easy to navigate and avoid superfluous scripts and animated content and other things that slow things down.

[kinnath]

Preview button still does not work for me.

And you have a major human factors fuck up -- the primary comment box at the bottom of the blog has preview button on the left and submit button on the right. But he pop up comment box has submit button on the left and preview button on the right. So when preview doesn't fucking work, you loose all your comments because you tried to submit but hit preview instead.

[Auric Demonocles]

I hadn't realized that the two were different. That is a seriously stupid UI design.

[kinnath]

I was going to give a simple +1 to that comment and then hit the wrong fucking button again.

I am pretty sure the old system had preview on the left and submit on the right, because muscle memory is causing me to always go to the button on the right, which is really fucking me up for the reply to comments box.

[SugarFree]

You are right. I've been doing that as well.

[Auric Demonocles]

I was aware it had flipped from the old system, but I hadn't realized that it was different between boxes in the same page.

[Zeb]

I do that with almost every comment. But preview seems to work fine for me, so I don't lose comments.

[Corporate Drone]

It's.. So.. Slow.. what gives?

[Auric Demonocles]

Enhancement request: Ability to collapse a subthread (though this is less crucial now that MNG isn't around to get into it with John).

[Marshall Gill]

No but Dunphy is, so that would be a really nice feature.

[SugarFree]

Yup. In an environment where some people have no self-control, technology is a blessing.

[T]

Depends still working for you, in other words.

[Auric Demonocles]

Enhancement request: More indenting for threaded comments.

[RBS]

This is a good one.

[Marshall Gill]

Preview still doesn't work in Win7.

[Auric Demonocles]

I don't think that's the issue. Preview works fine on my Win7 machine.

[SugarFree]

Are you running Chrome?

[Auric Demonocles]

Firefox.

[$park?]

Preview works just fine in Win 7 Enterprise and Home Professional running Firefox with NoScript.

[The Late P Brooks]

it is important to remember that not everyone has new computers or reliably fast internet connections. The priority in designing a text based site like this, in my opinion, should be to make it fast, easy to navigate and avoid superfluous scripts and animated content and other things that slow things down.

*wiggles fingers vigorously*

Also, I get randomly logged out. Not the end of the world, but an annoyance.

[invisible furry hand]

Both the new and old sites would randomly kick me out. I assume the squirrels fear my beauty - and yours too, it seems

[Auric Demonocles]

Finger wiggling?

[Corporate Drone]

it's finger wiggling day at Chick-fil-A. bot only for the next 5 minutes.

[CampingInYourPark]

"We need your help to make the site better."

Your site...you didn't build THAT!

[Auric Demonocles]

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great Furturama quoter somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable commenter system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in reasonable and drinking games. If you've got a website -- you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen.

[Apatheist ?_??]

Like the design, page loads fine as well.

-using chrome with adblock plus, donottrack plus and reasonable on fast machines and fast internet.

[kinnath]

trapped at work with WinXP, IE8, and not cool tools to block shit.

Every week, reason gets a little slower and more painful to use.

[RBS]

adblock helps a ton.

[kinnath]

I have firefox and adblock at home, performance is very crisp.

[Mint Berry Crunch]

Even on a 1024 x 768 monitor, there is an annoyingly wide white margin on the left.

So in any comment section a first post looks about as indented as a first 'reply to this' did on the old site.

[Auric Demonocles]

So in any comment section a first post looks about as indented as a first 'reply to this' did on the old site.

One tiny thing that would be nice is some kind of vertical bar or whatever that showed where a top level comment would be.

[nobody]

Yes, this would be great. It's sometimes very difficult to figure out where new threads begin.

[Auric Demonocles]

Literally all it would take is a vertical line on the left side of the page.

[flye]

Seconded. This is a simple formatting change that would really clarify some of the threads without resorting to collapsible replies.

[Mint Berry Crunch]

Yep.

On the old site, I'd immediately recognize a first comment because it couldn't realistically be any further to the left.

Now I have to train myself to notice a first comment by how it lines up with my browser's Forward button.

[Ron]

change for changes sake is not always a good thing.
the old layout was so nice and clean, easy to navigate this is just a bunch of jumping off points with no correlation and the scrolling stories at the top move way to fast I have to stop it every time and that doesn't always work.

[SteakFury]

Maybe if it didn't try to load 30 instances of the google pluseone JS things would be smoother. This site has some serious JS abuse.

[stupac]

Why is the time stamp so prominent and bold? It grabs my attention more than the actual comment text.

[$park?]

That's just because most of the comments aren't worth reading anyway.

[The Late P Brooks]

Finger wiggling:

That was an Occutard phenomenon; apparently, the assembled mass of nonconformists exhibits approval by wiggling their fingers in unison.

I actually saw an example on that MSNBC hipster douchebag focus group show. Some girl with a dopey haircut started doing it as some other nitwit was spewing vacuous platitudes. In person, I probably would have thrown her to the ground and commenced kicking her.

[Auric Demonocles]

Clapping is too mainstream?

[Auric Demonocles]

Also I just realized the humor in that comment coming from the guy who refuses to utilize threaded comments.

Not that I think you should change. I appreciate that kind of will and respect waging a one-man war. It inspires me to keep going on in the alt-text fight.

[Fist of Etiquette]

It's clear that we commenters are going to focus on the commenting, but overall I don't really have a complaint with the redesign. It's generally easy to navigate the site, and the goal apparently was to place enticements to the various features and content, and that probably works as planned.

[johnl]

Please correct the timeline so that the next article and last article links work. Now they skip half the content and get stuck in loops.

[Zeb]

It's always done that for me.

[johnl]

It's gotten worse.

[johnl]

And can we please get iso 8601 bigendian dates? 8.3.12 doesn't even look like a date. It's 20120803.

[$park?]

No.

[Randian]

How is 8.3.12 not an adequate communication of the date? People get picky about the weirdest shit.

[GILMORE]

Randian| 8.3.12 @ 12:23PM |#

How is 8.3.12 not an adequate communication of the date? People get picky about the weirdest shit.

Well, maybe some people are anglophiles, and put the day first.

I myself drive on the left side of the road, just to make a subtle statement of my continued loyalty to King George.

[Zeb]

I have to deal with people from different countries a lot, so I have taken to writing the month in words every time I write a date so that there is no ambiguity about which number means what. I can't even remember what the normal order is in the US most of the time.

[GILMORE]

Register in the comments section to get the full experience of the new Reason.com...

i.e. "....become the next Warty-Rape experiment!"

[GILMORE]

I came to complain... and inadvertantly, I debugged.

FYI = in IE9, there are some issues. I believe the technical term is, "all fucked up"

the sections at the top of the page run vertically now, and actual text is floating somewhere 3-4 screens down (scroll tastic)

Also, there's a floating "Hit Run Home" button in the middle of the comments section (currently sitting on Sparky, above)

Really, Nick Should use Reason.tv to run a really schlocky info-mercial on why subscribing to Reason magazine is so awesome, and how only losers just read it online ...... and if you act now, you'll also get the set of paring knives - a $39.99 value! - ABSOLUTELY FREE. Plus, with your third annual renewal, you'll be eligible to purchase your first junior-grade Monocle, and receive a "Fuck The Poor" T-shirt!

[GILMORE]

The Koch brothers have demanded this re-design to force addicited readers to resort to the print version, else they suffer constant migranes trying to decode this white and orange mess...

[Metazoan]

I agree with the general sense that the site progressively uses/abuses more JS, causing it to become a disaster on mobile devices and just unpleasant on regular computers.

[Mongo]

Ever since I had password problems with various sites (not Reason's), I now have great difficulty accessing Reason. Super slow. Freeze-ups.

Whenever I go to your site, the previous day's site comes up (actually, the July 31 page is the current page). This happens now with other news sites.

Stop it with those Facebook plugins - what a garbage social media site.

[Mongo]

My laptop works fine. It's my work computer that does this.

[Carston]

If its loading previous days, it is getting loaded from cache. Just refresh and that should resolve.

[ant1sthenes]

1. Ditch the social media buttons on the left of the article, they take up too much space. Add a second share button to the top of the article by the RSS icon, if you think people are missing the bottom one.

2. There's also too little delineation between different areas -- it's just a big white mess. Consider placing all the content areas (article, comments, newsfeed, top stories, trending, bottom summary area, ad spaces, etc.) in clearly defined light-background areas that sit on top of a darker background (possibly with a graphic such as an adaptation of the latest magazine cover, so long as it doesn't distract). If you do that, clip the site area and topic bars to just the middle article area instead of spanning the entire screen.

3. The next/previous article bar should be above the comments area.

4. The View Hit Run Archives area is basically wasted space. Consider placing it in the middle with Home. You could possibly work four arrows that way (Home being up, Archives being down).

5. The author blurb area uses a little too much space in this article, with the Share/Print buttons and the twitter link on different lines.

[Ted S.]

When you submit a comment, the page doesn't load to the point where the comment is, but to some random place quite a bit farther up the page.

[Auric Demonocles]

If you wait it jumps back down eventually. But yeah, that's weird.

[Patrick Doland]

We've made some improvements to the way the social media links are loaded onto the page.

Do things seem to be better?

[Rasilio]

It is just a handful of page hits so small sample size and all however yes there does seem to be an improvement.

The page no longer freezes after the initial framework loads and it is making its web service calls, it also appears to only be calling the social media widgets once per page which I'm assuming was the change you made.

[Patrick Doland]

It's more than that actually. We're only loading the individual buttons when they appear in the visible window (which makes the most difference on the /blog page where there are many of those buttons).

[James Anderson Merritt]

Editing function in the fora, so that registered users can correct and/or update their own comments, is a feature that has long been requested. Please add it to the "All New Reason.com!"

[GILMORE]

Also= I have been agitating to change the posting button from "Submit" to "Contribute!" or "Post"

I SUBMIT TO NO ONE!

In the London tube (aka 'subway'), the exit signs say, "Way Out".

I pointed this out to a Brit and said, "See -That's how government works = they just want to charge everyone for the time it takes to put up 3 unneeded letters/space"

No one thought it was funny.

The coffee shop people also insisted the 'regular' coffee I was ordering was called an 'Americano'. I said, "We dohn need no steeking Latte, ay Muchacho?" That wasn't funny either.

[Fist of Etiquette]

WHERE IS MY VIEW AS A SINGLE PAGE?