Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Site updates

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A couple of minor site changes to call to your attention, all on the left sidebar.

First, the Mass. BlogWire from LeftyBlogs is back.  Technical issues have been worked out and misunderstandings cleared up on all sides, and we’re happy to welcome them back to the site.  We’re keeping the BMG Mass o’ Politics feed over on the right, which we like because we have full control of it, so we can have it keep track of some of our “Differently Winged” compatriots as well as other sources that don’t meet LeftyBlogs’ criteria.  The two serve somewhat different purposes and can usefully co-exist on the page.

Second, we’ve added a “Latest Mass. News” feed at the top of the page that displays the three most recent Massachusetts-related headlines from the AP.  That way, we don’t have to post every time some new tasty tidbit comes in from AP’s prolific reporters!

Third, we’ve gotten rid of the “subjects” box, which I don’t think anyone was finding very useful.  If you think different, let me know, but with the advent of tagging (which I wish people would do more of on their posts, by the way), the old “subjects” paradigm seems outmoded.

As always, if you have suggestions on how we can improve the site, please let us know either in the comments or by email.

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Comments

  1. I would appreciate a little HTML lesson here.  What is tagging?  How do I do it?

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    I have recently learned how to make text bold, italics, and underlined.  I know how to hotlink a picture, and know that doing so is poor sport.

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    I’m ready for a new lesson.

    • Tagging is the idea of attaching simple words to an idea.  So, if the post involves Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth, tags might include:

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      Al Gore, environment, global warming, politics, movies, science

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      or some other combination.  Traditionally, tags are limited to one word if possible, and are separated by commas.

      • That reply was super-fast.

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        So the words are like keywords, in plain text, at the end of a post?

        • is right after the “title” box on the “write a new post” screen.  You should see a box there labeled “Tags: (separate by commas).”  In that box you can list whatever tags you want.  Popular ones are Patrick, Gabrieli, Reilly, LG, Governor, Big Dig, Marriage, etc.  Here is a complete list of all the tags everyone has used on the site.

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          It won’t work if you just put them at the end of the post in the text box.

  2. May I humbly recommend you move the “upcoming events” box on the left hand margin upward, maybe to just below the “about” box?  Out of sight, out of mind… and there’s usually some interesting events listed, and hence inevitably missed out upon, if the listing isn’t higher to attract the attention of readers and potential upcoming event posters.

  3. David,

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    Glad to see the constant evolution — oh, sorry, intelligent design — of the site.

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    In this case, the addition of the “Latest Mass. News” feature has created a small problem for me, and probably for others like me with weak eyes and a large screen resolution. The box is bigger than what was in the left column before, and now pushes the center and right columns slightly to the right, so that the rightmost edge of the page is slightly off my screen, enough so that the “HOME” button at the bottom is no longer on my screen when I scroll down.

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    Not a big deal, but it is a bit annoying.

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    Was it your intention to move the site to the right?

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    So, it would be great if you could make that new box the same width as the others.

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    Having said all that, I like the new feature (at least in principle) and will live with it if that’s the way it is to be.

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    Thanks for listening!

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    PS one of the headlines now showing is

    Homeowner shoots officer in Shrewsbury home

    — not to make light of what happened (not much!), but is that anywhere near the left clavicle? (The officer is expected to recover.)

  5. Ironically, DaveMB posted a comment with instructions on how to link, and in so doing committed the cardinal BMG sin of linking: DO NOT post long URLs in comments!  They screw up the browser window for everyone.  I’ve reprinted his comment below, but changed the html addresses to fake ones – they won’t work, but the point is the same.

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    Do you know how to make a link?(0.00 / 0)

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    The best way to learn HTML techniques is to use the “view source” command on your browser (normally on a toolbar under “view”) to see what HTML commands led to whatever you see on a given page.  When you look at the source from a page that was generated automatically, there will be lots of things you don’t understand, but usually by scrolling around you can find the user-generated HTML text that you want to imitate.

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    For example, if I want to link to this story about Paul Hodes fundraising, I write an HTML “a-tag”, including the link to the story, “http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?blahblah“ [note: this is a dead link], inside quotes, then the text of the link, then a “/a-tag”.

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    When you make a link you should always preview and test it before you post the entry.  (My first version was badly messed up because I tried to write out the a-tag and the /a-tag, which didn’t get shown.  But you can see the tags using view-source).

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    Testing this, I find that the I’ve made two usable links to the article, because the text of the link is treated as a link.  But the first one with the a-tag and the /a-tag is much easier to understand.

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    by: DaveMB @ Fri Jul 14, 2006 at 15:36:43 PM EDT

      • and sorry for causing the trouble.  I’m a raw-HTML person, as you can tell. 

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        The post you linked to is excellent, and if I had known about I would have directed CentralMassDad right to it.

  6. Is there a way to fix the bug that makes the left column huge? Forces an ungodly amount of scrolling.

    • MFW mentioned this too upthread.  I’m not seeing any problem.  I fiddled a bit – is it any better now?

      • Basically, it looks like the left column has elongated to the entire page, but it’s mostly blank. I don’t know anything about thse sorts of problems — perhaps part of the code failed to wrap?

        • Still trying.  Do you use Firefox, or any unusual setting?  It all looks fine to me.

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          I fiddled a bit more.  Is it better yet?

          • But this has never been a problem for me before. I haven’t changed any settings. I will try it in IE and see whether it’s better.

                • I am using Firefox and Safari and neither are giving me issues.  Howeve Macs are supremem machines and I rarely ever have problems.  On the computer that his đŸ™‚

                • With the recent changes to the BMG site, the content is shifted so far to the right (hardly appropriate for Democrats, dontcha think!) that at first sight you would think there’s nothing there other than the new items in the left column.

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                  I understand that different browsers will render the code differently, but be aware that Netscape 7.2 has been very displeased with BlueMassGroup yesterday and today. Strange that it reportedly is looking OK with Firefox since I thought Netscape and Firefox had a lot in common.

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                  Please lean the content back further to the left and do the Democrats proud.

              • the problem is not Firefox.  Firefox is standards compliant.  The problem is likely to be bad HTML code in conjunction with IE allowing bad code to render (albeit unpredictibly in the big sense).

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