Legal Commentary

Problems leaving comments here?

By Beldar

TypePad is making some improvements under the hood, and I think some of them may be causing conflicts with some of the customized templates I'm using for my comments. At least as I perceive the problem, it starts with the moment I click on the data entry field for the comment text ? that's where I start getting odd behavior, anyway.

A few readers have emailed me to indicate that they've had similar problems; but a few readers are still managing to post comments.

For those who are still managing to see their comments posted, I wonder if you're seeing any of the weird behavior (as compared to how my comments were working, say, two weeks ago). If so, feel free to post a description of what you're seeing as a comment to this post.

Or feel free to use this post to test whether or not you can post a comment.

TypePad's customer service folks are very responsive, so I'm hoping the problem can be diagnosed and fixed in short order.

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UPDATE (Sun Dec 14 @ 10:55pm): TypePad's support folks say the bug (as illustrated by this screencap) "is a known issue which [TypePad is] working to resolve this coming week." In the meantime, it seems that the best way to work around the bug is this:

1. Click within the comment text entry field (which will start the bugged behavior, complete with whirling and never-stopping "progress" icons).

2. Click on the "View an alternate" hyperlink, which will cause an error box to appear saying that "You cannot leave an empty comment" error box to appear; click the "OK" button in that error box.

3. The randomized verification text will then appear. Re-type the characters you see into the small text entry field just below them, but don't click any buttons yet.

4. Click again inside the comment text entry field and type your actual comment text. If you click the "Preview" button, a preview of your comment will indeed appear, just below the bold-faced "Previewing Your Comment" headline.

5. When you're satisfied that your comment says what you want it to say, click the "Continue" button just below the verification text entry box ? not either of the "Post" buttons.

6. That should post your comment within a few seconds. But the screen won't automatically refresh to show the new page with your comment as posted. (This is causing lots of duplicate comments at the moment, and understandably so.) Instead, you have to manually refresh your browser to display the new page.

I'm confident that the TypePad folks will have this sorted out in short order so that this work-around will no longer be needed. Thanks for your patience in the meantime.

Full post as published by BeldarBlog on December 14, 2008 (boomark / email).