We had a very good shakeout test for the new system over the past couple of days; releasing it Friday caused a pretty remarkable surge of comments (over 7,000), setting an all-time record even though most of them were just in open threads.

That stress test revealed a synchronization problem that otherwise would not have shown up, as comments were posted so quickly that many ended up with the same timestamp. This caused the duplicate copies of comments and incorrect post numbering many of you noticed. And that bug is now squashed.

Recent updates:

* the comment posting system is completely Ajax-driven, resulting in near chat-room speed because you can post and see new comments without ever reloading the page. Every thread is a little chat room! (And if you’re using a browser that can’t do Ajax, it will gracefully fall back to the old system that requires a page reload after posting.)

* there’s an almost-live preview of your comment, that shows up above the comment posting form when you click the ‘preview’ button, showing exactly what your comment will look like when it’s posted.

* any deleted comments in the thread are now automatically updated (hidden from view) when you post a comment or click ‘new comments,’ to prevent you from reading or replying to a post that has been consigned to the /dev/null directory.

* the previous/next post links that appear at the top and bottom of each thread now include the number of comments posted in the previous and next thread.

* to use the posting features, of course, you’ll need to be logged in to an LGF account. But even if you aren’t logged in, you can use the ‘new comments’ button to follow a developing discussion without reloading the entire page. (Yes, even the trolls can do this.)