Update, 1 September 2010

[fu]

Hi Dreamwidth!

I've been stuck with a craving for Lucky Charms (they're grrrreat! And are for kids, silly rabbit), so I've been having that for breakfast this entire week. Also had it for lunch this one time a cat leaped up onto the dining table and ate my lunch for me. Hey, at least the cat didn't get my cereal.

Anyway let me just hand off my cereal bowl and we can start with the update.

A Warm Welcome

We've noticed a lot of new members this week! Welcome to those of you who are coming from LiveJournal -- you might want to check out the Guide to Dreamwidth for LiveJournal Users.

Last Week's Progress

This week's code tour was done by the ever awesome cesy.

That brings us to exactly 2002 bugs which have been resolved fixed, and almost 2300 bugs that have been resolved in some way. This week also brought us another milestone: I filed our 3000th bug!

Since our bug list contains planned features and code cleanup as well as actual bugs, I'm really proud of this milestone.

This Week's Request for Feedback

We have another version of the update Create Entry page up for feedback.

And first of all thank you to everyone who left feedback for the last version! We weren't able to respond to everyone individually, but we read all your comments and tried to take all of them into account while working on this latest version.

The short list of changes is:

• less options on page startup


• ability to customize the page so it fits your posting habits


• full list of tags


• editable individual tags


• fix for the red flash issue


• tweaks for older browsers, including better support for resizing


• various appearance and behavior tweaks

Play around with it a bit :)


We built in drag and drop functionality for mouse users. We are aware that this only works for mouse users, and we'll be working on ways to have something that will work for everyone, not just mouse users.

We'll also start integrating the mockup into the backend soon, which means that the next time we do this, the mockup should respect your site scheme and use your icons/tags/etc (it still won't remember your settings, though, and it won't work to actually post).

Communities that Link to Other Communities that Link to Other Communities

This week's theme for community plugs is communities that link to other communities to get you started on finding and making those communities that you're interested in:

• dw_community_promo - the official community promotion community


• community_promo - an unofficial community promotion community


• create_my_comm - a community for community ideas, in case the community you want doesn't exist yet

And finally, some links that don't fit into the theme, because I've said "community" so much that it doesn't look like a real word anymore:

• getting_started - for any questions you may have about getting started here on Dreamwidth


• interests search, to search for people and comms which share your interests


• site search, to search by keyword for posts about topics you're interested in


• the latest entries page, to see the latest public entries posted to Dreamwidth. Also possible to see the latest public entries with a specific tag
  

Equally Warm Goodbye

And that's it for this week. Rest of this month is denise's as per usual. As always, if you're having problems with Dreamwidth, Support can help you; for notices of site problems and downtime, check the Twitter status page; if you've got an idea to make the site better, you can make a suggestion.

See you again next week!

Comments

[charmian]

Update page is looking very good! I like how we can make it wide (although my personal pref is for it to be a bit longer). The ability to customize the options is great, also, although is it intended that we can't get rid of "Currents"? (I'd like to delete it too, as I never use it) It's also great that we can drag and drop the things, to get a nice streamlined experience.

The only thing I still think is kind of questionable is the placement of the 'delete' and 'post' buttons, which feel aesthetically kind of off to me. Maybe they could be made somewhat larger?

[fu]

The inability to hide currents was a coding error on my part. Fixed now, thanks for pointing it out!

And thanks for the feedback! Have put the buttons on the list of things to think about.

[denise]

The reason we have them so far apart is that as it is now, it's really easy to hit 'delete' when you mean 'post'. It does pop up a confirmation, but it's also really easy to be moving on autopilot and just return out of the dialog. (This has bitten me on the ass, oh, approximately nine billion times.)

So, with this, we were trying to separate them as much as possible. I'll see if hope (who has been doing AWESOME, AWESOME WORK with this redesign, omg, she and fu turned my crappy pencil sketches into ART) has any ideas, though.

[charmian]

Maybe then they could be like on separate lines? For example, what if post were sitting above all of the boxes (with a large button) and delete were sitting below them?

[existence]

I would totally confuse these if they were exactly stacked at least once, depending on HOW they were stacked.Personally, my vote is for far away as possible.

[sorchasilver]

I understand that there is a reason to want them apart for some users, but since you are putting customisation into the design, is there a reason this can't this also be customisable? I don't hit delete when I mean post, and the current positioning really bugs me. If I could put the buttons where they work best for me, then this wouldn't be an issue at all.

[ranunculus]

That separation between post and delete caught my eye, and THANK YOU!

[kake]

I would also like to be able to have a longer entry field... perhaps it could automatically get longer if there's nothing in the "drag and drop" spaces below it?