Weekly Update: 23 November

[denise]

Wow, it really is Monday. Mark and I lost most of the week -- him to the swine flu, me to the Christmas knitting (I'm getting there! Only two pairs of socks left!) -- and I could've sworn it was last week. (This is one of the perils of working at home and keeping a non-24-hour sleep schedule. Sarah keeps threatening to buy me one of those clocks that only has the day of the week on it.)

Happy Thanksgiving to our US readers this week! And if you're looking for an excuse to escape from the familial festivities, feel free to tell your family members that you've got Dreamwidth work to be doing.

Behind the cut: development updates, call for styles testers, an update from suggestionsville, and stuff to read.

1. Development

I overslept this week, so I didn't get a chance to put together a code tour, but this week we resolved 23 bugs, including new themes for Drifting, Bases, Boxes and Borders, Fluid Measure, and Negatives; display fixes for several layouts, and some general bug fixes and improvements:

* A fix for the problem where your reading page would use your journal's adult content setting for displaying NSFW/18+ icons on other people's entries;

* A fix for the problem where comments without replies wouldn't have the Expand link in customized comment pages;

* A fix for the problem of deleted accounts showing on the non-full profile view under certain circumstances (they should only show on the full profile view);

* The new ability to "update time" when posting an entry, so you can choose whether or not you want your entries to reflect the time you started them (opened the update page) or the time you posted them (if you hit the 'update time' button before you post).

All of these will be live with the next code push. Keep an eye on dw_maintenance to see when that might be.

2. Layouts

As many people have noticed, we've been expanding the number of layouts we offer (as well as the number of themes). The effort is coordinated in dreamscapes, where layouts for consideration are posted.

If you aren't a layout wizard, though, you can still help in the process. When someone makes a layout, it's posted to dreamscapes for testing and turning into an actual system layout. It's the testing part that we always need more people for: if you want to check the layout in your browser, OS, and screen resolution combinations, we always need more eyeballs.

The needs testing tag in dreamscapes has themes that need checking in various situations. If you've got a few minutes, drop by, check the previews or apply the theme to your journal, and see if there are any problems in view or display.

3. Community Promo

This week, our featured communities involve stuff to read and stuff to make:

books is a low-traffic place to share discussion of books of all types: stuff you've read, stuff you've started, stuff you've just finished, stuff you hated, etc.

knitting is a general community for anyone who likes putting sticks and string together, or would like to learn. We show off our knitted projects, discuss technique, and share tips and ideas. All welcome!

4. Finding More Stuff to Read

If you're looking for good content on Dreamwidth, foxfirefey has started dreamlight, a place for people to showcase interesting stuff that's happening on Dreamwidth.

Been participating in Follow Friday, the weekly meme that involves listing off accounts you want other people to know about? Drop links to your posts in followfriday.

And, of course, you can always search for something interesting.

5. Suggestions

Thus far, 160 suggestions have made it through our Suggestions process and into our bug tracker, and of those, we've implemented 40 -- a 25% hit rate. Every week brings a few more things that people have asked for, no matter how big or small.

If you've got something you want to suggest to make Dreamwidth better, you can fill out the Suggestions form, but this week I'm mentioning it for the other part of the process: the discussion and brainstorming in the dw_suggestions community. Drop in now and then and give us your opinion on the suggestions that get posted -- if we're ever on the fence about whether or not we should do something, the quality (and vehemence!) of the discussion is part of what sways us.


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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; if you just want to come and hang out with us, join us in irc at irc.dwscoalition.org, channel #dw. (Warning: #dw is capable of eating your entire day. In fact, #dw is capable of eating your entire life.)

We'll see you next week for our next update.

Comments

[denise]

The benefit of working for yourself is that you can set your own schedule, though. And I spent my entire 20s being a workaholic overachiever and totally paid the price for it, so my personal resolution was that my 30s would be better. (I still backslide a lot, but I'm learning to take it as it comes.)

I hope you're feeling better soon!