Weekly Update: 21 December 2009

[mark]

Happy Holidays!

Dreamwidth is humming along, and this week's update promises to be short and to the point. I'm currently out of town in North Dakota visiting my family (hello, Mom!) and we're relaxing in the living room about to watch the video of my wedding which we just got recently... ah, holidays!

1. Spam Update

Our anti-spam team has an update for you this week. There were 79 reports of spam, of which 78 were actually valid spams. We've taken care of banning the IP addresses and account that was spamming us, and we're working to build better tools (and analyze LJ's latest anti-spam tools) to see if we can automate this some.

Thank you to all of you that report spam when you see it! That is the best way for us to be able to identify where spam is coming from and get rid of it.

2. Gradation Vertical

If you don't know what I'm talking about, last code push we released a new site scheme -- a different way of browsing the Dreamwidth site. If you haven't seen it yet, you can get a look at it here:

http://www.dreamwidth.org/?usescheme=gradation-vertical-local

It's a dark scheme designed to provide an alternative to the bright schemes we have right now. If you want to use this scheme yourself, you can set that in your Manage Account page, Display tab:

http://www.dreamwidth.org/manage/settings/?cat=display

Anyway, this is a new site scheme and there are still some bits that aren't quite right yet. If you like it and would like to help us improve it, please see this post by foxfirefey:

http://dw-dev.dreamwidth.org/33203.html

Thanks for helping out!

3. Development

Not much to say for development this week. What with myself and most other people being out or busy for the end of December, it's going to be pretty slow around here as far as code development goes.

For this week we will skip the code and bug tours, and instead I will personally thank all of the people who make this possible. Thank you!

4. Wrap-up

Well, that's the end of this short update. Happy Holidays if you celebrate something, and if not, I hope you enjoy your week!

Comments

[azurelunatic]

Happy Solstice!

[renne]

I like the vertical scheme! It's nice! I've always preferred vertical schemes over the horizontal ones.

I'm not so keen on the dark colours though, any possibility in future of it being offered up in the lights too?

HAPPY SILLY SEASON!

[renne]

OH WAIT, THERE IS ONE. I'll just shut up now & change my theme. ;)

[nonniemous]

THANK you for the gradation vertical. Now if there's only a dark holiday scheme in time for next year's Midwinter holiday season, Dreamwidth will be absolutely perfect. ;-)

No, seriously, I REALLY appreciate you all taking the light text on dark pages issue seriously. Most people don't--they think ti's a matter of taste. And yeah, I can do light backgrounds for a while (as per my current holiday style), but for any length of time I need dark backgrounds. You all rock!

[msilverstar]

PLEASE comment on the scans_daily issue. I don't really understand what's going on, and I expect you to be a lot more communicative than LJ, but not a word.

metafandom linked to londonkds post, so it's not exactly obscure. You need to say something!

[denise]

It's not really something we consider suitable for public commentary -- we contacted the people who were directly affected, to let them know what their legal rights/obligations and choices were, but it's not something we necessarily want to call to everyone's attention, simply because the more a service yells something like this from the rooftops, the more the opposing party is likely to dig their heels in and target the service about everything, including things they might otherwise let slide.

You can see Dreamwidth's DMCA policy if you have questions in general, or email us if you have specific questions.

[ex_pseudonym472]

Thanks for the weekly update. I appreciate the option of having a light on dark layout.

[zarhooie]

WHOO SPAM. I am so freakishly proud of our spam team.

[iamshadow]

THANK YOU SO MUCH. As someone with sensitivity to large amounts of white on screens, I've engaged the light on dark scheme immediately. I've been waiting for it since I first got an account, and saw it mentioned that it was in development.

[tenkuu]

I have to admit, that theme is far too dark for my tastes. If there were some color other than black and a tiny bit of white to lighten it up a bit, it would be nice, but all black, especially for a Gemini like me who loves bright colors, is a bit depressing. :(

[iamshadow]

I think this theme is less about mood and more about accessibility. As someone with sensory sensitivity, this theme is a welcome relief. Pages with heavy concentrations of white or bright colours give me headaches and make me squint. This can make composing a blog post something that can take hours, because I have to give my eyes a break every minute or so and look at something else. I could easily make my journal theme dark, but the 'post' page was always that bright, stark white, and even my Irlen filter couldn't dilute that much. Hopefully, this basic light on black theme will make it easier for me and others like me.

[marcmagus]

Thank you for the light-on-dark scheme! It's a real relief for my eyes.

Any chance of getting a light-on-dark version of Tropo, or another horizontal scheme? As much as I prize vertical real-estate over horizontal, the horizontal navigation strip can be scrolled away, whereas the vertical one takes up space no matter how far the page scrolls.

[mark]

Gradation Horizontal is in the works, and that will be the same scheme but in the more normal horizontal look.

Well, I expect it will differ from Tropospherical in some ways. I'm not sure if we'll make a light-on-dark Tropo scheme. When Gradation Horizontal comes out, if you feel it's lacking compared to Tropo, let us know and we'll see what we can do.

At some point we want to make sure we have enough options to cover things such as accessibility and choice, but we don't want to have to support dozens of site schemes. That becomes difficult and overwhelming for users and developers.

[azurelunatic]

Remember how there was a poll, last time around, for black-on-white vs. black-on-light-grey vs. v. dark grey-on-white vs. v.dark grey-on-light-grey? You think we could have one, just the other way around, for the dark site schemes? I'm finding that the pure black/white contrast is a little glaring, and I may not be the only one.

[niqaeli]

Strictly, Gradation isn't a pure black/white contrast. The main background is a dark grey, not black. Admittedly, it's still a pretty sharp contrast; I'm just a pedant.

I think a poll would be a good idea, though. The contrast can be an issue for folks, as I understand. I wouldn't mind a light grey instead of white, myself, actually.

(I actually most favour green-on-black, but I know green-on-black don't work for everyone and isn't going to happen for this! If I want green-on-black, I flip over to the lynx scheme or hit my bookmarklet.)

[quackaquacka]

I had a dream about dreamwidth last night! I created an awesome piece of code to allow you to transport sandwiches through the computer like scanned in .pdfs or something. We'd been very close to a solution for a while, but I discovered that apparently, the the server was eating the sandwiches before they arrived at their destination.

Then I realised that you need to get the sandwich into the computer in the first place, and that is apparently a bit beyond my code-crafting skills.




But if you ever get past that first obstacle, I've got the rest of the solution here ;)

[dancing_serpent]

I loved so hard at this comment! Thank you. *g*

[ldybastet]

Dark background! OMG! Yay! Thank you so much, guys!!! :D *switches to Gradation*

[solitaryjane]

HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO YOU TOO!!!!!!

[aqualegia]

Is there any way I can stop getting two copies of these announcements in my mailbox?

[denise]

My check shows that you have a regular user account and an OpenID account -- you might want to check that the OpenID account doesn't have news notifications on. (If you really can't figure it out, check the full headers of the notification; it will include which account received the email.)

[ex_xo956]

i really like the dark scheme! so easy on the eyes! thanks guys. ♥

[turlough]

Have a great and relaxing holiday!

[moonstruckangel]

THANK YOU GUYS for the theme! I cannot stand livejournal's white background and I'm always ranting to myself about why lj can't make a dark version,dreamwidth's more grayish background is a lot better and now it'll be even more better with the dark theme. :D

[primwood]

Happy holidays to all you Dreamwidth peeps, too! Thanks for your diligent work this year.

[blackcanary]

Belated, but thank you so much for the dark scheme! :)

[baggyeyes]

Have a happy holiday, people! Thanks for the update. I'm trying out Gradation (sp??) Vertical right now. I think the text might be slightly less jarring if it weren't white, maybe a lighter gray?

[andraste]

The spammers have switched from quoting Plato at me to quoting Einstein. I deleted and reported the comment *g*.

[ex_scarygirl300]

Mmmmm....dark theme is dark. I approve.

[nile]

Happy Holidays!