dw_news | Weekly Update: August 12

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weekly announcements

Weekly Update: August 12

Hello, Dreamwidth! There is currently a hole in our bathroom shower wall. Maintenance swore they'd have it completely fixed by today. Considering that there's only half an hour left of today's working hours ... I think we might be showering in the downstairs exercise room again today. (Ew.)

Thankfully, we've been a lot less remiss in finishing and fixing things here on DW. Let's go through the week's announcements, and I'll save the best for last.

Development

Development this week has mostly gone to bugfixes from last week's code push, all of which are now live. You can check out the week's code tour if you're curious. Welcome this week goes to new contributor

cpm!

We think we've caught most of the bugfixes from the last code push, but if there's anything that you're still having problems with, let Support know!

Feeds

This code push finally fixed the ability for us to merge duplicate feed accounts into one, so I went ahead and did all the ones that people reported a while back. From here, if you notice duplicate feed accounts (two feed accounts pulling the same content, even if it's not the same feed URL), please report them to Support -- they'll be able to fix them up for you.

Styles

Our last code push made it so that people can display the entry management links in their styles as either text or icons, which a lot of people have asked for! We have a lot of themes by now, though, so some of them have turned out to have display problems. We're fixing those, but if you've got a few minutes, stop in and give

dw_styles a hand in checking themes to make sure there aren't any more problems we're missing.

Communities

It's been a while since we've had community-of-the-week here in news updates, and I'd like to bring it back! This week,

pauamma suggests

forkedtongues, a community for discussion about languages, translations, and the experience of being multilingual.

If you've got an active community that you love and want more members for, or are looking for some new communities to join, check out

dw_community_promo.

Update Page

I did promise the best for last, right?

A little while ago, we unveiled the first draft of our new update page (being revised as the first step to adding draft & scheduled posts functionality). We got some great feedback (and thank you to everyone who left it!), and we're now ready to show you guys version 2.0.

This version incorporates most of the feedback you guys left, and is a result of some great partnership work between

fu and

hope, whose mad design skills has taken my initial crappy pencil sketches and

fu's much more awesome first draft and done a lot of work on them.

Things to note for this version:

* As suggested, we've moved the draft and scheduled post management onto another page (which hasn't been turned into a working version yet, but we do have the first mockups of that done -- we'll show that one off in a few weeks.)

* We've moved around a lot of options to the places people said they'd rather see them, so hopefully it will be more intuitive for people to use.

* We've fixed up a lot of the visual presentation, so the eye travels more smoothly across the screen.

* We've done a bunch of bugfixes, so any problems you reported in the last round should be fixed by now.

Like last time, this is still a demo; it won't work to post entries to your journal, and it won't use your tags or your icons. Give it another look and see what else you can suggest for us to improve it further:

Create Entries Demo 2.0

*

That's it for us for another week! 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.

We'll see you next week (when hopefully the hole in my bathroom wall will be fixed) for our next update.

Threaded | Flat

Is there any chance the right-hand column of boxes will be able to collapse completely? That is, horizontally as well as vertically. The update box is so uncomfortably tiny, especially on widescreen.

I like the new update page! Everything looks great. The only thing I'm not fond of is the tag section - first, that typing in a letter brings up all tags containing that letter instead of all tags starting with that letter (which makes it harder to immediately bring up the correct tag), and second, that the tags can't be edited if you mistype one. But other than that? Really cool.

It looks great on my mobile phone ♥ which I'm really very happy about. It all degrades very gracefully into one column. I'm a bit confused about Post being on the left and Delete on the right because for some reason I expect it the other way around but everything else is all good. I like how tags and currents have their own separate boxes and I didn't even know how much I wanted to see the permalink.

That looks *really* slick (the new update page)... don't take this wrong, but it reminds me a lot of WordPress. Only... much more compact.

Oooh. Odd bug. On second and subsequent tags, you have "49 characters left" instead of 50 for the first one.

Oooooh. "Reduce animations". LIKE! does it remember that?

The page seems to take a bit to load... if it remembers "reduce animations" does it load faster?

What is the theory behind the usefulness of the tag bubbles? Personally, I find them hard to read and edit should I make a mistake. I would much rather see an expanding tag list and choose from that but I was just curious as to the thought behind the change there and why the uneditable bubbles.

love it!

only comment being, swap delete and post buttons. especially for those who read left to right, i'd select options down the left-most column, the center column, the right-most column ... then click post. but now i have to mouse allllll the way over to the other side of the screen. i can see lots of entries getting eaten that way.

(i would guess that folks whose native language reads right to left may have a different opinion though. :) )

It looks like a KDE "Preferences" dialog. >.> It's got an on/off switch for everything including the kitchen sink, with collapsable menu upon collapsable menu requiring clicks to conceal or expose functionality that only a handful of people will need.

If our target audience is LJcode power users, let's just come out and say it. Diversity statement or no, when the site's interface looks like this we're making it very intimidating to new users. And I know Dreamwidth serves a different niche than Tumblr or Posterous, but it seems like it requires a lot more effort to do basic things on Dreamwidth than it does almost anywhere else.

Between invite codes and privacy filters, I wonder if Dreamwidth's real "killer feature" is insularity. And I don't mean that as an insult.

The new update page looks awesome, it looks really pretty on my mobile too. It'll take getting used to with all the columns but I like that it'll remember what I want collapsed.
As for the post and delete buttons, I like them how they're placed now.

I haven't had time to poke at the column behavior as much as I'd like, but to start:

I loaded the page in IE, firefox and chrome, and I assume the default behavior is for the right-hand column to run alongside the text box? That's what it does in fullscreen in firefox and IE, but never in Chrome for me.

On my 1024x620 netbook, all three columns (status, publishing, unlabelled) are always below the text box in Chrome, which makes the "status" box look like it ought to be at the top of the Publishing column. To my brain, it makes more sense there, and it also makes the expanded right-hand column less long.

It seems to me that the status box should be closer to where you click to save/post/whatever the entry, but it doesn't bother me if there are good reasons for it being at the top of the screen.

I like the behavior that splits the right-hand column above the security and publishing columns when the window narrows to two box-widths.

I'm also adding an Nth vote for having the Post button at the bottom right, if they're going to be in separate corners like that.

This is definitely a vast improvement on the first draft- much clearer and more consistent. I'm particularly pleased that you've split scheduled/draft posts off to their own page.

Things that still bother me:

* Preview button is still way too far away from the post button, necessitating scrolling up and down after writing an entry. That is going to annoy me every time. I remember last time you said you wanted to keep them separate because some people were hitting the wrong one, but surely preview could be down at the bottom SOMEWHERE and still be distinct enough.

* The text entry field feels very small and squished-in, when it should (for me, anyway) be the main focus of the page. I really wish it could be wider.

* As others have said, the positioning of post and delete seems counter-intuitive to me. I foresee myself hitting delete instead of post a lot!

* The way that the tag autocomplete brings up all tags containing the letter rather than those beginning with it is annoying and makes me wish I could turn it off.

* I'd like to see this page in the alternate site schemes - Tropo Red gives me a headache, so looking at the mockup is uncomfortable. I really need to see this in Celerity.

Initial thoughts --

Like a couple other people have said, the text box seems really small, especially among the plethora of options out there. Since writing the entry is actually the point of posting, is there a possibility it could be made larger? My initial thought is put the right hand column down below the text box and have the text box centered on the screen with nothing on either side of it, because the way my brain works, I can't look at it, the right-hand column immediately draws my eye and distracts me, and I'd rather be able to look just at the textbox instead of being distracted by this other shiny. (On the right hand side. Which is, I think, my dominant side; I'm less distracted by things in a left-hand column.) And if it's down below, then the three columns are all next to each other! Which seems much more orderly than the current scheme, at least to me.

Agreeing with other people about the location of the post button -- putting it on the right hand side seems much more intuitive. Although it seems like it would be nice to have the delete button on the same level as the post button, for symmetry, because right now it looks like it's out of place below that pink bar.

The bubble tags don't work for me visually, especially the way they end up stacking -- too much empty white space if you have a one line tag, followed by a two-line tag, followed by another one line tag, in which case the third tag goes down below and there is all this blank space between it and the one-line tag above it! If that makes sense?

Permalink is AMAZING.

Since there's an option for going to one's cross-posting settings from the cross-post box, would it be possible for there to be an option to go to one's upload icon page from the icon box? Since I know there have been numerous times when I clap my hands and go, "OMG I MUST HAVE THIS ICON ON THIS POST BUT IT IS NOT UPLOADED YET" and then have to go through the whole rigmarole of clicking off the page, uploading, hoping that the entry saved with all the metadata, and then being able to use that new awesome icon.

Huh, thought upon comparing it to the current page (which I have to admit I like considerably better because it's not as visually distracting) -- are there going to be "insert image" and "embed media" options?

It's so -- busy. And not stream-lined. I want to like it, but it doesn't work with the way my brain works very well.

It looks like information overload. I think it's in part that by breaking everything up into its own boxes, it all suddenly looks like more. And collapsing a couple boxes here and there won't really help with that. If we could close the boxes, so they were gone, and then there was a panel in preferences or a 'restore all' button or something to bring them back up again, that might work for me. Also, if all the boxes were freeform instead of locked to columns, and I could just move them around to how I wanted them ordered. That way I could put all the collapsed boxes together and they'd be easier to ignore.

And until someone pointed them out, I didn't even notice the post/delete buttons. They're so far away.

Also, I didn't see any alt-text on any of the images on the icon tab. I clicked on the one that turned out to have that popup with the preview of all the icons, and the popup a. failed to load (but my connection is crap ATM, so I'm not ruling out me) b. didn't have a close window/cancel button, so when it failed to load I had to refresh the page.

It's all right, I suppose.
Things that bug me:
• in order to have the right-column, I need to stretch my browser waaaay too far; I have it set to ~800 pixels wide 'cause that's what I read off best, but the mock-up requires almost all of my screen to have the column, which makes me twitchy. And if the column ISN'T there it's a lot less intuitive a design. (I'd sacrifice entry-writing width to use the column, though in that case it'd be better if it were longer - perhaps as long as the column is? I don't know.)
• That being said, still SO MUCH STUFF EVERYWHERE OMG, it tends to overload my brain and my eyes glaze over, which of course means it takes quite a while to find anything. I think it probably needs more white space.
• 'Currents' make me think of the food, which is also confusing. Small change such as making it 'Current:' would utterly eliminate that, however.
• I want to make the entirety of 'security and restrictions' go away, and leave the room it took up for the 'publishing' modules to flow over and spread out, is that sort of... I don't know, reverse-cascade possible?
• The headings can be selected like you can drag them, but they don't drag. This is confusing.
• Similarly, the text-boxes look like you can resize them, but you can't. (This might just be Safari, however.) I do think that being able to resize the entry-post box at least would make people feel better about things, though; they can have as much space as they'd like.
• The icon-selecter tool doesn't work for me either, in the same way a comment above described.
• When collapsing things down far enough to get to two columns the icon/tags/etc modules do reverse-cascade, but in the exact opposite order than what I'd expect, which is also confusing.

tl;dr: set up to work with really wide browsers, and buttons-everywhere-confusing.

Ooooh, the Post button is super-far away from the Delete button. That should make me feel like less of an idiot! (Don't care which side is which, I'll work that out, but with them far apart, there's so much less chance I'll click one when I mean the other.)

Never occurred to me before, but it would be really nice to know what the journal default settings are, especially for posting to communities. Maybe some kind of label/menu combination?

I love the new mockup! It's easy to use and very intuitive, I think.

My only longing, and I may be the only one who prefers this, is for an option to have the tag drop-box display on posting, as you do when you use the "edit tags" function, so you can just select your tags rather than typing them in, in comms and journals where the tag system is complex, and typing in the first few letters mays still bring up twenty tags!

Any chance the post/delete bar could be right under the text window instead of way down at the bottom?

I'm also in agreement with others who say that it seems like the post and delete buttons should be switched around.

Otherwise I like it, especially being able to collapse the boxes.

Issue (sorry if this has already been filed): If I start entering a tag, hit down to go into the autocomplete options, decide I've mistyped and go back up to the entry box, it moves my cursor to the beginning. Which is not intuitive and doesn't let me start deleting what I typed wrong.

I do think there's way too much for basic users -- I'd use it as-is just fine, but my fingers still type "blahblahblah/update.bml?mode=full" by default when posting.

Right, I promised a lot of feedback for this page to Fu, so here's my comment!

First off: I, like everybody else, love this new mockup. But I agree with some others that this page is very cluttered. I'd also love to be able to move the boxes around so that they're where *I* want them to be. (I also want a pony.)

Tags: It's already been mentioned here that the update page makes it look like you can only have 50 characters total for the tag list, rather than 50 characters for each tag. The problem here is the "Tags (comma separated):" text, as it makes it look like the text box is supposed to contain all of your tags separated by commas (as it does in the current version). Instead, the text box is used only to add a new tag, and the tag is transformed into an uneditable 'tag box' when the comma key is pressed, or you move out of the text box.

To fix this, it might be good to change that text to say something like "Add tag (use comma for more):", but that isn't the clearest text ever.

Also, I want to echo what people have said about the uneditability of the 'tag boxes'. While it's nice to be able to delete them, it makes editing the text quite tough. Also, I like how hitting BACKSPACE once will highlight the tag you're about to delete if you press it again, but if you decide you don't want to do it after all, there's no way to do that with the keyboard short of pressing TAB, which logically would go to the next field but actually goes to what's visually the *same* field. You should be able to cancel a highlighted BACKSPACE by just typing, which would unhighlight the tag and start on a new one.

Icons: There's no title text on the two small buttons next to the entry icon for the icon browser and the random icon selector. There should be, because while there's alt text, it doesn't help sighted people to know what the buttons are meant to do. We need to be able to hover over things like that and find out what it means.

Preview/Post/Delete buttons: I tried to pretend-use this page to make an entry (knowing that it wouldn't work) and when I went to post it, I was about to hit the button when I realised I was hovering over the "Delete" button. I don't think it really makes sense for "Delete" to be there - and by a stroke of luck, I also don't think it makes sense for "Preview" to be in the Status section at the top. Why not swap the two around (so that you have "Save" and "Delete" buttons in the Status section) and then have Preview and Post both at the bottom-right (rather than the bottom-left and bottom-right)?

Scheduled Publishing: The "Today" button in the calendar picker doesn't work for me. It'd also be nice to have the date in this section labelled "Post on:" so that it's obvious you're not editing the display date.

Age Restriction: Does the "Reason" field apply if you choose "Journal Default" where the default is anything above "No Age Restriction"? (that is to say, can you override the Reason on the Journal Default setting?) If not, it should be hidden; and in any case it should be hidden when "No Age Restriction" is selected or when that's the journal default and it's on that setting.

Comments: Maybe change the "Send Email:" text to "Email Comments?" - otherwise it can be a little confusing as to what email it's referring to. (Yes, the section it's in makes it clear, but people don't want to have to look at section names :D)

If I come up with anything else, I'll let you know :D

Edited 2010-08-13 00:57 (UTC)

Of the good: Reduce animations is awesome, and for the most part, the layout is much more intuitively ordered.

Other thoughts:

* Too much white space, nothing draws my eye to the posting box as the centre of the page. I wonder if others find the page so cluttered because the entry box is not the biggest thing on the page by a large enough margin. It should dominate the page, and it doesn't.

* +1 on the switch post and delete. That's a hell of a mouse swoop to get to the post button.

* I find the Post as: and Post to: horribly confusing and frustrating with that bait and switch behaviour of the two areas occupying the same space. If I'm logged in under my sock account (like I am right now) and I want to post to a community from my main account, it looks like I have to choose the community in the to area first even though it's below the as area where I switch accounts which I have to do second. Um--arrrgh!!! is how that made me feel.

* I would toss the Security and Access over to the sidebar, make the Entry box longer and keep the Publishing under it. If you never ever change security and access, collapsing them doesn't give you any space that makes the page look less cluttered. It feels like a placebo collapse button.

* I honestly don't find the tag bubbles useful at all if I can't edit them. I really prefer the delicious autocomplete (with the usage count in the list) to any other tag system out there. Getting to the little x to delete these is precision mousing (which I suck at), but getting them highlighted and using the delete key doesn't work, which is not expected behaviour for a list of words. They're overdesigned in my opinion.

Oh, and please, please tell me that hitting enter while in the subject line will not post the entry.

*grins* I think I like it! Especially the tag-thing of awesomeness.

Wishlist of tiny things:

Mouse-over text for the choose icon and random icon buttons

To be able to double-click to select an icon from the choose icon box

To be able to double-click in the tags box to see a list of all my tags, without having to type in a letter first

To be able to edit the tag-bubbles directly rather than having to close them and create new ones in event of spelling mistakes

Some (or even all) of the options closed by default - I found three solid columns of options a bit daunting at first, and only realised how much I liked the new page when I scrolled back down after closing half of them.

When I middle-click over a link to open a new tab, I get the "you have unsaved changes, are you sure you want to leave the page" warning, despite the fact that I'm not actually trying to leave the page. My new tab doesn't open until I've clicked OK.

New update page is a winner.

Okay, I know I saw this being discussed, but now I can't find it.

I just got the red-screen-of-flashing-evil when I was trying to collapse some of the various boxes -- and that was, like, actually deeply painful. I still love it, it's still awesome.

Although yeah, I've got to agree with people that the tags in the boxes are kind of evil, I like the lists so much better. But, all things considered, that's minor.

The tags in the boxes could probably be done better -- they look nice and neat, but they can't be edited, only deleted, which I don't like.

I think there should be textual links for the icon browser and random icon things, instead of the cute little pictures. Text would just be more intuitive. Also... is that icon browser only for the update page, or is it going to replace the current icon browser we have in comments, too? I don't like it D:

Somehow it seems to me that "Scheduled posting" should go under "Display date", but with currents above that it wouldn't really fit. What I would REALLY love is the ability to move the boxes around to our liking.

I love the way it looks, btw. I showed the page to a friend of mine who's not a DW user, to see if there was anything weird or confusing to her, but she didn't have any complaints. (Am aware that the plural of anecdote is not data, but I wanted to share that.) Keep up the good work!

I really like how the tags look. It makes it so much easier to remove a tag.

Apparently we're an emotionally stable bunch here: we've stayed at "amused" for a week now!

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Communities

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