Weekly Update: August 12

[denise]

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.

Comments

[auroraprimavera]

Hm, I just looked at the page again - very good point. There are some things that I'd prefer to have hidden by default. Make it less crowded.

[gchick]

That makes me SO HAPPY. It's always been a nagging thing at the back of my mind, like, since my earliest LJ days, that I could never figure out anything beyond whose journal it was from a link -- but the combo of a WHOLE assload of time in WordPress land lately plus seeing the preview link in the nice new update page preview made it suddenly snap from "this is a naggy how it's always been kind of annoyance" to "WTF 2001-style permalinks?!"

SO VERY HAPPY.

[ex_rising236]

One little thing that I noticed on the mock-up.

Selecting a icon, it would be nice to have textual links for 'random' and 'browse' as an option instead of the little icons. If that was made possible (and maybe have the two textual links for those options beneath the drop-down list, or something) I'd be thrilled.

Also, I'd be curious to see a mock-up done for how it'll look in either of the gradation site-schemes.

[sky]

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.

[trobadora]

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.

[ex_pseudonym472]

I'm getting the same red flash.

[ninetydegrees]

I'm sorry it happens to you too because that hurts yet selfishly glad I'm not the only one.

[ex_pseudonym472]

Awesome! That was my one concern with it. Having it saved client side instead of server side makes it not function well for those of us who clear sessions quite frequently.

[erilyn525600]

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.

[ex_pseudonym472]

Awee, that was horribly sweet. Being the only one is never a fun thing. I'll deal with a blinding red flash any time if it means someone doesn't have to feel alone in something.

[ninetydegrees]

XD Who's sweet now? *hugs*

[erilyn525600]

I think the tag autocomplete is helpful when you're not sure of the first letter like I know it ends in 'cake' but not sure what it starts with. I can see how it would be harder if you're more sure of your tags though.

[feathertail]

+1 on the busy and cluttered comment. My first thought on seeing it was "Augh, information overload!"

I know that we're a community of power users here, but can't we keep things simple for newbies? Imagine a first-time Dreamwidth user taking one look at that page and running to Tumblr or Posterous. The only thing we've got to offer people who aren't LJ power users already is a social network, which may or may not include newbies' friends.

[helens78]

I actually really like that you can get tags starting in the middle of a word somewhere, for the same reason as the commenter above.

[technoshaman]

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?

[wyldbutterflies]

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.

[ghoti]

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. :) )

[feathertail]

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.

[bells]

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.

[healingmirth]

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.

[grlnamedlucifer]

Adding my "here!" to this as well. I could definitely see myself accidentally deleting posts where it is now.

[musyc]

*nod* This here. I opened the update page and physically recoiled from the overwhelm-ness of it all, and I've been merrily using LJ for ten years. I can make it get up and dance, and this update page had me confused. If I were a new user, it would probably frighten me, and I'd never spend the time to figure out how to operate it. I'd abandon my account and go somewhere less difficult.

I think if there were an option to switch between basic-no-frills and advanced-zomg-clickythings, like the HTML/RTE tab, it would be far less of a "I won't touch anything so I don't break it" experience.

[sorchasilver]

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.

[quinara]

Glad it's not just me!

[feathertail]

+1. If we're trying to accomodate power users, and at the same time reach out to newbs and diversify ourselves, we need some way to hide the complexity from them. Not just collapsable menus, but a whole "simplified interface" kinda thing.