Reminder: Beta features are available to test!

[denise]

It's been a while since we've reminded you of the existence of the Beta Features collection. This is where we make new features and major page redesigns available to people in advance of changing them for the whole site, so people can help find the weird edge case bugs, let us know about usability and accessibility problems, and generally bang on certain changes before we make them the default behavior so the deploy runs more smoothly.

I'm posting about beta test opportunities because 2023 has been the Year Of Finishing That Last 10% On So Many Things, and part of that is us making a real push to get some more things out of beta. In particular, the redesigned Create Entries page has been in beta for an absolutely mortifying length of time by now, and we are absolutely determined to finish up the last few things that are blocking us from releasing it and get it out the door relatively soon.

This is the last call for "I'm having a problem with this page that will keep me from being able to use the site if you make this the only way to update". If you haven't enabled the New Create Entries Page beta to test it, please consider doing so soon! It's a full, ground-up rewrite and redesign of the update page in order to modernize it, make it easier to maintain, significantly improve usability and accessibility, and generally give us a lot more opportunities to improve the posting process. In particular, the page is fully customizable: if you hit the "Settings" link in the upper right corner of the page, just above the "Subject" field, it will let you customize which panels show when you load the page, change some visual settings about how the page behaves, and (if you scroll down) move around the individual panels so they're displayed in a place you find logical for your workflow. We think it's a massive improvement from the old update page, and we're ready to do the last bits of work we need to do in order to switch everyone over.

We will soon be removing the New Create Entries Page beta and making the new, improved version of the page the only option for everyone who uses the site. This is your last chance to let us know if something is very broken for you: checking now, and reporting any problems you might have, will prevent future disruption to your use of the site. Please take a moment and enable the beta so you can help us find any last lingering issues.

The other major beta we have running right now is the New Inbox Page conversion. This is part of our ongoing modernization efforts: Dreamwidth itself was launched in 2009, but because it's based on LiveJournal's open source code, parts of the site date as far back as February of 1999. (If you're as bad at math as I am: that means three months from now will be the 25th anniversary of the code that runs the site existing in some fashion. Please don't tell me if my website's source code is older than you are; I already feel old as hell just thinking about it.) As you can imagine, the technology that runs the internet has changed significantly in the last 25 years, and we've been engaged in a long, slow-motion project of updating the code that generates all of the pages on the site to use more modern technology. Like with the new Create Entries page, this makes it seriously easier to maintain and allows us to benefit from the accessibility, usability, and bugfixing work that other people using the same technologies have done: the old way of doing things was unique to DW, while the new way of doing it uses more widely-used frameworks and modules so we can benefit from many other people's work.

Converting site pages to the new way of doing things involves a complete rewrite from the ground up, though, and while we try to keep the two versions looking as similar as we can, it's not always possible: some changes to how the pages look and feel are inevitable. There's also, of course, the opportunity for new and exciting bugs. So, when we've been converting major pages, we run it through a few rounds of beta first. The inbox is one of the last remaining big user-facing conversion projects, and we wanna get it done and dusted so we can pick off the last outstanding pages to convert and finally be done with this massive albatross of a project we've been working on for-freaking-ever. (We're about 80% done, and this fact is very exciting after having been working on it for so long.)

If you haven't enabled the New Inbox Page beta to test it, please consider doing so soon! (And if you had previously enabled it and found a bug that made you turn it off, please try turning it back on: we've done a lot of bugfixing work.) Because of how old the old Inbox page was, this is one of the more dramatic "things will look different" conversions we've done and the new version may take a little while to get used to, but all the major functionality should match and it includes a number of bugfixes that the old version of the inbox doesn't have.

We will soon be removing the New Inbox Page beta and making the new, improved version of the page the only option for everyone who uses the site. This is your last chance to let us know if something is very broken for you: checking now, and reporting any problems you might have, will prevent future disruption to your use of the site. Please take a moment and enable the beta so you can help us find any last lingering issues.

Finally, a few years ago we converted the journal entry view from the old code to the new code. Despite us aggressively running it through the beta system before making it the default for everyone, a few people experienced some dramatic bugs (including some wetware bugs: it triggered photosensitive migraine in a small number of people). While we worked to fix the problems people reported to us, we enabled a beta flag to let people turn the new code off (as opposed to our usual method of using the beta flag to turn the new code on).

We've done a significant amount of work on the problems people reported with the new journal entry view, including working with a number of experts on photosensitive migraine and a panel of the users who reported that the new code triggered photosensitive migraines for them. At this point, we're reasonably sure that we've fixed every issue that was reported to us, and we're making preparations to remove the beta flag that allows people to turn the new code off. (Keeping two versions of the code for this long is a lot of maintenance overhead, and we can't keep the old code around forever.)

If your account has the "Temporarily revert updated journal page components" beta flag on -- that is, if you previously experienced a site-breaking bug with the new code and had to disable it while we fixed it -- please go to the beta page and turn that beta flag off. This will switch your account to using the new code that every account created since the conversion has been running and let you verify that the particular issue you were having has been fixed. This is probably the most critical action for people who had problems with the conversion to take, because we really need to close out that beta and stop having to maintain two versions of the code, but we don't want to break things for you again!

We will soon be removing the "Temporarily revert updated journal page components" beta and making the new, improved version of the journal entry view pages the only option for everyone who uses the site. If you previously enabled the beta flag in order to temporarily use the old code while we worked to fix it, it is very important that you turn off that flag now and verify that your issues with the new code have been fixed. Please take a moment and disable that beta if you have it enabled so you can help us confirm that the problem you had is fixed.

(The remaining individual beta flag, two-factor authentication, is a very early test that was released as a beta so people can test out the process of configuring an optional two-factor authentication setup. While you can set your 2FA preferences, none of the site login pathways actually use 2FA yet, so enabling it won't do much. The final flag, "site-wide canary", is a generalized "this is the cutting edge code that we've just committed and will be released in the next site update" setting, and you should only enable it if you like living dangerously and occasionally finding that everything breaks horribly.)

For all of these beta flags, if you enable them and have problems, check the Beta Features page listing for that specific beta flag listing: there's a link to the specific entry in dw_beta where you can report problems or bugs.

Comments

[juniperberry]

I haven't had beta features on, so I just switched them on and...hmmm.

The good: I like the new inbox page! Knowing it's coming is a good, and the larger font is easier to read than the old version, so I'll count that as a good.

The post-an-entry page...ooof. Not sure I like that. I don't think I have a choice at this point, but no. I don't like the icons being at the bottom, I'm sorry--that's antithetical to the way I do posts (pic an icon that vibes with what I want to say and then write!). Having it squished down at the bottom to the point where it's completely out of the first screen on my laptop is...not great. I do like the bigger posting box and the longer subject line box, but the fact that everything is squished down so far is very :/. I even went and played around with the settings, but there's no option to put the icons next to the entry box, so I'm still :/.

So that this comment is not entirely sour griping: I do like the button options of "Random" or "Browse" given for the icons! They're much more visible and easier to navigate, and harder to click the wrong one on accident, so I do like that.

I like the look of everything else! I just hate the icons not being at the top. A lot of the visibility is improved with this design, except for the icons.

It's rolling out whether I like it or not and it isn't buggy thus far, so I'll get used to it eventually. It's just a reminder of why I haven't been using the beta options.

ETA: And I should have read all the comments, because someone said you can move it? BRB, trying that out!

ETA II: Still gonna take some getting used to, but this is much more workable than I thought it was going to be--thank you for your work and your patience!

[ilyena_sylph]

Thank you for running testing to see if you could make it work better for you!

<3!

[yhlee]

Actually, I want to THANK Y'ALL for the settings on the beta/new "create new entry page" - the "full width" option for the text area for "create new entry" actually was going to make the site unusable EDIT FOR CLARITY for me END EDIT (I have weird headache/migraine issues caused by wide field-of-vision things, big monitors and movie theater screens are actively bad for me), but being able to change that in settings and pick options in the sidebar 100000% resolves this for me, THANK YOU ALL for your hard work.

[denise]

There are so many different posting workflows that we looked at trying to figure out what the "default" workflow should be and realized any one we tried was going to be seriously annoying for a large enough group of people to cause loads of unhappiness. Usually we are very reluctant to add additional points of customization/more options (because we're already well past the point where it becomes a cognitive overload burden), but this one justified it.

[juan_gandhi]

Thank you so much!

[starwatcher]

I have wanted the Post and Preview buttons to be farther apart -- but now they're TOO far apart, LOL! Is there any way to adjust them?

Currently, I see a 3-part bar -- Post, what access, to where -- then a big gap, then Preview. I'd much rather see a 4-part bar, centered or on the right, with "Post" at one end and "Preview" at the other.

I mean, I'll adjust, and I haven't a clue about coding (other than italics and links). But if we can move other page-elements, could those be moveable as well?

Or are they already, and I just can't figure out how?

[denise]

Unfortunately, there's no good way to make items inside each of the modules movable :/

We experimented a lot with the placement of the Preview button through multiple rounds of feedback. Originally we did have it at the end of the "post/a [security] entry/to [location]" line! And then we discovered that placement was triggering a lot of people to hit Preview instead of Post too often: making those elements into something that felt sufficiently like a sentence was triggering people's brains to treat the button at the end of the sentence as the "post" action because it was like the period of the sentence, if that makes sense. A lot of people were reporting that the "period/action at the end of the sentence" effect was strong enough to trigger "even though I intellectually know the action button is at the start of the line, and even though I remind myself every time not to click the button at the end of the line, I still preview the entry multiple times before my subconscious processing systems let me consciously see that the 'post' button is all the way back there". Moving the Preview button all the way over there was the only way we found worked to break that "period/action at the end of the sentence" effect and let a lot more people post when they meant to post and preview when they meant to preview, even if the button is now waaaaaaay the hell out in left field at very wide screen widths.

(I'm summarizing a lot of experimentation/theorizing here, because it took us approximately forever to figure out that's what was happening: none of this kind of thing is on the level of conscious thought and it took some wild-ass guessing to realize that's what was probably triggering it. It never ceases to astonish me how the smallest differences can prod our brains into doing extremely weird things.)

[starwatcher]

If I use the column view, the text entry is on the left, and the icon-choice on the right. Is there a way to change that, with text-entry on the right, and icon-choice on the left?

[grayswandir]

I was wondering the same thing. The way my display is set up, the text box in the new Post Entry page ends up way over against the far left of my (fairly wide) screen, which I'm definitely not a fan of. If I could switch it to the right it would be more centered on my screen.

[vriddy]

I've been using both the beta create entry page and new inbox for ages, and I love them both! Very excited to see that finally It's Time and they'll come out of beta soon!! Congratulations on all the hard (and I understand, quite tedious!) work :)

[the_beasts]

we're unable to really take much time to engage with the beta create entries page on a deep level, because it's extremely overwhelming and stressful for us, with the way the giant entry text window is across our entire laptop screen and right at the top of the page above our icon selection window etc. it breaks our brain and we can't think and don't want to even stay on the page at all.

we tried to push past that and work with it, but we haven't had much success finding a way to customise the page so that it becomes accessible to us.

we picked the "Column alongside entry text" option and saved the changes, but nothing happened. even though we're using a 16-inch laptop screen, which we'd imagine should be wide enough for the "Side column only available in wider windows" stipulation.

we also tried to put the icon selection pane and entry date pane above the post subject/body text, and/or beside it/each other, to help stop it from completely overwhelming us and stressing us out, and to make the page layout more familiar (and thus more accessible) to us. but we couldn't seem to raise any of the movable panes above the entry text & subject element? it seems as if the "customisable" workflow of the page only applies if your "customisation" doesn't mean anything needs to happen before you get to the post subject & body text parts of the workflow. if that's the case, and the drag-and-drop elements can't be moved above or beside the subject & body text elements, then not only is that very restrictive on customisation and presumptive about what people's workflow is 'allowed' to look like, but it's also completely excluding the workflow type that the site has always defaulted to before. which seems illogical, to us. why wouldn't there be people (especially neurodivergent & cognitively disabled people) who want or need to use the familiar workflow that the site has always had?

if we're just missing how to move things above the subject & body text elements, we'd love to know how to do it, because it's just not working for us and it doesn't look like it can work, since the subject & body text don't get the dotted outline that the other moveable elements get.

and if anyone can help us get the side column to display properly, we'd really appreciate that too. note that we have selected "Turn off mobile view for this device" in our account settings, started a new post after doing that, and refreshed the page.

if these things are not fixed, and we can't make our create entry page less overwhelming and more suited to our familiar workflow, we will be unable to use the site once the beta create entries page becomes the only option.

our cognitive & learning disabilities mean that we can't really adapt to a whole new workflow and interface that's so completely different and upends our pattern for doing things, especially when it's also so completely overwhelming that it shuts down our brain.

thankyou for all your time and hard work on this wonderful site. <3

[ilyena_sylph]

Hi, beasts.

Can you let us know what browser and what site skin you're using right now?

[veronyxk84]

Hi, I'm a DW user since July and I'm still learning a lot of things... I never realized there were Beta features! I enabled the Inbox and Entry page and I haven't used them extensively, but I love how they instantly seemed to be more user-friendly and more intuitive. Especially from the tablet, which is the device I use more often. So much easier to select a single inbox message and mark it as read, for example. I can't even tell how many times I accidentally flagged messages instead of marking them as read cause the links were so close and my fingers missed the mark. 😂
Thank you so far, I'll keep testing.
-Vero

[fiachairecht]

Okay, slightly less unbearably cross about the unreadable inbox and back with some more actual thoughts, specifically about the new Create Entry page. None of these are bugs, to be clear, and yous should be very proud of all the work that's gone into this, they're just things that make it much less usable and accessible to me (and possibly others?) that I've got is this/will this be possible questions about.

1) The ability to move panels around is great! It is deeply unintuitive to me that you do that from Settings. I actually didn't realise the Settings button existed due to where it's placed (attached to the subject line) until it was pointed out to me, and even if I had seen it I would not have thought 'this will let me drag and drop panels around' - since it's attached to the subject line my immediate inclination is to think it's settings for the post. Some clarity as to the fact that it's actually page settings that persist after you post this specific entry, and what exactly you can do in those settings, would be nice.

2) It would be amazing if we could have the sidebar on the left, move things like icon, date, &c above the subject/entry, and move tags, currents, the journal we're posting to &c above the post button. Doing that sort of stuff first - especially when I'm, say, archiving backdated fic to my fic comm, or making sure that I'm posting fandom exchange posts to the relevant community rather than my personal journal - is an integral part of how I post.

2.5) Actually nevermind part of that, I found the standalone 'Post Entry' button below the tags and stuff after I scrolled. Still find it weird that there's two Post buttons, but less annoying than I'd thought.

3) Any chance of the Casual HTML/Markdown/etc thing being tabs on the textbox instead of a dropdown, or a thing we can set a default for elsewhere, or becoming a moveable element? It's just. Really awkwardly placed, imo. Especially when I'm keyboard-navigating, i.e. trying to move from subject to entry just by hitting tab, it's jarring to have something in between the two.

4) I like the tag and icon browsers! I like being able to hide things like crossposting that I'll never use! I do not want to be an endless fount of negativity!

5) Are we locked in to there always being two columns under the entry form, even if one is empty? It would be great if the tags &c modules could expand to fill the whole space rather than being scrunched over to the left like in this screenshot [Firefox, Windows 11]

[sporky_rat]

You can set your Casual HTML/Markdown choices and they should stay. Go to Account Settings>Display>Entry Editor Default, and there's an option for 'Last Used'.

[derridian]

Dreamwidth people/people in the comments, I need a little help.

That was a very big wall of text with lots of information that I’m having a little difficulty getting it straight in my head. As far as I can see I should be turning on beta testing for the “new create entries page” and for the “new inbox page” and perhaps leave the rest alone (I don’t want to be a site-wide canary and I don’t seem to have any beta turned on to then have turned it off again). I have no clue what two-factor authentication is but it seems not to be happening soon and is probably something I can leave to deal with at a later date. I have very low spoons and difficulties with information processing, so I would just like someone to check I’ve understood the information and don’t have my wires crossed anywhere.

Thanks in advance :)

[vegetablearian]

You don't have to turn on the beta testing for those two pages unless you want to check them out and give feedback, but otherwise that's how I've understood everything, too!

(Two-factor authentication is when they send you a code/link in your email or phone or whatever that you have to log in with instead of just your password.)

[lexicalcrow]

Oh thanks for the head's up. I hadn't looked at the beta create entry page in years, so I'll enable that and see how it feels. I'll let you know if I have any issues with it.

[vegetablearian]

Thanks for the heads up! I never looked at the beta pages before.

I really hate the new create entries page. It's big and blocky and confusing. I'm glad it seems to work better for screenreaders but for me looking at the page it's a lot harder to take in. (I couldn't even see the new settings part until I looked for it after I saw it mentioned here!)

Maybe an easy change (I hope?) would be to be able to drag the boxes to the left and above the text entry part as well as to the right and below. It all just seems backwards to me (either to how I do things or to how it used to be) which is really not helping, and I can't fix it with the settings already available.

(I really appreciate the reduced animation setting, though!)

Also, anything you could do to make the boxes narrower would help. The icon box is maybe the worst example of how wide it is. It's just really difficult to understand where things are like this. But maybe this would be mitigated just by being able to rearrange them more fully.

I would really love for it to fit on one page of a 1920x1080 monitor again! I know that's specific but I really liked it about the old page. I feel like if I could get it on one page again (with all the necessary boxes) I'd have a better chance of being able to learn/see where things are.

It's just really overwhelming and confusing to look at. I'm sorry I can't put it into better words!

This one is very minor and not critical at all, just an idea: the html/rich text dropdown could maybe be radio buttons on desktop at least if not mobile? Right now changing between most modes is only one click but now it's always two.

The new inbox page seems fine, though! And it's prettier, at least with the purple site skin :)

But, I noticed the text size is bigger on both pages. I don't know how other browsers work but I use Firefox and so if I decrease the size it will be domain-wide, also it squishes images (including icons!!). Could font size in the main site (I mean, not in journals) be a new setting maybe? Because I totally understand increasing the default. This isn't critical either, it's just annoying to be zooming in and out all the time.

[sporky_rat]

But, I noticed the text size is bigger on both pages. I don't know how other browsers work but I use Firefox and so if I decrease the size it will be domain-wide, also it squishes images (including icons!!). Could font size in the main site (I mean, not in journals) be a new setting maybe? Because I totally understand increasing the default. This isn't critical either, it's just annoying to be zooming in and out all the time.

The font size is the same as the other buttons, it just looks big because of padding.

[cyberbrain]

Thank you for everything you do!

I was tangentially aware that there were features in beta but didn't have any of them switched on until I saw this post. So, thank you, also, for bringing attention to that!

The new create a post page was a little shocking at first but now I'm used to it. FWIW, I think the ticky boxes for the display date, comment settings and age restriction should be ticked by default (and crossposting too, I guess, I just don't use that feature) because their sudden disappearance looks precisely like that—a disappearance. I wouldn't have thought to look for a ticky box to return them to me if I hadn't seen a comment mentioning it. I saw the Settings button but ignored it because I didn't expect it to allow me to change anything about the page's layout; most sites don't let users customize their UI, so this was unintuitive. (Generally, I feel like there's too much padding around everything, nothing fits fully on my screens like the current live pages. The current new post page is very compact and I quite like that, same goes for the inbox pages but more on that in a bit.)

The idea for moving panels is lovely! I found I couldn't move them on my tablet (Galaxy Tab S8+ with Opera) but they move fine on my PC (Windows 10, Firefox). I like the addition of the entry link panel, a custom link sounds nice. And the ticky box for a sticky entry is nice too. What I dislike is that the column of panels is on the right and gets in the way of resizing the entry text box. I can pull to lengthen it vertically but not horizontally. I do this occasionally when I'm dealing with a lot of text on the site, like right now. I know I can set the entry box to take up the whole width but that look also isn't comfortable (everything is shoved under the text box then).

Regarding the new inbox, the font is rather big (I think). Paired with the seemingly increased spacing, the page just feels bloated on my screen and on my phone screen it's needlessly long and needing to click to open the folders is an added barrier that slows down navigation (this is a common problem I have with mobile sites/responsive design). I had a moment of panic that the folders in the inbox were gone too before I realized I had a little triangle to tap. I can deal with the tap to see the folders but the font is way too big for me. I don't want every rando on the subway next to me to be able to read my screen so easily.

Maybe something like a font-size field can be added in the site settings so we can all choose what we're comfortable with? I see that there are people praising the larger font and I don't want to get in their way. (On mobile devices, we can set the font to be larger from the device settings if we want but we can't really force it to be smaller.)

Is there any way we could opt out of the responsive design bits through a (new) setting?

I am, apparently, a giant weirdo when it comes to browsing the internet on mobile devices and especially phones. I always want to look at desktop pages, even on my phone (a now four and half year old Huawei P20). I use Opera on my phone for that reason too. This is the only mobile browser that allows me to set it to desktop view and then also has word wrap to make this view navigable (and also has force enable zoom).

[regshoe]

I am, apparently, a giant weirdo when it comes to browsing the internet on mobile devices and especially phones. I always want to look at desktop pages, even on my phone

I was just (in the context of reacting to these changes) thinking I felt like the only one who found that! You're not alone :D A non-mobile-optimised page that requires a bit of zooming in/out, horizontal scrolling and resizing is still easier for me to use than a crowded, confusingly minimalist mobile-'friendly' page.

[andrewducker]

I was hoping the new Create Post page would allow me to upload a photo as part of it.

Any chance that that will happen at some point?

[sporky_rat]

Probably not until the conversion is complete. It's holding up oh my gosh you have no idea how many things that the devs want to do for the site.

[profiterole_reads]

I turned on the New Create Entries Page beta and it looks good. I'll have a post to make later today, so I will test it properly then. Thanks for your work.

[ffutures]

Really like the new create post page, since it uses the full width of the screen - I often cut and paste pages with pictures to the side of text, and it was hard to see how it was going to come out in the old editor. I noticed that the text entry window defaults to a few lines, but it can be expanded easily on this laptop (old MacBook pro running Safari 13.12, the last version it supports). I'll test it on a Windows box tonight and see how that goes.

[pru]

wow, lots of work! thanks for all this hard work on improving the experience here. <3

[cairistiona]

I just gave the beta create a post a go, and everything seems to work, and I can get used to the changes. I appreciate that you kept the RTE despite the challenges it gives you--call me a luddite or just plain lazy, but I prefer using that for inserting images/changing fonts, etc rather than having to look up HTML codes and typing them in on my photo-heavy posts.

My only real complaint is rather minor: I wish I could move the icon box above the subject line box. I'm used to choosing my icon first, not as an afterthought. But again, I'll get used to it and not give it another thought after a week or two.

I don't generally use the inbox except to occasionally empty it (I rely on comment notification emails instead; I'm a very small fry in the DW fish pond so I don't get a lot of notifications even on a busy day), so no comment on the changes there.

[denise]

Unfortunately, we can't let people put modules to the left of the update box or above the update box because the technical way to do that would badly violate multiple accessibility standards -- to the right is the only placement we can do that doesn't.

[ioplokon]

On the inbox page, will there be a confirmation on 'Delete All' before it deletes everything? It's very big and clickable, which is good for a button, but I'm worried about accidentally deleting everything. Thanks for all your work to keep the site running!

[momijizukamori]

Yep! There's confirmation, just like the old 'Delete All' button :)

[topaz_eyes]

I just switched to the Create Entries Page beta and it's great! Well done, coders and testers, thank you for your hard work! It's so much cleaner, bigger and better organized.

[pangolin20]

Well done! As noted elsewhere, there are still some issues, but I have full trust that you can fix those. And congratulations on being almost done with this one! I'm interested; what would you want to fix after this?

[denise]

We absolutely have to finish converting the rest of the site to the new framework before we can do anything else. We've kind of been working through them based on "how hard it is to match the old look/feel of the page" and we're down to just the really difficult ones now, sigh.

[katharhino]

Turned on betas for post and inbox, really excited about the new post page. It looks so much more flexible. I do agree it was a little unclear to me until reading comments here, that it was possible to drag the boxes around. That is a great and helpful feature. Anyway thanks for your work. I have a paid account here not because I use the paid features that much, but because I believe in you.

[havocthecat]

I love the new inbox and the new create entries page and - I mean, really, I guess I could use "new" to describe them all? But they're lovely!

[kore]

Wow, it sounds very exciting to finally see the light at the end of this tunnel -- thanks and congratulations to everyone and momijizukamori especially!

We've done a significant amount of work on the problems people reported with the new journal entry view, including working with a number of experts on photosensitive migraine and a panel of the users who reported that the new code triggered photosensitive migraines for them. At this point, we're reasonably sure that we've fixed every issue that was reported to us, and we're making preparations to remove the beta flag that allows people to turn the new code off. (Keeping two versions of the code for this long is a lot of maintenance overhead, and we can't keep the old code around forever.)

I just wanted to say THANK YOU for this, I was one of those people, and remembered migraine-triggering stuff from LJ changes back in the day too. I love DW's committment to accessibility and this is a great example of it. And I really love that the modules all movable and dismissable, being able to customize the interface like that is a big accessibility win for me.

[denise]

Photosensitive migraine is the worst freaking problem because we know almost nothing about what actually causes it (and the studies we have been able to do about it show that a large number of people who are prone to photosensitive migraines are actually wrong about what they think their triggers are: when they're exposed to what they think is the trigger in a controlled environment, it often doesn't actually trigger the problem, while other things that they don't consciously notice do) and the very few things we do know about what causes it suggest that the difference between "okay" and "a problem" are incredibly small, subtle details. The best guess science currently has is that it's almost entirely a function of the ratio between the spacing between lines on the screen and the length of the lines, but we don't know for sure what the exact ratios need to be, or whether there's a cluster of ratios that are likely to be okay and the "bad" ratios are outliers or whether it triggers at multiple parts of the curve, or whether there's any kind of equation that can predict it. Even the best the world class expert in the problem can do is hand you a list of "we think these are the most likely things that cause the problem; start changing the things at the top of the list first and stop when your users tell you that the problem stopped". It is one of the most poorly understood design/UX problems in all of tech, it is incredibly easy to trigger accidentally because the difference between "okay" and "a problem" can wind up being a few pixels sometimes, and everyone is just guessing about what makes it better.

Like everywhere on the internet does, we're probably going to trigger it for you a few times in the future, because it is impossible to predict. To make it worse, it's very personalized, too -- like, a few of our volunteers including myself are prone to photosensitive migraines, so we do run every new design by at least a few of us to see if it's going to make our heads explode, but just because it doesn't trigger for me doesn't mean it's not going to trigger for someone and the worst part is we can't always fix it because we can't figure out why it's happening in the first place. But at least we do try!

[grayswandir]

I see that a majority of people seem to actually prefer the new Create Entries page, so I don't know that this is going to be helpful at all, but to me everything on that page seems HUGE and leaves me basically no white space at all except the margin between elements. The text is bigger than on the rest of the site, and it's all in boxes that make each element take up a ton of space so that together they fill the whole screen. For me, the old version of the Create Entry page left lots of white space all around the text box and everything else. Now everything is packed together into one solid square of buttons and boxes.

I don't know if any solution to this is possible, especially since other people don't seem to see this as a negative. One thing that would work for me is if I were able to resize (or just change the zoom for) the Create Entries page as a whole. I just tried using my browser to zoom out the page to 80%, and it actually looks great to me that way, and really highlights for me that the lack of white space is what's making the new page feel so unpleasant to look at, because as soon as I shrink it down it feels completely fine. But unfortunately, if I set that page at 80% zoom, the setting persists all over the rest of Dreamwidth, making the text very tiny on all the other pages, like this one.

Basically, all the elements in the new Create Entries page seem disproportionately large compared to the rest of the website, and leave way less white space around elements than other places like the profile pages and comment pages. I'd love it if there were a way for me to zoom out just the Create Entries page, where everything is so big, but leave the zoom at 100% for the rest of the site.

(It probably matters that I'm using one of the Tropospherical site skins, which I prefer specifically because it leaves more white space than the other options. I'd love to use DW in dark mode -- I use every other site that allows it in dark mode -- but I can't use either of the Gradation options because of the lack of white space.)

Like others have said in their questions/complaints, I don't mean to be completely negative! I understand that there are reasons why changes are necessary. It's hard for me to say anything definitely positive about it from a user standpoint, because all the changes on the new page are at best neutral for me. I'd far rather have the icon and date at the top, but it sounds like that's already been determined as impossible to change. I'd also love to be able to switch the text box to the right instead of the left. But for me really the biggest thing is the lack of white space -- I could deal with the other changes if I could fix that -- so if there's any way that could be adjusted, I'd be very grateful!

(ETA: here's a pair of screenshots to show the difference in white space and font sizes between the versions -- since I realize all of this may vary by site skin. These are both at the same zoom, 100%.)

[denise]

Your screenshots are displaying super tiny (like, 10 pixels wide) in my browser and I can't actually see any of the details in them; I'm sorry!

For the font issues, I'm going to have to refer you to the second half of an answer I already typed up because I'm really, really pushing the edges of my physical capacity this week.

For the rest of it -- I am very, very sorry that the updated version of the Create Entries page doesn't work for you from a UX standpoint, but at this point, it's been in beta for twelve years, and it's been through multiple rounds of feedback, adjustment, compromises, and balancing solutions for multiple use cases, access needs, and preferences. The sort of feedback that would necessitate scrapping most of that work and starting over isn't feasible for us to act on, and we really, really need to get it out of beta because it's holding up a ridiculous number of increasingly-urgent projects. I know this isn't an answer that people want to hear, but we really are at the point where we have to limit the feedback we can act upon to "this specific thing does not function at all in my browser/OS" and revisit the other questions sometime in the future once we've been able to finish the rest of the code conversions that will allow us to solve some of our other long-standing UX problems.