seperis | i am missing something here big time

Okay, so I've been running profile in beta since they offered it, so granted, I'm really used to it. But I'm seriously confused; what exactly is wrong with it besides being rather stark?

(Also granted, I'm a huge fan of stark and simple.)

I'm reading the complaints and while some of the issues (the bio customization) aren't ones that relate to me since I don't put anything in there but text, the rest seem to be talking about a profile page that is nothing like the one I'm looking at.

I am also all over those tiny arrows that close and open up sections; that pleases.

Controversy at

lj_design here and here, and featured on Fandom Wank here.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, check your profile for the new layout.

ETA:

niqaeli reminded me of this: Kat's Page, please squint. This, two failed frame experiments, a period of black background/white text and thinking it was a brilliant idea to make a single image a background and imbed an imagemap on it is why my webpage is exactly three colors plus simple images. Those were dark times, people.

...seriously. I created that background myself. I leave it there when I get flights of fancy with css to remind me of the dark side.

I too have no idea why people hate it this much.

Oh thank God. I mean, I love those open/close arrows like whoa.

I'm with you, I rather like the new profile layout. But then, my profile isn't one of those big graphic heavy ones, it might make a difference. What can I say, my decorative tastes aren't spartan, but it's not that far off.

Yes, this. I love stark. I adore stark. It's easy for me to find what I'm looking for with the minimum require colors. I am totally a dinosaur. *g*

Personally, I don't get why it bugs people. I like the placement of links to the memories and tags section.

I can see the point at the very top section, but again, I've been using it for so long I'm used to knowing where to look.

the bad: white space, clutter, too much scrolling, poor order of key info
(ex here: http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_wank/1185562.html?thread=191316762#t191316762)

the good: I like the collapsable sections and how they arranged the friend/community/rss feed.

I don't see the whitespace problem. Is it supposed to be vertical white space or horizontal?

The scroll down--I mean, I looked at the old design, and I'm not seeing a huge difference in the amount of scrolling compared to the old way, with teh exception that the watched communities were categorized with Member of and Posting at the bottom. Closing down the sections shortens the scrolling hugely.

I've had the beta for ages as well but I don't get it - all my bits and bobs in my profile are still there...?

:)
Jaydeyn

Yeah I can't say I see the problem with it either. I mean I know have to fiddle with my bio a little because it looks slightly weird now because I do have some graphics but there is no big problems with it. *shrugs*

Oh I just wanted to add I'm totally not a fan of stark either and I don't mind it.

I like some things, like that you can now collapse sections, and that the statistics (last posts, joining etc) are up on top, rather than hidden, I find that useful for comms especially and to see whether something is still active.

What I don't mind, since my LJ doesn't really have a title (I'm uncreative that way), is that the title and subtitles are so much less prominent, but I think that will need some getting used to for LJ where that part was kind of like a title/header before, and now it's like a footnote size below the user name.

I think the other thing is, that the profile before wasn't all that broken, IMO, and that they change the interfaces so often when that is something you got used to, is a bit annoying, because you have to acclimate all over once again. I mean, I have customized my desktip to remain the same and have the same arrangement of buttons and such for a decade now, and when my OS updates stuff, I customize it back to be the colors and positioning I'm used to, because I dislike change in my environment.

I have only two issues with the new profile, and neither really pertain to the design, which is in my opinion, no fuglier than the old one.

Issue the first is the last post date now being in everyone's face at the top whereas it used to be hidden under a link at the bottom. Most people wouldn't have thought to go looking before. I'm waiting for the first person to make me justify not letting them in on a filtered post.

Issue the second, which was an issue with the older layout too is that they should allow a change in background colour as an option - especially now that there is more whitespace.

Maybe the arrangement could use some tidying up, but all in all, I think it is an improvement.

Ultimately, I think a lot of people just don't like change and this is as good as an excuse as any to whine about LJ. And I wouldn't mind, but a lot of the comments are just offensive - unnecessarily so for a page that probably doesn't represent a large slice of general LJ viewing. (I'd say I view a profile about once to every 100 LJ page views, if that.)

In other news - This IS fugly. And useless. And who do LJ think they are? Microsoft? (http://www.livejournal.com/settings/)

edited at: Date: 2008-11-08 09:34 am (UTC)

Uh, as someone who just used the new settings page to modify three different things without having to poke and prod and guess where things where all over the site but merely look around 1 or possibly two tags, I'm gonna say it's different, but not useless at all, it's definitely better than the way it was. At least everything is centralized. I was skeptical sure, I think clouding the tags was dumb because the things referenced the most are not necessarily the things people want to find the most, HOWEVER it's actually amazingly intuitive for me.

*shrug*

*shrug*

I think the search for depends too heavily on you actually knowing what each setting is called. I'm definitely down with more centralised - but I'm generally a more ordered sort of person that likes a page with tabs for the various types of settings.

Which is why I love this. (http://www.livejournal.com/manage/settings/index2.bml)

Actually the tags version doesn't require you to know the name of what you want so much as the function, which is usually what I remember anyway. E.X. The searchable email thing. There was only two tags it could be and voila, so I found it.

I would think 'password' is pretty self-explanatory, but it doesn't work. Neither does 'status' or 'delete', for purposes of journal deletion. I'm guessing that either the search doesn't work completely or that some settings might be excluded from that interface.

But all power to you if you like it. Diff'rent strokes, diff'rent folks, and all that.

I like it. Then again, I adore black-text-on-white-background pages, with nice simple layouts. I'd rather a profile page which uses more space for text (which this does on the sides) and has the ability for me to hide the "mutual friends" and all those other options if all I'm looking for is a particular LJ name (which is all I use my profile page for: as a quick link to a particular LJ if there was a story/post I wanted to read/comment on but skimmed on my FList).

Then again, people who are all "yay for arty design" probably don't like it but I think it's nifty.

The only thing I am really unhappy about is the ugly and intrusive block of stats at the top, which feels invasive and is clearly for the benefit of LJ and not the user. It was extremely unpopular in the beta stage feedback and they have failed to change it or justify why it is so important. I'm also surprised by how soon after the last round of beta they have rolled this out, since at least one of the designers was commenting (http://community.livejournal.com/lj_design/16599.html?thread=2403287) to say that they were focusing on usability right now and that visual design wouldn't be addressed until the new year. which I assumed meant that implementation was still some time away.

I do love the ability to collapse sections and have them stay collapsed, though.

I don't understand the point of those collapsed sections. What do they do? So you collapse "friends" and it stays collapsed and ... then what?

I just don't get it!

If you hate heavy graphic bios or like to go straight to certain things on your or other people's profiles, you can collapse those things so they aren't visible. It's useful to me with people who have bios that go on for pages.

Yeah, I don't mind it. There are things that could be done better, but all in all it's okay. Some better, some not so good. I just don't understand what the huge upset is about, that people are talking as if this was Strikethrough come back again, right with threatening to leave LJ and all that. *shrugs*

I was in beta too, and I'm a) totally used to it, and b) not that bothered to begin with. I like it. It does seem easier to find stuff now.

what exactly is wrong with it

Beats the hell out of me. *shrugs*

I like the 'post an entry' etc. links across the top.

I'm finding a lot of people are assuming that the way they use the info page is the way everyone uses it. I like the stats up top, I use those stats a lot, to the point where I'd added a scrip to automatically take me to everyone's full profile. I'm not sure there's actually more scrolling than before and they did fix the problem of getting a complete friends list when you had more than 500 people. So that's a plus to me as well. On a personal note, while some people find the white space annoying, discrete sections work great for my eyes, easier to find and focus, especially on days where focusing is *hard* yo. Add to that the collapsing sections and I'm happy. *shrug* Change happens. The profiles have been pretty much static for years, I'm okay with them mixing it up a bit.

*this* YES!

People always assume that what is "natural" and "intuitive" for them is true for everybody else, and it's just not so!

And some people never learn that simple fact!

The uproar kind of reminds me of the uproar every time Gaia Online changes its layout, which they seem to do about once or twice a year. There's a week or so in which there is a lot of complaining, whining, and yelling. Then everyone gets used to it. Lather, rinse, repeat. I actually think it's kind of funny by now.

I hadn't had the chance to look at the new profiles on a decent computer (stupid hotel terminals featured superdooper 600x800. um. no)... I have now. And yeah, it totally works for me.

What's the problem? Has it broken random peoples' stupid, stupid overfilled 'bio' areas?

*shrug*

Setting aside the look of it, which I find bare, my problem is that as someone with a large f-list there is no longer any way I can see a complete list of just my mutual friends. I click to expand and get every name and comm on the page in one lump, not just my mutual friends.

If I'm missing the right button to push, I'd love someone to point me at it, but I've been clicking all over and can't see it.

This was a feature that was on the old profile so I'm not sure why it was taken out.

did you try clicking on the ... at the tail end of your list? That opens it up further.

I did and it does so thank you very much but I'm kind of sitting here with my jaw hanging down.

That? Was not user friendly or obvious AT ALL.

Or I'm dim.

I won't be offended if you think the latter.

:-)

It definitely isn't obvious.

And a little note (even in little tiny font) near each section explaining to click on the ... to show all would have been useful.

^_^

It would!

I'm a big fan of simple so I'm not finding this to be that big a deal. And those those collapsible sections are handy.

Sure the top section is a little heavy but overall it's not horrible.

I think I'm probably a pretty unsophisticated lj user. Maybe it has something to do with that, because honestly I hate the new profile page. It's stupid little stuff. I find the new listing of other people's journals to be much more difficult to read. I think there's somehow not as much space between names, and they're somehow not as bold. I also don't like having to scroll down to get to them -- one of the things I often do is click directly to friends' journals and now I have to scroll waaaay down to get to them, let along community journals -- which I often get to by going to my profile page. I also hate having all that extra crap at the top, and don't like all the stats all visible like that at the top. I'm very private, and wish there were a way to turn off other people's ability to see when/if I've posted.

It's totally possible that it's just the *change* aspect, but I don't think so. I don't know the technical stuff -- how to describe what's wrong with the design -- I just know what I don't like as well as the prior version. Different people seem to use the profile pages differently.

Despite all this, I'm sure I'll get used to it and live through the process.*g* Who knows, maybe I'll turn into its biggest fan. But I really, really don't like it.

After noticing the beta announcement bar, a lot, I clicked on it, and went, well, that's OK! And went on my merry way.

I finally tweaked a few graphics that went kerblooey, and updated my profile (hadn't thought to do that, go new beta!), and, well, yeah, I um kinda prefer the new layout.

In my case, it's readability. There appear to be, whether there are or not, a lot more font sizes spread out over the page, which fatigues my eyes when reading. The information that's on the page looks more crowded together, with larger chunks of white space between chunks of information, rather than a more balanced spacing. I'm also having flow issues, simply because they changed the order of information to something that's not intuitive to me. The old layout wasn't intuitive to me, either, but I got used to it over the course of the years. I'm not sure how large a percentage of LJ's users have vision problems similar to mine, though, so I don't know how common my own issues are.

Considering I update my profile maybe once a year, I probably wouldn't have noticed for weeks if I wasn't for the uproar. Count me as one of those who doesn't quite see what the problem is.

I must admit to being kind of amused by the (now standard) mis-handling of the announcement and the (also now standard) LET'S ALL LEAVE LJ yelling.

Thank God, I thought because I didn't loathe it with the intensity of thousand suns that I might be defective.

Well, I'm defective, but just not for that reason.

I like it personally.

My theory is that it's because people think of their LJ as theirs and they don't like bits of it being messed with without their permission, not because of any real flaws with the new layout.

I have two problems with it.

1) The top and basic info sections are not balanced on the page, length-wise or width wise.

2) There's not enough white space in the lower sections of the page, so the friends section runs into the comm sections visually. I've had to add information I didn't want there in order to achieve any sort of visual balance in those sections on my page.

That said, I'm kind of OCD about visual balance sometimes, and there are things I do like about it, like not having to scroll down for commentstats.

Don't mind it but I was trying out the beta and cbf changing back. Besides I don't look at my profile page much? And as long as I can read the basic stuff for people I'm ~~stalking~~ friending, I don't really care much.

Best comment ever on the new profile over at (http://community.livejournal.com/lj_design/17491.html?thread=4961875#t4961875)

lj_design. :D

I don't think it is stark and simple. I think it is more squashed and cluttered that the last one.

I may have got the world's shortest memory but I'm sure reading people's friends/friend of lists did not used to hurt my eyes - either the font was heavier or the colours were less bright or- something! Also? When you have eyesight like mine, those lines that go all the way across the page to divide the sections, when they are all close together - as they are on my own profile - start moving after a while, so I begin to feel seasick.

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