in which ashley gives a first impression of LogJam
LogJam is a cute little Linux (and possibly other OSes?) client for LJ, and presumably any other journal site built on the openjournal framework (or whatever the hell they're calling it now). It's tiny in a few senses-- there's literally not much more than a textbox and spaces for tags, music, mood, and other things to be entered (basically every of these fields can either be selected or deselected from the "view" menu). It doesn't take up much processor speed. It's rather sleek, and not offensively huge on my 1024x768 resolution laptop (a common problem I've found with the LJ site, and other programs as well). There are dropdown menus to add common HTML formatting, as well as LJ tags like LJ-cuts, polls, and files. It also has a few other features I've yet to try, including monitoring your FList (even limiting updates to one of your FList filters), auto-detecting music, autosaving in the case of a crash, and an icon in your statusbar.
I really like this client in concept, mostly because LJ is one of the sites that absolutely crawls on a 56k modem. It's basically all I'd need to write an entry, without having to wait ten minutes to get to the update.bml page. Plus, to the best of my knowledge, it's completely open source. Updates to the client will happen on a regular basis-- or if the project has died, it can easily be resurrected or forked by anyone who has the desire and knowledge to do so.
So far, so good.. but I've noticed three main problems so far. These could just be the way I'm using it, of course, or actual problems with the client itself. And it could be entirely possible that there's a more recent version out there than the one I got from the Ubuntu repository. But anyway, the three major issues I have so far:
1. Privacy doesn't work.
This is sortof a huge deal for me. Posting sensitive information to your "only three people" FList filter, only to discover it was sent completely public, does not fit my definition of fun/easy/useful. Especially since my first trial was with a private entry. This will bear some further testing out, but it seems like it doesn't work at all.
2. Music doesn't work.
Again, there could be a few reasons for this-- the fact that I'm entering it by hand, or because I use quotation marks and there's something off in their parsing. But despite my typing it in, it didn't show up at all in my entry. Ick.
3. There's no "location" option-- same with comment screening and adult content.
"Location" is really the only field of these that I use on a fairly regular basis, so that's the only one I really miss.
That's all I've noticed so far; granted, I've only used this to make one entry (two, counting this one), and once I've used it for at least a month, I'll make a more in-depth review of it. The problems aren't huge enough for me to stop using it; it's easy enough to edit in music, and for a quick or public entry, LogJam will definitely be my preferred method of posting.
I really like this client in concept, mostly because LJ is one of the sites that absolutely crawls on a 56k modem. It's basically all I'd need to write an entry, without having to wait ten minutes to get to the update.bml page. Plus, to the best of my knowledge, it's completely open source. Updates to the client will happen on a regular basis-- or if the project has died, it can easily be resurrected or forked by anyone who has the desire and knowledge to do so.
So far, so good.. but I've noticed three main problems so far. These could just be the way I'm using it, of course, or actual problems with the client itself. And it could be entirely possible that there's a more recent version out there than the one I got from the Ubuntu repository. But anyway, the three major issues I have so far:
1. Privacy doesn't work.
This is sortof a huge deal for me. Posting sensitive information to your "only three people" FList filter, only to discover it was sent completely public, does not fit my definition of fun/easy/useful. Especially since my first trial was with a private entry. This will bear some further testing out, but it seems like it doesn't work at all.
2. Music doesn't work.
Again, there could be a few reasons for this-- the fact that I'm entering it by hand, or because I use quotation marks and there's something off in their parsing. But despite my typing it in, it didn't show up at all in my entry. Ick.
3. There's no "location" option-- same with comment screening and adult content.
"Location" is really the only field of these that I use on a fairly regular basis, so that's the only one I really miss.
That's all I've noticed so far; granted, I've only used this to make one entry (two, counting this one), and once I've used it for at least a month, I'll make a more in-depth review of it. The problems aren't huge enough for me to stop using it; it's easy enough to edit in music, and for a quick or public entry, LogJam will definitely be my preferred method of posting.