Release #119

[theljstaff]

Release #119 is live!

Friends feed customization

The Friends feed page can now be more fully customized! Many new customization options have been added, and you can see each change you make while you're still on the page, making it easy to see what your changes will look like.

Comments

[nookiepowered]

I greatly appreciate the expansion of the the color choices and the links list being added as a widget!

Other things that would improve the visual customization:

* Allowing a header graphic, or at least allowing the background image to be placed at the top of the page, either above or below the sitewide and journal navigation bars.

* Allowing customization of the colors on those top navigation bars. All the background and link-color tweaking in world won't help the layout if we're stuck with a big clash of columbia and cadet blue across the top of the screen.

* Allowing users to adjust the width of the content and/or widget columns. Good lord is that a lot of wasted space on the right, while the main reading content is crammed into a narrower than necessary block.

__

Not directly related to the layout but definitely a visual thing: the graphic LJ cut works fine if one's just using it for a cut, aka typing

[fiddlingfrog]

* Allowing customization of the colors on those top navigation bars. All the background and link-color tweaking in world won't help the layout if we're stuck with a big clash of columbia and cadet blue across the top of the screen.

Agreed. The "Show 5 More" button at the bottom of the Twitter widget also uses that color. And none of the color options had any affect on the "Retweeted by" text in the widget, meaning it's still showing as grey when everything else around it is orange and green.

Edit: Oh, and there's a line at the top of the calendar widget that refuses to be anything other than white.

[erinm_4600]

* Allowing users to adjust the width of the content and/or widget columns. Good lord is that a lot of wasted space on the right, while the main reading content is crammed into a narrower than necessary block.

I second this request, whole-heartedly. For what little is in the "new" sidebar, it doesn't need that much space. I can't imagine it needs to be much more than 20% of the screen, if that.

[dragonheart97]

+1 on the header. If the header on my journal also showed up on the Friends Feed, I might actually consider using it.

But the bigger question is: All this customization is very close to what we can already do in our journal style, and everything matches across the board in our own custom styles. Why, again, are you even bothering with the second version at all? What is the point of it? I don't understand why it was even needed, to be honest.

[fiddlingfrog]

As best as I can tell, and this is mostly inferred from information that was passed around a couple years ago when LJ first started testing the /feed page, it's all about standardizing. The current situation, with a couple dozen different layouts, each written in different coding styles, with different options and layout tweaks of their own, is apparently a hindrance to the development of new features

[msilverstar]

I agree -- it's not a case of "not broke, don't fix it" -- many of the old systems are broken and/or un-maintainable. Sometimes you just have to fix things.

[vaysh]

* Allowing users to adjust the width of the content and/or widget columns. Good lord is that a lot of wasted space on the right, while the main reading content is crammed into a narrower than necessary block.
Seconding that. I would love to finally switch to the New Version but not when I have to read my flist crammed to the left side of the screen.

[twirl_madly]

I second the thoughts about the < lj-cut > feature. They are often used for trigger warnings, as well, and I really don't want that functionality to be lost.