Release 88 sneak peek, Mashable Awards nomination, Holiday promotions, ONTD Games

[news]

December 14th, 2011 - Happy December Holidays and welcome to the official LiveJournal newsletter! Bringing you system updates, community events, and other newsworthy nuggets from the world of LiveJournal. Here's a look at what's news on and around LJ:

Release 88 sneak peek
Our final site update of the year, Release 88, is scheduled to go live

Comments

[timewreck]

Can we stop redesigning and adding new things and make sure to fix the old things that are currently broken? Because as far as I've seen of the new comment page design, it is absolutely hideous and the notion of getting rid of subject lines is ridiculous since people actually DO use them.

By the way, is that new hideous design even useful for lov-vision and/or blind users? You know, some people use screenreaders to access LJ and from what it looks like, I assume it's not.

[rosiedoes]

Woah, woah, woah - what kind of idiot would think we should get rid of subject headers? Oh, hang on... we're on LJ, aren't we? The staff here has no actual concept of how people use their product...

[timewreck]

The idiot somebody linked up there. He says it's because "people don't use it". SO LEAVE IT. If they don't use it or want it, leaving it there doesn't hurt them any. Taking it away will hurt people who DO use it. Like me.

[rosiedoes]

Well, exactly. At sherlockbbc we use it to distinguish between threads in a weekly fandom activity post (meet-ups, etc.). I don't follow the kinkmemes, but they're essential over there, and they will be essential in many other places. Organising fic exchanges or challenges generally. Probably the charity auction communities.

JFC. The only reason I still use this site is because I run a community which exists on here. Otherwise, I'd be gone altogether.

[timewreck]

I'm an RPer and I use them to denote whether a thread is audio, text, or video and to mark locations or times of a particular thread. On my regular journal, it's more than useful to denote trigger warnings and general organization. I've been with LJ since the late 90's (early adopter!) and I see it swirling the drain each time it tries a little harder to be Facebook or Tumblr or whatever other social networking site there is out there.

[rosiedoes]

I've been on here on an old journal since at least 2002, if I recall. Every time they try to make it more like Facebook or Twitter or Tumblr (now that they aren't trying to make it more like MySpace, because MySpace is dead - a lesson? Not for LJ!) I find less and less reason to be here.

[yvonnegos]

I couldn't agree with you more. And another thing, I don't know about other people, but I like LJ where it is. Facebook, Twitter, all those, ARE social networking sites, we use those to talk to friends and family, that's all real life. For ME, LJ is my own private little fantasy world, that I can hide away from everybody. We can do whatever we want and say whatever we want and read whatever we want. I like it that way...

[czol]

In secret communities they're used to indicate which secrets are being discussed in which thread. It would get really confusing without subjects.

[ceilidh]

This guy.

[rosiedoes]

I know - I saw your post upthread.

Ugh, I guess it shows how shit this place has become that my first instinct is to respond in gifs a la Tumblr, rather than icons, as I would have here, when I didn't hate it so much I only come back to mod a comm.

On which note:

[awry]

They need to at least give opt-out features.

[timewreck]

I fear that if LJ does give that option, it'll be either customized comment pages or this new design. The blue one goes bye bye (unless some genius person makes a Stylish script to bring it back or something.) ENJOY YOUR LIST OF SHIT CHOICES, PAID USERS.

[bridgings]

+1

I'm also extremely suspicious of the accessibility of the redesign. Something about a person who thinks "LJ NEEDS MORE VISUAL TRANSITION ANIMATIONS" says to me that a lack of thought was put into people who are a.) on slow connections, b.) accessing big posts that lag already, OR c.) ARE VISUALLY-IMPAIRED. What the hell, LJ. Seriously.

[mechers]

no shit. yes to all of this.

[pikacharma]

YOU. Quit posting logic. I think that's against LJ's TOS or something.

[brotherskeeper1]

My vision is not good and I wonder how I will deal with this :/

My journal has had a "Bug" for months which is allegedly fixed but the release has not gone live.

I wish they would just leave things alone. But LJ,