LiveJournal's getting a new look
We're really excited about a new navigation scheme that we're launching this month. It's called Horizon, and the goal of it is to make finding things in LJ a whole lot easier.
And now for the part where we try to anticipate your questions:
Wait, what's a site scheme?
It's the menus, design and layout of the header that appears on all the site pages.
Hmm, why redesign it?
Our existing site schemes were starting to feel the pressure of time -- we've added a lot of features since we designed them, and it was getting difficult to shoehorn those features into the various menus. The Horizon scheme is designed to be expandable over time, as we add new features.
Our design team spent a lot of time researching and iterating on this new design If you'd like to read more about it, check out this post in
lj_biz and several other posts in
lj_design.
Why should I use Horizon?
Because it'll walk your dog and take out your garbage for you! ...Okay, no, that's a lie. But we think -- and beta feedback agrees -- that the biggest advantage of using the new site scheme is how easy it is to find things. It might take you a few days to retrain yourself where to look for things, but once you do, we think you'll find that locating links to commonly-used tasks is suddenly a lot easier.
I want to check it out! How can I switch to Horizon now?
Go to Viewing Options and select Horizon. Be sure to scroll to the end of the page and hit the "Save Changes" button to save your preference.
When is the switch happening?
Starting on or after September 14th, we're changing the default site scheme over to Horizon.
This means that:
- All logged out users will see Horizon
- All new accounts will have Horizon as their default site scheme
- Anyone who hasn't explicitly chosen a different site scheme after August 31st will be switched to Horizon
We're getting the word out early so everyone's aware of the change and of their choices. Feel free to spread the word to your friends. You'll also see some reminders around the site.
But I don't like change!
If you've tried out Horizon and have decided you prefer a different site scheme because you're used to it, it works better for you, etc., we've created a way for you to keep your preference. Go to the Viewing Options link to select your preferred site scheme and be sure to scroll to the end of the page and hit the "Save Changes" button. You must complete this task any time between 8/31/06 and 9/14/06 in order for it to work, because we just recently added the code that remembers your preference. (For example, even if you're already using XColibur (the current site scheme), you need to go choose and save XColibur again in order to not be switched over to the new Horizon scheme in a few weeks.)
We'll be keeping the other schemes available for people who want to keep using them, but we won't be updating them to include new links and features -- we just don't have the time and resources to support four different versions of the navigation scheme.
Other questions we didn't anticipate?
If you see bugs or broken behavior, please submit them to this post in
lj_releases. There will be a vertical layout for Horizon (called Vertigo) but it won't be available until later this winter.
What does Frank think about this?
We're not sure, he's too busy listening to FRNK Radio, a stream of all the most recent public voice posts.