New Friendslist Site Scheme

[twissie]

I want to update you all on the state of the beta testing of the new friendslist. I've now been actively using and testing all the features of the new style for a couple of days, and while it's not completely useless, it's not perfect either.

Comments

[nausicaa83]

Thanks a lot for keeping us updated, you're amazing!

Both the font and background colour are going to be very painful for my eyes. I'm going to get so many headaches. =_=

[twissie]

No problem, thank you for leaving a comment :)

I really do hope they add in some sort of customization options. Even just options to adjust font style/size, width of the feed, and background colour would go a long way towards making this a useable and welcome change.

[nausicaa83]

EXACTLY. I think I could get used to it as long as I could fix the colours a bit. If it's anything like that new comment style, that colour combination gives me a headache in less than four minutes.

[twissie]

I have major issues with the new comment pages, and though the new feed follows the same colour scheme, it is easier on the eyes.

[jocosa]

I am trying it now but it only shows the Beta banner up top on my profile page. When I go to my friends page it looks no different at all and the Beta banner is gone. I tried a hard refresh and no change. Did I mess up somewhere?

[twissie]

I've seen people complain that they aren't able to activate the new feed despite being on the beta server. I had some issues myself, but was able to work around it with the following workaround:

- Go to Select Journal Style
- Open a preview of one of the styles in a different tab or window
- Add in "friends" in front of the "?s2id=" part of the URL, for example http://twissie.livejournal.com/friends?s2id=21633446

This worked for me, but I don't know... let me know! Also make sure you actually are on the beta server before trying this.

[jocosa]

Thanks for the tip! Sadly, still nada. I used the preview of the Halloween bats layout and it still comes up normal. If I flip over to my profile from there it definitely shows Beta up top.

I'll keep trying and maybe eventually it will kick over.

[twissie]

Do you see the new feed if you click the example link I pasted above (http://twissie.livejournal.com/friends?s2id=21633446)? My first look at the feed came from somehow gaining access to it through someone else's friendslist ...

It could be specific to the theme you're trying it on, though. I opened a preview of the Blue Fence (Minimalism by SUP) theme. There should be a small gray banner across the top of your flist, you click it to gain access, and then you can access the new feed like you normally would your flist (this sounds a lot more complicated than it actually is XD).

[lilyginny27]

First, thank you for compiling all of this. I never did get to figuring out how to Beta this because my weekend was so busy, but I don't feel I really need to either you are so detailed with everything. So, again, thank you :)

I almost feel like this is a combination of Tumblr and Facebook. What they are doing, I mean. Like they are taking the Facebook newsfeed and making it look all fancy and shiny with big buttons and moving photos.

I like my mood icons. I hope they keep those :(

[twissie]

You are welcome! I felt a bit guilty after my last post took off, and then seeing people reference the post in their extremely abusive and negative comments toward the LJ staff, so ah.. I needed to get a more balanced post up about what the new flist will really be like.

The look has changed, but it's very much still LJ. We'll see if they take any of the initial feedback into account before going further with this.

[twissie]

Yeah... I know DW essentially has everything I *need*, but... I just don't want to move. If I ever move away from LJ, I think it'll be to a personal blog space. I'll lose the community aspect of journaling, but oh well. So be it.

[foxfirefey]

So far my biggest problems have been pretty trivial:

* The ridiculous stitching skeuomorphism at the bottom of entries. My eye, while scanning, interprets it as a rendering glitch, something going wrong, and it crashes my flow. I'm not horribly against skeuomorphism, but in this instance it feels very out of place and detrimental.

* The comments count is on the "wrong" side for me--that is, when I'm finished reading an entry, the first thing I want to do is check the number of comments, and it is easiest when that is closer to the right side, because my eyes are already scanning from left to right in order to read.