Profile Page Design - Feedback and Process

[gregorykennedy]

I just wanted to update everyone on where we are with the Profile design process. We are still reading and addressing feedback directly in this community. It's slow going as there are lots of suggestions. Thanks to fiddlingfrog all of our replies to specific comments have been collected here

Comments

[trialia]

Here's your specific feedback: there is TOO MUCH WHITE SPACE. It's causing me and many other people headaches and migraines. Even being able to change the background colour on the profile, which I know is not that difficult to code, would help with that.

[sarahcb1208]

I agree with that. I hate all that white space. Definitely causes a headache.

[hammond]

I don't understand why people are obsessed with this issue of white space. The old version of the profile had just as much, if not more white space (especially around the friends, communities etc.)

The new design scales better to fill the screen and reduces the white space.

[ice_dragon00]

The problem is this new design makes much poorer use of whitespace, it gives no where for the eye to rest and for people with assorted visual issues it is a nightmare to look at.

[oohasparklie]

You know, I believe most of the feedback has been negative, and it's been ignored. So why bother?

[trialia]

"omg they're so MEAN!"?

[oohasparklie]

LOL

Well, on the one hand, I can see LJ's frustration, because every time they change something, the users have the biggest hissyfit known to mankind. But then, maybe they should LEARN from that and quit changing things when the users are obviously used to and happy with how it was already? Also, it might help if, when they do change things, they change them for the better, instead of putting things in weird places and making things look ugly.

But again, they don't listen to feedback, so there's really no point of these posts. They're going to do what they want no matter what.

[uozaki]

Usually though, there's a lot of 'omg change is badzorz' comments, and a smattering of 'actually I like it' comments thrown in, and then everyone gets over it. (Or takes their complaints to private venues.) This time I don't think there's even 5% of comments positive, and most of the negative ones have the same complaints. The SO MEAN is just icing, really.

But you're right. Listen to valid complaints? Leave well enough alone? Whut?

[neitherday]

My biggest issue with the new profile is the placement of the bio. The bio is the space for the users to introduce themselves in their own words. It should ideally be the first section and it definitely should not be below the scroll. Fix that and everything else I can get used to.

[miss_mandy]

Yes, this! Placement of my bio is the most important thing to me. I can get used to the other stuff I don't like, but I just really want my bio up above my stats.

Maybe move the basic info part to where the stats are right now (which makes more sense in my opinion), but the bio underneath and then move the stats to the bottom.

[mercat]

Agreed.

[onlylisa]

I second this and would like to add that the lines through it and the sections give a resume feel to it that is not attractive.

[vvalkyri]

Would be really nice to go back to munging email addresses -- i've started getting spam via my lj address.

[astronewt]

The email address is actually still mangled, though it doesn't appear that way when you look at the page as a human. Behind the scenes, in the source code though (which is what a crawler or bot would be looking at), your email address is coded like this:

whoever@whatever.com

It does not appear as a contiguous email address that can just be 'lifted out'. If that mangle option is off, then your email appears as a straight up "mailto:whoever@whatever.com" string of text exactly like that in the source, which is why it's easier for that to be picked up by a bot.

Spam companies often know about the LJ forwarding address and will mass-mail usernames, knowing that a certain percentage will get through. If you ever want to disable the forward for your account (which won't affect your ability to receive comment/subscription notifs or anything), you can do that through the Admin Console as explained here.

[vvalkyri]

Hm. hasn't been much, so I guess it was coincidental. Another friend had noticed at about the same time, and thought it was the lack of munging.

Other friends disabled the paid account forwarding some time ago; so far it still is useful to me.

Thanks for the info!

[turlough]

Aha! So that's the way you do it now. Before when you copied and pasted a mail adress spaces appeared but that doesn't happen now and I've been wondering in a vague way if something was wrong.

Poll

[trialia]

Also, look at this: http://www.livejournal.com/poll/?id=1295859

I know half of the photosensitive people who have answered the poll don't have problems with it, but what about the other half? I don't want to continue paying money to use a site that makes me physically ill, and as a community moderator I view profiles on a regular basis.

Edit: Please do NOT answer this poll if you are not photosensitive, I set it up only for the migraine sufferers and those who don't have them who are voting are skewing the poll. If you want a general one for people who don't have migraines as well as those of us who do, create your own!

Re: Poll

[cahwyguy]

Do remember that there are migraine sufferers who are not photosensitive (he said as he is still trying to recover from this morning's migraine...)

Re: Poll

[trialia]

Point, but there's an option for that in the poll. I can't edit the comment now because you've replied, but people who apparently don't suffer from migraines were responding to it, and that's not the point of that poll.

Re: Poll

[inlaterdays]

I'm not a member of the comm, but I get migraines, so I went and voted...hope that's okay, and thank you for linking.