LiveJournal

[settiai]

I only know a handful of Russian, so I've been mostly depending on online translators to read the non-English comments in the post about LJ's planned changes to the friends page. Apparently, it seems that there's a belief that your journal's style is meant for your readers instead of you, which... really seems to be the opposite of what many people

Comments

[amenirdis]

Well, yeah. My style is supposed to make it easy for my readers to read and follow, high contrast, clear, unconfusing, for the same reason books aren't printed in Ye Olde English style or in yellow ink on pink paper! I want people to find it easy to read my words and uncomplicated to navigate. And certainly I know that if I go to someone's journal and it's in gray on a black background or cluttered with pictures or in a strange font, I hit the backbutton because most of the time I'm not casually interested enough to wade through something where they've made it hard for me. In fact, I have my flist display in my own style, simple and high contrast, because I don't want to bother with strange fonts and too many pictures.

[settiai]

Huh. I actually come at it from a completely different direction. I have my journal set up in a way that makes it easier for me to read: in my case, a dark font on a background that's lighter but not super light. If I go to someone else's journal that's white text on a black background or something along those lines (which, for some people, is much easier to read than, say, black text on a white background), then I assume that's the format that's easiest for them to read and I simply add ?style=mine to the end so that I read it my journal style. That's why I have a journal style in the first place, so that I can read things that otherwise I wouldn't be able to. Also, I assume most people who read my entries are already reading it in their own style, because they're accessing it from their friends list

[amenirdis]

I think my background is showing! :) When you do a website for an organization, or press releases, or a blog or whatever, you're trying to make it easy for the "customer." It's not for you. It's for them. When I want people to read my fic (or my books) I want it to be easy for them. They're my "customer." They don't have to spend five minutes thinking about my story. There are tons of other things for them to be doing. So I try to be as simple and accessible as possible, the same way I did when what I was providing was links designed to help people find legal assistance, etc.

[settiai]

*nods

[effervescent]

I swear they are going about this completely ass-backwards. Yeah, I hope that people find my style readable, but since *I* am the one who uses the journal every single day, I care about me more than I care about other people reading it. Just... idek. Have they completely lost sight of the fact that this is about people reading other people's journals from their flist, not just people posting to readers who only look at their main page?

[settiai]

*nods*

Exactly! I mean, there are dozens of people who I've been following on LiveJournal for years, but if I was to stumble across their journal without seeing their name the odds are that I wouldn't recognize it. Because, you know, I read people's entries on my friends list; it's extremely rare that I ever even see their posts in their own journal style.

[alyse]

It's not just about personal preferences, though. Certain fonts or displays are enough to trigger a migraine for me - Microsoft's ClearType and the font they ended up using as a default on AO3 when they had the new skin debacle both trigger migraines for within literally minutes. Both look blurred to me, in spite of the claim that they're supposed to be crisper and clearer (and I have really good vision according to every sight test I've done), and trying to bring them into focus is what triggers me

[settiai]

*nods*

Oh, no argument there. That's really what I meant when I said personal preference, but I couldn't quite think of how to work it. There are some color schemes that I can't deal with because they cause severe headaches, so I definitely know what you mean.

[venetia_sassy]

Excuse me, completely random person here, but how may I get this AO3 skin?! I'm just downloading any long fic to my ereader at this point.

[ladyoneill]

While I'm guessing this "standardized" FL will be just white background with black font, it could be anything. I tend not to go to other people's pages because my eyes need a large font and no glaring colors. I have mine (ETA and my FL in my style) set just the way I like it. I'm not quite sure I really understand their reasoning. Why not just make everyone use the same layout for everything then?

Really not thrilled about this upcoming change.

[settiai]

This post has some screencaps. But, yeah, that's way too much white space. If I tried to actually read my friends list on something like that, it would trigger a migraine within fifteen minutes tops. :-/

[rosewildeirish]

One thing I have noticed as more and more sites design to be mobile-friendly: the changes are butt ugly and computer-unfriendly. Well, *on* a computer or laptop. On an iPad, tablet, or phone, not so much.

Seems most sites are looking to strike a balance between mobile users and computer users, and the result is something that's middle of the road and not all that great for either user.

[settiai]

See, those sites don't work well on mobile devices for me, though they do look better on them than on a computer.

[rosewildeirish]

Yeah, it's a brave new world. I'm not a fan of websites that cater to mobile devices; I kind of think they need an alternate version for them rather than an amalgam.