3 things: Yuletide progress report; LJ hates its users; the state of the smoke shop

[edenfalling]

1. I made a few mostly cosmetic edits on my Yuletide story and uploaded the beta draft to AO3. This is because I will be in a minivan heading to New Jersey tomorrow evening when the deadline arrives, and it is better to have a slightly untidy story than no story. :-) (In all honesty, the story will work as is. I just want it to work better.)

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2. This new interface thingy LJ just rolled out, I do not like it. Not at all. The default pages are ugly and the margins are awful. I want more white space at the edge of my pages, thank you. I also want the light blue shading at the top of the comments section to go die in a fire. It is vaguely painful to look at for too long -- not enough color contrast, I think.

Plus all comment subject lines have been summarily made to disappear and turn into bold headings in the comments themselves, which is just... I don't know who thought that was a good idea, or why, but it is a BAD IDEA. It destroys functionality for no reason. Why was this not TESTED or run past the user base?

...

I am beginning to think about redirecting all comments to Dreamwidth and seeing if I can recreate even more of my LJ reading list over here. Also I may have to embark on the long and unspeakably tedious task of switching all the links in my master fic lists to point to DW entries, and all the internal links (forward to next chapter, back to previous chapter, jump to main index page, that sort of thing) to point to DW as well. That will take forever and a day, but I suspect it may be worth the headache in the long run.

The ONLY good thing I have noticed in the new LJ code is that on the mobile version, when I hit the back button from an entry to my f-list, I no longer get jumped up to the top of the page; instead, I only get jumped up one or two entries, which is still not ideal but is at least vaguely more functional. And that is not worth all the new idiocy in the slightest.

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3. PM has been massively overstaffing the smoke shop this week, in anticipation of last minute holiday shoppers. Today was actually quite slow, but I'm pretty sure that's because it rained all day. Tomorrow should be busier.

Anyway, I left about two hours before the scheduled end of my shift, because there was no point in me just standing around with nothing to do. I am of two minds about leaving early. On the one hand, I don't earn money if I'm not on the clock. On the other hand, if I go home, that means less work-related stress and more chances to take a nap. I am a big fan of naps. :-)

Comments

from Tigger

[(Anonymous)]

re#2
From the gossip* I picked up lj is owned by the person who redesigned the comment pages, and he seems to believe anyone who disagrees with him is an idiot. Then again by that source he my well be Oberon.
*so this is hearsay

[autumnia]

My first thought after seeing the LJ "redesign" for the first time was, "Did I accidentally make my font size too big on the browser?" I work in the web field and have several strong opinions on the new user experience and look and feel: not only is it NOT user friendly but the design is terrible. I never understand why sites insist on making everything look "modern and hip" when really, it doesn't really do anything for their customer base.

It's yet another reason I've held back on converting to a paid LJ account.

It's hard to get people to convert to DW when so many people remain on LJ. The only nice thing I find is that when LJ *is* down, I can still read new posts from those who crosspost via DW.

[edenfalling]

I have never had a paid LJ account, or even a Plus account with add supported whatever; I am still on an ancient, creaky basic free account, and in the old type of layout -- I think it's called S1? Mostly because I found something that didn't visually irritate me and never saw a reason to change.

I don't like change. I really don't like it when change is forced upon me, and said change is both ugly and non-functional.

I do, conversely, have a paid account here on DW. I like this site. Its owners care about their users' opinions, and it's just... tidier, I guess. But yeah, while I do all my posting here and have started friending some people here and not on LJ, I do end up doing the bulk of my reading over on LJ just because that's still where more people are, so it gets both more posts and more comments on crossposts. *sigh*

[autumnia]

Like you, I have a Basic account on LJ and it's more or less fine for what I actually use it for. And my views on change are the same as yours as well. :-) I really dislike change when it's forced upon and when you should follow because "everyone one else is doing it" (for me, the latter is especially true when it comes to Twitter, Facebook and all those social media tools).

Dreamwidth really seems to be so much better than LJ though I have yet to upgrade my account. Maybe if more people get on it, it'd be worth it to pay for the extra features DW is providing. At the very least, I like that you can customize DW's layout so much easier than on LJ so it's easier for me to use and read.