(no subject)

[cjsmith]

Looks like the latest LiveJournal barfage isn't just in the temporary V-Day changes. No more titles for me or for anyone else on the Lynx scheme until they fix it.* No more current music, either, but that bothers me less because I almost never used that one.

Bummer, 'cause after nearly three weeks the other problem had just in the last couple of days gone away.

(Why yes, I DO think they're trying to force the Lynx folks to change. It's either that or a level of carelessness/cluelessness that elevates them to Waste Of Oxygen status, and I'd prefer to think they're merely rude.)

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* Anyone else reading this who's using the Lynx scheme: what browser? Do you see this problem?

Comments

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

One of the myriad items that helped me and deyo see that Charitableway was on the way out, before they folded, was that they wouldn't test their product in anything but IE, because "no one uses anything else." No AOL, no Netscape (pre-Firefox), just IE.

I imagine it didn't hurt that the CTO and CEO had both come in from MS.

[platypus]

The Lynx scheme is also hosed in IE 7 (dunno what browser you have). I've heard they're "no longer supporting" Dystopia, which I use, so new features won't be added to the sidebar, etc. I was less than thrilled with the new update page, but at least it's working for me. For now. I don't think it's reasonable for them to only support site styles that use javascript, dammit.

[platypus]

And of course IE hasn't even been standards-compliant, so the more you cater to it, the more you drift away from good web design. Ken once had to devote an entire section of a talk to workarounds so standard css stuff would work in IE.

I refuse to get involved with any html too futzy to hand-code, but I suppose that's not an option for everyone...

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Firefox 1.5.0.4 on Windows XP; I'll test a newer FF when I get home. I think there's an enormous amount about LJ site choices/support that is totally unreasonable. Sadly, I'm heavily invested in the friends I've made here.

[platypus]

Sadly, I'm heavily invested in the friends I've made here.

Me too. Sometimes I look at other people's journals hosted on their own sites, and think, "Ooh, I'd like one of those." I prefer the online-journal format, one entry per page, more essayish, than the blog format, but Livejournal sucked me in (and, let's face it, bloggy entries are what I actually manage to WRITE on a regular basis, so...). In 1995 a friend suggested I start keeping an online journal; I wonder what it would have been like if I'd taken his advice. I wrote a few entries on Diaryland early in my relationship with Ken, and they're cute in a nostalgic way, but so much of life's a blur simply because I wasn't taking any of it down.

But Livejournal? It's all about the people. My best friend's here, and my mom, and so many people I wouldn't know if it weren't for this site. Like you. And I'd miss you all terribly, so no matter what crappy web design they implement, I'm not going anywhere.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Amen to that. It's frustrating when things turn crappy, and I can imagine that it's possible I will one day be driven away, but for now, I'm hanging on.

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

Given that LJ's interfaces are published, couldn't someone (not me! not now!) write a wrapper website with a decent and consistent UI?

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

It seems possible to me. O'course, anyone who's good enough to tackle such a complex project alone and do it better than LJ has done is probably busy.

[sunnydale47.livejournal.com]

Have either of you tried an LJ Client? If you use Windoze, Semagic (http://www.livejournal.com/download/?platform=Windows) is terrific. It's so much better than updating through LJ's update page. It keeps track of everything for you, and it's continually being upgraded with new features (http://community.livejournal.com/ljwin32_sema/). Music detection is automatic if you're listening on your computer, or you can fill it in yourself. Of course there's a space for a title. It's way better than LJ's update page even for those who don't use Lynx!

Besides the ease of updating, it keeps track of your friends list for you, pops up reminders of friends' birthdays, and pops up notifications of when friends (or just selected friends) have posted. It makes it ridiculously easy to edit past posts. It makes text into a link automagically -- you just highlight the text, copy the URL in the clipboard, click one button and it turns the text into a link, no pasting, no typing in the HTML. It completely automates LJ for you in just about every possible way. And whenever LJ adds a new feature, Semagic is updated to automate it.

If you have a Mac, I can't recommend one of the clients (http://www.livejournal.com/download/?platform=Macintosh) over another, but I'm sure at least one of them is as good. Xjournal sounds like it has many of the same features.

If you've tried an LJ client and decided not to use it, I'd be interested in why. I couldn't live without Semagic!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I haven't tried one. I've heard both gripes and attaboys about Semagic, and I hadn't particularly seen a reason to download yet another bit of software (for example, I type HTML a lot faster than I mouse), but this latest breakage might make it worth it.