cellio | LJ: why the new update page is bad

I just submitted the following support request:

(Yes, I saw the note that you're working on problems here, but I'm interpreting that as "doesn't work in some browsers", or last night's date bug, not "difficult UI".)

While it is not as bad as it was last night, the "update journal" page is still too wide to be usable without lots of horizontal scrolling. The hard-coded width of 760 pixels in the content pane (this excludes the sidebar links in the classic style) seems to be the core of the problem. I assume you chose 760 to be under 800, and that you're assuming users will maximize the browser window if need be, but it's a bad idea to hard-code assumptions about a user's environment. It would be better to use proportions and let the browser handle the rendering.

I didn't say this in the support request, but they should think more about how they roll out changes like this. When you change existing functionality you're bound to break something, because you can't think of every combination of browser, usage pattern, special input needs, etc etc etc. In the case of the web site, it would have been really, really easy to provide a "having trouble?" link that went to the old, working form.

Followup: I received the following reply. Doing this solves the scrolling problem; some other aspects of the display are then screwed up (overlapping input areas), but they seem to know about that already.

"Thank you for your report. However, there is no way to view the Update Journal page in the old style. Viewing this page in the new LiveJournal style, http://www.livejournal.com/update.bml?usescheme=xcolibur may solve the screen-stretching problem. I apologize for the inconvenience, but please be assured that developers are working to find a resolution."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

hell, it would have been nice to have a warning in

news or something. Even a request for beta testers for the new UI, since they do have a testing area.

I forgot about the testing area. I wonder if they ran this through it.

I don't know what other changes they made last night, but today my posts keep appearing, disappearing, and producing errors when I try to touch them. Hmm.

what cluster are you on? I am on Chef and I have been dealing with that all week. :-/

Indigo, last I checked. (I don't seem to have stashed the "where are you?" URL -- do you have it?)

I think the problem is that browsers aren't being consistent in how they show the page.

I have no horizontal scrolling on the page at 640x480 (using Firefox 0.10 under Linux). (Of course, I haven't dived into HTML or CSS to see how it's coded, so it may have changed since you posted...I'm not sure.)

As for the date last night...what I found was that it just took a long (excessively long) while for the date to adjust from server time/Pacific to my computer's clock (Eastern).

Interesting. I read the source of the form page to get that 760. Perhaps Firefox is smart enough to say "hey, that's bigger than I am, so I'll ignore it". (It's still wide/scrolling for me.)

The date bug was that for a while last night, if you submitted a post with the form it produced an error, but if you then went to the date field and explicitly selected the current month, it worked. Mind, it's a drop-down menu that was already set to September, but it didn't work if you didn't touch it anyway. Well, apparently it worked in IE, but (according to the bug reports) not in most other browsers. That one's fixed, though watch out for the automatic checking of the "backdate entry" box today.

As I say, it may have been editted...but what I'm getting is:

[textarea style="width: 100%" wrap="soft" cols="50" rows="20" name="event"]

The only place where 760 comes up in the page (that I see) is the code for previewing a post.

But, I think I saw that they'd been working on fixing the backdate checkbox problem, so perhaps this has also been addressed.

Re: Their followup.

I'll note the page they cite is the one you get when you click on the "...", vs. "Update Journal". I normally clicked on the "..." anyway.

some other aspects of the display are then screwed up (overlapping input areas)

I don't see this. Now, I'm running Mozilla; perhaps it is just a problem with a particular browser (I'm not full screen, but about 75% screen).

I'm using Mozilla too. I see the login/password entry boxes overlapped with the date entry boxes. It's kind of weird. I should probably upgrade to Firefox, but I haven't done so yet.

I don't have that overlap occurring. Further, I'm not using the XColibur style; my default style is Dystopia. I'm using Mozilla 1.7.3.

I even tried logging out, and still the login/password wasn't overlapping with the date.

So, given all this info, I think it is an odd interaction between some of your customizations. Take a look at http://www.livejournal.com/manage/siteopts.bml (http://www.livejournal.com/manage/siteopts.bml) and see what option you have selected.

(Note that this is different from your journal style).

I'm using Dystopia.

With Xcolibur I get the overlap (not with Dystopia -- there the page is just too frigging wide). I was wrong; the overlapping stuff is the search box, not login box (I'm already logged in). I saw "username" and misunderstood it.

I guess I should see if upgrading the browser causes the Xcolibur version of the page to work.

If nothing else, we'll narrow down the problem to where it can be accurately reported!

The overlap goes away under Mozilla 1.7.3. (I see that FireFox is still in beta, so I'm holding off. The minimal upgrade that doesn't change my UI is sufficient for now.)

That's good to hear. Speaking of upgrades, I put SP2 on my wife's machine yesterday. I'll see how that goes. So far, so good.

This morning, while the wife and small thing go to religious school, I get to do my monthly highway page updates (plus laundry, cleaning up, etc.). Should be fun.

For xcolibur, under Mozilla 1.7.3, when I activate the dropdown for category, it covers part of the "download a client". No where in that style, either for the top javascript search menu lines, or the dropdown for category, is there any interaction with the date.

I notice that the "preview" looks wierd, probably because the

symbol isn't showing up (it shows up as "[info]"), and they attempt to preview in my journal style now. As a result, the spacing for the <HR> is wrong.

Only if you're using the default "skin" for the LJ site. This might have been before your time (I've lost track), but for a long time the look and feel of the web site was different -- a dark blue sidebar with links to everything that is now accessible only through the javascript-based move-the-mouse-here-and-wait-for-submenus stuff. But they also allow people to set this skin. So my "..." page was a little different than yours was. (That's the one I always used, too.) The link in their reply makes explicit the choice of skin that you get by default and that I'm not otherwise using. Presumably you could substitute something else for "xcolibur" to get what I'm using, except I don't know its name. (My first guesses would be "classic" and "original".)

completely off topic, but happy birthday!!!

Thanks!

The portal (http://www.livejournal.com/portal/) page still looks okay, but that's probably on the hit list.

I'm also going to wish you a belated Happy Birthday. I thought of you in between hacks!

Thanks! I hope you're feeling better soon.

LJ: why the new update page is bad

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