cellio: (avatar-face)
Monica ([personal profile] cellio) wrote2011-12-21 09:19 am
Entry tags:

new LJ style: ow, my eyes!

They changed the style for the individual-entry pages. The big thing everyone is complaining about is the new comment interface; that's butt-ugly too, but my real problem is that they shrank the font for everything. Browser zoom zooms the whole page (hello horizontal scrolling) and just isn't practical -- if I set a higher zoom for LJ it'll affect all my pages and things like profiles and help requests will be affected too. Ditto for Stylish; I don't know how to have it affect all and only individual entries.

Assuming that they're going to punt on my request to put it back (they usually punt on accessibility requests in my experience), could anyone reading this possibly, pretty please, write me a Greasemonkey script (or Stylish script, if you can figure out how) to put it back the way it was, or suggest some other browser customization that'll do it? Or an LJ style? (They claim they'll offer one in the future, but who knows how long?) I still have some old-style LJ pages in browser tabs so I'll harvest the source for one of them.

Big accessibility fail, LJ! Stop with the assumption that everybody in the world has 20/20 vision please.

[identity profile] alienor.livejournal.com 2011-12-21 03:09 pm (UTC)(link)
There's an option to view the comment pages in your journal style, would that help? I'm assuming that you've set a style that meets your accessibilty criteria.

Once you set your style to include comment pages, adding &style=mine or ?style=mine (which I'm guessing your familiar with, or are using a script) should put you to your customized page.

Here's the options set to put your comment page to a style:

http://www.livejournal.com/customize/options.bml

Display
Presentation
Basic Options
Disable customized comment pages for your journal Yes No

It's the 4th option under Basic Options, if you're having a hard time reading the page. Or you may need to hit the "Expand All" buttons (Find worked to get there), then do a find for "customized comment". I checked, and both sets of words are actually text that's Find-able (at least, in this browser).

I hope this helps, or that you can find what you need!

[identity profile] magid.livejournal.com 2011-12-21 03:14 pm (UTC)(link)
I had already set &style=mine from before, and the new comment format has overridden that, unfortunately, at least in my style (S1).

[identity profile] alienor.livejournal.com 2011-12-21 03:20 pm (UTC)(link)
Is there a particular reason that you're still using S1?

[identity profile] magid.livejournal.com 2011-12-21 04:04 pm (UTC)(link)
It looked fine to me, and I couldn't find something in S2 that was similar, so I never bothered to change. Do you know of a style similar to the old default?

[identity profile] alienor.livejournal.com 2011-12-21 04:27 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm looking at your journal, and it seems that anything in the Classic series (perhaps Everwhite?) would work. Magazine is another that I seem to remember from teh old days that looks to be revived.

From:
http://www.livejournal.com/customize/

There's a search box above the available styles on the right, you should be able to search for "Classic" to return things that look like they're the same styles (there are several color schemes), or you can search for "Everwhite" to get some that have the total whiteness of your current theme.

[identity profile] magid.livejournal.com 2011-12-21 05:26 pm (UTC)(link)
Thank you.

I"m looking at the S2 styles, realizing that I don't love any of them, but could get used to no longer having my friends color-coded to the left of entries and such, but the flattened threading is irksome. I'm not tech-savvy; is there a way to modify a theme so the threading steps more obviously?

[identity profile] alienor.livejournal.com 2011-12-21 05:40 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm not really familiar with S2, I've always solved that issue by picking a theme that has step threading. I don't see an easy way to figure out if a theme does that or not. You may have to obtain the theme id number (by clicking on the +magnifying glass icon in the selection screen; the address bar will be something like http://magid.livejournal.com/?s2id=18783950

Then, append the ? part to a page with comments, like

http://magid.livejournal.com/1615859.html?s2id=18783950

And you'll be able to see what the comment page for that style looks like.

It's annoying that there isn't an easier way, but I don't see one.

[identity profile] http://users.livejournal.com/merle_/ 2011-12-21 05:48 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm not sure what's up with the LJ team these days. I just use Opera and set it to 140% on those windows. It works almost passably well.

The new buttons, though? Huh? This is almost the least important feature they could be working on, and even if they did think it's important they could have tried to do a good job of it.

Let us not mention how the default 'what happens when you hit enter' when creating a post changed from saving the post to spell checking it.

[identity profile] alienor.livejournal.com 2011-12-21 05:51 pm (UTC)(link)
It looks like Magazine or Minimalist may work for you:

Magazine in Everwhite: ?s2id=18783950
Minimalist in Travel Afar: ?s2id=18783950

[identity profile] cahwyguy.livejournal.com 2011-12-21 06:27 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah, the new style is disconcerting. I'd find a workable journal style, and set the flag to view in your style.
ext_12246: (Default)

[identity profile] thnidu.livejournal.com 2011-12-21 06:34 pm (UTC)(link)
0. I'm reading http://cellio.livejournal.com/909127.html
1. I click "post a new comment".
2. I type the comment.
3. I try to change my userpic from my default (Loiosh) to my WTF? icon. The pointer changes to "link:pointing hand" when I put it on either the name of the current userpic or the down-arrowhead next to it -- or anywhere in that icon box box -- but nothing happens when I click it. Check the NoScript icon -- right, whole page is enabled.
4. Since this is really the third time I'm trying this, COPY AND SAVE THE WHOLE TYPED COMMENT.
5. Click "Post a new comment" button at the bottom of the comment section.
ext_12246: (Default)

[identity profile] thnidu.livejournal.com 2011-12-21 06:44 pm (UTC)(link)
0. I'm reading http://cellio.livejournal.com/909127.html
1. I click "post a new comment".
2. I type the comment.
3. I try to change my userpic from my default (Loiosh) to my WTF? icon. The pointer changes to "link:pointing hand" when I put it on either the name of the current userpic or the down-arrowhead next to it -- or anywhere in that icon box box -- but nothing happens when I click it. Check the NoScript icon -- right, whole page is enabled.
4. Since this is really the third time I'm trying this, COPY AND SAVE THE WHOLE TYPED COMMENT.
5. Click "Post a new comment" button at the bottom of the comment section, as opposed to the differently colored "Post a new comment" button at the TOP of the comment section.

ETA: Hey, whaddya know, this time it worked.

6. Before adding the ETA line, observe that the Edit Comment button and the Delete Comment button have, IIRC, been SWITCHED from their old positions, so I have to click the rightmost button to edit comment; the leftmost will delete it. Or maybe it would have started the "you sure you wanna delete?" dialogue, but either way, .

7. Heyyyyy, where's the PREVIEW button. Is that the empty checkbox up top that says "check" next to it? If it is, Dumb Dumb Dorothy, THIS IS NOT THE PLACE FOR A HOMONYM!! Save again and try it.

8. All it does... well, it's not clear what the purpose is, but it doesn't give me a preview. So...

9. Hey, there's a HELP button under the userpic box. ... Nooooo, that just tells me about USERPICS nothing I don't already know.

10. OK, copy again and save again, and click "Post a new comment" again. The one at the bottom; the one at the top has disappeared, maybe when the comment was successfully posted. But now there's another "Post a new comment" link OUTSIDE the comment box, at the bottom. Maybe that's in case I want to post a DIFFERENT new comment before posting this one, and risk screwing them both up. I think I will avoid that one.
ext_12246: (Default)

[identity profile] thnidu.livejournal.com 2011-12-21 06:49 pm (UTC)(link)
0. I'm reading http://cellio.livejournal.com/909127.html
1. I click "post a new comment".
2. I type the comment.
3. I try to change my userpic from my default (Loiosh) to my WTF? icon. The pointer changes to "link:pointing hand" when I put it on either the name of the current userpic or the down-arrowhead next to it -- or anywhere in that icon box box -- but nothing happens when I click it. Check the NoScript icon -- right, whole page is enabled.
4. Since this is really the third time I'm trying this, COPY AND SAVE THE WHOLE TYPED COMMENT.
5. Click "Post a new comment" button at the bottom of the comment section, as opposed to the differently colored "Post a new comment" button at the TOP of the comment section.

ETA1: Hey, whaddya know, this time it worked.

6. Before adding the ETA line, observe that the Edit Comment button and the Delete Comment button have, IIRC, been SWITCHED from their old positions, so I have to click the rightmost button to edit comment; the leftmost will delete it. Or maybe it would have started the "you sure you wanna delete?" dialogue, but either way, .

7. Heyyyyy, where's the PREVIEW button. Is that the empty checkbox up top that says "check" next to it? If it is, Dumb Dumb Dorothy, THIS IS NOT THE PLACE FOR A HOMONYM!! Save again and try it.

8. All it does... well, it's not clear what the purpose is, but it doesn't give me a preview. So...

9. Hey, there's a HELP button under the userpic box. ... Nooooo, that just tells me about USERPICS nothing I don't already know.

10. OK, copy again and save again, and click "Post a new comment" again. The one at the bottom;* the one at the top has disappeared, maybe when the comment was successfully posted. But now there's another "Post a new comment" link OUTSIDE the comment box, at the bottom. Maybe that's in case I want to post a DIFFERENT new comment before posting this one, and risk screwing them both up. I think I will avoid that one.

ETA2: And what *it did was POST THIS EDITED COMMENT AS A REPLY TO THE FIRST ONE. "Obviously" I should have re-clicked the edit icon for the previous one, which is ABOVE the comment input box, at the point of an angle. But as I was looking at my text and getting it centered on my screen, THAT UNEXPECTED PART WAS SCROLLED OFF MY SCREEN AND OUT OF SIGHT.

(Where am I, what number?... OK.) 11. Now I will scroll up again and click that edit icon that the arrowhead, or wedge, or notch, is pointing to. After of course saving again.

[identity profile] magid.livejournal.com 2011-12-21 06:51 pm (UTC)(link)
This is so strange: when I look at this page of comments via Cellio, it's stepped. But when I look at a preview of the styles you recommend, and all the others, actually, none of them are stepped. No clue whether there's something on my machine that's making it all weird, or something else.

I really appreciate the time you've put into this; thank you.
ext_12246: (Default)

[identity profile] thnidu.livejournal.com 2011-12-21 06:55 pm (UTC)(link)
0. I'm reading http://cellio.livejournal.com/909127.html
1. I click "post a new comment".
2. I type the comment.
3. I try to change my userpic from my default (Loiosh) to my WTF? icon. The pointer changes to "link:pointing hand" when I put it on either the name of the current userpic or the down-arrowhead next to it -- or anywhere in that icon box box -- but nothing happens when I click it. Check the NoScript icon -- right, whole page is enabled.
4. Since this is really the third time I'm trying this, COPY AND SAVE THE WHOLE TYPED COMMENT.
5. Click "Post a new comment" button at the bottom of the comment section, as opposed to the differently colored "Post a new comment" button at the TOP of the comment section.

ETA1: Hey, whaddya know, this time it worked.

6. Before adding the ETA line, observe that the Edit Comment button and the Delete Comment button have, IIRC, been SWITCHED from their old positions, so I have to click the rightmost button to edit comment; the leftmost will delete it. Or maybe it would have started the "you sure you wanna delete?" dialogue, but either way, .

7. Heyyyyy, where's the PREVIEW button. Is that the empty checkbox up top that says "check" next to it? If it is, Dumb Dumb Dorothy, THIS IS NOT THE PLACE FOR A HOMONYM!! Save again and try it.

8. All it does... well, it's not clear what the purpose is, but it doesn't give me a preview. So...

9. Hey, there's a HELP button under the userpic box. ... Nooooo, that just tells me about USERPICS nothing I don't already know.

10. OK, copy again and save again, and click "Post a new comment" again. The one at the bottom;* the one at the top has disappeared, maybe when the comment was successfully posted. But now there's another "Post a new comment" link OUTSIDE the comment box, at the bottom. Maybe that's in case I want to post a DIFFERENT new comment before posting this one, and risk screwing them both up. I think I will avoid that one.

ETA2: And what *it did was POST THIS EDITED COMMENT AS A REPLY TO THE FIRST ONE. "Obviously" I should have re-clicked the edit icon for the previous one, which is ABOVE the comment input box, at the point of an angle. But as I was looking at my text and getting it centered on my screen, THAT UNEXPECTED PART WAS SCROLLED OFF MY SCREEN AND OUT OF SIGHT.

(Where am I, what number?... OK.) 11. Now I will scroll up again and click that edit icon that the arrowhead, or wedge, or notch, is pointing to. After of course saving again.

ETA3: But that only posted the partially edited comment, only up to 10.

12. So I hit the LOWER post a new comment button, and that ... put in a NEW comment, with all I had typed so far. I suspect that if I now hit the EDIT again, ... I don't f*kin' know.

ETA4: Yup. It posted what I had typed before. Basically, I THINK, if you hit edit you get one chance to change it. After that it has to be a new comment. I think.

[livejournal.com profile] cellio, I'm sorry for filling up so much comment space this way, but this has to be commented and submitted... as in thrown in the bastards' faces for WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO US?????? ...

13 (uh-oh). And although I THOUGHT I'd hit edit, I'm in Post a New Comment, and I don't know what difference the upper and lower buttons that say that -- both in the color-coded same area -- will make. Save and hit upper button.

ETA5: It did NOTHING!

14. I will try clicking the lower post a new comment button.
ext_12246: (Default)

[identity profile] thnidu.livejournal.com 2011-12-21 06:58 pm (UTC)(link)
And that, for the FIRST TIME since the very beginning, did what I was trying to do: post a new comment to Cellio's post. They seem to have massively fucked up
- editing comments
- the distinction between replying to comments and commenting on the post
- the userpic interface

[identity profile] alienor.livejournal.com 2011-12-21 06:59 pm (UTC)(link)
That's really odd. I see you have a post about this on your journal, so I'll start a comment thread there so as not to keep cluttering [livejournal.com profile] cellio's box with notifs.
gingicat: (Default)

[personal profile] gingicat 2011-12-21 07:11 pm (UTC)(link)
I do get color-coded icons in the style that I use, for what that's worth.

[identity profile] alienor.livejournal.com 2011-12-21 07:20 pm (UTC)(link)
Or they're trying to chase everyone to using an S2 style for their comment pages, because I haven't seen any of these issues. Everything looks exactly the same to me as it has since the last major change.

I can see the interface that you're complaining about, when I remove ?style=mine from the comment page, so it's not a browser issue either (on this computer, which is running IE7 and I can't fix that, display problems are often browser issues).

I seem to remember that support for the default comment page was only added back in grudgingly, so TBTP may have decided to update the code for it.

It looks like it was designed by whoever designed the new google sites, and I hate those as well. Yuck.

[identity profile] magid.livejournal.com 2011-12-21 07:42 pm (UTC)(link)
In S1, a rectangle the length of the post was in whatever color I'd chosen for the person; it looks like in S2, it's just their name in a colored box, which is much much smaller. Time to adjust....
ext_12246: (headbang)

Signal boost: Fixing Livejournal. For real. And then getting away from it.

[identity profile] thnidu.livejournal.com 2011-12-22 07:44 am (UTC)(link)
PSA: Fixing Livejournal (http://mdlbear.livejournal.com/1428834.html), from [livejournal.com profile] mdlbear.
goljerp: Photo of the moon Callisto (Default)

[personal profile] goljerp 2011-12-22 01:12 pm (UTC)(link)
Ugh. I thought it was a problem with my browser at first -- but the new font size is TINY. (I think I'm using the original style by default, 'cause it worked for me when I started doncha know, and I think the new comment thing is pretty 'orrible, too.)

(Unrelated aside: for some reason, on my Macbook Pro, occasionally when I use two-finger scrolling, the browser interprets this as command-plus or command-minus, and I effectively zoom in/out. That's what I thought happened at first -- but I need to increase the font size by two for things not to be microscopic. WTF?)

Re: Signal boost: Fixing Livejournal. For real. And then getting away from it.

[identity profile] magid.livejournal.com 2011-12-22 02:23 pm (UTC)(link)
Both of those points are true, and yet, not exactly right, either. I was happy with my (ancient) S1 style, which I have indeed now changed to an S2 style to deal with their unilateral changes to commenting and such, but the new style isn't exactly what I'd choose. I was happy with S1, and it frustrates me to have to choose something else that I didn't want (not to mention the amount of time spent figuring out which S2 style was closest to what I'd prefer).

And I do cross-post from DW.... except in the middle of a DDOS attack, when cross-posting doesn't work.

[identity profile] alienor.livejournal.com 2011-12-22 03:35 pm (UTC)(link)
That's odd. This link:

http://cellio.livejournal.com/909127.html?s2id=18783950

works exactly like it should for me.

I was having trouble accessing LJ at all last night (thus why I didn't reply last night), so perhaps they were having some server issues. I don't know.

[identity profile] alienor.livejournal.com 2011-12-22 03:37 pm (UTC)(link)
I wonder if they didn't test browser compatibility before pushing it? From here (IE7) the font on the default comment page looks normal, but I suspect that most folks reading [livejournal.com profile] cellio are using browsers with more Geek Cred.

[identity profile] alienor.livejournal.com 2011-12-22 03:49 pm (UTC)(link)
No problem and I'm glad it's helpful! I just wish they hadn't changed things so that we HAD to scramble to find new styles - a warning would have been nice. *sigh*