My comment to lj_design

[wolfwings]

I'll be writing a GreaseMonkey plugin for FireFox to revert this update-page redesign.

Supporting a rich text editor as an option is very understandable. Forcing a design based around rich text editing is not. The previous design was highly effective because it followed basic W3C usability rules in the core layout, not just inflicting W3C usability orders by abuse of HTML tags. Previously, the 'tab key' sequence in the update page was visually trivial to understand, and let you enter the entire post in one go, then tab to the 'settings' box at the bottom if you had to change anything.

Now? The update page is far less usable than it was before for pure-keyboard use. Not everyone uses a pointing device to post on LJ, the whole point of LJ is that it's friendly to large blocks of text. Those that are happy typing large blocks of text will (usually) overlap heavilly with those that want simplisticly-ordered entry boxes and minimal-keystroke-counts for their most common uses.

What statistics, gathered how, did you base this redesign on? If you only based the redesign on supporting more advanced functions later, that is the wrong reason for a redesign of that magnitude. Adding a secondary 'tab' of options to the existing options-box, or allowing people to customise their options-box to include certain options by default, while maintaining the 'E-Mail like' subject+body box at the very top of the update page would be far more functional, IMHO.

Replace the 'rich text' editor with this new update page. Categorically stating you will not return the previous update.bml in any form however reeks of strongarm tactics, despite a huge public outcry easilly on the magnitude of other poor decisions LJ has made and then had to retract. I admire your constitution in wanting to stand your ground, but I find that stance foolish when the community at large has spoken this loudly.

Especially since this 'redesign' was so horribly broken in ways that any proper webpage testing would have trivially revealed. I'm not even talking about multi-platform testing, a single Windows PC with FireFox and the widely-available Web Developer plugin could detect the errors initially included in the page-release. This redesign was forced out early, without proper testing, to critical complaint and yet you steadfastly are taking a very Microsoft-like stance of 'We know better! We won't admit failure!' and are soldiering on.

Good luck. You'll need it.

Chances of it making a difference immediately? Not much. Chances of it reinforcing the grassroots bitchfest that will hopefully revert this poorly-designed, pixel-fonted change? Really damn good I hope.

Comments

[genmaicha.livejournal.com]

The thing that clinched my dislike of the redesign is the fact that, in Firefox, when I select my mood for the post, the width of my moodtheme means that the image overlaps onto other text selections down there. It just looks plain bad, in other words.

[wolfwings.livejournal.com]

I didn't even go into more advanced testing and all the (obvious) problems it would have discovered. When I could, with a single browser available on all major OS's (Windows 2k/XP/Vista, Mac OS/X almost all versions on PPC and x86, Linux on everything, *BSD), with a single plugin that is named something plain-english (Web Developer), detect every single error they've had reported to them, their 'redesign' reeks of a hastilly-rushed-out item so the 'recently departed for greener pastures' developer of said changes can reap the benefits of 'designing the majority of the used pages on LiveJournal' in their resume.

Yes, I'm pissy. :-)