Yuck.

[solarbird]

Livejournal is hacking with the user profile page. The changes are, in my opinion, universally awful. Look at your own userinfo page, then add

?ver=ng

to the end of the URL to see the "new look." Here's what mine looks like in "new look" form.

Things I hate: The two-column layout. The pronounced tendency to horizontal scrollbars. The nasty myspace feel. The priourity it gives to "friends" over "biography" - you know, the thing the user actually writes. The fact that it puts the most useful information in the right hand column, the column where sites often put ads, and which is also the column many web readers have learned to block out. Advertisers call this "right hand blindness," and that's where they've put things I care about in the profile. The accidental nasty whitespace that appears in the middle of the second column (of three, in dystopia) if you put anything of any length in your bio. The fact that it lists the last school in your school list as your current school, which is just wrong. The bad wrapping control in the top box, the one that replaces the neat and tidy (and small) icon strip currently used.

Comments on the lj_design thread that I've read so far have been overwhelmingly very negative, but supposedly the comments from the support team were less than overwhelmingly thrilling, but they've gone ahead and referred to that feedback as being "positive feedback" and are so far pushing ahead with the new look. I think it's awful and suggest people here who have LJ accounts and opinions leave your own feedback on the thread I linked to above.

[ETA: None of this is to imply that I think the current userinfo page is good. It's not, particularly. But the new version is significantly worse for anyone who writes a bio or does any manipulation on their userinfo/profile page. For people who don't, the new look is... well, still lame, but not nearly as bad for them as for us.]

Comments

[lisa-marli.livejournal.com]

Eeu. Because I didn't put the dates in for my elementary school (I don't want people to know when I went to elementary school for ghods sake), they claim that's the school I'm currently attending! WTF?!?

Gotta go complain!

[bjorker.livejournal.com]

Oh, yuck. I do not like. Mind if I copy that and post in my journal as well? Or I can re-word. Maybe if they get enough bad feedback, they'll leave it alone? I hope so. Ugh.

[solarbird]

Always, always, always use your own words.

And don't be abusive, I'm not calling jihad. I think they're on the verge of making a big mistake, though, and I want that avoided.

bexone gets it right. Here is her breakdown of why it's broken. I'm still reading; so far I've seen seven people who like it out of 300 responding. Hopefully a 97% disapproval rate (of which I'd say 95% is extremely strong disapproval) will convince them to throw this dog out.

[banner.livejournal.com]

I doubt it. Mama LJ knows best after all. That's why they've started to censor people.

[avram]

Details? If this is the breastfeeding thing, I already know about it, but if this is something else, it’s new to me.

[cow.livejournal.com]

That "search journal" button's still there, despite the fact that their search tool sucks ass.

Ye gods. Call Google already and get it over with.

[firni.livejournal.com]

that. sucks. ass.

[solarbird]

Don't just tell me; tell them too.

[firni.livejournal.com]

at 1300+ comments, I'm betting they're not reading anymore.

[banner.livejournal.com]

I hate people who have to keep changing things to justify their jobs. The new format is ugly, very ugly. It's also non-functional, counter-intuitive and people don't read in columns!

This has so many things wrong with it I can only believe that they designed it by committee.

[solarbird]

Oh, here we go. Somebody figured it out.

"New look" userinfo pages, in xCalibur, without ads, click here.

"New look" userinfo pages, in xCalibur, with ads, click here.

It's all about ad positioning in the areas they think most Sponsoured+ accounts are going to be using.

[emmacrew.livejournal.com]

Ayep, looks like that is it. Screw you perm and paid account people, we're making it look nice for the ads!

[sir-quirky-k.livejournal.com]

That's just damn awful.

I've contemplated moving to GreatestJournal as it was, this has made my decision a no-brainer.

Incidentally; I'm using Dystopia too and I can only see two columns...

[solarbird]

The Dystopia control column is a column. So you've got that as column one (left side), plus columns two and three (the two in the "new look" userinfo page).

[sir-quirky-k.livejournal.com]

THAT would explain it.

[flashfire.livejournal.com]

I'm undecided on this so far. I'd prefer the stuff I write is what's on the left side, personally.

As for the schools, you have no date range in it. That's probably why it shows up. I have dates for all of mine and none of them show at the top.

[solarbird]

Your userinfo gives me a horizontal scrollbar. Most of what you actually write is now off my browser screen unless I horizontally scroll.

Also, it really irritates me that they can't even get a consistent column head across two columns. At least, not in Dystopia.

[flashfire.livejournal.com]

What resolution are you using that causes this? It doesn't happen for me at 1024x768. So, if the "new" userinfo winds up being the standard and it forces people to use a larger screen resolution...even worse idea.

[solarbird]

I don't run applications full-screen. I dislike that very much. My screen resolution is 1024x768, but my browser is narrower than that.

[flashfire.livejournal.com]

How much of the screen does the browser normally take up? I have a few wider images in the normal userinfo so I'm wondering if that causes your browser to have to scroll, too.

[solarbird]

mmm, about, I dunno, three-quarters? I have to scroll a bit to see all of yours, but I can widen a bit and not need to. With the new one, even if I do go full screen, I have to scroll.

[mattsnaps.livejournal.com]

One happy note is that the opaque, un-discoverable image bar for some of the actions you can perform on a userinfo page (add, etc) are now discoverable, by virtue of being textual and being attached to that, uh, gradient doohickey.

[solarbird]

Yes. Too bad it wraps unattractively if you happen to keep your browser window narrower than they do, using it like a column-based reader instead of a replacement desktop.

Man, the testing matrix on this must have been miniscule.

[britzkrieg.livejournal.com]

Great comments. I totally agree. And I feel alienated by the apparently teenager-centric, corporate-sponsored model LJ seems to be shifting too.

Hey... would you be willing to offer a quick critique of a web design I'm putting together? You seem to have great intuition about what works and what doesn't, and just as importantly, why. Lemme know.

[solarbird]

Sure, as long as it's reasonable. What's the URL?

(It's partly intuition, but it's probably partly also my art degree.)

[britzkrieg.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I can't post the URL here, since it contains copyrighted material. Would you mind sharing an e-mail address with me? You could contact me at britzkrieg at gmail dot com if that's OK.

[janne.livejournal.com]

Looks utterly odd to have the bio on the 'invisible' right hand column, indeed. Huh. Hope this ends up being optional if used at all...

[ysabel.livejournal.com]

You just need more friends, then the right-hand blindness problem goes away.

Just take a look at mine (http://ysabel.livejournal.com/profile?ver=ng).

(Not that I'm saying I like it, mind you, but it might amuse you.)