telophase | So...

I switched a while ago and like it better than the old one, too.

I suspect it's mostly the sudden change without warning that's setting most people off, but aesthetic preferences do differ. :)

Via friendsfriends - the font used for the stats at the top is TOO SMALL. Not everyone who uses lj is a teenager with good vision.

And WHY THE HELL DO I HAVE TO CONFIRM I AM A HUMAN?!?! I'm fucking LOGGED IN!

That, I can understand.

Sorry, that was me! :) I set the comments on my LJ to require a CAPTCHA from non-f-listers because I was hit incredibly hard by Russian spambot LJs, and after getting in an argument with one* I got fed up and set that.

* Well, it was really good at picking out keywords in my comments and pasting text in that had flamebait opinions. I did figure it out after a couple of exchanges, though! Eventually!

CHANGE IS BAD!

(Kidding. I was a little startled, but I like being able to show/hide stuff at will.)

I think it looks too chopped-up, and I'll second the frustration about the words being too small.

Most of my trouble with the new user profile page comes from my having major problems reading gray on white and light blue on white. I can handle black on white fine, and dark blue (bolded) text on white is okay. Both light-ish text on light background and light text on dark background make me me feel dizzy. The latter generally looks to me like it's flickering or dancing.

I'm finding insufficient margins on the new layout, too. I find myself feeling overwhelmed by it and having trouble finding the boundaries between different pieces of the profile.

I think there's also a bit of dissatisfaction for me in the type size. It's minute. Of course, I don't think anything should be smaller than 12 point Times New Roman. Ever.

I like the show/hide option but I really dislike the fact that the add/track/etc option set is no longer centered and highlighted in a little menu bar. My eyes skip right over them. I also never cared about the stats so them being up top like that just makes everything look cluttered to me.

I liked the old one better, but the new one has its advantage, most importantly the stats at the top. And I really don't get what all the fuss is about, either.

Yes, I switched when they offered the beta and also forgot about it! I did have some trouble initially finding some things I wanted (like, the first time I needed to text a certain someone ...), but now I'm used to it. (But then, tiny type is not usually a problem for me, and I'm used to dark grey on white because it's what our agency sites use ... .)

My main dislike is the way text scrolls all the way across the page. Which is fine with black text, but the blues for friends makes it hurt a bit to look at. And while I'm not an expert (and have primarily looked at the new profile pages on the computer I'm using at work while my regular one is broken, and that computer has color settings I don't like in general, so that likely skews my perception) the blue seems brighter and the lines finer.

I'm neutral. I'm rarely on that page so it doesn't come close to rocking my little corner of the world. :]

I like how the data is rearranged, however, I think it needs to use colorbars or something besides a thin horizontal line to break up the sections. And that font is really tiny.

It reminds me of facebook, in a way. That's not a complimentary comparison.

There's too much whitespace when you first hit the page. Whitespace is a good thing, but the particular amount hits me as looking like "oh this is a blank page -- no, wait, there's some text hiding around the edges of it". This is probably because of my particular resolution and resizing of Firefox, granted, but it still strikes me as... blank.

Font too small, yes.

Also, if sections are collapsible, why are they all expanded by default, making the page scroll hugely long?

Interests and friends lists have become huge wall-o-text chunks that are unreadable (not that they were great before).

And why, for the love of whatever, are the communities I'm a member of hidden without me CHOOSING it to be that way? >.> I can see people having privacy issues with that, but I've often found interesting comms by way of seeing what comms friends are members of.

I really don't care about the stats and rarely checked them, so to me, they waste and widen the space at the top.

This comes fairly close to my own thoughts on it.

Too much horizontal information. Cannot track. My brain is organized to search for things vertically in a tree or equivalent system.

Also, the type is too small.

Besides the horizontal lines, I'm fine with it. I also participated in the Beta, and I've read many posts about the Beta and upcoming change in the news and LJ Design and what not, I don't understand that some people can claim "The didn't inform me!!" Gah!

I don't like the visual weighting - the expanded add friend/gift/foo/bar/crap thing is the visually heaviest thing (with the possible exception of the usericon depending upon the icon used) on it at most widths. I don't think they understand how to use whitespace, because they don't know how to use it here. I don't like the inconsistent columns and subheaders, I'm not a big fan of the horizontal lines which I think make it visually chunky without good effect, and whenever you have shit like this, yr doin it wrng:

Interests [Edit] [Remove Some]

Interests (121):

Subheaders should not repeat the header exactly, particularly not when there's only one. They do the same stupid thing in "Friends," which at very least should be "Friends" and "Friended:" because of the "Friend of:" second subsection.

I wish they'd hire a designer. The old one was not a better design, but it didn't look like anyone had tried to design it, so simply came across as naive, which means it didn't trigger any design analysis on my part. This one does communicate "attempted design," and so does, and then doesn't do very well, so bothers me. The previous one also had the advantage of not being so text-dense.

I'm not sure how I feel about the new set-up aesthetically or practically yet. I just think having changes foisted upon users without warning is rude and disconcerting because now we have to re-learn where everything is. -_-

I didn't even know it was changing and I don't really look at profile pages a whole lot so it probably wont make a lot of difference for me.

However, I don't think I like it as much as the old style because it seems more cluttered and blocky than the old one. Though there's the same amount of information as there used to be it now seems to be more compact and dense and therefore slightly overwhelming on first viewing.

Editted: Punctuation, the bane of my existence!

Hmm I don't use the profile page much, so I didn't notice a difference at all. I think the idea is good, but the very top of the page looks cluttered. Also the name,birth date,location part of the basic info looks strange to me. I would think that the bolded words would be aligned. It isn't horrible, but as others have said, I see a lot of white space, some imbalance and what seems like textual overload.

My problem with the whitespace is that it's not used properly. Whitespace is good, not wasted pixels. You need it. (If you're an artist, it's "negative space" for text layout, and just as you wouldn't distort a person to cover as much of the canvas with their body as you can to make a better portrait, you don't want to cram a page as full of text as you can for better readability, either.) But you need to use it sanely, and they seem more to be using it by accident.

Yes. Exactly. It is just so random!

It's too horizontal--too many lines going all the way around the screen. I didn't particularly like the old profile page, but I would rather have the screen real estate better used with some column or something to break up the horizontal lines.

But honestly, I don't care that much. I'm happy enough ignoring the profile page most of the time.

Oh it's not as bad as some people scream about it -in fact some of it I'd say is quite functional and good, but I certainly won't lie and say it's looking great either. I do like the information at the top and the new way they have categorized the information and that youc an also hide/cut part of it. Very nice.

My main problem is the (as others have said) the heavy horizontal weight: not only does all block of text span the entire page width but it is underlined by the thin horizontal dividers. The dividers in combination with the simple, practical text makes it look like a base HTML folder category for chrisssake. It also makes the big blocks of texts look even bigger and more confusing (especially so the links for whatever reason). I can imagine folks with a wide-screen monitor going nuts.

However, as said, it has practical advantages and I reckon I'll learn to live with it. Still, an INFORMATION page should be simple but not as simple so that it is confusing. It would be preferable if a first-time visitor to LJ could understand wtf it is about without getting lost. But that might be wishful thinking.

Anyway... I think it's the "basic Info" category that makes me frown the most. I'd prefer it merged with the top information (perhaps as a sub-topic if they insist) instead as a stand-alone divider between the top statistics and the Bio, which somehow just makes both the important 'Basic info' and the Bio get lost.

It looks like what Firefox does when it fails to load pages properly. Bleh.

Also: too horizontal. Also also: the font for several of the important things is too small.

The main font color, varying sizes, and chunks of text alternating with chunks of whitespace are all huge eyestrains for me. I can't say I liked the old profile page, but looking at it didn't trigger headaches. I can't look at this one long enough to say anything about the functionality, and since I have two journals I switch between a lot, which means signing out and signing in a lot, I see the page a lot. I have to brace myself every time.

Ditto. I wear glasses and have to look at a computer screen 8 hours a day, and CHOOSE to look at a computer screen about another eight a day -- if it's such huge lines of text and whitespace, my eyes literally hurt. I recognize I may be on the higher userend for them because of this, but the fact remains that the old profiles didn't cause me physical pain, and the new ones ...actually do. :/ (A-and I have, um... ten journals :/ One of which is a perm account.)

I don't mind it/dislike it, I just personally prefered it being right justified. Also some of the text is too small (and I'm viewing at 800x600).

EDIT---
I also agree with others that it is too horizontal/text boxy(?).

I really dislike the stats being right up there at the top. I don't like that they're the first thing the people see. I preferred them being hidden behind a cut tag at the bottom because for me, they're kind of personal and if people are really interested in seeing my stats, I'd prefer that they have to actively go looking for them, rather than have them shoved in their faces the minute they click on my profile. I understand that more stat-oriented people like yourself may have differing opinions/needs on this though.

I don't like that the buttons at the top now have text next to them, because I think any idiot can figure out what they're for without being explicitly told 'this one is for posting an entry, this one is for tracking...'. I think it kind of dumbs the whole thing down a little.

I absolutely loathe the gray text and arrows. It looks so mechanical. I liked black text much better. I don't like the hide/show features; I liked it better when things like bio, friends, personal information, etc were shown, because really, what's the point in needing to hide that stuff anyway? I hate, hate, hate the line breaks. It makes the whole thing look so much less cohesive.

I dislike the way the userpics and journal name and subtitle are jammed over to the left. I think they should be the focus of the page. (Incidentally, I liked the center-justified thing they had going on before much better.)

The feeds thing on the bottom is dumb; if you're not watching any feeds, it just says 'feeds (0)'. They should remove it if the person doesn't have any feeds listed. As for communities, the 'watching' and 'posting access' really doesn't need to be shown to anybody except the user themselves. Showing what communities they're a member of is sufficient, I think.

Overall, I think the new changes really depersonalize the profiles, and I hate that. It makes each profile into a number, rather than a person's carefully-created profile for their journal.

So yeah, in case you couldn't tell from the above, I really hate the new profiles. XD I understand that YMMV, though, and I'm not hating on people who like the changes, because everyone has different needs and preferences, and that's cool! This is just what I don't like about the changes.

ETA: Forgot to add some of the most obvious things! New profile is way too horizontal, has way too much whitespace, and the text size is way too small. Also, I liked the post to journal/track/etc being boxed and highlighted to make them jump out. I just think the new page has really bad visual flow; the eye doesn't skim neatly over the information, it's forced to jump around erratically trying to find the important stuff amid all the junk and whitespace. At least, mine is!

I actually like it better because the information at the top is more compact so I scroll less!

this (http://community.livejournal.com/lj_design/17908.html?thread=4529908#t4529908) is my comment to the lj-design post, with a mock-up of something that would be more appealing to me personally while also having the stats up higher. i mean, i never use the stats, no exaggeration, so a design that makes that pretty much all that i can see at first glance is pretty useless to me.

more specifically, lots of people have already commented with my reasons: i agree with

nekonexus,

rushthatspeaks, and especially

solarbird.

cicer has an excellent point about the depersonalization, which is a huge part of why i dislike it.

i mean, you used to do manga-flow-analysis. this just doesn't flow well.

i think people are being too shouty-shouty at the lj-design posts and stuff, but i also think that the lj-staff should have... known better, in a way? because people are shouty-shouty about all the design changes. (including me.)

I really like the collapsible bits. I think my only complaint is the tiny type in the top sections. Otherwise, I'm pretty neutral on it.

it is way too wide on my screen. i hate that it kills the sense of joy of creating ones profile that we had before. i know lots of people spent their time on it and now it just doesn't flow right?

i also don't like having all those stats at the top, i rather my bio or at least my name and website only at the time. the font for the journal title/subtitle is far too small and seemingly meaningless now.

Besides the fact the white space unbroken with other colors hurts my eyes, I left my feedback here :)

Certainly, for me, it's not the sudden change. It's the lack of professionalism in the design (seriously, give me 10 minutes and I can mock up an HTML equivalent of it; 'hundreds of hours in design' just makes me go "oh, stop LYING, LJ...") mixed with the eye-hurtiness of what they finally decided on (c'mon, break it up with some blue stripes as per usual or SOMETHING, guys)... yes.

Okay, it took 15, but here, download that and tell me that it isn't of the same approximate layouting skills as LJ. Hand-coded in 15 minutes in wordpad without much copy-texting and not once touching the source code for the profile. This is why, in my comment I linked, I complained how "my Homepage"-y it was.

If I were designing it I'd make the text bigger, though I beta-tested it and didn't mind it too much.

My big objection is that it doesn't work with screen readers (at least according to a comment in

lj_design, I haven't had a chance to try it with my dad's computer). Accessibility is a big thing for me, and I get frustrated with people who think that they can just change whatever on a page and not include alt text, etc.

the stats I'm interested in are at the top instead of at the bottom hidden behind a cut-tag

You're interested in finding out when someone else last updated, how many comments they've received, how many comments they've posted, how many memories and tags they have, their user ID number, the date the lj was created, and the number of virtual gifts given? Statistics are fascinating, I know, but that strikes me as a little extreme.

My objection is that all these pointless numbers are up at the top before I can get to the info *I* really want about a user, which is usually where they are (because off-hand references to 'here' make no sense without) and what their range of interests are (ie congruent with my own or really far away.)

As far as I can tell, the location of the person is still above the fold on most browsers, and I have to do the exact same amount of scrolling to get to the interests on the new user page that I had to do on the old one.

Checking the stats is one way to tell at a glance if the person who's just friended me is a spambot, or in the case of someone with very few posts showing, whether they're someone f-locked down tight who has me on a casual reading list or a new LJ*. I hit the profile link in the LJ notification, check the stats, then if they look promising, hit the front page and skim through the posts to get an idea of who the person is and what they're interested in. And I judge the ratio of f-locked to open: if I can actually see a good deal of their f-locked posts, I'm a lot more likely to seriously consider friending them back than someone who's obviously got me on a casual reading list. It's a way to manage my LJ friendslist.

* I have yet to have any serious problems with stalkers, etc., but a person who quit work at my job location shortly before I was hired, whose job was taken, reworked, given more money, and then I was hired for it, friended me on Facebook although we have never met nor exchanged email nor had any other contact, and he quit this job five years ago. I am VERY CAREFUL about who I let into the f-lock filters for this and other reasons, and a well-established LJ with lots of comments is much less likely to be this guy than a relatively new one.

*looks at comment list*
You seem to have struck a gold mine of opinion on this one (not that it's anything new, given the breadth and diversity of your friends list). :D

I'm still absorbing the change, as I don't look at profile pages often... I'll get back to you.

check out this post (http://community.livejournal.com/lj_nifty/159748.html)at

lj_nifty

It says, in part:

I've taken the liberty to make a Greasemonkey script that, rather than forcing you to one specific layout, lets you pick and choose the tweaks you want to apply to the profile page. You can find the Greasemonkey script here:

http://matrix.theblob.org/greasemonkey/ljprofileadjustments.user.js

After installing the script, go to a profile page and click the "Customize profile >>" link at the top. A box will show itself that allows you to make any of the following tweaks individually:

* Remove horizontal rules from all but the top
* Remove topmost horizontal rule
* Underline all links
* Move user stats to bottom of page
* Remove images on topmost links
* Add more spacing between sections
* Increase the font size of user stats
* Indent interests and user lists
* Reduce overall width of page
* Center the page when width is reduced

click above for more info....

So...

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