LiveJournal Design

As you may have heard, there has been a number of layoffs in the San Francisco office, including the entire design team. I just wanted to say goodbye and thank you to everyone who has been a part of this community. I know a lot of times, it seemed like your comments weren't being read or heard, but believe me, they were. I promise you, I read every single comment on any post I made (unless the comment was made months later), and read most of the ones to posts I didn't write. I even enjoyed (ok, maybe that's not the right word) the more vicious comments because it was proof of how much everyone cared about what happens to LJ. And that's something I'm really going to miss.

For a long time, the design team was just me. This year, gregorykennedy and lizlux came on board and a lot of usability improvements were being made. I was really looking forward to 2009; there are so many parts of the site I want to fix up—Memories (managing and deleting memories and keywords) and Manage Custom Filters (duplicating a group and inverting, easily separating out communities from journals, etc.) to name a few—and I really thought I'd have a chance to do it.

I am really sad to be leaving. I have been an LJ user for almost 9 years, and would have been an LJ employee for 3 in March. I don't think there are even words to express how much LiveJournal means to me, but I don't think there needs to be because this community is full of passionate users who know what I mean anyway. I don't know what will happen with lj_design, if it'll be handed off to someone else, or if this is going to be it, but this will be the last post here from me. So thanks again, and goodbye.

<3,
chasethestars

p.s. In the next release, the last updated timestamp on the profile page will be changed to be less exact. The date will remain, but the exact time will be gone. (If this change is reverted before then for any reason, please don't come after me with pitchforks.)

p.p.s. The link to beta the consolidated settings page was accidentally removed from the main site navigation. It'll be back next release (you'll have to re-enable it), but in the meantime, the beta settings page can be accessed at http://www.livejournal.com/manage/settings/index2.bml. Or it might be live by next release!

We have been working on the profile page since summer (the initiative was first started 2 years ago). It's been a very challenging and enlightening 6 months. After multiple rounds of betas and feedback, we have something we're happy with, and hope you are too. The usability of the page has greatly improved, and the information is easier to take in at a glance. Thank you to everyone who provided feedback on the many iterations of this page. We could not have ended up with the profile page we did without your input.

The most recent changes we have made:

• Action links are now in a vertical list rather than across the top
• Section headers changed to match the design on the Customize Journal Style page
• Reorganized display of information in the top area
• Moved External Services and Schools below Interests
• Changed AIM service icon
• Added an [x] that will remove the yellow feedback notice

There are still several usability improvements that could be made to the profile page, such as the display of friends/communities/feeds. We will continue to work on those ideas in the future, but will be returning most of our efforts to the Consolidated Settings page now, as well as focusing on other things for 2009.

We look forward to hearing what you think. Please also let us know if they are any bugs.

Known Issues:

• Long schools don't wrap; the whole section folds below
• If you're seeing a white background on the icons in the action links, try shift+refresh and/or clearing your cache
• Action links stagger in Internet Explorer when browser text size is set to smaller than the default

detailbear had a great suggestion of putting Schools and External Services into the Interests section. Both Interests and Schools are ways of browsing LJ for other users, and External Services is another way to connect with users elsewhere on the web. This shortens the Basic Info section, and moves Schools further down the page.

The poll shows a clear preference for Basic Info before Bio. There were comments further explaining some voters' choice that Basic Info only go before Bio if it was just the basic basic info, without schools and stats. This works well with the suggested rearrangement.

Here are the reworked mocks (again, shown as if you're looking at someone else's profile, in which the edit links wouldn't be visible to you):



( page width and links )


We look forward to hearing your feedback on the new mockups.

Journal Styles

• Subject lines in system layouts now link to the entry page (on the Recent Entries page, Friends Page, Day View (every page that can display multiple entries). eta: Known issues in A Sturdy Gesture, Nebula, and The Boxer.
• New journal layout, Minimalism, which has 25 themes:
  • Aquatic Moon
  • Autumn Time
  • Bad Weather
  • Black Pit
  • Claret Mood
  • Crazy Day
  • Crimson Valley
  • Dark Wood
  • Deep Ocean
  • Depth
  • Desert Fire
  • Desert Memories
  • Entries on the Wall
  • Fire Smooth
  • Forest Afar
  • Heavenly Color
  • Notebook
  • November Day
  • Outline
  • Randomness
  • Red Style
  • Stone Age
  • Travel Afar
  • University
  • Valley of Silence

Beta Settings Page

• Security question on Account tab: changed to "question is set" instead of showing the actual question.
• If a change is made but not saved, there is a JS alert on any action that would leave the page, instead of only when switching tabs.
• Site Scheme options now include short descriptions in parenthesis after names: Horizon (site default), Vertigo (vertical navigation), Lynx (light)
• PIN for mobile posting is hidden on set up page (but not in the instructions)
• Changed gray description text to be the same color as the rest of the text on the page (black) so it didn't look inactive/disabled.
• Added text to the top of the page linking to edit profile and journal style.
• Added "Find by Email" choices to "Privacy" tab.

Profile Page

• Added commas to numbers in stats on profile page where they were missing.
• Collapsing and then re-expanding v-gift section no longer introduces huge whitespace.
• Fixed bug which added an extra </div> if Posting Access list is empty.
• Borders on images placed into the "Bio" section of the profile will now show up.
• A post with further profile design changes is forthcoming.

There's been a lot of comments for keeping Basic Info before Bio. The main arguments being that you're more likely to look for your friend's contact info than you are to read their bio again, and that sometimes bios are just full of colorbars and other long things you might not care about. The counter-argument is that the bio is what the user wants to say about themselves, so it should go first.

This poll isn't to decide which comes first, it's to help gauge preference. Please keep discussing in the other post, comments are turned off on this one.

Poll #1305016
This poll is closed.
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

What's your preference?

Communication and Beta

We'd like to clear up any confusion about beta testing: It has always been open to any user to beta test. When something is available for beta, a Beta Features link will appear on the header of the default site scheme, Horizon, and Vertigo, it's vertical counterpart. Features available for beta testing are also announced in news, as well as any major updates made in beta.



To keep up to date on these, if you haven't already done so, you may want to add news to your friends page, or sign up to receive notifications when "LiveJournal.com makes a new announcement".

If you're still using the older site schemes, Dystopia (the purple and orange one) or XColibur (the blue one with your userpic in the top right corner), this is a reminder that they are no longer updated or supported, and haven't been for years. The Beta Features link will not display in these site schemes. You can switch to a current one on the Viewing Options page.

That said, we will also try to make betas more prominent on our side. For future betas, we plan on adding "beta test the new version of this" messaging to the top of each page that will be changed, in addition to the Beta Features link and news announcements.

Change and Opt-Outs

We have explained in previous posts why an opt-out cannot be offered. There are already many use cases that need to be accounted for (logged out, logged in, ads, no ads, viewing your own profile, someone else's profile, communities, feeds, and so on) and all of them would require updating if something were to be changed or added. Having an option to use the old version of the profile page as is, with no updates is also not optimal, as it would also double efforts in Support if someone needed help. New additions would also be missed.

Change is required for LiveJournal to grow and evolve. We cannot keep legacy versions of everything on the site. Major changes are jarring at first, and take time to get used to. In the feedback we have received, many of you have even said you didn't like the profile page at first, but do now after giving it a chance.

Feedback

Just because we are not doing everything exactly as requested, it does not mean we are not listening. Your comments do get read. Keep in mind that the best and most helpful feedback is detailed. If you don't like something, what is it that you don't like about it? How would you prefer it to be done? If something has broken, how has it broken? Details help with investigation.

We'd love to make everyone happy, but everyone uses LiveJournal in a slightly different way, with different preferences. To that end, we're really trying to make the site as usable as possible for as many users as we can.

Proposed Changes

These are some of the changes we are thinking of making, based on your collective feedback. (Click images to enlarge; the view is of looking at someone else's profile)

• Redesigning the top to fit the ad so Bio can come before Basic Info
• Moving Last updated time and comments counts from the top to Basic Info, moving name field to the top
• Changing the headings from the gray rules to blue to match the collapsible sections on the Customize Journal Style page

Let us know what you think, and we'll continue to revise and implement.

We have put together a new post which details out of all the specific feedback on the new profile we have received in all of our previous posts. We did this to let everyone know that we are listening to you, and that this is what we have heard. The following list is not intended to make any judgments on the items listed. We are not saying that these things can or will be changed; similarly, we are not saying that they cannot or will not be changed. We are publishing it to you so that you can know we've heard you on the individual concerns you have pointed out to us. The items are also not listed according to any ranking. So don't be concerned that the thing you're most concerned about is listed at the bottom, as that does not at all mean we consider that item to be the least important.

Once we are confident that we have gathered all the feedback, and we have discussed it internally, we will come back to this community with a proposal for changes to the new profile.

While we've made every attempt to list as much as possible, please comment if we've missed a major point of concern for you. Thank you!

Concerns have been expressed about:

• The amount of whitespace in the overall layout. Seen as unbalanced, visually unappealing.
• The horizontal rules. They break up the page unnecessarily, give a very 'blocky' look to the page.
• The placement of the Bio section. Not given enough prominence, should be moved higher or other steps taken to remove other info to result in it being higher.
• The full page width as the page is expanded. It should have some maximum setting to prevent big whitespace and other issues at really large widths.
• General call for more customization controlled by the user. Ability to drag components around the screen and place where the user prefers. Possibly allow user style sheets to be applied.
• Text size in top section. Seen as being too small in relation to prominence/placement. Tiny text might be OK if the information were at the bottom, but hard to read when presented as first thing.
• More ability to hide certain information. Possibly hide stats block as a whole, hide parts of the stats block, 'blur' the last updated field to not be literal date/time stamp (instead, updated in last week, updated two weeks ago, etc). Have last updated reflect viewer's access level. (see opposite viewpoint in next section)
• To move stats block to the bottom of the page. More similar to old profile, not as prominent. (see opposite viewpoint in next section)
• Tags and Memories listing in Stats block. Why so prominent. Concern over viewers seeing total of tags, even if they can't view the tags themselves.
• V-gift section. Too prominent, should be lower on page.
• Screen readers. Does not work with many, works with a few apparently.
• Underlining of links in the Friends/Comms/Feeds section. Bring this back -- too hard to read without underlining, can't process the usernames as easily.
• Feeds section. Should be disappear if no feeds are listed.
• Basic Info section. Put it lower on the page, or in place of the stats block. No ability to remove it entirely since 'Name' field is always listed, could Name field be added to another section so this is possible. Integrate portions in other locations possibly.
• Collapse setting. Setting should not stick from page to page. Should affect user's profile page only. (see opposite viewpoint in next section.)
• Ad placement/type. Different type of ads might lead to other design possibilities opening up. A landscape/wide/horizontal ad would fit the page better than the square blocky ad, improving flow.
• Heads and sub-headings. They appear redundant in sections like Interests.
• First 'row' of profile. Looks/behaves oddly with that middle column of data.
• The text added to the row of buttons. Text is redundant, some buttons should be added/removed. Icons themselves shoudl be self-explanatory, negating need for the text. (see opposite viewpoint in next section)
• Communities and feeds listing. Should be able to be collapsed 'together', no need to be separate main-level sections.
• Over 500 total friends/comms/feeds watched. Second page list should allow you to view just friends, just comms or just feeds. Grouping all of them together is too hard to process, can't find what you're looking for, etc.
• Various font color or other page element color changes suggested. Make heading text darker, non-white background, certain text larger, etc.
• Schools section. Too prominent.
• Sub-information in sections. Info in sections should be slightly indented under the main heading. More visually appealing, less blocky.

Items where opposite 'positive' viewpoints expressed:

• Collapse setting should remain as it is. Very helpful for permanently 'banning' a section you never care about.
• Stats should stay at the top. Many users use them all the time to judge activity levels before friending or adding to comms.
• If Stats are moved, that might be OK, but don't remove or alter them at all -- they were there before, no reason to remove or change them now.
• Various 'edit/modify' links are very helpful, provide direct access more obviously.
• Text added to buttons is helpful, makes it easier to quickly find what you want.
• The horizontal rules. Help organize information into separate groups.
• Underlining of links in the Friends/Comms/Feeds section.  Links in the profile looked neater without the blue underline.
• Removal of indentation under the friends is more visually appealing on the page as whole.

I just wanted to update everyone on where we are with the Profile design process. We are still reading and addressing feedback directly in this community. It's slow going as there are lots of suggestions. Thanks to fiddlingfrog all of our replies to specific comments have been collected here:
http://community.livejournal.com/lj_design/17986.html?thread=6021698#t6021698

Once we have gone through everything, looked at all the mock ups, and shared all of this internally. We will bring a proposal back to this community to address your feedback.

Please note: constructive and specific feedback is most appreciated. Comments that are simply rude, mean and belligerent only create noise and make it hard for us to address the real concerns.

We have been monitoring all of the feedback on the new Profile. After reading through almost everything there are a few points that we would like to call out:

1. The link to LJ Seek has been removed from the new Profile. This link was always there, but the new design gave it more visibility. Due to privacy concerns that were brought up in comments this has been removed from the page. Please note LJ Seek is a 3rd party service not affiliated with LiveJournal. We have no control over their site. Our removal of the link is not a removal of the site itself or its archiving of public entries. You may wish to visit LJ Seek directly to opt out of their indexing. Click here to opt of LJ Seek http://www.ljseek.com/journal.php.

2. The stats at the top are another item that many people have issues with in the new Profile. These stats were always on the Profile but in the old version they were on the second part of the page that was hidden from view. Many people just never noticed them. We are open to feedback on how we should address the stats in the future. Possible options would be to enable visibility controls for this specific statistic or to research ways to have it show only the last update visible to the viewer based on security levels -- what other options can you think of?

3. The 'Last Updated' statistic is one specific example of a statistic that some users felt was now not in sync with the rest of the privacy controls available on LJ. Again this feature was always on the page and now with it being given more prominence we might want to consider a feature to restrict display.

You can also use the 'Minimize my journal's inclusion in search engine results' option here at LiveJournal to help reduce your journal's inclusion in sites such as LJ Seek or Google. This option can be found here. If you are beta testing the new combined settings page, this option is found on the Privacy tab

4. The roll out strategy for new features is another issue that many people brought up. Just to clarify, we did announce all 3 of the beta launches in news and in this community, and the beta test features button has been at the top of the entire site for over a month on horizon and vertigo. However we don't think that is enough and want to improve our ability to communicate upcoming large changes with users. Here are some suggestions:

• Provide a link at the tops of pages that are being worked on and allow people to preview the changes directly from those pages.
• A system wide email to all users that a major UI change will be implemented.
• Road block or interstitial to communicate the UI changes.

5. As for the visual design issues. The biggest challenge for us is the scaling. The profile page has a lot of customization features that allow for a huge variety in the amount of content displayed. For example some people see ads, and some do not, some people have 100's of virtual items displayed, other don't even allow them, some people display up to 10 IM clients, and wide range of schools attended. The profile page also has to work for both personal journals and communities. And HTML in the bios prevents us from moving to a two column design system, like we have on other pages. While it might seem a simple task on the surface the depth of the design challenge we face is very large. With that said we want more ideas, some of the things that people have comped up are a great start and we are seriously considering adopting some of those ideas, such as moving the stats to the bottom of the page.

6. As for screen readers there have been some reports of bugs that prevent people from using screen readers on their profile page. We are paying particularly close attention to this and want to hear specifically about bugs that people have found in this area as we are committed to accessibility for all users.

7. Though we will not be reverting to the old version of the profile page or providing an opt-out of the new profile page for the reasons stated previously, we very much want to keep working with you to continue to update the new profile page to achieve an end result that most users can be happy with. We hope that the removal of the LJ Seek link is a first step in that process, and that we can continue to receive your specific feedback on what changes you would like to see on the profile page. To that end, on our next production push, we will be including a feedback link on the new Profile page to engage with even more users who may not have seen all the places for feedback mentioned in news or lj_design.

Thanks to everyone that provided us with specific feedback. Please keep it coming.


Update 11:35 am PST

[This was posted in the community and is re-posted here for everyone.] We decided to not allow opt-outs on UI design improvements because it makes the design, maintenance and support of LiveJournal very difficult. If there are lots of different version of the site (like there are now). We have to know each version and design for each version. Adding one button to the profile page requires us to design and test for Basic, Plus, Paid, Logged-In, Logged-Out, Journal View, My View and Community View. Plus we need to also design for screen readers, privacy concerns, language issues and older site schemes. If we have two version of one page you multiply all that by 2. Which adds weeks to design and testing.
</lj></lj>

For people who had HTML in bios that was broken by the new Profile Page design. We just pushed live a fix to correct the problem. If you're still experiencing problems with the HTML in your bio, please let us know.

Update 7:26pm PST
We just wanted to let you all know that we are reading all the comments. We thought that we would post here again to clarify why we are doing this:

• The current profile page does not scale well, and has not been significantly upgraded for years.
• Our goal is to make the primary actions clear. This is why we're adding text next to the button icons, and calling out select actions.
• We also have grouped information together that was scattered throughout the page.

As for an opt-out, the problem is that we have enough trouble making changes to the all the different permutations of LiveJournal that exist now. Going forward we have to be careful about how much complexity we add to the site because it makes the design and maintenance very difficult, and increase our response time to fixing problems.

Please read through lj_design. There you can see the months of history and work that were done on this page. All of our comments and feedback can be found there.

Please continue to provide us with feedback. I only ask that you try to be as specific as possible. That way we can respond to your requests and incorporate your ideas.

Update 11-10-08, 1:04pm PST
As requested, we are removing the link to LJ Seek from the new profile page due to some concerns about how it affects your privacy. The patch will go live sometime this afternoon.

Update 11-10-08, 4:11pm PST
We are still going through all the feedback and should have a response ready sometime this week, hopefully tomorrow.

After months of hard work and three public betas, our new profile page design is now live. We want to thank everyone for all the feedback. If you're interested in reading about the evolution of the design, just click on the profile tag and the entire history of posts will be available for you to read.

For those who have asked about an opt-out option, it's not going to be possible for us to provide that for the profile page or any other significant UI changes. While we would like to be able to support every permutation of the product, adding more complexity at core levels makes it really difficult to design and maintain.

For users that have been with LiveJournal for a long time, it may be hard to understand why we continue to evolve the user interface design. There are a number of factors that go into our decision making process when we make changes to the design of LiveJournal. User feedback is one of the most important ones, but it's not the only factor. Our goal with the profile page redesign and all the user interface design work is simply to make the website easier for everyone to use, which includes new users.

We know that for you, this may seem not very useful, since you already understand how to use the product. This is why we go through the painstaking process of creating beta versions, getting feedback, creating a new beta version and so on and so on until we achieve something that we feel comfortable launching. It's impossible for us to satisfy everyone, but we still try.

The profile page is a very difficult page to design given the personal nature of the information that is on there. The Account Settings project I think is a more clear cut example of how we are improving the LiveJournal experience for both new and old users alike.

Thank you.

Given the feedback on separating out the bio from the profile page, we have decided to reconsider our strategy. Our first post was just a suggestion, and the goal was to get feedback from the community. Please keep in mind that no final decision has been made. But we want everyone to know that our users feedback does play heavily into helping us shape the LiveJournal user experience.

Thank you for all your feedback! The new profile page will go live for all users in the next release (Thursday) with the following changes:

• expand/collapse selection will stick when visiting a different profile
• addition of links to view friends page
• addition of links to edit profile and manage friends
• if you have userpics, but no default selected, the link will be to allpics.bml instead of editpics.bml

Future Plans

For the future, we are thinking of separating the bio out from the profile into its own page. The idea behind this being one is a free-for-all for self-expression, and the other is for standardized information about the user and their account.

The profile would stay an app-styled page containing user info. The new bio page (or "About" or whatever it will be called) would match your journal style, or have its own layout entirely. Maybe instead of a separate page linked from the journal and profile, this would be a tab in the profile.

So far, this is just an idea and we're only brainstorming. What do you think? Would you like to see this happen? How would you like it to work?

By now all Horizon and Vertigo users have noticed our Halloween treatment on the top of the page. A number of people have had questions about the site scheme and I thought we would create a post on the Design Community specifically to address all the questions.

1. Can I keep this as my theme forever? Sorry this is a special update that is only available for Halloween. Check back next Halloween to see what we do.
2. When will the theme expire? The Halloween scheme will come down at the end of November 1st.
3. Does this affect all users globally? Yes, only users with the Horizon or Vertigo site scheme.

Extra Credit: Did people notice Zombie Frank on the logged in home page?

Enjoy your Halloween.

You know the drill.
(To turn on beta testing of the profile page, click the Beta Features link in the header. If you still have this enabled from last time, you should automatically see the new version whenever you view a profile page. You can also append ?ver=2008 to the end of any profile url.)

Screenshots for comparison:

Your Own Profile	Current	Beta 1	Beta 2	Current Beta
(with ads)	Current	Beta 1	Beta 2	Current Beta
Someone Else's Profile	Current	Beta 1	Beta 2	Current Beta
Community Profile	Current	Beta 1	Beta 2	Current Beta

Why the Redesign:

Many of you have asked in our previous posts why we're even redesigning the profile page at all. The current profile page does not scale well, and has not been significantly changed since... ever. It's been one long list going down the page, in no real order. We're redesigning it so information flows better, and is easier to navigate through. ( Read more... )

Challenges in Redesigning:

The biggest challenge of redesigning the profile page is that different amounts of info will display depending on what the owner has filled out and what information has been set as viewable, and to who. Each section can be really long or really short. ( Read more... )

Fixes from Round 2, and Changes Based on Your Feedback:

• Fixed all the bugs listed in the last post.
• Fixed CSS so the Schools text wraps instead of pushing down to the next line which pushed Bio down too. Links in navigation up top also now wrap under instead of colliding.
• Removed the box around the top (looked too much like an ad).
• Removed the link from the journal title (redundant).
• Removed the flag journal link (offensive).
• Redesigned display of Friends/Communities/Feeds for better eye-flow going down the page.
• Added the ability for the viewer of a profile to collapse/expand various sections.

Feedback & Bugs:

Please continue to give us your feedback!

Known Bugs

• The bottom of community profiles touch the footer in XColibur (#)
• valign in bio not working (#)

edited to add at 5:20pm
It seems that there is confusion over the display of v-gifts on the profile page. Only v-gifts received in the last 2 weeks will appear on the profile. After that, they are moved to the v-gift history page. Recipients of the v-gift can also choose to have it removed from their profile page, or delete the v-gift completely. See this FAQ for more info.

As part of our ongoing efforts to make LiveJournal simpler and easier to use, we have consolidated all of the various settings that were scattered around the site into one easy to access place under Account Settings.

For phase 1, we aggregated all of the settings into one place. We made a few small changes to the defaults (only for new users), but haven't removed anything. The goal for this phase is to simply take stock of what we have. We now want to open this up to our beta testers and get feedback. Your feedback will be incorporated into phase 2.

Please Note, you can't view these changes unless you have beta testing turned on. To turn on beta testing of the Account Settings, click the Beta Features link in the header. Once enabled, you should see the new version whenever you click the Account button in the header at the top of every page.

The new Account Settings page can be viewed here

The specific changes to the UI are as follows

1. Settings from the following pages have been aggregated into one Account Settings:
   • Manage Account (/manage/horizon.bml) image
   • Viewing Options (/manage/settings/) image
     
   • Manage Comment Settings (/manage/comments/) image
   • Manage Message Settings (/manage/subscriptions/) image
     
   • Go Mobile with LiveJournal (/manage/mobile.bml) image
   • Choose Your Ad Settings (/manage/account/adsettings.bml) image
2. We added a page where you can ban and unban users from your journal and any community that you maintain. It can be found at the bottom of the Privacy tab.
3. The options for showing your LJ Talk online status and disabling v-gifts have been moved to the Edit Profile page.

Submit your Feedback
We are looking for specific feedback on how we can improve the Account Settings even more. Please keep in mind that our goal is to make LiveJournal as easy as possible to use for everyone. Ideally, this means trying to identify features that we can simplify, explain better or even remove. Because we have a small team, the more complex the product is, the more difficult it is for us to design for and provide support to our users.

Here are some ideas that we would like to implement for phase 2 of this project:

1. See if certain settings could just be removed so there is just less for people to learn.
2. Rename certain features so that it's easier to understand what it is they do.
3. Rewrite the FAQs so they better explain features.
4. Find other areas where we can simply de-clutter.
5. Create an advanced setting tab. This could contain legacy settings which might be difficult for new users to understand.

We'd love to hear what you think about this new page, as well as any ideas you have for how we should proceed with phase 2.

Thanks.

To turn on beta testing of the profile page, click the Beta Profile Page link in the header. If you still have this enabled from last time, you should automatically see the new version whenever you view a profile page. You can also append ?ver=2008 to the end of any profile url.

Here are some screenshots comparing the current profile page on LiveJournal, the profile from the last beta, and the new profile that's in beta:

Your Own Profile	Current	Last Beta	New Beta
(with ads)	Current	Last Beta	New Beta
Someone Else's Profile	Current	Last Beta	New Beta
Community Profile	Current	Last Beta	New Beta

The main feedback from the last beta was that there was too much white space, unbalancing the page (when there is no ad), and that schools was too large/prominent. A lot of you also felt that the Tell A Friend and To-Do List links weren't useful on the profile, and that there should be a link to the tags page.

We redid the top section.

We decided on a standardized set of action links that are always present on the page. If you don't have access to a particular action, it will be disabled (e.g. a user has disabled v-gifts, or a community that allows only select members to post). The links for each view are as follows:

Your Profile: Add/Modify Friend, View Journal, Post an Entry, Tracking, Send V-Gift
Someone Else's Profile: Add/Modify Friend, View Journal, Track User, Send Message, Send V-Gift
Community Profile: Join/Leave, Watch/Modify Watch, View Journal, Post, Track, Send V-Gift
Syndicated Feed Profile: Subscribe/Modify Subscription, View Journal, Track Feed
Open ID Profile: Add/Modify Friend, Track User, Send Message, Send V-Gift

Other elements of the top section include journal info and stats (number of entries, last updated, comments, Memories, tags, ScrapBook files), account stats (LJ user number, join date, Support points, v-gifts), and account type.

( other changes )

Feedback & Bugs

As always, we welcome and appreciate your feedback. If there's something you don't like, please explain why you don't like it, and suggest alternative ideas if you have any. Please also let us know of any bugs you find.

Known Bugs

• The last updated date on accounts with 0 posted entries is incorrect.
• Missing anti-spam on IM addresses (#)
• Account level is misaligned in older site schemes (Dystopia and Xcolibur) and Lynx
• Overlap in lower resolutions
• The way schools wrap when length is longer (#)
• Sometimes "comments" isn't plural when it should be (#)
• Journal title for OpenID profiles link to their journal, which does not exist (#)
• It says "Modify Friend" instead of "Add Friend" when someone has you added as a friend, but you haven't add them yet.

• For Paid and Permanent users, ?style=mine is now available as a persistent preference with toggle on/off in the nav strip. More details in paidmembers here.
• Graphic Previews (Snap) is now a viewer option rather than journal setting. More details in news here.
• Changed "Change Journal Theme" to "Change Journal Style" and "Customize Journal Theme" to "Customize Journal Style" in the Journal menu on the main navigation.
• HTML fix in Expressive and Mixit layouts (they were missing closing divs).
• Fixed alignment in Writer's Block on the homepage.
• Updates to Profile Beta.

I know that it has been a long time coming but I wanted to officially announce my arrival here at LiveJournal with the redesign of our community. My name is Gregory Kennedy and I started here at LiveJournal about 4 months ago as the new Global Creative Director. While it might sound fancy, my job here is simple: to help guide the design teams in both the US and Russia.

Some of my goals for LiveJournal and the teams are:

1) Improve the overall usability of the product. I simply want to make it easier to do all the things that are unique to LJ. We have already started making some small changes that people may have noticed (like the new footer). But we have plans to make a lot more changes. Some of the projects we are working on include consolidating all the different settings from around the site into one easy to find place. Another ongoing project we are working on is to improve the design of the profile page. A new version of the page should go into beta sometime this week

2) Give the LiveJournal brand more love. The actual brand of LiveJournal has a rich history and is really fantastic. But no one was ever directly responsible for it. Some of the work we have done in that area is to create a style guide with a design framework for both the US and Russia teams to follow. This way there is more consistency and we act as one company. Another example of our new design direction can be seen with our corporate site: www.livejournalinc.com

3) Help make LiveJournal great. I think that LiveJournal is a great product and has so much potential. In addition to the core team that has been with LJ for a long time, there are a lot of new people here working with me. Together we all have a lot of ideas about how we can improve LiveJournal and make it truly great. I won't go into all the details, but we are working on a bunch of exciting stuff that that fits within the spirit and heritage of the LJ.

We also have a new team member here in the San Francisco office. Liz Luxenberg (LJ username lizlux) just started working with chasethestars and myself. She is a very capable and talented person. We are both happy to have her on the team.

Lastly I just want to say that I welcome feedback from the community. LiveJournal is a company that values our users and wants input. We actively manage this forum and read all the comments posted in it.

• updated the visual design of the footer that went out in the last release: before/after
• added a link to contextual hover menus to send a user or community a v-gift

We're still working on alternate ideas for the profile page redesign. One of the things we're thinking of doing is removing the links for Tell a Friend and To-Do List. These would still be accessible, just no longer linked from the profile page. Thoughts? Anyone strongly opposed to this idea?