New beta scheme....

[kyrielle]

LJ has a new beta site scheme.

Tried it. Lasted less than 5 minutes. HATE it. The colors make it hard to read and I had trouble finding my friends page. Seriously, how hard is it to make the most obvious "Friends" on the header be your friends page instead of the menu for MANAGING your friends for crying out loud? They say there's one at the top (saw that eventually, faded and hard to spot at first, though) and one at the side (never even saw that one). Really good design. I don't need to see my own frickin' userpic front and center while my most-used links are hidden in a pale font that is HARD TO SEE. I thought Xcolibur (which I use because Dystopia is missing too many links I use, not 'cause I like it) was ugly. This is uglier. I'm impressed, but not positively.

It's blocky, huge, clumsy, ugly, and the contrast bites monkey butt. Seriously, mid-range blue on light blue? What were they thinking? Were they thinking at ALL?

On the other hand, I also hate the nav bar and I know some of you love it. So - check it out if you're curious. Maybe you'll love it, maybe you won't, maybe you'll have feedback, maybe you won't.

Also, I find it highly ironic that lj_design is one of the journals that forces the nav-bar on its users. What idiot thought that setting was a good idea? Why do I not have a counter-setting that says NO NO NO NEVER YOU JERK TURN IT OFF?

Er.

I was stressed already, then I went and turned on a butt-ugly site scheme from a journal with a hated nav-link. Can you tell I'm all stress-puppy and full of the hate now?

Yes. Off to do something not-online as I want no more LJ at the moment after this. I keep wanting to see what's new, and maybe contribute my opinions, but I wish more of the things they wanted opinions on were things I liked more than disliked. :P Oh, well.

The BPAL folks are up through May 1 with shipments. My order was May 9. *sighs* Maybe I'll get it before, say, July 15. I hope.

Comments

[tibicina.livejournal.com]

I think what they mean by 'on the side' is over under the Livejournal in dark blue on black, which I find far less readable than the blues. I don't have a problem reading the blues, but that may be either than I see color contrasts better or may be that my monitor is better or adjusted differently or something. Don't know. I find it... unobjectionable. Not great, not awful. Mostly I'm looking at my friend page, which is in my prefered style anyway.

[kyrielle]

I could read the dark blues. I could read the lighter blues when I looked for them but they were soooo not eye-catching I didn't notice them until I was already saying "where the HELL is my FRIENDS page?" Because the darker 'Friends' option was real obvious to me and the lighter one didn't even catch my eye.

Seriously, it's CSS driven, people. Give us COLOR options, it's not that hard. I know some people like blues, so that should probably be one option, but heavens let me have something high-constrast please.

And don't hide important links in the right-hand side bar which is where I'm accustomed to seeing "irrelevant clutter" go.

[kyrielle]

Interesting. I checked the screenshot in that post - and in that screenshot the blues are much darker/clearer on the upper items than in what I actually saw when I turned it on (on the same monitor!). On the screenshot it almost seems the upper row is the same shade as the lower row. What I saw was this, in which the upper blues look faded compared to the lower, to me:

[tibicina.livejournal.com]

I think the upper row is a /slightly/ less intense shade than the lower row. Or possibly it's an illusion due to the shading of the background because it's against a darker blue background. I'm not sure. It wasn't a problem for me, but, yeah. Now, what is more of a problem is that if I have the window tiled instead of full screen, then the entire top starts trying to overlay in weird ways and it's /AWFUL/.

[malerin.livejournal.com]

If you don't like the nav bar, you'll love this: http://community.livejournal.com/no_lj_ads/25362.html

[kyrielle]

Having to turn it off once more is rude, but fixable. However, the simple fact is, if someone chooses to force it on all their readers...then an external tool (like the one linked in my other post) is the only way to avoid it. That setting is asinine and offensive. I go to comment on someone's journal, or read what's behind a cut, I get that messed-up navbar...bleh. Pain in the rear.

Fortunately, I now won't see it in any case, a fact about which I am positively gleeful. I realize it's useful to some people but to me it's just wasted-space clutter. And it's ugly. :P