Hee! I'm sorry; I try to keep things as simple as I can, but it's a complex topic to try to explain. I'm sorry my comment was gibberish :)
In the simplest terms: a lot of the things the website relies on to let you read comments to your journal, manage comments in your journal, submit answers to polls in your journal, etc, were all really really really old. (LJ was first written in 1999, and we branched from LJ; many of the things have been updated or added since then, but the most basic parts are in their teens by now!) That's good in that they've been fairly well tested by now, so most of the bugs have been ironed out, but it's bad in that browsers and computers have changed a lot since then and how they handle showing you things on websites and letting you interact with websites have changed with them.
We could write our own new versions of all the things, but then we'd be the only people who could fix problems with them. That limits us, since there's only about a dozen people actively working on Dreamwidth at any given time. Fortunately, a lot of these things are things that other people want to do on their websites, too. So people have written "building blocks" of software that can be used in lots of different commonly-needed situations, and made those building blocks available for anybody to use.
Previously, we were using our own custom building blocks, so we were the only ones who could change them or fix problems with them. By switching to the more common building blocks, we get the benefit of everybody else's work, too -- now it's not just a dozen or so people fixing bugs with the building blocks, it's thousands of people who are using those building blocks on lots and lots and lots of different websites. Because people view and interact with those building blocks in lots of different web browsers and on lots of different types of computers, those building blocks have been really well tested and people have found most of the bugs that would take us a really long time to find and fix.
Now, it takes time and effort for us to integrate those building blocks with Dreamwidth -- just like it takes you a long time to build something with a set of Legos even if you have the blueprints to build that life-sized model of a Lego car -- and sometimes there'll be a bug in the way we put those building blocks together (kind of like you not noticing until you're done that you have a blue Lego where the pattern calls for a purple one) -- that's why we're doing this slowly and making sure that people test at every step. But when we're done, it'll kind of be the equivalent of that full-sized Lego car, and since it's made out of building blocks that many, many people use all across the internet, we'll have the benefit of millions of people testing and hundreds of programmers working on the underlying building blocks.
no subject
In the simplest terms: a lot of the things the website relies on to let you read comments to your journal, manage comments in your journal, submit answers to polls in your journal, etc, were all really really really old. (LJ was first written in 1999, and we branched from LJ; many of the things have been updated or added since then, but the most basic parts are in their teens by now!) That's good in that they've been fairly well tested by now, so most of the bugs have been ironed out, but it's bad in that browsers and computers have changed a lot since then and how they handle showing you things on websites and letting you interact with websites have changed with them.
We could write our own new versions of all the things, but then we'd be the only people who could fix problems with them. That limits us, since there's only about a dozen people actively working on Dreamwidth at any given time. Fortunately, a lot of these things are things that other people want to do on their websites, too. So people have written "building blocks" of software that can be used in lots of different commonly-needed situations, and made those building blocks available for anybody to use.
Previously, we were using our own custom building blocks, so we were the only ones who could change them or fix problems with them. By switching to the more common building blocks, we get the benefit of everybody else's work, too -- now it's not just a dozen or so people fixing bugs with the building blocks, it's thousands of people who are using those building blocks on lots and lots and lots of different websites. Because people view and interact with those building blocks in lots of different web browsers and on lots of different types of computers, those building blocks have been really well tested and people have found most of the bugs that would take us a really long time to find and fix.
Now, it takes time and effort for us to integrate those building blocks with Dreamwidth -- just like it takes you a long time to build something with a set of Legos even if you have the blueprints to build that life-sized model of a Lego car -- and sometimes there'll be a bug in the way we put those building blocks together (kind of like you not noticing until you're done that you have a blue Lego where the pattern calls for a purple one) -- that's why we're doing this slowly and making sure that people test at every step. But when we're done, it'll kind of be the equivalent of that full-sized Lego car, and since it's made out of building blocks that many, many people use all across the internet, we'll have the benefit of millions of people testing and hundreds of programmers working on the underlying building blocks.
Does that make it clearer? :)