Update on entry/comment page changes

[denise]

We are aware of the issues that people are having with the entry/comment page changes and we are working, and will continue to work, to fix them over the next few days. This entry covers what we know, what you need to know, and what we're doing to fix things.

DISPLAY BUGS

* If your font size is unspeakably large, please check both your browser default font size and check the current magnification level you've set for Dreamwidth and Dreamwidth journals. Most browsers will remember your last-used magnification setting on a per-website basis, so if you changed your magnification on DW in the past because the site was setting a smaller-than-browser-default font size, it is probably now too large now that we are using the browser default font size. This has been the root cause for lot of the people reporting extremely large font sizes, so take a moment to check.

* A number of page elements in all of the available site skins are either missing background colors or are having the wrong background colors applied to them (highlighted backgrounds too bright, wrong color, bad contrast, etc). This is a bug and will be fixed as soon as possible.

* A number of page elements have the wrong padding, margins, or line-spacing. This is a bug and will be fixed as soon as possible.

* User-supplied CSS in entries (character sheets, tables of contents, icon tables, etc) are inheriting wrong padding, margins, or line-spacing. This is a side effect of some of the other CSS changes we made: we try to exempt user-provided CSS from sitewide CSS changes, but sometimes when we change the order in which site CSS files load, things behave differently even if we didn't deliberately change any of the CSS that targets those elements. I don't know how much of that we're going to be able to fix, because nobody has had the time to look at it yet, but please give us a week or so while we figure out what's ultimately causing it and see what we can do.

* Third party extensions such as userscripts, Stylish changes, custom site skin CSS, and the like have changed how they behave -- this is due to the changes we've made to the underlying HTML structure of the page, more about which in a moment. The creator of those third-party styles and add-ons will need to figure out the changes that need to be made in order to get it working again; you can let the author of the specific one that you're having the trouble with know that we're happy to help them if they need assistance.

VISUAL/ACCESS ISSUES

People have reported a photosensitive-vertigo (PSV) reaction (that's the fancy shorthand for "this website makes my eyes/head/etc hurt, gives me migraines, etc") to the new version of the entry/comment pages. PSV has multiple causes, each individual's PSV triggers are different, and scientific research into what the most common causes/triggers are is in its infancy. There's no single checklist or automated test for design elements that are most likely to cause PSV issues. We've done our best to create one, and we check everything against that checklist, but it will never be perfect, because things that fix one person's PSV can trigger another's.

The good news is that all the research points to PSV problems being a sort of collection of cumulative triggers: with the exception of strobe-related epileptic issues (which are actually a completely different section of the brain and different underlying cause), most of the very small number of people who are likely to experience photosensitive vertigo issues can tolerate one or two things that might be a PSV trigger on any given page and only begin to experience issues when things go past a certain threshold, which is why small changes can cause or fix problems.

We believe the vast majority of the PSV-related issues people have been experiencing are due to the above display bugs -- the three most common causes of PSV issues are certain intervals of line spacing (bug, line spacing changed for some elements due to misinherited CSS), missing or wrong contrast colors in specific spots (bug, a lot of things got the wrong colors due to misinherited CSS), and tall blocks of text or page elements that are consistently wider than about 80 characters' worth of size^[1] (bug, some things are the wrong width due to misinherited CSS).

We are reasonably confident that fixing those display bugs will fix the problem for about 90% of you who are reporting issues, at which point we'll be able to get better data on how many people continue to have problems after the known-to-be-likely causes are handled. If your photosensitive reaction is severe enough that it would harm you to keep using the new version of the entry/comment page over the next few days while we push fixes as we can fix them, you can go to the beta features page and enable the button under the second heading, "Temporarily revert updated journal page components", for a few days. Please then go back to that page in a few days, after we're able to fix the display bugs, and turn it back off again so that you're able to evaluate whether those fixes are enough to fix the issues you're having; if they don't, we will want to hear about it then.

We are not ignoring the fact that people are reporting photosensitive vertigo issues, but you don't need to let us know until we fix the display bugs I've listed above. We're very sorry for the problem.

If you've had particularly severe photosensitive reactions to any website, not just DW, in the past, I'd like to urge you to activate the beta testing flags whenever we mention the release of a new one in dw_maintenance, because that will let you let us know when our methods of avoiding the problems aren't sufficient for a particular change or redesign as early as possible in the process. We use both the ongoing beta feature sets and one-off new beta feature sets as a method of trialing new designs for many more uses and use cases than we can catch in our extensive pre-beta testing, and the more people who activate each beta feature set, the better data we get.

^[1] This would take a whole lot of digression to explain: the short version is that human brain expects certain visual ratios in content blocks based on how large the text we're reading is, and for some of us, when we don't get them, our eyes or brains complain. This is about half the reason why every site skin without a sidebar restricts text to a certain length across even very wide screens, the other half being that long unbroken lines of text are bad for triggering dyslexia issues. Side note based on this principle: if you're having photosensitive vertigo issues and have installed an extension or user style to increase the width of text or of site elements because you're using a higher resolution monitor and have the site window fullscreened, you may be better off disabling the extension, and instead reducing the margins by tiling your windows. It's not a guarantee, because again everyone's triggers are idiosyncratic to an extent, but it is one of the very few triggers that's widely identified.

"THE OLD VERSION"

An extremely common question people are asking is why we can't just let people continue to use "the old version". This particular change isn't a new site skin or a purely-visual redesign: it's part of the ongoing-since-2012 process of converting the underlying code that generates the site to use industry-standard, widely-available frameworks instead of trying to manually reproduce 20 years' worth of advances in frontend web development by hand with a team of only a few people. Every page on the site needs to be converted. We've been doing it bit by bit, and this particular change has been the conversion of the entry/comment page -- probably the second-most-complicated conversion we have still outstanding.

We've explained this ongoing project before, but since it's been long enough that people either don't remember the explanation or weren't DW users yet: These changes are necessary, because without them, we can't make any of the changes that people ask us for without something that should be a few days' work turning into a nightmare of months upon months of debugging, edge cases, and programmer tears. It isn't possible to keep "the old version" of the underlying code, because the entire purpose of the changes are so that we can finally, finally stop maintaining a custom HTML-like markup "language" that was created in 1996 and that we, LJ, and other sites using either the LJ or DW code are the only sites on the internet to ever use. It's not only a massive barrier to entry for people who want to start contributing to the project, it's frozen with the features that were available on the web in 1996 and every single modern web feature we or our predecessors have been able to bolt on top of it since then, including such basic things like "leave a comment without having to load a separate page" and "make it possible to choose a user icon and see which icon you chose", is one more layer of things that have the potential to break in modern browsers, needing us to spend hours or days diving into bugs and issues that should be a few moments to fix. We cannot keep the old version, because the old version is a twenty-year-old bolted-together mess that has become impossible to maintain.

This is pretty apocalyptic language, I know. We've all resisted using that sort of language before, because when we do it sounds like we're saying that the site is made of silly string and tinfoil and may explode at any second or that we don't know what we're doing. (The site is not made of silly string and tinfoil, it is not likely to explode at any second, and we know what we're doing.) However, it's become clear that by not saying, very bluntly, "if we do not modernize certain parts of the codebase, we will eventually never be able to do anything to the site other than chase various display glitches ever again, and that day is a lot closer than it should be", we've failed to convey the urgency motivating those modernization projects.

It's virtually impossible to keep a page's styling looking similar when you're going from one underlying modern framework to a different underlying modern framework, much less when you're converting the eldritch probably-haunted katamari of handwritten-in-a-text-editor-in-1999 HTML and CSS that lies at the heart of every page on the site we haven't converted yet. Part of the reason the conversion and modernization is going so slowly is that we're trying very, very hard to keep as much of the converted pages looking like the old code-katamari version as much as is possible within the limits of what technology is possible; when it's not possible to match the old visuals (such as when the old visuals rely on HTML tricks that are old, outdated, or deprecated), we've been trying to modernize smartly and in ways that get us useful benefits.

CIVILITY

I won't lie, another part of the reason this conversion project is going so slowly is because it is exhausting, demoralizing, and discouraging to receive a flood of abuse after every page or page-element conversion when people assume the worst possible motives or accuse us of making changes in bad faith. We are human beings who work on this project (mostly in our spare time) because we believe in what we do here, but it's incredibly hard to motivate yourself to do something that you know has a 100% chance will get you cursed at, called a moron, and accused of not caring about people.

We've left the comments to the previous dw_maintenance post screened, and I have set all comments on this post to automatically screen, because we can either moderate the public discussion or we can fix the problems people are cursing at us over, and right now we are choosing to put our attention to fixing the problems. Yes, we want to hear when there's a problem, and we want to hear people's feedback about changes we make and how we can make them work better for you, but there's a difference between "the display of this thing changed, was that intentional?" and "this is fucking garbage and you should be ashamed of yourself". (I am only slightly paraphrasing.)

At this point, please wait for us to fix the already-reported issues before you report any additional visual, display, or design problems: the vast majority of issues that people have reported in the last six hours are duplicates of things that have already been reported, and the fixes for the first round will affect the fixes for subsequent rounds.

UNRELATED BUT WHILE I'M HERE

* Facebook has placed DW on its blocklist of prohibited domains to link to. This means nobody will be able to link to any Dreamwidth page from your Facebook account. We don't know why they made that decision, and they deliberately make it difficult to appeal or contact them about it. We'll do what we can to try to get answers from them later in the week once we've handled the above collection of issues, but if you're a FB user affected by this, you may want to contact them as well.

EDIT: someone knew someone who knew someone, which is the only way this apparently ever gets fixed, so linking from FB is working again!

Comments

[mergatrude]

Having recently witnessed how badly a site redesign can go *cough*ravelry*cough* I am - AS ALWAYS - impressed by your care and dedication to your user base. So sorry to hear that some people are so entitled they can't be patient and polite.

As an émigré from LJ, this site is so important to me. So thank you everyone associated with DW from the bottom of my heart.

*sends virtual cookies*

[efficio]

Again, thanks for the work you guys do on this site. I can tell it's a labor of love and I greatly appreciate being able to come here and use a site without ads, without censorship, etc. and with a responsive dev team.

That being said, I do have a question I've had since the update went out. The page numbers now look like this, lacking a background:


I've done my best to approximate how they used to look:


I noticed someone else brought this up last night but I couldn't figure out by your responses if this was an intentional change based on accessibility (if it is, that's fine, although I personally preferred it the other way) or if it's a bug. I'm just curious which it is?

[gorramwolf]

Thank you for your hard work, thank you for all you have done. Those loud abusive voices do not speak for all of us, or even most of us. We're with you. You've made DW our home, and we are here to say that we give a damn. Thank you for all you have done.

[peaked]

ftr, I found the way you commented to users to be professional and not dismissive at all. (You were blunt and to the point, which is something I value as someone who speaks the same way to people I provide a service to.) I'm pretty sure you were far more concerned in gathering the information you needed (from quite explosive emotional outbursts) to begin implementing fixes to bugs vs. coddling people.

You're also justified in being upset considering users here were behaving like you and Denise were personally out to get them. Thanks for all of your work and for the volunteers who also provide support to Dreamwidth's services. ♥

[kareila]

Always happy to help the antispam team get the tools they need to make their job easier!

[stealthsystem]

Just wanted to come by and thank you all for what you do. It's not easy working on a website like this, and people can sometimes get so entitled.
Sorry about the abuse. Good luck with the bug-squishing.

[china_shop]

♥ ♥ ♥

[billroper]

Good luck! I am happy that I work on back-end development, not the front-ends. :)

[lxe]

I don't have a facebook account but my friends who do found that a link shortener would do the trick.

[insanityprelude]

That's a weird move on Facebook's part. But it's Facebook, so it probably means you're doing something right, heh.

I'm sorry people have been such jackasses over this. I actually feel kind of bad for leaving negative feedback myself now. Change is tough, but I'd rather have a working site than a totally busted one, so if the code redo means things look a little strange for a while, I'll live!
If there's still a site on the web whose leadership actually cares about their users as something other than a payday, it's this one; thank you for all that you do.
(Especially the changes in the name of saving the RPers! ;))

[mindways]

Sorry to hear y'all have been catching flak - I'm entirely happy with both your communication and the results I've been seeing. (And the code tour of June 18 - July 18 was possibly the most entertaining changelog I've ever read.)

I know what a pain it is to modernize codebases that badly need it (especially trying to keep things looking similar!), and how much *more* of a pain - a long, protracted, death-of-a-thousand-cuts pain - it is to *not* modernize codebases that badly need it.

In your shoes, I don't think I'd be as patient as you've been with the complaining. Thank you *very* much for all the work y'all do!

[bosombird]

Thank you for taking the time to keep us updated, Denise! It's good to hear that a lot of the photosensitivity-related problems seem to be down to bugs like you suspected. Hopefully it won't be too much of a hassle to fix everything! I'm one of those people that had issues with the changes as initially implemented, so I'll have to stick with the old journal page components for now, but I look forward to actually being able to check out the changes properly once everything's ironed out, and the improvements on the mobile side of things are welcome too.

I don't have much experience with web design specifically myself, but I've had to wrangle with coding for other projects before, so I can sympathize when it comes to old code bogging everything down. And the basic LJ code this site was based on is old by now; with how much browsers (and the internet in general) have evolved since then, I can't say I'm surprised to hear it's been a problem. Thanks for putting in so much work behind the scenes - it's gotta be a pain trying to modernize everything, especially while still keeping the site looking similar, but it's definitely appreciated.

[tanya_salpe]

Thank you very much for all your work ❣
PS
Why is my comment not visible? ☹ How can this be fixed? Thank you

[subsequent]

I'm not seeing any issues myself, just consider me part of the drive-by squad dropping LOVE AND PRAISE for all the work you put into this place.

Thank you for your effort and your time and your labour into building a place on the internet that still feels like a community. Those with complaints might shout the loudest, but know that there's definitely people cheering you on from behind the screen.

Thank you!! ♥

[noneforall]

Hey there! I usually don't pop into any of these announcements because I'm usually pretty happy with my DW experience and if it isn't running smoothly I can normally get help from the community to tweak things (and in fact a lot of the community has been great in finding ways to hang in there while waiting for fixes!) or just wait until I get used to it.

So sorry for how loud and messy the last post got, but I do appreciate that you guys took the time to listen and respond to individual concerns; it's always stuck with me that despite how frustrating things can be and as you described lots of yelling whenever something new happens or changes you guys are willing to sit down and explain what happened and why it happened even for those of us out there who can't make heads nor tails of code or how it presents on a website!

Anyways, I also wanted to check in and say that I just noticed Tropo Purple has been fixed up and is no longer neon! This is wonderful news for both mobile and incognito browsing, and was much faster than I was anticipating given all you guys had to deal with, so I just wanted to say thank you for that! It looks like proper padding is also back for usernames/datestamps on comments, and the comment box looks less squished than before, so kudos for those as well. All of my userstyles are pretty much fixed and up to date (bless you, DW community) so I'm happy as a clam at the present time.

(P.S. I ALSO FORGOT TO SAY THAT MOBILE IS BEAUTIFUL NOW. I had so much eyestrain and flailing with zoom before to try and be able to read things, especially when threads got long. This is SO MUCH EASIER TO READ. This goes for the mobile commenting feature, too, I literally could not read what I was typing in the box before so this is really going to cut down on typos. :D)

Best of luck with figuring out the rest of the bugs and also the continuing CSS overhaul. I'll try my best to check out the beta stuff once in a while... I tend to be very forgetful that that is even a feature but hopefully more of us RPers have learned about it with this whole kerfuffle and you guys will get a wider beta testing audience as well. :))

[swaldman]

I'm sorry to hear that things are getting abusive. Y'all don't need that.

If you collectively figure out the best way to complain to Facebook, would you mind sharing that? I think most of my readers come by FB and twitter, rather than DW reading pages, so being unable to link will be a problem....

[legendarychampion]

Just adding my voice to the comments thanking you for your hard work.

I haven't had time to go through the entirety of the comments in the last post or this one, but it's really sad to see people engaging Dreamwidth staff in bad faith. I know everyone's been burned by social media and I've personally had issues with certain things myself, but come on.

[lavendertook]

You have never done wrong here with DW and I hate that there are people giving you a hard time and saying nasty things about any changes you need to make and all the work you put in. But of course there are people acting like this because it's the internet, and it's people using it instead of cats who would just purr and stare at you with their cute little faces until you fed them again. Someday, humans will be replaced by cats and the world will be healed, scratched up and knocked over, but over all healed. Until then, thank you for all you do for us through this site. Carry on and screw the haters.

[yurikhan]

I might sound redundant here but I think you could use a bit of this particular kind of redundancy.

Thank you for evolving DW to replace prehistoric BML (sp?) with modern HTML.

Thank you for respecting browser default font size.

Thank you for respecting browser default colors and font typefaces if you’re going to. If not, thank you for having custom themes that let us configure our journals to respect browser default colors and typefaces.

Thank you for keeping the site readable in a window smaller than the whole screen, without horizontal scrolling or zooming out.

Thank you for being transparent about the oncoming changes.

[emperor]

Sorry you're getting abuse :(

[igenlode]

It's not only a massive barrier to entry for people who want to start contributing to the project, it's frozen with the features that were available on the web in 1996 and every single modern web feature we or our predecessors have been able to bolt on top of it since then, including such basic things like "leave a comment without having to load a separate page" and "make it possible to choose a user icon and see which icon you chose", is one more layer of things that have the potential to break in modern browsers, needing us to spend hours or days diving into bugs and issues that should be a few moments to fix.

Please, please don't remove the ability to comment by loading a separate comment page instead of using some kind of JavaScript-driven live page-content-resizing -- I'm not using JavaScript, and every time a site does this I lose access.
I've always understood that part of the Dreamwidth ethos was the ability for pages to degrade gracefully; when you accidentally made it impossible to set dates on a post without JavaScript, for example, you apologised and changed it to allow a fallback option.

(And, as others have commented, while I personally am very grateful that this last code push has made it possible for me to post comments again *at all*, the new comment box being only three lines high does make it a lot harder to post well-composed and well-thought-out responses.)

[igenlode]

Yes, I was interested by the photosensitive vertigo thing, given Ravelry's issues, which at that point I hadn't heard of anywhere else...

[dr_zook]

You guys are literally the best. Sorry for all the crap dumped on you. Stay golden! ♥

[etfb]

Looks like Facebook is no longer blocking DW, at least:

[moongoddex]

I didn't comment on the last post because I had no issues with the update.

I'm sorry you've been getting so much flak. I think people are used to big sites who don't care about their userbase so much as they care about profit - but I appreciate and love this site does things differently. It doesn't excuse it, but I figure that's where some of it comes from.

Plus, I love that this is all coming from a place of accessibility. I've not had accessibility issues myself on DW but there's so many other sites I struggle with that I just expect will never address issues I have. So, even if this isn't directly benefiting me, I'm very happy to see it. Gives me even more faith in you.