Poll: Form and Function

[thefourthvine]

So, I've finished tagging all my entries. Notice my index posts that allow all of you, including anonymous users, access to all my tags.

Notice that they look fucking awful. And the print is tiny, so I'm not even sure anyone will use them. Plus, I seriously do not want these to be the top entries in my journal for however long it takes LJ to put a "Tags" link on the info page; looking at them depresses me, and I'm probably the only person who actually looks at my journal regularly outside of a friends list.

But, on the other hand, I did tag all those posts. I have no idea what the point was if I can't find a way to let everyone use them to search by fandom and theme. So this poll is asking, basically, for you to identify the lesser of the evils, because they all look fairly evil to me at this point.

And while you're here, could you weigh in on other appearance aspects of this journal? I mean, if I'm going to pitch a major wobbler over the hideousness of my index posts, surely I could also spare some time to worry about the fact that my journal is, well, pretty darned hideous? And that it may also make other people's friends lists hideous?

I mean, OK, I'm going to spare that time anyway, so I guess what I really want is for you to spare enough time to form an opinion. I would greatly appreciate it.

But mostly, please god someone tell me what to do about this whole tags issue, because - the horror. The horror. My dogs are averting their eyes from the screen, here. Dust mites are scoffing at my primitive grasp of website design. It's all very very bad and wrong. Help meeeeeee.

[Poll #518389]

Comments

[strangerian.livejournal.com]

Stratospheric thanks for changing your comments page to the default (which I can read) from the (hiss, boo) S2 style (which I cannot due to type size and, usually, lack of contrast between background and font colors). I mostly see your posts on Friends, or I'd have stopped reading them, necessary though they are as air to me, and died.

Whoever invented the S2 style, please die. Now. Half of LJ became illegible to me at one fell swoop, and getting back to that necessary-as-air thing, it's pretty much that person or me.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

Yeesh. I hear you about the inherent teeniness of the S2 style - on my high-resolution laptop, it's minuscule even at 150%, and as I spend 10+ hours/day reading on a screen and I'm trying to keep my vision, I don't love that. Also, believe it or not, I made an effort to make the fonts bigger in my current LJ layout, because I know people have problems with font size on LJ. It's still, well, small. But not as small as S2 wanted it to be, which I consider to be some kind of success.

But enough about my pain. We cannot allow mere font size to stand between you and your daily dose of LJ (or drive you to homicide). So my question to you is: what browser are you using? If your answer is "IE," then it's time to switch to Firefox or Opera, both of which will allow you to control the font size of the pages you visit, easily and effectively. You can also use them to force inconveniently-colored pages (although, seriously, mine at least should be fully readable as far as color goes; if you get a chance, please have a look and let me know, because I whine enough about color choice that I'd like to not be a total hypocrite with my own LJ layout) to display in the way you prefer.

(I know all of this, including what follows, because my mother's much more than half blind, and I am in charge of rendering her computer accessible to her. And I tell you truly: if my mother can use her computer and browse the internet, anyone with any vision at all can.)

Advantages of Firefox: it's free (and non-profit and open-source), has about a million free add-ons, and is the easiest to use in terms of font-size changing.
Disadvantages of Firefox: it's memory-hungry; if you do massively tabbed browsing, the way I do (by which I mean, 50 or so tabs open at once, but if you're using IE I'm not sure you even the option of tabbed browsing - I have no idea what features IE has these days), you'll experience browser crashes. Also, it identifies itself as Mozilla (which it is), meaning you'll be locked out of websites that do that moronic browser-detection Java dealie. (Which is fortunately not many of them.) Also, if you use bookmarks the way I do - most people don't - you'll be frustrated with some of Firefox's limitations.

Advantages of Opera: it's fast and it's not at all memory-hungry (I can tab to my little heart's content, even with many other big hungry programs running). It can be told to mask itself as the browser of your choice. Also, fewer programs are written to take advantage of its security weaknesses, because it has the least market penetration right now.
Disadvantages of Opera: the free version has an ad in the top right corner (though you can learn to ignore it pretty quickly, or you can pay $39 or $49 to make it go away). It's made by an actual company that has to stay in business for you to continue to get updates. And increasing the font size can require more steps (by which I mean, two clicks of the mouse instead of a keyboard shortcut - we're still not talking about a time investment).

You can download Firefox, and learn more about how and why it's made, here (http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/).
You can download a free version of Opera - and behold one of the most inexplicably disturbing photos ever used in advertising - here (http://www.opera.com/). (The photo alone is worth a look. The Opera folk are apparently quite, quite weird.)

Seriously. There is no reason to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous layouts or let other people control what you can read. (Including me. Though at least I have good intentions.) And if for some reason you can't change browsers - although it will be easy, I swear - or you have questions or problems, let me know. (You can email me at deepbluesea @ postmark . net rather than comment here, if you like.) There are other solutions; if necessary, you can even use the accessibility options on your computer itself to do this (although it's kind of messy and kind of a pain, so you don't want to do that unless you absolutely have to).

[strangerian.livejournal.com]

No problems with the color set-up in your current LJ, really. You've even made sure the type is something approximating black on a pale, plain background. Blue is kinda soothing and probably a good choice. Note to Some Users I Could Mention but not you: Avoid creating an LJ layout with one or more pictures as backgrounds. Even representations of lissom young men with come-hither eyes are not worth the loading time when I've seen them and seen them and seen them already.

Thanks for the reminder about changing type size, though this inevitably leads to being kicked in the eye by the size-22 fonts on the next normal page I click to. Still, it may prevent evil thoughts and indigestion and a 'cide of some kind or other; I'm nearsighted enough to be happy about any progress in screen visibility.

I've got Firefox already, being an old Netscape user who mourned its eclipse by IE in much the same spirit as hating S2 styles, but minus the visibility problems. IE merely rots the *soul*.