You've been toying around with the blog interface off and on for a few months now, and i just have to say that i cry a little on the inside every time you put out the latest incarnation of Blog Home.
There's one feature i enjoy, and that's the one at the end of the current blog i'm reading that says "Previous blog title" and "Next blog title". I do enjoy that for those days when i don't get the chance to read my favourite blogs, and that person's posted multiple blogs.
The cosmetic look isn't much different from the old Blog Home, so i have nothing positive nor negative to say about it.
But here's the internal tear-inducing thing about the new Blog Home. It may be a simple thing, but it still just bugs the crap out of me: clicking on a blog title no longer spawns a new tab. So here i am, reading a blog, minding my own business. . . Okay, so i'm not minding my own business. If i was, i probably wouldn't be reading the thoughts of someone else, right? But i think you know what i mean here. Anyway, i'm reading along, i post my comment/kudos, i close out of the tab from force of habit, expecting to go back to the blog list and select something new to read.
Only now i can't, because the blog didn't spawn a new tab, and i just closed it, and now i have to log in all over again! Annoying, annoying, annoying! Sure, it's only one thing, and i did list a positive and a neutral aspect, so statistically speaking, that'd give you a solid C if this were a letter grade; a three out of five stars, if you will. All in all, not bad, right? Well, let me tell you, the crappiness of this far outweighs the occasionally-used previous-next blog feature you gave us to compensate.
So what exactly was the goal here? You messed with Blog Home, but didn't really DO a whole hell of a lot; certainly not enough to justify messing with it at all. So here's a list of features i'd like to see, since you're already fucking around with the interface anyway:
1. More font options, please! I know i could probably browse around and find a bit of code to change it to what i want, but i'd much rather select from the ole drop down menu, seeing as how there's already one there.
2. It'd be nice if you could access a sortable index for each person's blog. For instance, right now you can click on a person's blog title (if you're subscribed) from the Blog Home list, and it takes you to that particular blog. Wouldn't it be nice if you clicked on a blogger's name on this list, it would take you to a table of contents for that blogger? It'd also be nice if i could sort it by category, date, time, mood, whatever. So if i'm reading Bob's blog and i wanted to read all of his political blogs, i could click his name, and i would be taken to his blog table of contents. At the top would be something like a title column, date column, category column, etc. Maybe the category column could contain a dropdown box, and i could select news and politics, and it would show me all of Bob's political blogs. Or maybe there could be a side box containing all the categories underneath the box that has Bob's picture and details, and clicking one one of those categories would display everything Bob's written in that category. You've got several options, plus, you're a creative guy. You could make that work.
3. My Preferred List. This thing isn't really easy to use. Instead of searching through all the Myspacers to add someone to my preferred list, how bout starting a little more locally? Why not pull up a list of my friends, and i could check the ones i want to add? Or click their face and select add to preferred list? I mean, chances are, if i'm looking to put someone on my preferred list, it isn't gonna be some random schmoe, it's going to be someone i already know.
4. My Readers. I should be able to decide if i want someone to be subscribed to my blog. Right now, i can't edit that at all. If JohnBoy and i have a falling out, and we can't mend fences, i should be able to remove his subscription to my blog in the event he chooses not to unsubscribe just to irritate me.
5. My Subscriptions. Some people here (i'm not one of them, but i figured i'd bring it up anyhow, seeing as how ideas are being bandied about) have literally thousands of subscriptions. Let's pretend for a moment that i'm a top blogger, and i'm a nice girl and try to subscribe to everyone who subscribes to me. Now let's say i stopped enjoying some of the blogs i've subscribed to, some have stopped posting, and some are those irritating post-dating assholes who put their stuff up at the top of the list for the next eight fucking months, and now i want to clean house. It sure would be nice if My Subscriptions had a search field so that i could just type in the names of the people i no longer want to read, and i could unsubscribe from there. Yes, i know, i could always just click on the blog and hit 'unsubscribe', but what about those people who've been struggling with estalkers and now have private profiles? I'm not on the friends list, and now i've got no access to the blog, because everytime i hit the blog, i get the annoying "This Blog is set to private and only their friends can read it. Sucks to be you." message. I can't ditch their subscriptions now, even though i REALLY want to. So consider a search field in the My Subscriptions page.
6. Speaking of irritating post-daters, please disable the ability to post blogs in the future. It's Myspace, not time travel, for fuck's sake.
7. "Rich text is editor currently disabled. We're working on a fancy new one". I call bullshit here. You've been working on a fancy new one for the last twoish years, and from what i can tell, you've either stuffed it on the back burner and turned off the gas, or you've hired some really incompetent fucks to work on the rich text editor. How bout instead of mucking around with the Blog Home interface for no discernible reason, you deliver the fancy new text editor? Personally, i don't care if it's fancy and new or generic and old; i'm just sick of the message. So please, Tom, don't be a cocktease with the promise of better things to come, and then leave us hanging with the same old crap.
I think that's a good enough list to start with. I hope to see some actual improvements with all the muckings about happening with the blog interface. After all, what good is changing things simply for the sake of change? If it's not you, but one of your code monkeys you've hired, then i'd look at how that guy spends his day, because it looks suspiciously like he's jerking off and trying to look productive at the same time.
Love,
Christie.
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