Delicious

[jennyst]

So Delicious/AVOS broke a load of stuff. And fandom has sent in support requests, and AVOS are either frantically coding to fix it or possibly ignoring some requests - we don't know.

Fannish infrastructure like Delicious that relies on the goodwill of disinterested (or anti-fannish) parties such as AVOS or Yahoo is generally problematic - it's great to have free stuff while it's working, but it does leave us vulnerable. The OTW mission of preservation & access aims to help us in this sort of situation, but we don't yet have a full solution for all the things Delicious does.

This puts even more pressure on the bookmarks overhaul that AD&T are working on for AO3. And therefore more pressure on already overstretched coders and testers, so caring for our volunteers becomes more important. We have 21 improvements/bug-fixes planned for AO3 bookmarks, ranging from minor niggles to major new features. Which of those do you think are most urgent or important to the things you used to use Delicious for and can't any more?

I'm sure there will be an official OTW post about this later today, but I'd be interested to hear people's views.

Comments

[juniperphoenix]

I think bookmarks, even more so than works, would benefit from a more lightweight display. What I mean by that is that I'd prefer for each individual bookmark to take up less space on the page so that one can view a long list of bookmarks at a glance and more quickly find the one that's wanted. (Basically, it's the usability difference between the old Delicious interface and the current iteration that only displays 10 tags at a time.)

+1

[ursamajor]

*nodnod* This is a huge usability thing for me with the new Delicious; at best, I can see maybe 2-3 bookmarks in the same amount of space I used to read 5-8 or so. AO3's bookmarks are hugetastic; if I can see 1-1.5 per screen (I'm on a widescreen netbook), that's about normal for me, whereas with Delicious fic bookmarks, even those that maxed out the 1000-character description limit, I would at least be able to see 3-5.

I kind of wish that AO3 bookmarks used the text of my choice where they have the summaries, rather than having the summary *plus* my text below, making a single bookmark take up an entire screen. Maybe this is something that could be partially fixed by me setting a smaller font size on my Archive skin somehow, but I haven't played around enough with settings to even know if there are such things as alternate site themes/customizing little things like font size in them.

Separately, re the making of a bookmark: wish there was a way to hide/show the list of usable HTML, so that the Notes box can be bigger; wish the Tags box was at least as wide as the Notes box.

Re: +1

[jennyst]

I have to dash to work now, but I've thrown together a quick skin which improves it a little bit, though it's still not great. I know there are more improvements in the works for the bookmarks styling, and the site styling as a whole. Thanks for your suggestions!

[jennyst]

I've thrown together a quick skin which improves it a little bit, though it's still not great.