more Q&A
We've all, uh, kind of been busy lately. But we haven't forgotten! I have a small round of stuff this time, and hopefully more will be coming soon. (If your question hasn't been answered yet -- don't worry, we've still got a list of everyone's questions.)
prettygolucky: Are you guys going to eventually include a messaging system on LJ, or would you at least consider it? I.M.'s, that is (kind like the MySpace system, but better since LJ is better than MySpace anyway).
-- Yes, we are! We've finally launched LJ Talk, which is basically an IM system that's integrated with LiveJournal directly. It uses the Jabber framework, so we're able to communicate with people from different services as well (for example, you can talk to someone on Google Talk). Check it out -- I've been using it for a few months now, and I find it really convenient to use.
eloisem: Are you planning on implementing any web 2.0 features into LJ, for instance a box that pops up when you hover over a username to quickly navigate to their profile, add them as a friend, etc. (Kind of like how it is on Vox?)
-- In the time since you asked this question, we did! We implemented the "contextual hover menus", that appear whenever you hover over the icon in someone's username (like frank). (If you don't like these menus, you can turn 'em off at the Viewing Options page.)
mavicore: Anyway to have a feature where we can see who on our flist is currently online?
-- Kind of. If someone's logged into LJ Talk, you can see that they're online with either the contextual hover menus, or by looking at their profile, right under the "LJ Talk" listing.
japantherine -- Who was the first person to sign up for a journal that wasn't part of the makers/maintinace?
-- One of bradfitz's friends! Brad originally created the site to keep in touch with his friends, so the first several dozen users were Brad's friends.
desdema -- Is it really that hard to add a delete button to the "Edit Memorable Entry" pages? (Yes, I know how to delete a comment with the current setup.)
-- Heh, good suggestion! I'll add it to my list of things to try to do when I get some free time to dig into the code for that. (The ever-fantastic coffeechica wants me to point out that if you're not as memories-savvy as desdema is, you can find information on deleting memories in our FAQ.)
ihearttoronto -- In the future, is it possible to add a mood theme and music section to the comments area? (i hope you understand that)
-- It's certainly possible, but I don't think it's something we'll be doing. In general, comments aren't as "feature-rich" as entries are -- you don't have the full range of options and whatnot with comments as you do with entries -- so we avoid adding extra fields to comments. If you want to mention your mood/music, you can just say so in the comment itself. ;)
kremmen -- There are options for placeholders for big pictures and video. Why isn't there be one to insert automatic cuts in long posts? To cut all posts on one's friends page to an arbitrary max length would be an even more useful option than either of those.
-- We offer the placeholder options for people who are browsing over a slow connection, browing from a public place (or work), or for people who just plain don't want to have Flash video appearing on their Friends pages. So it's more a concern for loading time than anything else; browsers can generally handle text perfectly fine. So we've never actually seen a pressing need for a "automatically cut any post longer than X characters option".
But, I will say that it'd likely be one heck of a feature to code up. janinedog was working on something somewhat related a few months ago, and after squinting at the code for a while, and asking around for other opinions or insights, we could never get it to work quite right. (Auto-cuts cause serious problems if the cut lands somewhere in the middle of some HTML, like a table or an image or something.) And ultimately, the demand for this sort of thing isn't worth spending the time it'd take to get it right.
stillimage -- Why does the Frank radio not work? Do you ask before you stream the voice posts?
-- FRNK Radio only works when there are voiceposts queued up to play. If there haven't been any public voiceposts in a certain amount of time (I'm not sure how long), then you won't hear anything when you try to "tune in", unfortunately. We don't ask permission from each individual before including their voiceposts here, but we only include public voiceposts -- anything that's protected at the time that it's posted won't be included.
aileron -- Are there plans of implementing cross-posting features between LJ and vox?
We don't currently have plans for being able to import from one to another (they're both Six Apart services, but they don't share a common database backend, so we'd have to build an import system from scratch), but it might be possible in the future. More likely, there may be a way to cross-post an entry to both Vox and LJ at the same time, but I don't think there are any plans to do that, at least not in the near future.
prettygolucky: Are you guys going to eventually include a messaging system on LJ, or would you at least consider it? I.M.'s, that is (kind like the MySpace system, but better since LJ is better than MySpace anyway).
-- Yes, we are! We've finally launched LJ Talk, which is basically an IM system that's integrated with LiveJournal directly. It uses the Jabber framework, so we're able to communicate with people from different services as well (for example, you can talk to someone on Google Talk). Check it out -- I've been using it for a few months now, and I find it really convenient to use.
eloisem: Are you planning on implementing any web 2.0 features into LJ, for instance a box that pops up when you hover over a username to quickly navigate to their profile, add them as a friend, etc. (Kind of like how it is on Vox?)
-- In the time since you asked this question, we did! We implemented the "contextual hover menus", that appear whenever you hover over the icon in someone's username (like frank). (If you don't like these menus, you can turn 'em off at the Viewing Options page.)
mavicore: Anyway to have a feature where we can see who on our flist is currently online?
-- Kind of. If someone's logged into LJ Talk, you can see that they're online with either the contextual hover menus, or by looking at their profile, right under the "LJ Talk" listing.
japantherine -- Who was the first person to sign up for a journal that wasn't part of the makers/maintinace?
-- One of bradfitz's friends! Brad originally created the site to keep in touch with his friends, so the first several dozen users were Brad's friends.
desdema -- Is it really that hard to add a delete button to the "Edit Memorable Entry" pages? (Yes, I know how to delete a comment with the current setup.)
-- Heh, good suggestion! I'll add it to my list of things to try to do when I get some free time to dig into the code for that. (The ever-fantastic coffeechica wants me to point out that if you're not as memories-savvy as desdema is, you can find information on deleting memories in our FAQ.)
ihearttoronto -- In the future, is it possible to add a mood theme and music section to the comments area? (i hope you understand that)
-- It's certainly possible, but I don't think it's something we'll be doing. In general, comments aren't as "feature-rich" as entries are -- you don't have the full range of options and whatnot with comments as you do with entries -- so we avoid adding extra fields to comments. If you want to mention your mood/music, you can just say so in the comment itself. ;)
kremmen -- There are options for placeholders for big pictures and video. Why isn't there be one to insert automatic cuts in long posts? To cut all posts on one's friends page to an arbitrary max length would be an even more useful option than either of those.
-- We offer the placeholder options for people who are browsing over a slow connection, browing from a public place (or work), or for people who just plain don't want to have Flash video appearing on their Friends pages. So it's more a concern for loading time than anything else; browsers can generally handle text perfectly fine. So we've never actually seen a pressing need for a "automatically cut any post longer than X characters option".
But, I will say that it'd likely be one heck of a feature to code up. janinedog was working on something somewhat related a few months ago, and after squinting at the code for a while, and asking around for other opinions or insights, we could never get it to work quite right. (Auto-cuts cause serious problems if the cut lands somewhere in the middle of some HTML, like a table or an image or something.) And ultimately, the demand for this sort of thing isn't worth spending the time it'd take to get it right.
stillimage -- Why does the Frank radio not work? Do you ask before you stream the voice posts?
-- FRNK Radio only works when there are voiceposts queued up to play. If there haven't been any public voiceposts in a certain amount of time (I'm not sure how long), then you won't hear anything when you try to "tune in", unfortunately. We don't ask permission from each individual before including their voiceposts here, but we only include public voiceposts -- anything that's protected at the time that it's posted won't be included.
aileron -- Are there plans of implementing cross-posting features between LJ and vox?
We don't currently have plans for being able to import from one to another (they're both Six Apart services, but they don't share a common database backend, so we'd have to build an import system from scratch), but it might be possible in the future. More likely, there may be a way to cross-post an entry to both Vox and LJ at the same time, but I don't think there are any plans to do that, at least not in the near future.