Arctic Light

Some of you probably have already seen this on your own flists, but LJ is changing the look of the friends page. You can preview the new one by going to your friends page and clicking "switch to new" at the top. (You can turn it off and go back to the old one anytime you like -- at least for now.) ETA: Actually, this may only be for paid accounts, or only on some accounts but not others. Anyway, not everyone has this option. I'm sorry - I didn't know that! ETA2: Actually, it's part of the navigation strip at the top of your journal, so you'll need to have that turned on to see it. Apologies for the confusion, and thanks to torachan for pointing that out!

I'm going to buck the trend here and say that now that I've tried it, I like it, or at least don't mind it. I like it better than the site scheme I've been using, actually. It's clean and simple and I find it very easy to read. I tried clicking on everything, and everything works fine in my browser. The new look will take a little getting used to, but I have to do that whenever I change my custom journal look anyway. (Actually, it'll be nice to be able to change my main journal's look without changing the flist page along with it.) And while I'm really not fond of the infinite scroll, it doesn't crash my browser or make my flist impossible to read, and it seems to be where everyone (except DW *clings*) is heading nowadays anyway.

What I don't like is that they're going to be applying it to everyone eventually -- at least that's my understanding: that no one will be able to have their own custom friends page anymore, or opt out of this one. Everyone will be stuck with the new one, whether or not they like it or can even use it. Gyarrrr.

So that's my basic verdict: I like it myself, and it's not going to make it any harder for me to access LJ if/when they switch. But I really, really don't like the idea that it might (will?) be applied to everyone, regardless of accessibility or personal taste.

If you moderate an LJ community, you may wish to go check your settings - http://www.livejournal.com/community/manage.bml - click on the Settings link, and then look at its moderation settings. This morning I got a moderated-submission notice for a community that has never been moderated, and discovered that it was set to hold submissions with "non-whitelisted" links in them. Looking at a couple of the other communities I moderate, it looks like they made this change to a number of communities that used to be unmoderated, so you may wish to check yours and, if necessary, switch it back.

(... HONESTLY. I get that they are trying to stem the tide of spam - and I noticed that the "report as spam" link has come back when you delete a comment; it was gone for a while - but I don't appreciate having my settings messed with behind my back!)