Watching life backwards
Dec. 5th, 2004 10:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lovingbothOne of the annoyances of LJ is that it is difficult to read it 'forwards'.
Like most people, I start by looking at
http://www.livejournal.com/users/lovingboth/friends
(of course, a) you look at yourLJname/friends and b) there's almost always a friends group filter too...)
then
http://www.livejournal.com/users/lovingboth/friends?skip=15
(your number may vary...)
and so on, back in time.
So, to take an example from today's reading, you see the aftermath of a breakup before knowing that a breakup has happened.
Reading news in this way can be interesting - I once looked through a pile of year-old Guardians and hindsight meant it was both possible and fascinating to spot the small beginnings of what became big stories.
But normally I prefer to live life forwards.
And as I say, that's currently difficult with LJ. You can make a guess about the right value for ?skip= and iterate to the right figure, then start reading 'next 15 entries' until you hit 'now'.
But if someone on your friendslist posts between loading page n, reading it and loading the next page n-1, you will miss an entry! The bottom entry on page n-1 will become the top entry on page n and you'll never know (without looking at page n again).
Let's say it again: LJ needs an offline reader (OLR). You'd download all the entries you hadn't read, then the OLR can present them to you in any order you desire.
Like most people, I start by looking at
http://www.livejournal.com/users/lovingboth/friends
(of course, a) you look at yourLJname/friends and b) there's almost always a friends group filter too...)
then
http://www.livejournal.com/users/lovingboth/friends?skip=15
(your number may vary...)
and so on, back in time.
So, to take an example from today's reading, you see the aftermath of a breakup before knowing that a breakup has happened.
Reading news in this way can be interesting - I once looked through a pile of year-old Guardians and hindsight meant it was both possible and fascinating to spot the small beginnings of what became big stories.
But normally I prefer to live life forwards.
And as I say, that's currently difficult with LJ. You can make a guess about the right value for ?skip= and iterate to the right figure, then start reading 'next 15 entries' until you hit 'now'.
But if someone on your friendslist posts between loading page n, reading it and loading the next page n-1, you will miss an entry! The bottom entry on page n-1 will become the top entry on page n and you'll never know (without looking at page n again).
Let's say it again: LJ needs an offline reader (OLR). You'd download all the entries you hadn't read, then the OLR can present them to you in any order you desire.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-06 11:09 am (UTC)While I'm talking to a developer :) my other major annoyance with LJ is the way that the 'previous entry' / 'next entry' navigation is almost useless for any journal that's not completely readable by you.
If you try to use it and the relevant message is not readable by you (eg it's private or you're not in the relevant friends group) then you get a 'you are not authorised to read this' message, without even the option to go to the message after that.
A far better behaviour would be to show the previous / next message that you can read. It can't be difficult: it's what happens if you look at www.livejournal.com/users/username ...
This is a privacy issue. I may not want you to know that there are messages on my LJ that you can't read! (There's a similar issue with the calendar too.)