I'll think of a good title later

There has been a number of tags floating round the MyOpera community & I seemt to have contracted one from KayFour.

pick up the book you are reading...turn to page 123 and post on your blog the fifth paragraph. put title and author of book... and post it on your blog of course! ...and then tag five others...

Hmm, Ok then. From River God by Wilbur Smith a book on loan to me from my other half (who else?) I haven't actually got as far as page 123 yet so I hope this doesn't spoil anything...

On the same granite table that held the Canopic jars, the embalmers had laid out their instruments and the full array of pots and amphorae that contained the natron salts, lacquers and other chemicals that they would use in the process. Pharoah was fascinated by the glistening bronze scalpels which would disembowel him, and when the embalmer showed him the long pointed spoon that would be pushed up his nostrils to scoop out the contents of his skull, those cheesy curds over which I had pondered so long and fruitlessly, the king was fascinated and handled the grisly instrument with reverential awe.

How pleasant!

I'm sure the numerology of this tag is incorrect sure it should be turn to page 123, post paragraph 4, then tag 5 people...

As for tagging 5 other people, I figure I could tag Nix 5 times over the next week & get 5 different books, but I think I'll tag people at random as I come across them.

Edit: In the time that I have written this post, caught up on some forums & sent a couple of emails Nix has got through to p67 of the Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov. I don't know how she does it!

One More Chapter is a new blog that my better half sneaked in without telling me.

It's all about books. A subject on which she knows a fair bit. She easily reads half a dozen books to my one & I have thoroughly enjoyed all her recommendations to me so far.

Take a look.

Overall I love the new community. It looks & feels fantastic, the extra functionality is superb. I'm also quite excited by the potential for all the extra features that I know are on the way. I'm sure the speed problems & server errors will disappear in time. I think the biggest (& easiest to fix) problem with the community is the navigation. There are several instances where links are missing (or included) which make navigation through the community difficult &/or confusing. What follows is my take on what needs to be done to improve the system to provide the most logical & intuitive interface. My notes focus primarily on the blog side of the community, I'll get to the forums another time.

Firstly though:

Pet hate

Please do away with the 'Edit Title' button completely. It looks really untidy & out of place floating in mid air. The logical place to edit a blog title is on the Blog settings page, which you can already do. Fix this & I'll never complain about anything ever again (not true).

First Page

When I first log in why am I taken to my account page first? The account page provides links to lots of pages where I can make changes to options which I don't need to change everythime I log in. It takes far too many clicks to complete the tasks I perform most frequently, yet the tasks I only need to look at once are all accessible in one click.

When I log in I want to go to a page with the following links:

Back to the page I just logged in from
Add new blog post
My Blog
A list of my friend's blogs
Main list of forums
A list of my favourite forums
Private Message system
Account

Account

This page needs an option to remove the link to the Get Started guide, once i've got started I don't need to start again.

Web Page Layout

Include links to:
customisation/web design forums - where user can get help with CSS from the community
Upload files -user may want to upload background images.

Blog Settings

Include links to:
Web Page Layout
Countdowns
Access Rights
Tags
Links

Remove these links from the Account page

Links

The link input screen is very but I'd like to be able to set the order of the categories as they appear on the links page & also the order with which the links appear in each category without having to delete & retype them.

The links page is ok but why the uneven two column layout? It just looks messy.

Forum settings

Include links to:
Ignored users
Friends
a control panel page like the old forum!!!

Ignored users

Fine & dandy

Group Memberships

Not sure about this yet, a group is simply a private forum. There is not enough distinction between the private forums & the public ones. I've not actually created or signed up to any groups to make use of this feature yet.

Edit Profile

Very comprehensive, clean, simple & self explanatory. I'm glad nothing is compulsory!

Spotlights

Fine & dandy again.

Countdowns

Fine & dandy again, but how about specifying who can see the countdowns like the whisper tag?

My Files

I'd like to be able to set up my own directories in addition to the standard /blog & /files

Access Rights

Fine & dandy

Tags

Include links to:
related tags (against each tag)
most popular tags

New Blog Post

Very cool!

When using the whisper tag I would like to be able to select usernames from my friends list or add all friends with one click (I can never remember whether lokutus_prime is capitalised or not). I'd also like to see my own whispers by default without having to list my own username.

Adding a hyperlink can also be a bit cumbersome, I like to drag a tab into the text area which automatically inserts the URL, but I can't drag a tab into a javascript prompt box. The prompt box requires you to know & manually type in the URL, which makes linking to complex URLS like forum posts for example a right pain. I'd like to be able to select the text of a URL & click a hyperlink button to add the correct tags around it rather than the current method.

More later I'm sure...

How much thought do you other journalers put into your posts?

I'm not really sure about how I do it myself. I wait until something sparks & I get a subject to write about then I just bash away at the keyboard. I don't really think about the words I just type. Then I click the 'Add Post' button.

Then I read my post. Usually I have to edit half a dozen spelling & gramatical errors. Then I'll reread it again then maybe go back & edit a couple of sentances around.

The end result is definitely more coherent.

Then I usually leave it. However I do tend to worry that the words I wrote actually do convey the message that I intended.

For example the intention of my last post was to show my distaste for people who try to goad, incense or otherwise blackmail the staff at Opera into doing their bidding. But I was worried that some people might read it as a rant against people who haven't registered there copy of Opera (certainly not the case I assure you).

I love writing, but I'm not all that good at it. I make up for what I lack in talent with sheer volume of work. Some people can immediately come up with the correct words to use, get them in the right order & spell them correctly too. My approach is to rewrite, rewrite, rewrite... On my website I am still making small corrections & changes to pages that I wrote over 3 years ago.

Last night after I submitted my previous post there was a problem with the server & I couldn't access my journal to do any checking or editing. PANIC!

Maybe I take all this writing lark too seriously?

I feel warm & fuzzy now! I am quite amazed at how many people have visited my journal. Thankyou Stephan & Debra for your comments to my last journal. Just a few words can have a great effect. I love the new journal front page Stephan, I'll comment more another time. If the problem with 7.5 doesn't work out maybe you could adapt this javascript function which I know works in 7.5p1: function writeText(id,str) { if (document.getElementById) { document.getElementById(id).innerHTML = str; } else if (document.all) { document.all[id].innerHTML = str; } else if (document.layers) { with (document[id].document) { open(); write(str); close(); } } } where writeText(topten,

• Journalname (etc)

)' would directly write "

• Journalname (etc)

" into