There are no words in the English language I could scream to drown you out

[sovay]

So I got home to discover the latest code push from Dreamwidth has effectively broken the site for me. I left a comment to that effect. It does not look as though my comment will make a difference.

I understand accessibility is complicated. This journal and DW in general was one of the few things in my life right now that did not cause me active pain. It was in fact rather sustaining. That has just sharply ceased to be the case. I have no idea what to do. I left LJ for DW. I had planned to stay here until they turned out the lights because I trusted them not to hurt me. Now my eyes hurt. I am a text-oriented person who cannot comfortably interact with the text-based form of social media which is very nearly the whole of my life online. There's nowhere to go from here. (I can't even think about the effects on my Patreon.) I am tired of being a person whose needs are disposable. I am very, very, very not happy.

[edit 2020-07-26 1:21:00] I have temporarily reverted to the old style because the alternative appears to be verging on a migraine. And perhaps in a year the horse will learn to sing.

Comments

[yhlee]

Oof. I'm sorry they broke the site for a lot of people, and I hope they make it an option to put things back.

[asakiyume]

What's it doing for you? For me--as I type this (I'm on a desktop)--it looks **larger** than usual, and it seems as if it's put the typeface to Currier, although I know from the last comment I made that once I hit post, it'll appear in a different font.

[kathmandu]

Sympathies. And crossing my fingers that there will turn out to be still some combination of styling that will look how you want.

[pameladean]

Oh, no! Everything looks exactly the same to me; I guess when I log out and log back in all will be chaos and horror.

P.

[sholio]

Oh no, I'm so sorry! :((( That's awful, and I hope you're able to get some kind of fix that will put it back how it was for you. They should at least have that as some kind of site-skin option for people; it's bizarre to me that they don't.

[rosefox]

I'm so sorry! It doesn't look different to me, but I use the bare-bones Lynx style everywhere that my custom style doesn't cover.

If you switch to the old style and send me a screenshot of what you want it to look like, I can try to make a custom style for you. (And I'm sure I'm not the only person who immediately thought of doing that.)

[kore]

Oh no, I'm so sorry. I love your posts here.

I have no idea if this is helpful, but I am trying to see WHAT they did -- I can see it when reading other peoples' journals, but my own and my flist look the same? Anyway, what I have under My Account/Display is the "Show my journal's entry pages in my chosen style instead of the site skin" checked, and then "When viewing entry pages (including yours), use this style: My own style." I also have the DW CSS for blocking certain topics or users which I think also forces everything to my style. I view everything in either my own style or light, because I can't read the site otherwise. I think I can see some of the changes occasionally (font size, font, background colour??) and they look AWFUL.

Anyway, you are absolutely right with people needing REAL accessibility and our needs not being disposable, and this sucks. //hugs

[kore]

I think unfortunately the person in the change comments who said "Changing your site and not listening to feedback and insisting that users need to fix it themselves is the TUMBLR METHOD OF SITE DESIGN" hit the nail on the head. Also, I'm personally fucking sick of everything being pushed for mobile design. I don't look at ANYTHING on mobile except a couple of game apps.

[gwynnega]

I'm so sorry. It looks the same on my tablet, but I haven't tried it on my computer yet. I really hope there is a workaround that makes DW comfortable for you to use again.

[sbrackett]

Eeek! Everything looked mostly alright and then I clicked "reply" and discovered this commenting box has that annoying look of "someone linked me to the mobile version of wikipedia but I'm on my desktop" too bigness. It'd be nice if they'd put in an "I prefer mobile default/I prefer desktop default" switch somehow because I'm sure this size is useful to some but it is too much white space for me.

[ironymaiden]

I use style=mine everywhere, so I've been spared most of the trouble, except that on my custom style buttons are cropped and things are overlapping on mobile. *sigh*

[landingtree]

I’m so sorry they did this! The changes have indeed made the viewing of comments easier for me on a mobile, but I don’t know why they wouldn’t offer both options. Since I mostly read Dreamwidth on a laptop anyway, I’ve reverted to the old format as an extra ‘this matters to people’ vote.

Your film posts are excellent.

[muccamukk]

That all sounds terrible. I really hope that they make an option to switch it back permanently soon.

I feel for the devs because they're under SO MUCH pressure to make the site better on mobile, but they really screwed up on this implementation.

My style didn't get hit, but the icon browser has gone DEEPLY weird.

[julian]

It's eerily like Ravelry, which I do not hang out on but other people I know do, who Made Big Accessibility Changes just recently... some of which literally gave people seizures. (And migraines.)

I hope they do better at the followup than Ravelry did. And I'm sorry it's hurting you.

[kathmandu]

If you always stuck to defaults, you might not have noticed this, but even the built-in styles are extremely customizable. I picked one with a decent layout and then set all my own colors, fonts, and screen-width percentages.

So, while you are reverted to the original version, it might be a good idea to go into your Settings > Journal Style > Customize Your Theme, go through the tabs down the left, and write down paper notes of your current color codes, font sizes, element sizes, etc. That way you'll be prepared to customize to your taste if needed.

[starlady]

I would never have known anything had happened aside from the comment box. I hope you can figure out how to customize everything you need.

In the meantime, not sure whether the following will help your issue, but it seemed like a useful thing to share:

"The font uses your default browser font size, so you can change that in your browser settings and it will fix the issue, when it comes to reading and drafting posts at least (the comment box still seems to have oversized text)."

[labingi]

I'm so sorry that you're experiencing this and also technically a little puzzled because, if people hadn't been talking about it, I would not know there had been a code push. My journal looks 100% the same as it always did with zero work on my end.

I haven't checked DW in a few days, so maybe they changed a setting? Or maybe it depends on what browser/device you're using. (I'm on Firefox on a Macbook.)

Just a little confused as to what's going on, but I figure there must be a way to revert to the old style and retain it?

[ashlyme]

*hugs and love* I would miss you, for one.

This comment box is disconcerting. It's a bit easier for me to read, but it looks *cold*. I don't know why the hell they assume everyone wants to experience the internet through a damned phone.

[aurumcalendula]

*hugs*

[dhampyresa]

I would miss you if you left! I'm so sorry the code push broke things for you /hugs

I can't help immediately for reasons of (among other things) dodgy wifi and no laptop access, but if by mid-August it still needs fixing, let me know and I will do my best.

[brigdh]

I am so, so sorry. I really hope they offer a permanent fix, because I would hate to lose you from here.

[nineweaving]

Dear gods, this is appalling. I had no idea, as my own page looks just as it always did. I feel as if the angel of death has passed over my house, and I feel guilty.

Damn it all, making their community feel at home is their primary job, and they've botched it. I hope they let you keep a comfortable style, forever. Your journal is one of the great pleasures of DW.

Nine

[julian]

Btw, I don't think this is your specific issue, but per Denise's new post: "If your font size is unspeakably large, please check both your browser default font size and check the current magnification level you've set for Dreamwidth and Dreamwidth journals. Most browsers will remember your last-used magnification setting on a per-website basis, so if you changed your magnification on DW in the past because the site was setting a smaller-than-browser-default font size, it is probably now too large now that we are using the browser default font size. This has been the root cause for lot of the people reporting extremely large font sizes, so take a moment to check."

There's also some other pertinent bugs being worked on.