I looked at the journal of a woman who says she participated in the beta test for AOL Journals. I didn't think there was a beta test. Doesn't look like there was more than functional testing. If I had been a tester, here are some of the comments I'd have made within the first day:
. The "moods" list looks like it was made up by a 15-year old girl with extreme mood swings. I need "Contented" ("chillin'" or "happy" just aren't the same), and "Annoyed" (not the same as "angry"), and "Wistful" or "Pensive" (not at all the same as "sad"). If you can trust us with the contents, why can't you trust us to fill in our own word for mood?
. After reading the entries of some other bloggers, please, please, a spellchecker!
. I've been composing in a dumy email, where I have spellcheck, then pasting into the 'create an entry' form. After pasting, and even after some more editing, my paragraph structure is still there. So I 'save' it. And suddenly no more paragraphs - it's all mass. I have to 'edit' the entry, and break it into paragraphs again. Please maintain paragraphs when cut-and-pasted from other editors. If it shows after the paste, it can be maintained over the save. I did see something about turning something or other off in the hints/news, but I don't know how to do that in email. We Luddites can't be expected to figure it out whatever the problem is - you handle it!.
. The entries are last-in-first-out. Perhaps this is the way other similar journals are, but it is not necessary to follow suit. We lazy people are most likely to read first whatever shows at the top of the page. If it doesn't catch our interest, we move on. If it does catch us, we continue to read the entries in reverse chronological order, so sometimes things just don't make any sense. Or the suspense is lost. It would be most useful to have the oldest displayable entry at the top. Doesn't change the interest factor, but it improves the reading flow enormously. (And it's a lot easier than living my life backward.)
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