ratcreature | the new del.icio.us interface sucks

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the new del.icio.us interface sucks

Some of you may have noticed that I use del.icio.us quite a lot to tag fanfic (unsurprisingly I'm ratcreature there too). I also use a lot of tags, applying the tagging philosophy that you really can't have too many assigned to a story to easier find it again later. The redesigned site tells me it's about 3500 tags now, and I frequently add more.

Now, while I'm a bit dubious about the look of the new design, in particular that in list view the bookmarks, in particular those with many tags (and I tag stories with several dozen sometimes), take more room, I'll probably get used to the more superficial changes. However, that it now doesn't offer you a section with "unbundled tags" is really bad for me. To use recently added tags when they are merely displayed in the huge lists of several thousand other tags is quite impossible.

Their interface to bundle tags has been atrocious before, and drove me crazy (last time I sorted tags I had added into my bundles and changed some it took nearly a *day* and it weren't that many edits), so I only use it to bundle my newly added tags when I have at least some hours to become utterly frustrated, and just use the "unbundled" section to find the more recent ones again. That is now impossible, it seems.

Also, I didn't think this was possible, but the tag bundling interface got *worse*: It now won't load my larger bundles (like the "authors" bundle) at all for editing, and while it does load the smaller bundles, it now jumps you back to the top whenever you clicked on a tag to add it, so you can't even go through the list anymore without scrolling down again and again and again.

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I didn't even know they'd changed it! Okay, now that I've looked at it -- wow, that kinda sucks, doesn't it? I hate that they don't have a section for unbundled tags anymore! I do mine just like you describe ... add tags as necessary, and use the "unbundled" list to know which ones I hadn't bundled yet. Looking at the new bundle interface -- am I doing something wrong, or can you not even SEE the tag list until you choose a bundle to edit? How'm I supposed to remember which bundles I NEED to add new tags to? Why would they do it that way? I also notice that it doesn't show a tag list anymore when you click the "add" button, which means I'm probably going to end up creating a bunch of similar-but-not-quite-the-same duplicate tags if I can't remember the exact name of the other tag. (I already do this in LJ all the time, and then have to go in and compile/delete duplicate tags by hand.) Grrrr.

Yeah, they must have tried really hard to make the tag bundling interface worse. Before seeing this I'd have sworn that it could only get better, but I've been proven wrong.

I mostly tag with a Firefox extension that offers me tag-completion, so apart from the odd typo or redundant terms that aren't similar I avoid that problem you have when adding tags (I also use a Greasemonkey modification for LJ tagging to have better tag completion and list them).

Also their javascript still freezes my browser half the time so that I have to click to abort their script, and the bundling page got worse with that too. How am I supposed to edit tag bundles if they don't load once they're large? Did they not test this? Maybe that's just me, I think I'll try loading it in a different browser, but wtf?

Also, you are completely right about not knowing which bundles need to be edited. *sporks interface*

Seriously, who designed this? Surely not anyone doing interface design for a living. And they can't have tested it on anyone who uses the site themselves while having more than thirty tags or so.

The guy who wrote the original del.icio.us doesn't do interface design for a living, no. But he sold it to Yahoo!, so I assume that whoever did THIS interface actually DOES do UI for a living. Kind of sad, really.

It really is. Slightly cumbersome design that maybe isn't the most intuitive would be one thing, I mean, there is some room for different opinions and priorities, but you should be able to do basic things. I've now tried to load the tag bundling in another browser and it stalls later than in Firefox, but still doesn't load enough to be functional. So I can't bundle them, I can't display unbudled ones easily... surely someone must have noticed this.

No section for unbundled tags = my life is ruined! Well, more difficult, anyway. *growls*

I really don't understand how they could have thought this was an improvement. It is the epitome of what I'd call "verschlimmbessern" in German, a word squished from "verbessern" (to improve) and "verschlimmern" (to worsen), which makes me notice once again that afaik English lacks a simple word for this phenomenon of supposed 'improvements' that make things worse overall or repair one thing, and only to break three more, which is odd considering how often this happens.

*nods* I usually describe these as "to serve you better" -- which is usually how Verschlimmbesserns (?) are introduced in the US.

The noun is "Verschlimmbesserung" (singular) and "Verschlimmbesserungen" (plural). It sometimes comes in very useful that in German you can smoosh such opposites together, like in "Schadenfreude" I guess, so maybe this one will spread eventually to other languages as well. The phenomenon is certainly ubiquituous enough.

i'm still trying to like the look...hadn't even gotten to the tags yet. that SUCKS!

it really does. *sporks*

Wow, you aren't kidding, this really does suck. Is there an alternate service out there? Cuz this is bad enough for me to walk if there's not speedy improvements.

I have used other services, but they aren't as popular for fannish content and networks, and often have other drawbacks too. Other advantages as well, I mean, like some, have not just and AND as logical operator for the tags, but also a NOT which is really quite useful.

I'm with you. Having access to the unbundled tags is necessary, and further more, the new interface crashes Firefox 2--I think because it tries to load ALL the tags in memory, and FF is a memory hog to start with. I'm not sure I'm willing to go back to IE for delicious.

I heard someone had switched to Evermore, but I haven't checked it out. Didn't like the Mag.nolia interface much, and Digg doesn't look at all workable for a lot of tags.

I'm incredibly frustrated with and pissed off at delicious right now. How did this interface design get through testing? I tried to bundle my tags in four different browsers now (Firefox, Opera, Konqueror, and Flock) and large tag bundles don't load for editing at all in any of them (in FF and Flock the page doesn't load, in Opera starts to load but then freezes, and in Konqueror it loads but the editing Javascript doesn't work). They just broke some of their core functionality. I can't see unbundled tags and can't bundle them either.

I don't know the other services you mention, but if they don't fix this soon, I'm going to look for alternatives too.

I couldn't find the Evermore service you mentioned, and the others don't look too promising. And the tag access in simpy.com and diigo, which are the other bookmarking services I know, isn't that userfriendly either.

For now I've complained in the delicious support forums and hope they reconsider. There are several people who commented on missing the unbundled feature, and there was some comment from a delicious person who said 'if people don't like it, we can think about providing an "unbundled tags" bundle again.' so I hope enough complaints will accumulate. I also emailed them about the tag bundle editing problems I'm experiencing.

Hi, was wandering around lj and came across your account and, thus, this post. I mourn with you the changes to delicious, but if it helps, there's a way to get around the fact that there's no longer an "unbundled tag" section-- if you go to "edit tags," you can click the box that says "highlight tags already in another bundle." Not quite as convenient, but it does the trick.

Unfortunately you can't click on links there, so you can't use it to navigate these tags, and the bundle editing is now completely broken for me. It was torturously slow before (which is why unbundled tags accumulate). The feature you mention would be marginally useful to see which I have to bundle, and then only use bundled tags to browse, if the page to edit bundle would load for me. It doesn't. Only if the bundle is small with few tags it will load, so I can't add tags to big bundles with a few hundred tags (like my bundle for "authors") anymore. If that was the only problem I might even consider to resort many of my 3500 or so tags into sub-bundles, however in the editing (which I could try on some small bundles) you jump back to the start after *every* *single* highlight click and have to scroll down again. All very slow too. I'm not about to click and scroll thousands of times to reorganize my tags into smaller bundles with this torture instrument of an interface. (Yes, I'm still somewhat grumpy, I admit.)

I don't blame you for being cranky; I'm rather cranked-out myself over the change. >__> But like with LJ, I don't really have anywhere else to *go*, so I'm trying to see if I can't adapt to the new circumstances.

Well, there is the complaint and bug threads in their support forum. There are quite a number of complaints about the unbundled tags vanishing (about other things too), and I've seen some delicious support person say they might reconsider removing this. So there is hope that it might come back if enough users want it back, rather than adapt to the new meekly. *hint*

*laughs* Hint taken! I'll see to logging in my complaints as well.

Yay. I'll cling to my hope for now.

How the hell do we add new tags to existing bundles in this new UI? I have lost the last hour trying to figure it out and there seems to be no way to add new tags into existing bundles and there's no unfiled category so basically theres no way to know which tags are not yet placed into a bundle.

Absolutely horrible.

I know. I hope the many complaints in their community forum will bring the unbundled tags list back at least eventually.

YES! I was just playing with the bundling today and it drove me crazy!

Surely the designers have a place you can make suggestions? The Ma.gnolia cache idea sounds fantastic - losing fics is one of my biggest fears where this kind of archiving is concerned.

Yeah, there is the support/suggestion forums on their site were you can comment.

I do not believe this

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the new del.icio.us interface sucks

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Aweful

Re: Aweful

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i think...