| | There should be a movement back to Xanga. It's really sad how I've just completely neglected the slightly more intellectual, actually written-blog-centric outlet in favor of a somewhat mindless simple social networking site offering the same as everyone else - mind-numbing daily life updates, limited photo albums, simple email-like messaging, basic collaboration, and bandwidth-sucking video and applications. Not to mention all the side-banner adds necessary for someone to become filthy rich off all of us.
Upon revisiting my long-beloved Xanga page, I was greeted with a notice that they had changed the interface and "Everyone seems to like it," or some such promise. I continue to my "homemain.aspx" page, which has become heavily laden with shiny Web2.0-like buttons offering.... the same as everyone else. Now you can add photos, video, albums, audio... It happens to be just like that other place. Except it seems Xanga's rip-off is simply trying way too hard. It's very poorly tied together, in my opinion of course, but I do have to admit that at least the user "home" page is still generally clean with a basic white background and minimal "fluff" scattered around. Or perhaps that's just because my browser extension is blocking half of the active-content scripts the page is trying to force down my throat. Firefox, I love thee. I miss landing on the familiar simple HTML-based page, clicking on "Subscriptions" and being quickly handed an even more basic plain page showing me the text-only writings of my brilliant friends. Even smilies were excluded from this glorious, perfectly minimal center of pure efficiency. Granted, the new subscriptions page is similar, but no longer spartan, it has melded with the new home page, now including images and yet an additional script trying to run in the background for who-knows-what purpose! Something tells me I'd have more to gripe about if not for NoScript (http://noscript.net/).
Wondering what wondrous things Xanga has done with my public home page, I find the familiar link at the top left to go directly there. I was immediately surprised with the absence of a top banner ad, which was historically prominently located at the very top of all pages. This method proved forgivable because it was politely separated from the body and even the header of the page. Instead, I quickly noticed a brand new module grouped right in the middle of those modules I carefully approved and populated. This newcomer was completely blank, showing just the module background color of my site's theme. Curious, I employed the right mouse button to find out that this wasn't just a happy new neighbor offering an opportunity to improve my overall site content, but instead was a collection of scripts once again being faithfully blocked by my renewed best friend in the whole world of browserdom. A little torked (or a little *more* as was the case), I needed to know to what were my visitors being subjected. After NoScript obediently allowed that panel of evil scripts though, I was horrified to see some obnoxious Valentine's Day animation jumping around in clashing bright red, completely distracting from the clean interface that has been my strive from day one and text body of my front page. The prominent, yet polite, has now turned into something very annoying and INTEGRATED into my design! As if I put that there - An endorsement!?! At least sometimes that pest is driven by Google's AdSense, a much less "screaming-in-your-face" method of advertising. Even with AdSense, there are still no fewer than an average of 5 scripts trying to load just with a text-plus-outline-formatted web page. It's an outrage!
With all these improvements, it seems like Xanga's racing to become more bloated than even the abandon-all-rationality-in-favor-of-depressing-stupidity... on-a-stick, MySpace. If only I wasn't already established, and was looking for a good outlet for a writing-oriented, blog-centered medium, sorry Xanga, I'd move right on by.
That said, I can't argue with the familiar feel that Xanga does still have and the great sense of once again, sitting down to write something more than just a status update letting everyone know that I can be creative and witty with a saying about myself as long as it's kept to a one-liner with a character limit... That no one really benefits from anyway. The truth is, it's sort of nice to drop another little rant about nothing too important that maybe one person find can a little humor in the satire. And ultimately, after all of the above, it's just nice to be back on my good old Xanga again.
Thank you all, and good night.
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| | Posted 2/12/2008 11:34 PM - 73 Views - 6 eProps - 3 comments
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No one person knows how to make a pencil
