review OD 6.0

 I’ve just read the latest entries of the people that used to be my favourites and are now called bookmarks. It seems that everyone is making observations on the new OD 6.0 layout and that’s what I will do too. Now that I am back and want to try and integrate again slowly it seems fitting that OD has changed as well. However, change is also seen as unwanted because people just want to stick with what they are used to.
 
The separation of friends and bookmarks seems completely unnecessary. I’ve just deleted one of my bookmarks, but it still is present as a friend. So, in fact, I now have to keep track of two lists, which means twice the effort.
It is a bit weird that now the diaries show not only the date, but also day when it was written. As an idea it is a plus, but why does it have to be in Dutch? I guess the system looks at the IP-address, which means that for readers from the US/UK it will appear in English. When I read entries from these countries the day also appears in Dutch!
 
A big improvement is that in the bookmark list you can now see the date of your last visit. In the OD old style you could see your own last login, but sometimes that was just to write, or to read some, but not all, favourites. With this improvement you know when you have last read a particular diary, which is very helpful.
 
Another improvement is the ‘random settings’. Searching for US diaries only, for example, and searching male or female only, would have been handy for my BA thesis. A bigger ‘random pool’ makes everything more random, as it should be.
 
Furthermore, the tag index could be fun. I will see how the other changes will turn out.

In general, I’m not scared of what will happen.