Q is your friend. Also, use lists. And make your lists not too big. - Meryn Stol

And you wonder why newbies don't get FF. :-) - Dave Winer

I'm using FF all day long, and very seriously. - Meryn Stol

Lists are your friends. And FoaF makes subscribing abuse hurt ... and bad. - AJ Kohn

FF is serious bizness...iono what YOU talkin about. - Rahsheen

iono -- ??? - Dave Winer

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define... - Chris Heath

I use it to bash Apple products. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

indeed Q is your friend - but that requires you to read the help files - Bart LePoole

iPod/iPhone UI is more usable, no boring unrequested scrolling/updating features - cyb

Agree with Meryn; you can just toggle off real time with the play/pause icon in the upper right of the content window. But I agree with Dave: the quickened pace of even a paused feed doesn't lend itself to thoughfulness. Brings to mind the whole Nick Carr "Is Google Making Us Stupid" idea. - Tom Landini

I've almost replaced all my twitter usage with FriendFeed. (which was mostly serious) The realtime just makes it easier to skim thru more posts. I use the permalinks quickly on things I want to spend time on - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Tom, I'm not missing any thoughtfulness on FF! I get very good comments, at least on my feed. - Meryn Stol

But I wasn't joking. For me, FF represents some part of the future of "Enterprise 2.0". That's serious business. - Meryn Stol

Dave, in seven minutes you've got about 15 comments here ... not sure how 'readonly' that is... do you're blog posts get that much response this quickly? - Chris Heath

The flow is above normal levels right now - same thing happened when the beta first came out. But AJ is correct, there is not replacement for using Lists to manage your main feed into a stream content and frequency of one's liking. - Micah

Pause button in UR is our freind. - Melanie Reed

it's like google reader... but you don't have to push 'n' - Andrew Davis

So let's assume FriendFeed has changed design to drive more people to its service and grow – what other reason may be, right? Now everyone from the 'pro' camp comments that you need to learn to use the 'Q' key and pause the stream, and organise your subscriptions in lists. Or, to put it in another way, that the default organisation is not suitable and everyone needs to customise it. How does this match with the desire of drawing new, inexperienced people to the service? - Alessio Bragadini

Alessio: The UI is only busy for those with a large amount on subscriptions. Most new people don't. *Unless* they import all their Twitter friends... So indeed, it could be a problem. And if they import their Twitter friends, they might not know how to use lists yet. - Meryn Stol

Actually, that's just an option you have. I pretty much stick with the primary live feed until it gets boring, then I dig deeper. Just like I kept telling people with the old layout...the good stuff will get bumped. If it doesn't, you're subscribed to the wrong folks. - Rahsheen

Alessio: The point to me is that everyone can customize the UI to their own liking. I'm more comfortable watching stuff scroll by and then pausing when I spot something that interests me. - Tom Landini

What might be interesting is for some FFers to make some screencasts of how they use FF. - Tom Landini

I don't get the point of a new release if everyone is trying to customize it to look like the old one. Now FF is basically a chat. - brodo

I was reading the comments to Dave's post and then poof the page refreshed. Heh. I forgot to do one of two things to get the feed to pause: 1) explicitly hit the pause button or 2) scroll back up to the top of the comments and quickly click on "Comment" before the page has a chance to refresh. My favorite is to pause the page using this latter technique. This will cause the edit area to appear at the bottom of all the comments and freezes the page. You'll still get to see new comments appear. - Loren Heiny

Loren, just hit Q. It's the "quiet" keyboard shortcut. Also, you can freeze the stream just by moving your mouse over it. - Jérôme

Because I push all my friendfeed posts and comments onto twitter, I really think twice before the mindless comments. I always try and ask "Am I adding value?" - Christian Burns

Yep - Everybody. Find that old joystick. Fast ... slow .... stop - Charlie Anzman

Jerome, I'll give your suggestions a try, but sometimes when I'm using my Tablet PC I don't think about where the cursor is or if I should have pressed the letter 'Q' to quiet things down. Not bad suggestions, but as more and more people browse like I do with a Tablet or CrunchPad or Apple iPod Touch SuperMediaDevice, I think the FF team needs to do a little bit more work. - Loren Heiny

Dave: I pause the interface. I don't like the scrolling. Oh, and I'm doing everything else recommended here too. - Robert Scoble

Dave, the "p" key will pause the interface if you need a shortcut. I just use lists and filters - Jesse Stay

I think there needs to be a "Pause" button closer to each post, instead of just on the top. - rob friedman from twhirl

Gosh, I was just going to say that too. I pause the interface and refresh manually. I hate seeing stuff that I'm reading disappear down the page - and get lost somewhere on the next one. - Chris Loft

I'm not a big fan of pausing - if I see an interesting conversation I just open the permalink in a new tab. You get a dedicated page that does nothing but update the conversation in real-time, with a comment box at the bottom. I think it's odd that the permalink is hidden as easily-overlooked "X hours ago" info, but other than that I think this interface works pretty well. - Edward Coffey

What about if you click on a link? The contents can still scroll before you can read whatever was linked to and then decide if you want to comment about it. Outside of pausing the feed anything else you can do in this case? - Loren Heiny

Loren - I click on the posting date/time link ("4 hours ago"). That gives you one thread in one window. Bottom of the thread still refreshes in realtime, but you can read everything at leisure. - Eric Johnson

Out of the box the next FF can be frustrating. I also hate how, if I use the rollover from someone's name and subscribe to them, I then get redirected to the top of the page, and have to try and scroll down and find my spot again. - David Eedle

Have to agree with you there. There were so many options for filtering content with the old UI. That's the main thing I loved about it, being able to cut through the noise.. I could see Best of Day from different lists (which I haven't yet found a way to do on the new UI). If there's no way to do this and get to the posts within those list with the highest engagement it takes away a lot of the value of those lists. - Mike Elliott

Dave, newbies won't have tons of people that they are following so they won't have this problem that you are having before learning about pause. It will feel better to them to see some sort of action on a page. - Thomas Hawk

I find the best way to "stop the madness" (or pause the feed) is to move your cursor over any post -- that stops the scrolling until you move your cursor back into the grey. Not really obvious at first but works well. I rarely use the q key or the pause button. - Brian Sullivan

it's a use case issue, I open new tabs for involved items I want to read and then possibly comment on - but I also use pause a lot - realtime was avail in previous version it just wasn't default - mike "glemak" dunn

Mike is right. Tabs and pause work like magic. - Leigha Baer

This is a pretty cool thread - I wonder if Dave has read the pile of comments that keep trickling in? - Daniel J. Pritchett

Yes - Dave Winer

I agree there has to be an easy way to pause to be able to read or comment. I also don't like it if I have opened another tab with the contents, I return to FF to comment or like and the item has scrolled of to the sunset. - TobiasVerhoog.com

why do we have a fear for new patterns? - Phil Smirnov

I feel like whatever I do here is very short-lived and will ultimately be lost. - Angela

Lists help a ton in terms of being able to control the noise. - Louis Gray

Where's the UI equivalent for the keyboard command Q. Why isn't it obvious on the web page? It's just bad UI IMHO. - J.D. Deutschendorf

J.D.: at the top of the page, in the blue bar, is a 'pause' button. UI equivalent to q - FFing Enigma

Using the Q button isn't exactly the same as clicking pause. Clicking pause is permanent and will keep friendfeed paused even if you refresh the page. Q does not make it permanent. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

one reason I prefer using FF on the iPhone. - ~C4Chaos

Wow! I'm just beginning to learn to use FriendFeed. I've had this account for, I'm not sure, 7 months to a year and I'm only now starting to dig into it. These comments where very helpful in showing me that this tool requires work and a learning curve. I like that!! I can't wait to learn more. - John Michael Cannon

People can always press the pause button - Euan

Real time is king in my opinion. - Drew Lucas from BuddyFeed

@Mike Elliot's old FF's good UI for slicing and dicing: Amen. I'm looking for (and not finding) the ability to read feeds by type, i.e., by delicious, or by blog posts, or by tweets alone. Old UI had it. don't know if new one does. I miss those little kind-of-feed icons of the old UI. Especially for some rooms I created where I have a whole bunch of incoming sources -- they're all IDd w/ Room's icon (or default icon). Do not like. - Susan A. Kitchens

Susan: new FF definitely has that option. Create a filter, include service:twitter (for example) and you're done. All tweets from you, or the people you follow, or everyone on FF. - FFing Enigma

@FFing Enigma: How do you create a filter? I went to Help link, @ bottom of page, did an in-page search for "filter." not found. - Susan A. Kitchens

@FFing Enigma: Oh. I found it. I should NOT have clicked "help" to find the answer to a "how do I?" question. What I REALLY should have done was click "blog" -- how obvious! Sigh. Userbarriers++ - Susan A. Kitchens

@FFing Enigma: Before: open Friendfeed, find icon on left. Click. Watch page refresh with results. [Total clicks =1] After: Go to search. type in something, click Search. Page refreshes to see results. Click Advanced option. Read all the Advanced How-to. Browse the many text boxes for the one marked "service." Do not find. Read directions closer. Oh! Type that in main search box. Type service:blog and click results. [Total clicks: 2, plus about 2 minutes of close reading] - Susan A. Kitchens

The new interface works well for me but maybe I just don't participate on enough high-speed discussions to see the problem? The biggest thing I love about the new interface is that it establishes an interaction model that can be optimized and improved over a wide range without feeling too "different." The FF team will be able to tune its responsiveness based on how you use it, as well as how everyone uses it. It seems to me that they already have? - Daniel Dulitz

What are you talking about, Winer? Pissing off conservatives and libertarians is hard work, and do I get paid to do it? NOOOO. I do it for love! - Steven Perez

try this userscript : http://userscripts.org/scripts... - Jammy Lee