Updated Post...

A fix was released to the live-site today that resolved a number of issues identified by our founding user base. Mike provides a fairly complete list of the changes that would be visible to end users. Of the issues listed as top priorities in my post on bugs, all have now been fixed.

One of the issues present on both posts, the "Space Unavailable" problem, only affected a few users that signed up the day MSN Spaces went live. By the time we got the fix out today, we estimated the size of that group to only be a small fraction of a percent of our total user base. However, nearly all of us who began blogging the day we went live knew or had contact through our spaces with people desperately trying to hold on to "that cool space alias" as they waited for this problem to be resolved. Making matters worse, most of the people that ran into this problem were our diehard enthusiast. The ones who saw the press release the night of the December 2nd and jumped on the possibility of being the first.

A personal thank you to the users who lent us the patience to correct the problem. If you were one of those unlucky few please add a trackback to this post, linking the readers to your space. For everyone else, please visit these new spaces in the trackback list and give them a proper welcome to MSN Spaces and the blogging community.

A note for those with recovered spaces: Please take a moment and check out the following attributes of your space. It's unlikely, but these anomalies *may* exist as a side effect of your space's recovery.

1. Your space may be defaulted to "private". Please check (and if necessary change) your privacy settings if you wish to expose your content publicly or to your buddy list.

2. If when viewing your space in "author mode" (your logged in and see the settings and customize tabs in the upper right) you see any empty modules; ones with no title and no contents. Select the customize tab and remove all your lists modules (Book/Blog/Custom). If present, these will just be empty default list modules generated when you created your space. These would have never had any list entries in them, to begin with. Once you've removed them and saved you can just return to customize tab and add 1 to N more lists back. Now they should look normal.

3. When entering a blog post, ensure you have a list of defaulted categories. Try adding a new category, and try adding the category module to your space.

Looking at preliminary results, we may never see these problems in any of the recovered spaces. In the event that you do and the workarounds listed for #1 or #2, or you encounter #3, please feel free to leave me a comment on this post.

Thanks again.

The MSN Spaces Beta launched with a simple built-in category picker for filtering blog posts. When added to a space this module stays up-to-date with all the blog categories currently in use, providing readers with a way to drill down on a topic with one click from your home tab.

But here's where the critic in me wants to jump in and clutter up a simple and elegant design (the PMs on the team are starting to cringe about this point in this post)... There are some things that the category list doesn't do/allow that I think would be incredibly useful. They are:

• Have a customizable module title.
• Allow me to add comments for each category
• The ability to hide old topics that I'm no longer keeping current
• A link to get back to an "all categories" view.
• Control the order of the listed categories
• And finally, once I click on the category I'm interested in, I'd like an expand view of just those posts (nice and wide, like what I get when I select the "Blog" tab)

Well, if you agree with me that these would be (really * N) nice to have then, until we build it for you, you'll have to build it yourself. Have a look at the "Blog Category Picker" I created on my space. Note that if you're not on my home tab (say you just followed a permalink/trackback) click the home tab now. You'll find it in the leftmost column (my take some scrolling). Go ahead and click on "MSN Spaces" and you'll see this post become/return to full width... Now read on.

Lists in the Spaces Beta are generic structures. The book/custom/blog lists don't really have to contain that type of information at all. You've probably already figured that out by now. But how do you turn something like a blog lists into a category filter for you own blog roll

Follow these steps to roll you own:

1. From the lists tab of your own space, create a new blog list
2. Rename the list to something clever like "Extended Category List" (...and that's why developers are not allowed to name things around here)
3. Add a new list entry
4. In the first field put one of your category names
5. Skip to the last field (rightmost) and add comments that would best describe this category for your readers
6. In the middle field (normally reserved for URLs) enter the following address and replace the [X] sections with the values indicated inside the brackets

spaces.msn.com/members/[your space alias]/?partqs=cat%3d[your category name]&blogpart=blogmgmt&_c=blogpart

If your category name has any spaces in it you'll have to replace them with "%2b". Why? Internet address can't have spaces and the %2b is just a code used to represent a space to our system.

Use my address for this category as an example: spaces.msn.com/members/myworld/?partqs=cat%3dMSN%2bSpaces&blogpart=blogmgmt&_c=blogpart

7. Repeat steps 3-6 for each category you wish to expose in your list
8. (Optional) To add a "Show All" link perform step 3. Then, for step 4 enter something witty like "Show All" instead of a category name. Skip step 5 and for step 6 use the following address format:

spaces.msn.com/members/[your space alias]/?blogpart=blogmgmt&_c=blogpart

E.g. spaces.msn.com/members/myworld/?blogpart=blogmgmt&_c=blogpart

9. (Optional) To order the items in you lists see my post on how to do this (you may want to come back to this step after you test out all your links)

Now all this cool functionality doesn't come without a price. The drawbacks to doing this yourself are: First, you have to keep your list updated manually. This may not be that big of a deal to the average blogger who has a category set that remains fairly static; and it's really the level of control you need anyways so that you can hide dead categories. Second, you'll have to work directly with these "funky" address (I'll have some more on that in another post). Finally, since you're technically using query string arguments that we have not formalized, you can't count on them to remain immutable as we release updates to the site... I can keep you guys updated on any changes that will break the steps listed above but that means you'll need to read my blog on a regular basis (-:

Cheers, and I hope this helps to improve your space.

For new bloggers, perhaps nothing is more misunderstood and underutilized than trackbacks. Even the name is misleading to the uninitiated. So what are trackbacks and why use them? Unlike comments, trackbacks allow you to continue a conversation in your own blog and obtain comments on your take of the topic. Additionally, trackbacks can drive traffic to your site; a bit a shameless self-promotion, if you will. First, let's get some specifics on how to add and managed trackbacks in MSN Spaces. Then I'll get into some of the concepts and drawback associated with their usage.

How do I add a trackback? Really the question is more along the lines of "How do I add trackbacks to another Space?" To add a trackback to a blog posting you’re reading you’ll first need to click the trackback link immediately under that post. This should expand a section listing the current trackback list. If an address is shown at the top of this section (should end in ".trak") then this Space accepts trackbacks from all blogging sites. If there is no address displayed then this space may only accept trackbacks from other MSN Spaces (blogs inside the MSN network) in which case you can only use the "Blog it" feature (more on this in a minute).

Assuming you find a ".trak" address in the space your reading (okay, you will in this one); next you'll want to copy it on you your clipboard. Now return to you space and start your own post. At the bottom of you entry page you'll find a collapsed trackbacks section. Click on the "+" to expand and now paste the contents of your clipboard into the field provided. Once you're done writing what you have to say go ahead and publish. If you like, return to the original post you were reading and refresh you browser. Do you see a new trackback pointing you your space?

How does the whole trackback thing work? The short semi-geeky description: That address you copied from the original post and then pasted into you entry (the one that ended with ".trak") is called when you click "publish". An HTTP POST is sent to this address and the permalink URL to your new post is passed along in the body of the request. This adds the URL to the trackback list of the original post. In the Spaces Beta, the trackback addressing the original post is not saved with your new post. This may change in future releases.

How to allow trackbacks to be added to your space? Once you've logged into your space, go to your "Settings" tab (far right) and then click on the newly exposed "Blog Settings" tab. Once there, about halfway down the page under trackbacks, you'll find the following three options (remember, these setting affect your visitors but don not change your ability to trackback to someone else's entry):

Allow trackbacks from any public website: Anyone sending a properly formatted call to your ".trak" address will be added to your post's trackback list.

Allow trackbacks from other MSN Spaces: This is the default for MSN Spaces. With this setting, visitors to you space are not shown the ".trak" address when selecting the trackback link under your post, however, they can still use the "Blog it" functionality and a trackback will be added to your post's trackback list.

Disable trackbacks: No trackbacks are allowed. Unlike disabling comments, users will still be able to select the trackback link under your blog posts but MSN Spaces will no longer accept any new trackbacks for any of your posts.

The reason MSN Spaces defaults to allowing trackbacks only from within the MSN network is not out of the desire to create some sort of blogging/trackback monopoly. It's simply that trackbacks are often abused by advertisers. While creating the Spaces Beta we were approached by others developing sites for the blogging community. The "free word of advice" that we often obtained was to lockdown (even remove) trackbacks or our user base would be spammed.

If you find unwanted trackbacks don't hesitate to delete them. If you find links to external advertising sites showing up on you blog posts try changing your setting back to "Allow trackbacks from other MSN Spaces". If you currently have this setting try Disabling  trackbacks for a short time. If the problem persists please notify MSN Support. They will disable any space that inappropriately spams another space with advertising or links to offensive sites. …Your discretion on that last one.

But back to the whole trackback concept thing; another way to think about a trackback is that it's a pointer to an answer for a question that someone else has posed. This may not always be the case; indeed sometimes it's just the continuation of the question, but let's chew on this Q&A idea for a moment. It is important to remember that when posting the answer with a trackback (your entry) you are really adding a link to the bottom of the question (the original post), not yours. Here's a way to remember this and an example of the one big flaw in traditional trackbacks…

Even the most casual fan of the book Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy knows the story of Deep Thought (the second most powerful computer in the universe of space and time). Many millions of years ago a race of "hyperintelligent" beings got so fed up with the constant bickering over the meaning of life (which used to interrupt their favorite pastime of Brockian Ultra Cricket; a curious game which involved suddenly hitting people for no apparent reason and then running away) that they decided to build themselves a super computer and ask it to figure out the meaning of life. …Seven and a half million years later Deep Thought reaches an answer to the question and delivers it to the descendants of the people who built the bloody thing. The answer is …42 (but you knew that, right?)

Obviously a bit perturbed, the people don't know what to do with the answer and, as we find out, they really don't even know what the question was. "So once you know what the question actually is, you'll know what the answer means." Deep Thought tells them. The only problems is that it will take a new super computer and 10 million more years to obtain the question from the answer of 42 …To sum things up, that computer was Earth and it's destroyed 5 minutes before finishing the reverse calculation. Why? Because that's how ironic comedy works.

Sadly, trackbacks suffer from the same inherent design flaw. No they're not in anyway inflicted by off-color British humor. You see, once you're at the answer, you have no way to get back to the question. Trackbacks are a one-way street from the question (or the original post) to someone's interpretation of the answer or continuance of the topic. Really, taking this perspective, that's why the name is misleading; it really might be better to call it a track forward.

"Blog it" was our first dabble in attempting to make trackbacks more useable. The copy this, paste that of traditional trackbacks is a cumbersome and with "Blog it" all you have to do is highlight what someone else is talking about and select the "Blog it" link at the bottom of their post. This will open up your own blog entry window (after verifying who you are, if not already logged in) and will then allow you to save the quote as a new entry in you own blog. Complete with a trackback sent to the original post and all.

As blogging becomes more popular, blogging sites such as MSN Spaces will need to do more to educate users and improve the usably of this powerful feature, once reserved for only true hardcore bloggers. Comments on how you'd like to see this system improved are welcome.

…And for all you really hardcore HHGG fans out there (meaning that you knew that acronym without having to spell out Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy): Remember that life is paradoxically coincidental to the ironical tyrrany applicable to the unparalleled definition of reverse entropy!

That's Italian by the way… As it turns out that "tomato" is, well, "tomato" in French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese. In fact, I really had a hard time finding another word for tomato, which leads me to believe this was an inside joke on Gershwin's part. *OR* perhaps I read into things too deeply.

But I digress. I've been talking about MSN Spaces and it comes in a number of different languages …How's that for a cheesy title segway? Anyways, I've had a handful of e-mails asking how we support multiple languages across our site. Questions like, "If I create a space in English what does someone from Japan see?"

At a conceptual level any space being viewed has three language attributes.

1. The language the author wrote the content in.
2. The language of the non-content/non-user contributed interface (e.g. menus, theme names, etc.)
3. A static language permanently associated to a space for offline use. 

The first attribute is pretty self-explanatory; you write your blog in one language and anyone who visits the site will see exactly what you wrote, the way you wrote it. Let's call it your "content language" for brevity.

The second attribute is setup dynamically for the readers of your space (you're a reader too, as it turns out). As you browse around your space and the spaces of others you'll notice that the menus and other navigation elements are all in the same language; hopefully your favorite one. This is determined by either your browser language setting or your Passport language setting. This doesn't mean that you can read everyone's content but at least you're able to navigate their photo albums and perhaps navigate away using their New or Updated Spaces modules. I'll refer to this as your "application language" and I'll have some more on how to change this variable in a minute.

The last attribute is saved as a property of your space. It was obtained the same way we determine your "application language" but only once, at the time you setup your space. After that point it becomes a permanent fixture of your space. Call it your "offline language", and I'll explain why.

Your offline language affects a couple of things. First, your RSS feed states what language it assumes you content is in. What's RSS? Well perhaps a topic for another post. But click here and check out the RSS feed for my space. Look for my <language></language> element; it should read "en-us" no matter what language your browser is set to. Now try looking at your own feed via "spaces.msn.com/members/[YOUR SPACE]/feed.rss" This language value needs to be available to the world when you are not. And since we have no process that can scan your content and *guess* what the language is, this is how we do it.

The second use for your offline language is to determine whose New and Updated Spaces modules you're to show up on. If you were Japanese and didn't read English (okay, also pretend that this blog post is in Japanese so that you can continue reading it) an Updated Spaces module wouldn't be very compelling since English bloggers far outnumber those witting in Japanese. If your offline language is English then after you post and close down your browser, only other English reading viewers will see it. Note that I didn't say you'll show up only on English language spaces. When that list is being put together we're using the viewer's "application language" not the current space's offline language. Confused? Try the next couple of paragraphs.

I mentioned above that I'd share how to change your application language. Obviously you can change your browser language but there's another not-so-secret way. If you arrived at the MSN Spaces site from another MSN page or from your Instant Messenger 7 beta client you may have noticed, for a brief moment, that your address bar had a query string that looked like "?mkt=en-us". This overrides you browser or passport language.

Armed with that knowledge, take a look at those items displayed in my Updated Spaces module (you may want to refresh this page just to ensure you have the latest set). Now see my space as someone using a German browser would see it by clicking here. Did the list change? Some space titles may still be in English (as it seems popular in Germany to use English, at times) but are you primarily seeing German spaces in the list now? Check out some of those spaces but make sure you return back here to finish reading this post.

Okay so now you have N times the number of spaces to surf… And a new appreciation for Babblefish, but what else should you know? If you're still in German mode notice that the module titles for my Profile and Updated Spaces are in German but my blog list "Microsofties" has the same title (and not Mikroweicheis or something). List titles, play lists name, and photo album names are all content. But lists have a feature that the other two don't. If you don't modify the list name, say you leave it the default "Blog List", we'll translate it for all your visitors based on their "application language" and they now understand that you have more links for them to check out …Kind of a cool feature, in my opinion (but I’m a wee bit biased).

…By the way. All the readers who made in to the end of my obnoxiously long post and are still seeing German over English, click here… And then... Let's call the whole thing off.

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Response to Comments: Joseph

It's good to hear from a dedicated blogger and thanks for your honest and candid feedback. In general, the employees here want to change the opinions of people critical of Microsoft and its products. But speaking specifically about this team; we are committed to engaging and winning over a community that has not historically been in our corner, so to speak.

This is a team that prides itself on using competing technology alongside that of Microsoft's (in fact I was just reading your comments on my eMAC). Several members of this team are serious hardcore bloggers and have been for many years. Some still use other blogging solutions. This gives us some perspective into where we need to take Spaces so that we can become appealing to devote bloggers such as yourself.
 
Customization of your space's look and feel is of paramount priority. Themes, styles, and layouts are of limited value if they cannot be a personalized and as distinct as the ideas you express in your blog. What you see here is just the start of what's to come; seriously. I can't disclose our exact plans and timelines but please don't lose your newfound faith in us. "Crawl, walk, run" is the saying around here. Again, my sincerest thanks.

Okay, we don't have bugs that severe in MSN Spaces… I think.

However there are two questions that seem to persistently come up in blog posts, comments, and support e-mail: One pertains to a hard to find feature, the other is a feature that was officially cut due to time constraints but in Spaces there's a trick to get the job done, just the same.

First, your photo module plays a slideshow of the first/top album in the list. There's no UI elements or instructions indicating that you have the ability (in IE6) to reorder the albums via drag and drop. Drag any album to the topmost position and it's now the default slide show.

…Okay, you say. You already knew that. Well here's one that many on our own team didn't know. How do your order items in your list modules?

The query used by our storage system currently retrieves items sorted by the time the item was last updated, from oldest to newest. Thus to order something like your book list perform the following:

 1. Select "Edit list" from the module's menu
 2. Find the item you want to be the first in the list and click "Edit", then click "Save" with out making any changes.
 3. Then find the item you want to be second in the list… "Edit", "Save", etc., etc…

(Ensure you do this to all items in the list or the ones you miss will precede the first one you edited)

These are two usability issues we're likely to address before getting out of the beta stage; many here will push for that. But hopefully this info will provide a workaround until that time.

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Response to Comments: ShadyRudy922

You didn't drop the ball. What you're seeing is a bug that's affecting a few of our users. Most created a space on day one or two of the service (See my post on bugs). After reading that post, if you decide *not* to create a new space, holding on to the name that you already have, I'll request that MSN operations verify the fix by testing it out with your space (as I'm doing with the other two spaces listed in the bugs post).

So I came to the Spaces Team from the MSN Alerts Team a year and a half ago. Still to this day alert "toast" from my Messenger client will entice me away to an online article, or cause me to crack half a smile when I see a supposedly "working from home" co-worker sign on to XBox Live.

The real value in MSN Alerts doesn’t come from any new website redesign, but instead can only come from the relevance and abundance of content that the service has to deliver alerts on.

Recently its value has increased significantly as bloggers can now used Message Cast’s new Alerts Service (currently in beta) to push notifications to non RSS aggregation savvy readers.

Try it out; it’s free for the moment. Go to http://www.messagecast.net and sign-up. If you’d like to create an Alert module such as the one I'm currently testing out at the top of my space simply:

1. Add a new blog list part

2. In the welcome mail sent to you by Message Cast there will be an example block of HTML. Take out the HREF attribute value from the <a/> element and use this as your blog address.

3. From the "Lists" tab in your space, change your blog list name to something witty (I obviously skipped this step on my space)

Let me know what you think or if you find other uses for this service in the context of blogging and/or Spaces.

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Response to Comments: jcmulle

You actually made a really good point here.  I subscribed to myself just to test the system out but I missed the compelling scenario you mention of using this system to self-manage my blog post comments.

Before I get back to addressing some of the bugs today. Allow me to throw out some interesting factoids about MSN Spaces

• The Spaces alpha (Japanese trail) was developed in 8 weeks and was live for 4 months before the beta. All you had to do was to change you language settings to Japanese and visit spaces.msn.com
• The Spaces beta that you see today took an additional 6 weeks of development to the alpha code-base (and some weekends and 16 hour days)
• Spaces was almost entirely written in C# using ASP.NET (with the exception of the ActiveX control)
• The Spaces Team is only 1 1/2 years old.
• About 50% of the Spaces Team members were avid bloggers before the product's release.
• The Spaces Team also produces IloveMessenger.com, Messenger.MSN.com, Members.MSN.com, Groups.MSN.com, Alerts.MSN.com, and the HTML help system used by over 60 groups across Microsoft.
• With the release of this beta Hotmail, Groups.MSN.com, and Spaces now all share the same photo upload ActiveX control.
• The user interface for Spaces was translated into13 languages for over 25 markets. To view another language (without having to change your browser or Passport language) simply add the query string: mkt=[page group code] E.g.  http://spaces.msn.com/members/myworld/?mkt=de-de The content is still in English but every thing else is not (module headers, menus, etc.). Try this out on your own space.
• MSN Korea has a completely different site than all other markets called "Mini Home P". Try it out: http://spaces.msn.com/?mkt=ko-kr (use IE6)

How's that for a politically correct title...

I stared at Microsoft in mid 1999. A few months into my new job a list of bugs in shipping version of Windows was fell into the hands of a news media organization. The news story I read didn't give many specifics about the bugs themselves but instead chose to focus on the shear number of "bugs"; it was in the tens of thousands if I remember correctly. The journalist wrote a real piece of work slamming Microsoft for shipping such a flawed product. The press seemed to have a real scoop and an e-mail came down from an eccentric Microsoft VP to all employees stating that when he found the person responsible for the leak that employment termination would be the least of their problems. Ah, the good old days. By the way, the product was Windows 2000 (the code-base for Windows XP) and without a doubt a breakthrough in OS stability.

Spaces beta was release with ### known bugs. ...Okay, I'm not that stupid. But what constitutes a bug ultimately determines what that number means and since the answer is everything, anything, and nothing the number doesn't really mean jack anyways.

Design suggestions are called bugs as is the interoperability with the flaws in other applications, text that can't be translated into other languages, truncation vs. line wrapping, an HTML element being 1 or more pixels off from design drawings, and so on. That's not to say that these aren't important. Many if not most will fixed before we get out of our beta stage. Bugs here go through a triage process where one or more representatives form each sub team (product management, development, and test) debate each bug's severity and priority against the overall vision and schedule. The meeting is often referred to as "war" and these meetings can get humors or heated. ...Often from my perspective both!

Allow me to address some of the bugs that we consider our top priority as of today. Once we can answer these three questions with "0" we'll move on to addressing usability issues and design requests: 

• How many of these bugs cause data lose? One; during signup a failure in our storage system could cause your space to be stuck in an invalid state. If you're already signed up then you'll never be affected by this bug. Most of the users affected by this problem were employees setting up their spaces in the hours before Spaces was to officially go live.

• How many know, non-mitigated security bugs do we have? One; but the security issue is only perceived. If your a hacker you might think you've found a way to affect someone else space (post entry and customize it) but you'll really end up changing you own space, often "hosing" it (I'm being purposefully vague on the detail of how to reproduce this one).

• How many privacy related bugs? One; if you create a blog entry, upload a photo, and then cancel you'll still post the image to your blog photos folder. This is the scenario where you upload nude pictures of you wife to a blog post just as a joke and then cancel. But now you've been warned!

The above three issues have been fixed in our development environments and will be fixed on the live-site by the end of this week.

Tomorrow I'll post workarounds for three of the most common usability "bugs" encountered by users in this first week following the release of the Spaces beta and give some updates on others that will be in our up comming quick fix.

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Response to Comments: Steve Cornelius

I’m truly glad you found this post. I’ve taken a look at your space and it appears to be in the invalid state that results from this first bug listed above.

The good: We’re testing a fix now that will *probably* correct the few unlucky ones, like yourself, who created a space at just the wrong moment last week.
 
The bad: The earliest this fix will be out is the middle of next week.
 
The ugly: One option you have is to free up you Passport association to this broken space and create a new space. But in doing this you’ll end up losing the space name that you reserved. If you chose this route, proceed to do the following: 

1. Visit spaces.msn.com and login
2. From your error page navigate to http://spaces.msn.com/members/[YOURALIAS]/SpaceSettings.aspx
3. Select “delete the space” at the bottom of the page.

If you wish to hold out for the fix ping me again and I’ll add you space to a list of spaces that we’ll use next week to verify the fix.

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Response to Comments: Scottie R

"scottie" is a good space name; good find. I'll use the availability of your site to help gauge the effectives of the fix next week. Thanks for not giving up on us.

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Response to Comments: To all with broken spaces

A fix has been released and the following previously broken spaces are now up and running:

http://spaces.msn.com/members/sscornelius/
http://spaces.msn.com/members/scottie/
http://spaces.msn.com/members/monde/

...Something seems wrong with that title. In fact the whole notion of a beta seems to break the first impression rule. But oh well, onward...

So let's get introductions out of the way. I'm the development lead for one of the teams that created MSN Spaces; the user interface to be more specific. So at this point your either happily planning to read on or preparing to fill my blog comments with ...let's call it feedback, when it's civil.

I've been unofficially encouraged a few times to start up a blog on Microsoft, software development, and MSN Spaces. Here's been my issue with that; don't start something you can't finish... or that doesn't have an end. So here's my promise to readers (assuming I ever have any) at some point I'll end this blog. There, now I can start.