Friends views
I rewrote all the friends view code last night. It's so clean now. There shouldn't be any more random "my friends don't show up" bugs, and it should be much faster. If nobody notices any problems in the next few days I'll be able to remove a bunch of transitional code I had to keep in to be safe, and then things will be even faster. (The code I kept in was to maintain the state that the old friends view algorithm needed..... it's not used anymore, but it's still being updated. I kept it in case we had to go back to the old code.)

But here's the coolest damn thing about the new code.... it doesn't generate your friends list ahead of time, which required that you only had one set of friends. With the new code the server's able to show you any set of friends just as quickly. What this means is that you'll soon be able to have different sets of friends, and only show certain ones. And with each set you'll be able to scroll back 400 entries or so, instead of 75. (did anybody notice that the scoll-back limit is now 400?)

What I plan to do is attach meta-data to your friends groups. Currently you can only edit friend groups in the Windows client, and Evan's adding support right now to the Linux client. I'll make it editable on the web and then you'll be able to mark groups as public or private. With public groups there will be a drop-down or links on the friends view and you'll be able to filter your friends list based on the group. Also, there will be meta-data on each of your friends so you'll be able to select for each one: does this friends show up by default on my friends list (when no group is selected)? do I get email when this friend updates? etc, etc. The good part is that people won't have to create new LJ accounts anymore just to have different friend groups... I hated that. It's just not clean.