July 21, 2006
New look and feel
I'm experimenting with a new look and feel for the main page.
Brief entries will appear on the main page in their entirety. Longer entries will show an excerpt followed by a bright red link to "read the rest". Unlike the familiar "Continue reading "story headline"" links, this will bring you to the rest of the story on its own page. It will NOT have the inline "extended entries" that seem not to work with certain browsers.
let me know what you think!
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at July 21, 2006
05:22 PM | Email This
1. Looks nice and is functional too!
2. Like the look of the bylines. Has a very newspaper-y feel to it.
The "News" and "Election Refom News" sub-heads are a bit busy. However, if you're using these to perhaps archive the stories better, go for it.
Often times it is difficult to, for sake of argument, find an article about a particular subject that you may or may not remember reading back in November or September.
The only nit-picky page and layout thing is that the red "Read the rest" links clashes with our standard blue and gold.
Maybe bump up the font size just a smidge on the headlines to differentiate it from the bylines.
3. Have you figured out someway to run your corrections? Your old system seemed to have a problem with that.
4. Looks nice, seems faster. I think all of the technology updates, additions of new contributors, etc. at Sound Politics are all examples of why this is by far and away the best blog in the Northwest.
Congrats and thanks for all you do Stefan.
5. You continue to make improvements, and that is cool. I see that you still have a small rodent infestation problem but we'll squash 'em soon enough! ;'}
6. All looks good to me BUT the red "Read the rest" is a little to much for my eyes. It's like using a baseball bat to crack a peanut.
If a reader/viewer is engaged, what was done before, nice subtitle, worked pretty durn well. Maybe a 60% gray would work a little better . . . not so shocking present.
7. Looks great. I am all for original, efficient ways to cram more information onto the screen at one time!
8. Different, but OK.
9. The new look seems to have HUGE problems with IE7 beta 3. Like links not working even.
10. The links seem to take forever to come up on IE 6.
which means I'm less likely to click on them.
And because there's almost nothing outside of the link (And yes, there is not a need for "Danger red" for this link!) it makes me not as likely to spend as much time on this page.
11. The Read the Rest function is pretty irritating. I prefer not to have to bounce back and forth between pages to read an entire article. Opening in another window or tab isn't much better.
In too many of the articles you have to go to Read the Rest in order to get a sense of what the article is about. In others clicking to a new page, window, or tab gets only one or two sentences of additional information.
Please don't use the function as a cliff hanger. if it is a short article, show the whole thing. If it is a long article, please don't truncate the middle of a sentence. Make the basic point and let the reader decide if they want the additional details.
This reminds me of the teaser news commercials on TV - three buildings in Seattle about to collapse, tune in at 11 to see if you are sitting in one of them. Irritating rather than informative.
Hairy
12. I agree Hairy Buddah.. I do find the new method of reading the rest of the story annoying.
I hate having to switch back and forth between pages...
I though the old method was pretty useful, sort of original.
I don't care much for the new method
13. quote= Buddah
"Please don't use the function as a cliff hanger. if it is a short article, show the whole thing. If it is a long article, please don't truncate the middle of a sentence. Make the basic point and let the reader decide if they want the additional details." YES
Don't make the atricle on the main page too short and don't cut off in mid sentence.
14. This isn't working at all for me. I am running Firefox and the "Read the Rest" links get me to a "Server not Found" page. The read more before always worked well.
I really liked the old format and would cast my one vote for going back to the old layout.
15. I spoke too soon. "Read the rest" is annoying. By opening a new window, it is easy to lose your place, and it is cumbersome to have to return to the main window. I much preferred it when the rest of the article was simply inserted in the same page.
16. hating it...
17. I notice that the home page no longer refreshes automatically each time I revisit it: the "no-cache" meta tag is missing.
Also, I preferred the old-style "read the rest," where the balance of the story was revealed inline rather than jumping to a new page. I understand the old method was troublesome for users of certain browsers, but these users could always use the (now redundant) "permalink."