Comments on: A Note About the Notebook

By: Mikey

Mikey — Mon, 14 Mar 2005 03:05:49 +0000

Keep up the good work. Sees like every time you update the layout I like it more and more.

By: Tim

Tim — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 21:04:54 +0000

I think it’s a pretty good idea to mix things up and get a full “flow” of information, coming from you (notebook entries) or other (quickbits). There’s just one thing that bother me: the entries disappear too fast from the main page… If i have no access to my RSS reader and to internet for a day or two, then I have to browse through your site to find the last words published. Maybe you could allow more than 5 links on your main page…

By: Daryl

Daryl — Sat, 19 Feb 2005 17:14:32 +0000

I see you’ve divided the RSS feeds, which is a good thing.
I’m curious as to why your RSS feeds don’t make use of within the node.
You could set the category to either Quickbit or Notebook

By: Josh

Josh — Fri, 18 Feb 2005 22:27:39 +0000

I generally enjoy the new kottke-style inline thing, but I must add my vote for two separate feeds - 1 for articles and 1 for quickBits. I also would vote for a bit more visual hierarchy between articles and quickBits on the page, especially because your use of the extended entry link means that each post is about the same length on the home page, making it difficul to scan the page for big bits vs. quickBits. (Cf., again, kottke for comparison re: the role of post length WRT scanability ) Perhaps the quickBits text color keeps the grayer text color of the sidebar?

By: Dan Cederholm

Dan Cederholm — Fri, 18 Feb 2005 21:56:58 +0000

Taylor - Interesting about Live Bookmarks. I suppose the answer there would be to have all links point to the archived entry. Perhaps the decription could include the "visit link", to avoid clicking twice from an aggregator (I'm doing the reverse right now).

By: Taylor

Taylor — Fri, 18 Feb 2005 21:42:11 +0000

I share Mike D.’s feelings, but thought I would share my own personal reason why: Live Bookmarks in Firefox. (For the uninitiated: my SimpleBits Live Bookmark looks like a folder of bookmarks but is really a list of the latest SimpleBits posts, pulled from RSS.) Unfortunately, there is absolutely no way to tell the difference between real articles and your QuickBits. Imagine my surprise when I clicked “Transmit 3″ and ended up on what seemed to me to be the wrong site…
This touches on a larger point that is gaining importance on the web: with the increasing use of RSS and friends, we developers can no longer assume that users will use our interface to interact with our (or our clients’) information. Separation of content/information from presentation is excellent, but it requires us to think beyond our chosen medium.

By: Zach Crisler

Zach Crisler — Fri, 18 Feb 2005 20:10:56 +0000

Try offsetting the star for the "Notebook" title into the left margin--I do that on my site to differ a significant post from a less-significant post. It seems like this is a popular (um...proper) direction . Evil trickery and semantics aside, I do believe that a single column of aggregated data is preferable (at least when running a site with only one/two authors). Especially if data is evenly published on a consistent but non-predetermined basis (unlike a weekly or monthly publication). That means, you publish a reasonable number of quickbits that they don't over take your notebook entries, and vice versa. A smaller font and line-height for quickbits (maybe also wider margins) might do the trick?

By: Dan Cederholm

Dan Cederholm — Fri, 18 Feb 2005 19:46:27 +0000

Mike - Fear not, I'll have new feed options, shortly. It does make sense to offer an articles-only feed.

By: Mike D.

Mike D. — Fri, 18 Feb 2005 19:24:04 +0000

Me no likey. Sorry. I find myself generally a lot more interested in people’s original posts than their link lists so it really tends to clog up my aggregator when I’m forced to subscribe to both.
If you’re going to do this, I recommend at least providing a separate feed which doesn’t contain the link list. That would solve the only major problem I have with the new format.

By: Aaron

Aaron — Fri, 18 Feb 2005 17:48:48 +0000

I agree with Chris Gwynne’s comment about keeping the latest notebook entry on top. Gives the site a cleaner overall feel and is a more complete entry point to the start of the news.
The reduction in size of the QuickBit title works well. Other ideas following the same line of thinking:
- reduction in line-height (say 1.2 em)
- change to Tahoma
Both suggestions work around the idea to make the QuickBit section smaller, more compact.
My only critique would be the QuickBit title linking directly to the external site. Personally, I don’t expect to leave your site when I click on the title. I would prefer to be taken to the permalink … the information is redundant but does help to reaffirm that there’s no further content for this post. At the very least I would recommend the text “Visit Link” in the title attribute of the link for the QuickBit title.