[thelist] Site check request + blatant weblog promotion

[Jonathan_A_McPherson at rl.gov]

Simon,

Some thoughts...

1. "Google It"
This is an interesting idea, but I'm not sure the implementation is usable;
it's not clear what I'm searching for until I hover, and by then I could
have gone to Google and searched myself. If it were me (which it isn't,
obviously), I'd change the link to say "Google Search for '$word'" so users
who don't know the hover trick have some idea where they're going.

The same thing (albeit to a lesser extent) goes for your non-intuitive
practice of using the time the entry was posted as a link to the entry. It
makes sense afterwards -- but if I wanted to link to one of your entries, I
might not be wondering "Gee, maybe if I hover over the time the entry was
posted, it'll tell me how to link to the entry itself." (-: I'd be scanning
for something that said "Link."

2. Location of time/category/Google It
I think it'd be more useful to put (at least) the category on the top of
each entry rather than the bottom, because it helps users with little time
on their hands to easily skip entries in categories that are of no interest
to them. Assuming I'm reading in a linear fashion (or haven't scrolled to
the bottom of a post), I don't get to know what the category is until I've
already read the post -- at which point I hopefully know what it's about
already.

3. Archives and Categories
... are great if your users are seasoned webheads (apparently the target
audience for your blog), but they would give me a scare if I were a Web
newbie. Not only do they look nothing like the rest of your blog, they look
downright scary -- Apache what? index of funky looking path name with
slashes going the wrong way? Weird icons? Must have clicked on a bad link!

I'm sure you're also aware of the significant security risks you incur by
allowing directory browsing on your server.

All in all -- very nice. Clean. Low clutter. Good content. I like.

BTW, thanks a million for the CVS link -- I've been wanting to get up to
speed on CVS for quite some time, but, as you are no doubt aware, it's hard
to find something that's more technical than "Bob Checks Out A File Via CVS,
Hooray" but less technical than "Advanced Diff-Merging With CVS Source
Control Path Quantifiers Under Mixed BSD-Linux Source Development."  (I also
hope to give Gentoo Linux a go in the next few months when I get my own box
to play with.)

--
Jonathan McPherson, LMIT/SD&I
Software Engineer & Web Systems Analyst
email / jonathan_a_mcpherson at rl dot gov

-----Original Message-----
From: Simon Willison [mailto:simon at incutio.com]
Sent: Monday, June 17, 2002 3:33 PM
To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
Subject: [thelist] Site check request + blatant weblog promotion


I've been updating my new weblog for a few days now, and I think there's
enough content there to give people an idea of how the site is going to
develop:

http://www.bath.ac.uk/~cs1spw/blog/

I'm interested in feedback on all aspects of the site, in particular the
content so far but also the design (I'm not much of a designer so advice on
making it visually more appealing would be great) and general navigation
layout. I'd also love to know if it looks OK on a mac.

Since this is blatant self promotion here are a couple of tips :)