I don't know if I was just so comfortable with the old O'Reilly site layout or it's a nebulous something "else" but I am finding it really hard to like the new layout.
There are advantages and disadvantages, but the backend has improved greatly, which allows us to refine the public facing portions more effectively. I'm always happy to receive and discuss feedback though.
Re:Still a Work in Progress
sigzero on 2008-09-11T15:36:26
It is probably just a personal thing with me. Visually the old site allowed "me" to segregate all the sections (new articles, blogs, etc.) fairly rapidly. With the new site, and it could be it is because it is "new", I have to stare at it to figure out what section I am looking at. The blog sections (where I used to read your posts religiously) was something I visited a lot. I cannot even tell where that is on the front page now.
So I hope you didn't take it as "God the new site sucks". I did mean to convey it was confusing for "me".
Re:Still a Work in Progress
chromatic on 2008-09-11T17:46:35
Visually the old site allowed "me" to segregate all the sections (new articles, blogs, etc.) fairly rapidly.
One goal of the new site was to desegregate all of those sections, and then use tags to separate feeds into topics (Perl, XML, LAMP,
.Net, etc). The tagging component isn't quite complete. Re:Still a Work in Progress
kjones4 on 2008-09-11T22:06:25
I wasn't fond of the new interface at first, but once I figured out I needed to click on "Community", I started to figure out where things were located. I was fond of the blog section where blogs were grouped by topic.Re:Still a Work in Progress
sigzero on 2008-09-12T12:35:53
Thanks for this...I hadn't clicked on "Community" before.
Re:Still a Work in Progress
jdavidb on 2008-09-11T16:43:27
I was reading your O'Reilly blog yesterday and saw in the comments a reference to a follow up post you were planning. But the entry was from 2006 or so, and I couldn't find a link to your blog's archives. If such a link exists, it isn't evident. I was able to click on your profile, then click on "blog," but that gave me only recent entries (admittedly, a lot of entries, but still not going back near as far), with no apparent link at all to get to older posts. Alternatively, I was able to click on a calendar month on the right, but that brought up posts from everybody, not just you.
Actually, checking on this, it appears that this isn't your O'Reilly blog; it's the "onlamp" blog. But it's still next to impossible to find just posts from you in a specific month. I suggest some or all of the following:
- A link to "older posts" when I click your profile and then click blog.
- A way to select an author's posts before or after selecting a month in the calendar to the right.
- Completely dispensing with the "onlamp blog" idea, making each author's posts belong to that author's blog, and making "onlamp" a tag or category.
- Going back to the previous entry when you blog about something related, as you indicated in comments you were going to do, and adding a link, since obviously three years down the road some moron like me is going to be unable to find it.
:)
