Antipode tweaked
Since Antipode launched two months ago, I’ve been slowly improving things as I go and get feedback. At first the changes were cosmetic. I quickly made the “floating” header stationary, particularly when I realized it interferes with the footnote links I love so much. I improved all the navigation stuff in the sidebar, and then revamped the layout of posts on the main page (especially dates and tags.)
Then I went into a phase of obsessing about how many people were reading. Feedburner now hosts the RSS feed, and are doing a great job. They give a lot of options for stats and feed manipulation, and give me positive feedback when more people subscribe to my feed.1 I also installed a Related Posts plugin that works off of the tags, and I’ve been quite happy with its behaviour. There are lots of other tiny changes like this2.
The most important change, I think, has been the mixing commented links in with the articles. I think it’s been working well, allowing me to bring attention to things that I might only have a brief comment on, or follow up on a topic I’d written about before. Also, it lets me keep in the action even when I don’t have the time to write a full article, as during these last two weeks of final exams.
What do you readers think? Are the links useful? Is the pace good?
- Supposedly there are 35 of you. Of course, some might be subscribed but are just skipping my posts when they come up… hey, I saw that you! Come back and read this! [↩]
- For example, I now give a little description for articles’ images. This was inspired by xkcd‘s practice of doing this, but I am much less funny. [↩]
Dec 13 2007
3:17 pm
Well, the footer is still floating. I assume you know that and it’s intentional, but if we’re going to talk about things that have improved and things that suck, that’s #1 on my list for “suck.”
But mostly I read the site through google reader these days anyway…
Dec 13 2007
4:18 pm
Note that the floaty footer breaks in MobileSafari (it does some variant of the funky chicken), but looks ok in the other browsers I’ve tested.
I love the annotated links inline with the weblog, and the concept is working well on other sites too (though I’m biased). Another similar style of post I’ve seen is the “interesting comment” summary, used on especially active topics. I’ve seen it on a few sites now, and the posts are nearly always as interesting as the originals (author acknowledging readers, highlighting the great comments).
Related posts == cool (as is ‘See also’ much better than the ‘ooh, look biatch, I’m using tags’). I implemented my own related plugin before the 2.3 one appeared, but mine doesn’t hook into the RSS (so thanks for the pointer/reminder).
Picture descriptions are good too. And search engines, AFAIK, like them too.
Things to improve?
I think that your sidebar needs some Zen. It’s got a lot of stuff in it, without a clear flow. Good sidebars are difficult. Some of the stuff there is a better fit for an about page (‘credits’), and others (tag cloud) are more usable as ‘also popular’, or ‘active threads’. In the end a sidebar can give some important info (about you), and direct people to things they may want to read now. The less direct stuff like years and categories … don’t seem to be an immediate use of such an immediate space.
Your RSS feed needs some lovin’ too. I haven’t tested if most readers honor CSS links in RSS, or if the only approach is to add inline styles. What I find, though, is that a nicely formated article on your site looks like HTML1.0 via RSS. This goes for most sites too. Presentation is a huge aspect of readability (as much as language clarity).
The comments interface needs some work too, but again it’s a hard thing to do really well (and you’re using the standard fare). The better interfaces I’ve seen delineate clearly, and mute the meta data carefully. The standard WP stuff puts the meta data in-your-face and doesn’t separate the elements clearly.
The date badge at the top of the archived posts is a bit plain/bold too. Article meta is important, but is better done subtly (I think).
Dec 18 2007
3:55 pm
So, I know IE is unpopular in many circles, but it does still make up something like 90% of the browser market. Even in a highly geeky community, like the set of people visiting csss.cs.sfu.ca, IE makes up more than a third of browser hits (see csss.cs.sfu.ca/webalizer for numbers). I think sites should atleast be readable in IE if not visually appealing. This site doesn’t even render.
The footer is currently obscuring the submit button… but my rant against absolute positioning will have to wait for another day.
Dec 19 2007
1:22 pm
Thanks for the comments guys!
Andy: the site works fine in the current version of IE (as of late 2006), as far as I know. I hope that by “doesn’t even render” in IE, you mean it doesn’t have a stylesheet/graphics in IE 6. If it’s not readable in any browser, please let me know. I definitely want to support current versions of IE – a fair number of people still use it. On Antipode, I currently get 19% IE usage, but only 6% IE 6 usage.
Dec 19 2007
8:14 pm
No… I really did mean didn’t render…
http://lynet.ca/~alumb/antipode.PNG
IE Version 6.0.290.2180.xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158
There isn’t anything more if you scroll down (other than the footer). Look me up if you want me to test anything further.
Cheers.
Dec 20 2007
2:07 am
Yikes! I’ll have to get a copy of IE 6 to test this. At launch, I had IE less than 7 showing no styles, anticipating that sort of problem. Will fix – thanks for the tip!
Dec 20 2007
9:36 am
Hey. Just found this site: http://browsershots.org
thought it might be useful.
–http://alumb.blogspot.com/2007/12/cross-browser-testing.html