Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Template Revamping

I'm trying out a version of Hackosphere's NEO template, which should make it faster and easier to navigate between posts. Let me know what you think.

Update: Added sidebar poll.

I've also (somewhat haphazardly) categorized around 600 old posts. The rest can be found under the "compendia" category (as I maintained manually updated "category" posts for my first year or so of blogging).

Finally, I've replaced the old 'blogroll' with a list of 'neighbours' (i.e. people I tend to argue with!). I expect it'll change over time. Feel free to email if I've missed you out.

16 comments:

  1. I like the new template thus far. It's very easy on the eye.

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  2. Nice and clean - easy to read. Love the AJAX navigation, too.... very snappy!

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  3. Looks good and is very snappy.

    Navigation annoys me a bit since it breaks the back button.

    Still it is very very snappy

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  4. Hmm, I'm liking this more and more as I play with it. If I can get it to play nice with my javascript widgets and my tabs I might have to implement this for my blogs as well.

    Cheers
    David

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  5. I think there might be two problems related to my guest poster status.

    1. My comments are highlighted. I'm fairly sure it should only be your posts highlighted.

    2. Every single post appears to me to be written by David Hunter... Is this the same for you Richard or for others?

    I'm not sure Neo plays nice with group blogs, rats since I was thinking of using it!

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  6. Could you leave the Firefox spam out this time?

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  7. Hey, I liked the Firefox spam! ;-) But okay.

    David - I think those bugs must only show up for you (when you're logged in). But yeah, I've heard it doesn't work well for group blogs.

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  8. Okay glad that only affects me.

    Now actually the other thing is that your guest blogger posts are coming across as if you had posted them rather than your guests.

    Since I am guessing the "Posted by Richard" is part of the template or picked up from the feed in a way that would be a hassle to change. The easiest work around would be just to add a By XXXXXX at the end of each of your guest's posts.

    It is really growing on me

    Cheers
    David

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  9. Broken "back" buttons are bad. That seems to me enough to negate any benefits to navigation given by this template.

    Also, the non-centered nature of the posts bothers me. Maybe I'll get used to it after a week--dunno.

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  10. "The easiest work around would be just to add a By XXXXXX at the end of each of your guest's posts."

    Thanks David, I'll get right on to that!

    Hallq - yeah, it's a pity that "back" buttons don't work with this template. But it's easy enough to navigate manually (i.e. find the old post in the "recent posts" list, or whatever category you came from) that it hopefully won't prove too inconvenient.

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  11. Hi Richard,
    Would it be possible to put the posts on the left side, and side-bars on the right? Might be better.

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  12. It's possible, but the left-to-right direction allow for more intuitive navigation. Still, I might experiment a bit over the next couple of days just to see.

    What most annoys me with the new template is that the post area is too narrow! I would rather condense it down to just one sidebar, and use all the extra space for my posts. I don't know how easy that will be, though...

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  13. I hate to upset the democratic process, but...
    DON"T LISTEN TO THE POLL! I really like the new template.

    And thank you for including me as a "neighbor".

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  14. One minor point, you don't seem to be able to grab the normal blog rss feed from up the top any more just the feed for specific posts.

    As such how about adding a generic subscribe to my feed icon rather than the rather specific bloglines one since we don't all use bloglines.

    Cheers
    David

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  15. Done!

    Funny that the poll ended up 14-8 against the change, as compared to mostly positive comments here. But I like the new template, so... it stays.

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