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Microfeatures I love in blogs and personal websites

danilafe.com

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Re: Microfeatures I love in blogs and personal websites

#201

Post by JadeNB »

breck wrote: post #162
destructionator wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In years of doing this not a single person has ever complained I've never used your website, but if I did and the side arrow changed things, I'd immediately close it and never come back. You wouldn't get a complaint from me; you'd just lose me instantly and permanently. It drives me absolutely nuts when sites do this, it is so disorienting.

> I'd immediately close it and never come back. You wouldn't get a complaint from me; you'd just lose me instantly and permanently. Do you think this concerns me? I don't make this site for you, someone who admits they've "never used" my site. I make my site for my regular readers, some of whom have been reading the site for over 10 years. The people who regularly email me comments and feedback on my posts. People wh…

> a new language (Scroll) that is mathematically shown to be the simplest/most powerful language yet invented

This is, at best, ambiguous. To show something mathematically, you have to have a precise definition of it, and neither "simple" nor "powerful" admits a precise definition that is widely agreeable enough for any mathematical proof based on it to be worth anything.

Re: Microfeatures I love in blogs and personal websites

#202

Post by jmbwell »

reportgunner wrote: post #137

I knew the horrid progress bar is gonna be in the article, yikes.

Ah the push and pull. In the beginning, scroll bars were a feature. Then proportional scroll bars were a major development. Then scroll bars were dynamic, auto-hiding, optional, or removed altogether. So designers put progress bars across the top of individual pages--some sites have them, most don't, all different ad-hoc implementations. It's a new feature all over again, going through the cycle of learning what works and what doesn't. People hate it. People love it. All this has happened before. All this will happen again.

Re: Microfeatures I love in blogs and personal websites

#204

Post by k1ndl1 »

seanw444 wrote: post #150

Almost all of these are pretty nice. I disagree with the preview-on-hover though. That sends off a request to a possibly unknown (possibly unwanted) destination. I often hover a link to look at what the URL popup says in the bottom corner, before following it. It's just not a very privacy-conscious feature, even if convenient.

I've seen link preview solutions start to appear that I would assume are doing some basic moderation and logic to ensure consistency. I've recently seen on product hunt - Linkz.ai link previews SaaS .

Re: Microfeatures I love in blogs and personal websites

#205

Post by xnx »

swyx wrote: post #156

for those who want related thinking i defined my list of table stakes features for blogs here https://www.swyx.io/the-surprisingly-high-table-stakes-of-mo... across reader experience, author experience, and developer experience (for self maintained blogging software)

This is a good list. Have you reviewed any blogging systems to see how many of these features they contain (in a comparison table for example)?

Re: Microfeatures I love in blogs and personal websites

#207

Post by wonger_ »

adityaathalye wrote: post #139

Nice list! I like many of these "microfeatures" too. Some I have on my site ( https://evalapply.org ), some I don't because I don't want to require Javascript for blog functionality. I think I have a few others not in that list. This is my set of "microfeatures", which are all available in the post I linked below [1]. - All posts must have title, summary, dates (published, updated), one tag at least, and hot link to…

Do you prefer footnotes over sidenotes? And do you think each post/article should have footnotes?

Re: Microfeatures I love in blogs and personal websites

#208

Post by m1chael_k »

jefftk wrote: post #130

Lots of great features here! On the link preview feature, both Wikipedia's and Gwern's implementations put the preview on top of the main content. I think this is much nicer to put to the side, where its less intrusive: https://www.jefftk.com/p/preview-on-hover

[dead]

Re: Microfeatures I love in blogs and personal websites

#209

Post by wcarss »

weinzierl wrote: post #206

Hot take, but the microfeature I love in blogs and websites is a date at the very top. I know patio11's points against it, but from a user perspective it just adds so much context that for me it's a no-brainer.

Here's a link (I think?) to patio11's thoughts, since I went looking for it out of curiosity because of your comment: https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/content-m...

I also really like dates on things as a user of them.

Re: Microfeatures I love in blogs and personal websites

#210

Post by wonger_ »

rat_on_the_run wrote: post #114

I don't like side notes. It tries to separate the readers to two groups---one who wants more details and the other who doesn't, but the problem is that there's no such natural division. When I read articles with side notes, I often find myself constantly checking the side notes and then regret doing it because the info is unnecessary. I prefer the author to carefully think through and choose what info to present inst…

I treat sidenotes/footnotes like parenthetical expressions - too many are distracting. A strong writer should be able to convey his thoughts and asides without interrupting the flow of text.

But I'm not sure they can be eliminated entirely. At least sidenotes make use of empty space on wide screens.

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