> Bonus: Showing Page Progress
I just look at the scroll bar.
Microfeatures I love in blogs and personal websites
51–60 of 444 posts
Re: Microfeatures I love in blogs and personal websites
#52RSS should be a core rather than a 'micro' feature.
I might cop a lot of hate for saying this, but it's been 10 years, it's time to stop mourning RSS and move on. I loved RSS, I sorely miss the protocol based internet rather than the web based internet we have now. I miss when my emails didn't have adverts pretending to be emails at the top of my inbox. Advertising was a lot less prevalent when applications had protocols and you could simply move to a different client…
Mourning? Past? I'm still using it.
Re: Microfeatures I love in blogs and personal websites
#53Great list of things to think about for a good reading experience. Linkable headings is my favorite. I will often grab the IDs from source when needed. Hard pass on the external link decoration though. Please just don't break the back button and everything will be fine.
Re: Microfeatures I love in blogs and personal websites
#54It's not a feature, but I like websites without sticky headers or footers.
I hate seeing it on mobile, but I don't like it even on desktop.
The worst is the sticky side button overlapping the main content. A few years ago, I sometimes saw "share on social media" buttons obscuring the article, and that was so annoying.
Re: Microfeatures I love in blogs and personal websites
#55Good list, though here comes my Hacker News-style pesky comment:
Justified text on a screen is a feature that makes my eyes and brain hurt.
Ragged text is much easier to read. Uneven and beautiful, like a plant whose details you rest your eyes upon as you observe, rather than a uniform concrete structure where vision is lost.
(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
┬─┬ノ( º _ ºノ)
Re: Microfeatures I love in blogs and personal websites
#56RSS should be a core rather than a 'micro' feature.
I might cop a lot of hate for saying this, but it's been 10 years, it's time to stop mourning RSS and move on. I loved RSS, I sorely miss the protocol based internet rather than the web based internet we have now. I miss when my emails didn't have adverts pretending to be emails at the top of my inbox. Advertising was a lot less prevalent when applications had protocols and you could simply move to a different client…
This take, popular though it is, seems to be more vibes-based than reality based. Most blogs I visit have RSS feeds. The site we’re both currently posting on has a fully functional RSS feed. It’s hardly dead.
Re: Microfeatures I love in blogs and personal websites
#57I like Cassidy James' idea of linking a blog post to a Mastodon post[1], and showing the corresponding social interactions as a comments section at the bottom of the post. All static site client-side!
1. https://cassidyjames.com/blog/fediverse-blog-comments-mastod...
Re: Microfeatures I love in blogs and personal websites
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
> - Keyboard nav. Use the left/right arrow keys to navigate through pages on my site. Please don't, this is horrible and I've previously only seen it used by clickbait news sites. It provides no real value, the only use case of somebody wanting to browse through just the start of each of your articles is going to be incredibly rare. But what you're doing is hijacking a key that normally has no effect into having a de…
In theory is the same as in practice, in theory. But in practice, they're different. > It provides no real value, This is wrong. It provides a tremendous amount of value. Source: I use it many times a week, for many years, for many reasons. > destructive one. This is wrong. These pages are immutable with no state. If by chance you accidentally hit an arrow key on one of the rare long form pages with scroll, sure you…
> 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.
Re: Microfeatures I love in blogs and personal websites
#59I value links.
WordPress used to have a Links section in the sidebar by default. It was later criticised for the default links being to WP founders/devs. But it was there, and you could change it.
Links are the web for me. "If you like my site maybe you will like what I like".
Go look at https://diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/ - links!
Go look at other sites and if they are WP chances are no link list.
Am I blaming WP? Yes because I thought it was a terrible change. No because other site builders/SSG's appear to have followed.
Links make the web what it is.
We need more, not less.
Re: Microfeatures I love in blogs and personal websites
#60A feature that seems to have disappeared from a lot of blogs these days is date when a post was published. Sometimes date is required to put things into context and I can't understand why so many blogs these days don't have it.
I have actually three dates on my blog [1], (1) the date I started writing a post (hardcoded in the url/name), (2) the date it was first published (defined in the markdown frontmatter) and (3) the date a post was last modifed (based on git commits). I think all three are relevant.
[1]: https://du.nkel.dev/