btw - all the kewl kids have 'click here for the rest of the post' 'functionality'
do you think it is:
a) possibly a somewhat good idea in certain circumstances
b) fucking stupid
c) i wish lukery would add this fabulous functionality so that he hides most of his content. i dont come here for his content. scrolling is hard work.
talkleft, TNH, FDL, Clemons, tpmm, TLC et fucking al. i'm talking to you. you too, cannon.
i can completely understand if you are all doing it to increase ad revenue or something - but from a (this) user's perspective it just sucks. stop it already - unless you have a good reason.
i come to your sites so that i can read what you have to say - why make it difficult? if i'm not interested in a particular post, i can scroll down - but i want to read MOST posts.
Your mileage may vary.
Oh - that reminds me - do you think i should add this 'functionality'?
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19 comments:
No, I really don't mind scrolling down; it's quicker than waiting for all the ads on the new page to load. On the other hand, these tired old eyes have a hell of time trying to read the (kewl?) white-on-blue page.
notjonathon - thanks for your comments. this issue comes up ever now and again.
the white on blue thing wasnt supposed to be kewl. years ago i went through a registration process in 3 mins and happened to choose one particular format over another. every time this issue comes up, i try to find a solution where i can offer light-on-dark and dark-on-light - some other sites seem to be able to offer it - but i cant find the solution. perhaps it's time for an overhaul.
give me a week or so (post election) and i'll do a revamp (remind me if i forget)
I hate the "read more". It's like going into the pantry and instead of choosing from many cans on the shelf you have to open up every cupboard in the place to see what's there.
The white on blue thing is very good IMO. I find it easy on the eyes and a nice change from black on white. I know reverse colors (like yellow print on a black background) can be just too dark for some people. But the blue you have is a fairly mild one and I'd be keen to see it stay.
btw, there is a nice little interview with Gore Vidal.
Actually...I just might take that route myself (and I don't have ads anymore since i killed GoogleAds months and months ago).
I always fear that stuff I put a lot of work into gets missed when it goes down too far...and that's a huge reason why I have never posted that much at my blog.
I imagine that's the primary reason most of the named bloggers do that.
Loyal readers don't mind scrolling down...and want to read everything...but I think having a bunch of stories to choose from is better for first time visitors or google hit searchers.
And the bigger blogs have lots more casual readers.
Count me as a vote in favor of the current white on blue format plus I'm okay with the "click to read the rest" deal, too. That said, I have to tell you that I use a two-window strategery for reading/commenting.
I overlap them one on top of the other (staggered), with the upper one for the Home page, then click into the lower one to read the entire piece with the comments. When I go back to the Home page I don't have to wait for it to reload. :-) I started doing that over at DKos when the Recommended list was scrolling by faster than I could get to everything that caught my eye. By leaving the home page alone, I can avoid having that page reload (and some intriguing headline disappear) before I could get to it. Refreshing the home page at MY convenience helps me keep track of the stuff.
i hate the 'click for more' shit--totally not user-friendly; if you're interested in the material, then you wanna keep on reading w/o interruption.
plus i'll bet anything that at least some do it for the extra hits. just sayin' (from someone i once mentioned to you who told me that's why he did or still does it--i wouldn't know, i've not been back there).
as well, (haha, i'm NEVER done) being the contrarian i am, when i see 'click for more' or whatever, i don't. i'm off to the next site and if i'm really that interested, i'll google it for more somewhere else.
ps, i dig the white on blue.
I love the deep blue sea of background. It's cosmic and easy to read.
I'm such a technodunce, it's easier for me to just scroll till I'm done reading.
Light text on dark is more gentle for my eyes, I like it.
"Read more" would bad if reader had to click the link to see what's down there, as is the case in most of your posts with clippings from multiple topics.
However, on some very long posts with one single subject that could work, as long as fp summary on top descripes the rest of the post well. I doubt, though, that that would help significantly with problem of very long fp.
damien - the pantry analogy is funny.
Ron - yeah - there's probably a big difference between the hardcore audience and the more casual - but what i do, as a reader, is read all the way down to the stuff that i have already seen before - so i dont really see it as a problem that stuff is 'way down the page' - it's either new, or not. (i can totally understand it with say dkos)
the problem with the alternative is that i go to say, talk left, and i read down, open 5 new pages, and then go read them individually. take digby or billmon eg - i *never* once thought 'goddammit - i wish i didnt have to scroll through this nonsense.' occasionally there'll be a long post by puputonian (?) that i dont have time/inclination to read - but the 'cost' of scrolling through that is far outweighed by the 'cost' of having to open up every other damn post.
with some sites - i couldnt even be bothered (for reasons that might not be completely rational) - take TNH - I'm sure they have a lot of great content - and i'd probably read most of it if i didnt have to go to new pages. (in my head, i don't really distinguish between the non-ew posters)
LeeB - yeah - i do that too with the multiple pages - but i end up with 30-50 pages open all the time, which can be a nuisance.
Teemu - yeah - it wouldnt work for me generally to have a 'read more' - but i could conceivably do it when i actually write something instead of stealing - eg a long interview piece or something.
re 'a very long fp' - is that a problem for anyone? i can easily change it - blogger gives the option of X posts, or X days. i recently bumped it up to 6 days for one reason or other (i cant quite remember why) - i've just now brought it back down to 4 days. i'm never sure how frequently the non-daily folk drop by.
notjonathon - it seems that folks like the white-on-blue.
i've tried repeatedly to work out how to offer the 'flipped' version without luck - can you tell me how to do it?
Thanks. I wish I could tell you how. I have seen some pages that ofer choices, though. Under some lighting conditions, and dependent on how much sleep I've had (I tell my college students that the reason they can sleep all day is because their consciences are still relatively clear), the white-on-blue is all right, but at other times it just makes my eyes swwim.
I don't comment much on your site, but I do read it regularly. Since I'm in the Far East, our time zones aren't so far apart, either, and so I don't have to be going to bed just as you are getting up.
Anyway, keep up the good work on Sibel and that vast conglomerate/conspiracy that still seems impenetrable to me. When I combine Sibel, Daniel Hopsicker and Wayne Madsen. . .
By the way, a diarist at kos tonight writes that Joe Wilson said in answer to a question at a fundriaser that there are no tin hats any more when it comes to this administration.
thnx mate. (the student comment is funny) - as i say, i have no investment on the white-on-dark thing, and every now and again someone (legitimately) complains about it - and the regulars jump in and say they like it how it is, and i dont know how to offer an option...
if you have any specific questions about sibel, pipe up - because we have an array of experts here - and sibel occasionally drops by.
just curious - which part of the F.E. are you, and what are you teaching?
I've been a professor at a small women's college in Okayama, Japan for the past 15 years (a dirty rotten job, but somebody's got to do it). It's similar to living like Tantalus.
My doctorate is in English, but I've taught Public Speaking (I was Chair of the Department of Communications when we changed the curriculum, so I was able to write myself out of the TESL program), English and American literature (more in my line), American studies, intercultural communication, international studies and media techniques (video production--a leftover from my previous incarnation--mid-life crisis/career change).
On the question of Sibel, the outlines are getting clearer these days, but the scope of the neocon/arms/drugs/terrorism cabal(s) seems to be a Medusa of intertwining plot lines that outplots even the most paranoid of Bond movies. So far, the cast of characters includes:
1. the neocons. Perle, Kristol, Wolfowitz, Jim Woolsey (a classmate of mine at Stanford--we were on the same dormitory floor and thus acquaintances, but not friends), C. Rice (Hoover Institute and Academic Dean--I should say political hatchet person--at Stanford), Cheney, Addington, Libby. Can you include Fester--I mean Armitage--in this group?
2. Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the Russian Mafia, elements of the CIA, the Stans.
3. I should add the Hoover Institute. Stanford also welcomed George Schulz after his tenure as Secretary of State. Schulz was also President of Bechtel.
4. I certainly can't leave out Halliburton, nee Brown and Root. George and Herman Brown were the kingmakers of Texas politics in the 1950's. One of their proteges was Lyndon Johnson. When Halliburton became the parent company of then Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), clearly the real power after the merger was not the oil well supply company but the old Brown and Root core. (Disclaimer: I went to school in Houston with the daughter of one of the Brown brothers, who married a man named Fayez Sarofim.)
4. Whom have I missed?
As you can see, I was once somewhere at the edges of all this power structure (some of my old schoolmates are Bush Pioneers, shame on them), but for some reason (perhaps not being a closet gay, or only slightly more likely, quitting my fraternity and growing my hair long and protesting the Viet Nam war, or else because I didn't want to marry any of the wealthy airheads paraded before me), I never got close enough to see the inside.
In general, i prefer stories - even longer ones - complete in a single page.
One caveat:
Embedded flash, eg ads and embedded youtube videos etc, should be hidden behind a fold. Otherwise all those flash objects make firefox unusably slow, even if I have no intent of viewing videos. These days drifty's place is becoming unwieldy...
-lance
lance - thanks. yeah - we never use any of that fancy stuff over here. although i did once put up a youtube of eminem's mosh to help kick off the election season and was thikning of giving it one final fling.
notjonathon - thanx for the backgrounder - all very interesting. i'm not sure whether we should be envious or not of your current situation... i'm sure there's *some* upside ;-)
as for your list - sibel also says that the State Dept is very corrupt, and the DoD. so we can probably add a whole bunch of names to the long list. SIbel specifically refers to Grossman, and Feith as well (and edelman)
and you can probably add pakistan to your list of countries.
emptywheel is a big fan of the narrative that our current problems stem (in large part) from the texas mafia that you mention (plus Parson). i'm not really familiar with that story unfortunately.
Lance: Embedded flash, eg ads and embedded youtube videos etc, should be hidden behind a fold. Otherwise all those flash objects make firefox unusably slow, even if I have no intent of viewing videos. These days drifty's place is becoming unwieldy...
embedded flash, vids or whatever totally fucks up most blogspot sites who have them. i get to see a huge grey or white square (w/real text hiding behind it that i can't read) even when i'm down off that particular post; it's very annoying and i take off ASAP
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