Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Site Update -- New Commenting

[Update 2, 2008-11-04 02:00] Gone back to the old way, at least for the moment.



(Updated -- minor corrections)

It looks like Blogger has upgraded the platform to make leaving a comment easier.

If you're looking at an individual post page, say, as a result of following a link from your RSS reader or another site, you'll see the comment form right at the bottom of the comments for that post, if any exist, or at the bottom of the post, if not. Just scroll down as needed, type away merrily in that box, and click Preview or Post when you're ready.

If you're looking at a page with a bunch of posts -- say, the main (home) page or a past month's worth of posts from the archives or a list of posts from clicking a label or doing a search -- and you click the Comments link for a given post, the page will reload with just that post showing and you'll be positioned at the beginning of the comments, if any are already posted, or the comment form itself if not, when the page finishes loading. Scroll to the end of the posted comments to add yours.

Blogger says this is better. It does seem that way for the case where you're already looking at a single post on a page. I hope the latter option won't prove too disconcerting.

I just tried leaving a comment on another post on this site, and things seem to work. The result of clicking Preview is just a little sluggish, but a couple seconds' patience gives you what you'd expect. Ditto Publish.

Let me know if you hate it. I think I can flip a switch to make it go back to the old way.

Blogger's announcement, which is probably of most interest to other Blogger bloggers, is on Blogger Buzz.

6 comments:

Yakov Hadash said...

hey!

John Evo said...

Show you how my mind works, Brendan, I didn't even notice when I left that last comment! But you could think of that as a good thing, I suppose.

bjkeefe said...

Indeed. The first rule of user interface design is "Don't make me think," so if you went ahead and posted a comment without having to stop and think about the mechanics of doing it, the new interface is a win.

Anonymous said...

Hey, did you read that book, "Don't Make Me Think," by Steve Krug?

That book is one of my holy texts, one of my standard training tools for people when they start working with me. It's nice because it's written for the non-technical audience, so it's good for communications people and web developers. The interesting thing is that 95% of his ideas are lifted directly from the industry's top usability expert, Jakob Nielsen. But then, Krug writes a lot better than Nielsen, so it's probably for the best.

As for Blogger's new comments feature, I have only been able to successfully post one comment from Internet Explorer. I have to switch to Firefox to post comments...

Anonymous said...

Oops, got the wrong link for the book...

Don't Make Me Think

bjkeefe said...

Never did read the whole thing, unless it was available online at some point. I've read excerpts, I'm pretty sure, and certainly articles inspired by it.

Anyone else reading this using IE: please try to leave a comment and let me know how it goes. As I said in the original post, I'm more than happy to switch back to the old way, if that's what people prefer.

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