I don’t read Gizmodo, but I stumbled upon its new (?), threaded commenting system today.
By paying a bit of attention to the way Gizmodo comments are designed, I encountered some flaws.
The notification rows for new replies under the comments are nice and big. They are also placed quite close to the original comment, a method that uses the idea of proximity to simulate relevance. So far, so good.
Nevertheless, they could use some more love: when opened up, the actual comment loads into another “module” (box), so the sense of proximity is ultimately lost and the user’s attention is fragmented between three different blocks – all parts of the same discussion. It gets worse with more replies – check it out:
Plus, why must a user click on either the linked “X replies from” or the author names or the nice big plus icon? For some weird reason, there are two links at the same phrase – both do the same thing. All of the row should be clickable – big shiny happy clickable areas, remember?
Another problematic aspect is the actual reply to comment form.
When the user clicks to add a comment, she’s presented with a threefold list of ways to reply – one of which (Facebook) is disabled for now. Then why even bother add it to the list? It only adds clutter to a supposedly simple thing as a comment form. Just add a tiny notice there somewhere, that Facebook comments will soon be supported, and tada.
Moreover, I’m sure that most users leave comments as guests – why not load automatically the guest comment form then and lose a click? Plus, after the user has chosen a way of commenting, lose the humongous list – it’s not needed anymore. Add a “change mode” link and give the user the chance to go back and choose another commenting method. Simple as that.
Also, what does the “Start a new discussion link” do anyway? I click it, zilch.
OK, enough ranting for the start of a month as productive as October. Have a nice autumn creativity boom, people!
I’ve never been to Tennessee – I’ve never been to America, if that matters. But this series of sites would definitely lure me to this gem of American country:
It’s the four seasons sites for Tennessee Official Travel Planning organization. Winter, spring, summer and fall.
Each season, a different site, a different style. Vibrant and cool and cozy and oh-so-inspiring.
Eventhough my design style does not relate to the styles used in all of the above sites, I can find tons of inspiration just by looking at their homepage for a while, any given season.
Much attention to detail, pretty typography, awesome texture and colour palettes. These four sites are truly something to bookmark.
Kudos!
P.S. Seeing those I can’t stop humming the “Tennessee” tune by Bob Sinclar, really.
I stopped for a while today and checked out my Mint installation. Not that I have the tons of traffic, but it’s interesting sometimes to see the hows and wheres of your visitors. And especially your referrers.
Studying these results, I’ve come down to these quick and over-generalised conclusions:
- Technorati is dead. Zilch. Eventhough I use Technorati tags, I have minuscule traffic coming from the once “centre of the blogosphere”. People moved on.
- I would extend my above point to all blog aggregators, but as always, Greece is always two to three years back in terms of web acquaintance. So the only real traffic I have from aggregators concerns Greek-only services.
- Social networking sites and tools like Facebook and Twitter always bring in a decent amount of people. In fact, Twitter is even better than pinging blog aggregators that your blog is updated, because by using it, you’re pinging real people. And if you keep it short and not too dense (I only write three posts per week), people will actually thank you for letting them know you blogged.
- Providing a link to a Google blog post will provide you tons of traffic, guaranteed.
- Microsoft should really, really develop a Mac version of OneNote. People are actually begging for it.
technorati, facebook, twitter, oh who am I kidding – noone reads these anyway
