Author: Jimmy Akin

Howdy, folks!

Blogging will be a bit . . . unusual . . . the next two days (Thursday & Friday).

I’m taking a roadtrip through SoCal, Arizona, and as far as western New Mexico.

At least that’s the plan.

As a result, I may not have access to the Net–at least not the ordinary way.

I have, however, been preparing for this by getting myself set up with moblog (mobile blogging) capabilities–at least as far as the tech I have available will allow.

So, here’s what to expect: I’ll probably send a few camera phone shots. Probably won’t be able to do much explaining on what they are in the posts themselves, but I have a backup for that.

The backup is this: I now have an audioblog. You can access it by going to jimmyakin.blogspot.com. There I’ll try to post entries by mobile phone which you can listen to in .mp3 format. In these I’ll try to explain what’s in the camera phone pictures I’m sending, as well as other thoughts that occur to me along the road.

I may even find a wi-fi zone where I can do a more traditional post or two.

In my absence, I’d invite my co-bloggers to let fly with anything they may have that they want to say. (Thanks, guys! And don’t worry about scheduling. Just publish as soon as you write them.)

Folks can also use the combox to this post as a free-form discussion on . . . . well . . . anything y’all wanna talk about (but keep it within the rules).

Have fun, y’all!

Okay, folks. As an experiment, I’ve upped the number of days of posts that the top page has from four to seven.

I’ll let it stay this way for a few days and then decide whether to leave it this way.

Lemme know what you think of this and if it causes problems.

Yesterday’s post on blog design raised some issues in the comments box that I thought I’d solicit some additional feeback on.

1) Some readers were of the opinion that they’d like to see more posts on the main page before they drop off into the archives.

This can be accomplished several ways. One way is for me to simply tell the software to display more of them. Currently I’ve told it to leave 4 days worth of posts on the main page, but I can up that number if desired. For example, I could leave 5, 6, or 7 (or more) days worth of posts on the front page.

I can also tell the software to leave a specific number of posts (instead of a specific number of days) on the front page. Currently there’s probably an average of 17 posts on the top page at any time, but I coud tell it to have 20 or 25 or 30 posts on at all times.

A downside of upping the number of posts is that, as things currently are, it would make the top page LONGER and possibly make it take MORE TIME TO LOAD for some folks.

This leads to a second issue:

2) Some folks suggest that I use the extended post feature more often. Currently I tend to use it only for really long posts (like ones with multiple pictures in them), but it could be used on a more frequent basis–say, any time the post runs more than 2-4 paragraphs.

The upside of this is that it would make the top page vertically tighter.

The downside is that it would make folks click more links.

Someone suggested having the format be Title:Summary:Extende Post. I’m not sure how that would work. I’m not sure that I’d want to do a summary of the post before the "Continue Reading" link. If I did, it’d probably be a single sentence or phrase as a slug line to get folks intrigued enough to click the link. Perhaps that person or others could suggest more on that is envisioned for that possibility.

Another way to tighten the page vertically would be for me to use longer paragraphs so that there would be less white space between them, but that is SOMETHING I WILL NOT DO. I’m frustrated by seeing others use absurdly long paragraphs (in books, in articles, and on the web), and I am conducting a personal crusade against this tendency as I believe that shorter paragraphs are easier to read than longer ones.

So.

Whadda folks think? Should there be more posts on the top page (accomplished by the day or # of posts methods–and if so, how much more?) and should the extended post feature be used more?

So yesterday I get an e-mail in my box with the cryptical headline:

usability guidlines for blogs — please help us (your readers) out

The text of the e-mail consists of a repeat of the headline followed by a link:

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/weblogs.html

From this I would gather that the reader who sent it has a beef to gripe with my blog which he expects to be remedied if I read and follow the usability guidelines to be found at the link.

So I took a look at ’em.

They’re some thoughts by Jakob Nielsen, a Dane who has made a name for himself as a web usability consultant.

Now, I’m all for usability. It’s one of my favorite things. In fact, I regularly lament the lack of usability I encounter on the web, in software, and in life. Truth be told, if things aren’t usable then I’m liable to up and not use them! So Jakob Nielsen and I should be natural allies.

Unfortunately, not all values in life can be subsumed under the rubric of usability, and you’ll get a sense why if you visit the link and take a look at Nielsen’s site. It may be usable from a coding perspective, but it’s grating on the eye. (Screen widths being what they are today, having a right- or left- or both-hand margin available is a GOOD thing rather than let the text flow all the way across the page. San serif fonts also can’t be used for extended lengths of text; they’re best for headlines but will also grate the eye if they run on for too long.)

So despite what natural allies Jakob Neilsen and I should be, I’m starting to wonder how much of an expert he really is from the way HIS site is designed.

Then I start reading the content, and notice that he repeatedly refers to "weblogs" without even noting the existence of the more common term, "blog." He eventually surrenders to inevitability and starts using "blog," but he does so without explanation, which is odd since he feels the need to inform his readers–in his very first sentence–that "Weblogs are a form of website." He also states:

[W]eblogs are part of an ecosystem (sometimes annoyingly referred to as the Blogosphere).

Hoo-kay.

Jakob Nielsen’s credibility as someone to tell me about blog design is rapidly diminishing at this point. Even if one is initially put off by a word–like "blogosphere" or "apologetics" or what have you–if you really become an expert on it then you get so used to hearing the term that you lose your initial negative reaction and surrender to the fact that it is, in the end, the standard term accepted in the community.

In other words, you get over it.

The column was released yesterday, Monday, October 17, 2005, and at this point for an alleged expert in web design to be publicly complaining about the annoyingness factor of the word "blogosphere" tells me that he either isn’t that familiar with blogs–or "weblogs," as he calls them–or he is an unusually persnickety individual who is overly attached to his own ideas. Y’know: The kind of person who joins propane-accessory sales comedy troupe and insists on continuing to call it "The Propane Maniacs" when the rest of the group has decided that "The Propaniacs" is the more felicitous name.

Nevertheless, let’s see how JimmyAkin.Org stacks up compared to his top 10 rules of "Weblog Usability." What follows in boldface are Nielsen’s critiques of the design of many "weblogs," followed by analysis of how JA.O fares.

1. No Author Biograpies. Here we have a mixed score. If you click the "About" link in the left-hand margin, it takes you basically nowhere. This link came with the blog and I haven’t been able to get rid of it. But if you click my name under "JA.O Bloggers," you get a proper author biography of me. Clicking the other bloggers’ names also leads to info about them.
2. No Author Photo. Got one of me. Could get a little crowded if group blogs had them for everyone–and many members of a group blog might not WANT their photos online. For that matter, not all solo-bloggers want their photos online, so I don’t see this as an essential element of good blog design.
3. Nondescript Posting Titles. When it comes to magazine article and book titles, I’m a BIG opponent of obscurity. Clarity in such things is important to me. I’m less strict about this in blog post titles since (a) they don’t have to get someone to spend money the way a book title does and (b) nobody looks up blog posts in an index where the titles could confuse them. You just look at the next line and it should become obvious what the post is about. As a result, there’s a mix of clear and opaque post titles that I come up with. The opaque ones, though, tend to set an editorial tone ("Now here’s some good news. . . . ") or play on something ("Where Mr. Monk Shops"). I think they add texture to the blog, just like "Propaniacs" is less instantly  intelligible but more ultimately satisfying than "Propane Maniacs."
4. Links Don’t Say Where They Go. Here Neilsen complains about people including links like "some people think" and "More here and here." I don’t mind the latter so much since you’ve already been set up for what the topic is that you’ll find on the other end of the link (which is what’s important, not where on the Net it’s housed). The first, though, can be a real annoyance, especially if the identity of the person in question isn’t obvious from doing a mouseover. I don’t think this happens much here on the blog. I may say "GET THE STORY," but only toward the bottom of a post where I have been introducing the reader to the topic of what the link points to.
5. Classic Hits Are Buried. Not a problem. That’s why I have the Permaposts section (though I need to update those.)
6. The Calendar Is The Only Navigation. Bwaaa-haa-haa-haah! On THIS blog? You gotta be kidding me. I’ve got naviations methods all over the place. There needs to be a navigation method to navigate the navigation methods.
7. Irregular Publishing Frequency. Double bwaaa-haa-haa-haah! With an average of five or six posts a day, not on your life!
8. Mixing Topics. Okay. I admit it. I’m a topic mixer. I don’t think this is a problem, though. In fact, I suspect far FEWER people would read the blog if I just made it Catholic apologetics all day every day. One of the things I get the most compliments on is the diverse topic mix, so I think the readership of the blog appreciates this, too. (Though perhaps some don’t.) So I disagree with the applicability of this rule–at least in all cases. There are at least some cases in which it doesn’t apply.
9. Forgetting That You Write For Your Future Boss. While I hope to stay with my current employer indefinitely, I am quite aware of the potential issues here and strive to stay well clear of them.
10. Having A Domain Name Owned By A Weblog Service. Nope. Got my own, thanks.

So it seems that I’m in at least substantial compliance with all of Nielsen’s rules (not that they all have to do with the usability of the blog) EXCEPT for #8 and, perhaps, #3.

Which makes me wonder what kind of beef with my blog is had by the reader who e-mailed. Unless he’s got a strong thing for clear post titles or wants me to do apologetics all the time (in which case, forget it; the blog would be deadly dull), I’m not sure what he’s after.

Just one of the mysteries of life, I guess.