My friend and former band-mate Doug Haunsperger has started a blog. As you can tell from the title, his views don't exactly mirror mine, but he's a sharp guy and I expect he'll bring some good ideas to the table. So stop by and say Hi.
On a side note, I'm due for a little blogroll maintenance. What's on my sidebar right now has gotten to be a bit unwieldy. I'm toying with the idea of displaying a smaller blogroll on the main page, with a link to the full thing on a separate page. Does anyone have any strong opinions about that? Please let me know if you do, I'm planning on doing something this week. Thanks.
Posted by Charles Kuffner on August 04, 2003 to Blog stuff | TrackBackdropdowns.
Posted by: Michael on August 4, 2003 9:57 AMAs long as they remain available! (I use your site as my map to the world).
Dropdowns would work well if the list is separated into categories, but not if it is left as one long list.
IMO
Posted by: elizabeth on August 4, 2003 10:37 AMThanks for the plug! :)
Posted by: Doug Haunsperger on August 4, 2003 10:51 AMDropdowns may save "screen acres" (it's the place to be), but they certainly are a clumsy interface if they have a large number of entries. That is especially true if many of the entries share the same initial letter. Go visit Nathan Newman's site... on the whole a very decent site design from the standpoint of maximizing usage of available space... and see if you still like the idea of dropdowns. I'm not sold on them for things like blogrolls.
I didn't know you were a MOB member! I wasn't, but I hung out with a lot of 'em 35+ years ago.
Posted by: Steve Bates on August 4, 2003 11:47 AMOops! For clarity, for the FBI and other spooks monitoring the site:
"MOB" = "Marching Owl Band" of Rice University.
(It wouldn't be so bad if the spy types had a sense of humor... yeah, actually, I guess it would be bad even if they did. Maybe worse.)
Posted by: Steve Bates on August 4, 2003 11:54 AMFor the archives absolutely.
For the Blogroll/referer, I dunno. I don't think anyone will scroll down to find Off The Kuff on that page, so something where it might be found is better than the the current state of that page. And yes, it would need some categorization to be useful.
Posted by: Michael on August 4, 2003 12:32 PMWell Not Geniuses, Talk Left and Beatniksalad do a short "our favourite" blog roll, followed by the main one. And that works for me.
Posted by: slushfund on August 4, 2003 1:49 PMI worried about my bloroll size for a while, until I realized that the entire list still doesn't reach the bottom of the page of posts. Yours is the same way. I dunno...kind of a personal choice. I still use other peoples' 'rolls for new stuff, but not as often as I used to.
I briefly considered categorization, but since I put so little thought into my posts, I figured why bother doing that for a list?
Posted by: Scott Chaffin on August 4, 2003 3:58 PMScott,
I agree, but Chuck's blogroll doesn't start 'til after the first screen of history, which puts it pretty firmly in the "mostly never seen" category.
Unless the web usability people are wrong, which has been known to happen.
Posted by: Michael on August 4, 2003 4:45 PMGood point, Michael. With a year.5 under my belt, I know to look for a blogroll most of the time. There are probably people out there (ed: ya think?) who have no earthly idea what one is. As you can tell, I'm a usability cretin, except for my re-sizable fonts.
Posted by: Scott Chaffin on August 4, 2003 11:52 PM