New home page (mirror). It came to me in a dream, literally. Usability is overrated.
Love it? Hate it? Be honest.
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New home page (mirror). It came to me in a dream, literally. Usability is overrated.
Love it? Hate it? Be honest.
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i dig it.
Comment by john — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 12:17 am
That’s terrifying. And I’m stealing it. :-)
Comment by John Kenneth Fisher — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 12:17 am
I kind of liked having direct access to the latest post.
Comment by Spencer — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 12:21 am
I think that’s the best presentation of linkspew I’ve seen yet!
Comment by l.m. orchard — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 12:28 am
You’ll revert in about a week: when you get sick of it, and not a moment sooner.
That said, left-field stuff…
Comment by Dave S. — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 12:33 am
Hate it. It’s nice to look at, but it’s just a splash page at its core, even if it is a HTML 4.01 Strict splash page. At least http://www.tantek.com/log/ provides a way to get straight to the blog without intermediary clicking.
…so I don’t really have a problem with the splash page per se…it’s just that I don’t have a URL for the blog with the most recent post(s) on it.
Comment by Nathan Sharfi — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 12:34 am
I’m trying to figure out how Google will cope with this.
Comment by Zach Heaton — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 12:35 am
it should be linked to a cookie and options (see it, don’t see it).
Comment by anon — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 12:39 am
I like the background, but the buttons could stand a little transparency.
Comment by Jemima — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 12:44 am
Seriously, it’s a neat idea as a background to base something off of, but as it is, it’s way too limiting and awkward. In my opinion, at least
Comment by John Kenneth Fisher — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 12:48 am
Usability aside, sweet.
Comment by Aaron Swartz — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 12:48 am
Others have mentioned that it was better when typing the URL revealed the latest posts, but now it’s much harder to use those external links on the front page too.
Comment by Firas — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 12:59 am
Sucks.
Comment by Jarno Virtanen — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 1:06 am
I dig it. I don’t know that I’ve ever actually seen your home page before, though, so I don’t know what it used to look like.
Comment by Shannon J Hager — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 1:17 am
Well…it’s unique, I’ll give you that.
Comment by Keith — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 1:53 am
I agree with Spencer, “I kind of liked having direct access to the latest post.”
Comment by Anonymous — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 2:45 am
Google will love it ! The title’s link are well used, thanks.
I think it’s a good job and a nice idea.
Comment by greut — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 2:57 am
Artistically, love it.
But to actually do anything with it, first thing I do is kill all the styling with a Firebird extension….
Comment by Bill Mason — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 3:12 am
Hate it. There isn’t a page for the blog itself any more - just the latest posts - and I have to squint to read the b-links.
And I think it’s… lacking a little on the artistic side. Technically speaking, it’s great, but I really, really, don’t like it.
Comment by Daniel Walker — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 3:28 am
Hate it, hate it, hate it.
Unusable invisible b-links — I quite liked those and used to follow them when they appeared in a list on the old home page, but the new home page drove me away to their RSS feed.
(Embarassing confession: I actually had to view-source to before I realised the background *was* the b-links. @import “/css/usability-is-overrated.css” made me giggle, though…)
And no list of recent posts — just the single most recent post — which is a step backwards: it was useful to be able to see the last 5 or so because you could see at a glance whether they’d attracted any new comments.
Comment by James Kew — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 3:34 am
How about a permanent http://diveintomark.org/latest/ leading to the latest entry? I would rather like to link to the blog instead of the home page, just like I link to index pages instead of Flash intros: Beautiful, but not for the returning visitor.
Comment by Alexander — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 3:38 am
Wow. So have you, like Gallileo, decided that the Sun really does orbit the Earth? Usability is only an excercise in mental masturbation?
In the case of empty design, your splash page is a winner. However, if you actually wanted people to be able to make sense of/use it…. You lose.
Comment by Dr. Fu — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 3:40 am
It’s pretty, but it’s no complete redesign. Hint, hint.
Comment by Jesper — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 3:41 am
It must be horror to keep all those links up to date.
Comment by Jeroen — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 4:00 am
It’s alright, but now I can’t find the b-links and the associated RSS feed. Do they still exist?
Comment by Manuzhai — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 4:36 am
It’s good, although I do wish the “latest” button went to the “last 5 posts” like it was previously.
Comment by sparticus — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 4:37 am
When I saw the new design for the first time, I supposed your site was hacked! ;-) Seriously.
If you want me to be honest, I have to say that I don’t quite like the new design. But to be even more honest, I didn’t particulary like the previous design either. The accessibility and usability is good, so I don’t bother, but from the artistic point of view, nothing earth-shaking yet.
Comment by Peto — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 4:38 am
It’s quite funky, but I hate that blo.gs now takes me to the splash screen rather than your latest post. Somebody made a suggestion about that already
Comment by Meri — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 4:39 am
Is there any way you could disable the hover on the b-links when one hovers on the squares? Or, perhaps create some dead space around the squares.
I like it generally, b-links as a background is figurative and literaI, clever. Can’t seem to find the RSS feed for the b-links and from a previous comment it must exist, right?
Comment by Anonymous — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 4:43 am
I like it when weblogs don’t look boring. Your old design was pretty boring! People who like boring pages can still get your rss feed.
Comment by andi — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 4:49 am
Why isn’t the menu an unordered list?
It’s a nice/cute idea, but I stopped reading mark’s b-links through the site.. it’s not usable.
Comment by Sérgio — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 4:57 am
How about fixing those links in the RSS feed?
Comment by Gabriel Radic — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 5:02 am
Looks great. Makes it hard for me to tell when you have a new post up. Perhaps it could do with a bit of tweaking …
Comment by Adrian Sevitz — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 5:12 am
I hate it, and already wrote about it a few days ago: http://www.virtuelvis.com/archives/124.html
It would be a tiny bit better if you
a) Had a /latest/ pointing to the latest entry.
b) Added <link /> to your RSS feed, so I wouldn’t have to see the awful front page.
Thanks.
Comment by Arve — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 5:29 am
Never really liked splash pages, and this one is no exception. Granted, there’s the “woah, what’s this?” factor the first time, but it gets old very quickly.
Not to mention the fact that it doesn’t really fit with the rest of the site. It definitely looks like it’s just slapped on there. Definitely does *not* qualify as a redesign.
And then there’s usability, but there’s no need to rehash that.
Comment by CDL — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 6:19 am
It promotes serendipity, which is fun. It is very “linked”, which is appropriate. It has obviosu usability drawbacks, but as you say: sometimes usability is …whisper… overrated.
Comment by Lee Bryant — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 6:25 am
Dislike. It’s a neat idea that doesn’t quite work.
I don’t usually comment on peoples site redesigns, because generally they’re cosmetic and any negative comment ends up being a gripe about change itself.
In this case, it’s a real reduction in the utility of the site. I miss having an unchanging URL that takes me to the latest post. On top of that, I was starting to enjoy having that easy-to-follow column of b-links, and now they’re a chore to keep up to date with.
Comment by Charles Miller — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 7:01 am
Interesting concept, but completely annoying beyond “ooh look at what Mark has done”. I have to “select all” just to see the background text, and even then I have to squint to see it. I can no longer simply load up your website to see if there’s new content - I have to:
a) Load up your website
b) Select all
c) Squint to see if there are any new links
d) Click through to your “latest”
I hate it.
Comment by Jim Dabell — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 7:11 am
Umm…. Is it an ode to Vincent Flanders? http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/ …
Comment by Andy — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 7:14 am
Came in a dream? Hmmm. What did you do or eat for dinner that evening?
Comment by CowPi — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 7:20 am
Neat to look at (the first time). Usability may be overrated, but total unusability is hardly an improvement.
Comment by Bill — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 7:52 am
The web page is completely unreadable on Pocket Internet Explorer on the Pocket PC.
(The old version of the site rendered great).
Comment by Peter Craigmile — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 7:53 am
It doesn’t look like a blog, and that’s a *very* good thing.
Two suggestions: make the b-links a little easier to browse and include at least *some* content. The latest entry would be nice.
Comment by Joshua Kaufman — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 8:05 am
I don’t like it. It would be good but the navigation is horrible.
Comment by Kevin Breit — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 8:06 am
Hate it. I can’t use my keyboard in any obvious way to skip past it, it makes some of the b-links unusable (behind the boxes) and the rest of them light gray on dark gray (not the easiest to read). I hate having to use the mouse and take an extra step to get to your actual site. The old setup with the latest post and b-links down the side was much more functional.
That said, it’s cool design, etc. Just not very functional. I guess usability really isn’t all that overrated after all.
Comment by Anonymous — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 8:10 am
Sorry, don’t like it. Clever, but not as usable. I want to see the latest blog entry by default. And where are the B-links?
Comment by Dave Seidel — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 8:23 am
You can find the b-link RSS feed through the site map — link at the bottom of this and all (except home) pages — under “Syndicated Feeds”.
And on the subject of in Mark’s RSS feeds: http://diveintomark.org/archives/2003/07/01/leave_rss_alone explains all.
Comment by James Kew — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 8:51 am
hate it. found it very ironic given your usability bent. thought the browser didn’t like your html.
Comment by Hofo — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 9:04 am
hate it, i’m afraid…simon says meets the net
Comment by Patrick H. Lauke — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 9:06 am
Man, you people have zero sense of humor.
Comment by Andy Baio — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 9:31 am
Depends what you’re going for..
If usability, well you already know.
If you mean to have a front page that’s more than a blog, than yah, that works..but you should consider having a front-blog page as well.. the unnecessary click is providing me with more exercise than I intended for the day, I’ll send a bill over for burned calories.
Comment by kasia — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 9:50 am
Hate it. Sorry.
Comment by Allie — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 10:10 am
You can find the main feed and the B-link feed on the home page through RSS auto-discovery, which all good aggregators support. Just point your aggregator to diveintomark.org and it should give you a choice of subscribing to the main feed or the B-link feed. If your aggregator doesn’t do that, complain to the vendor/author.
Comment by Mark — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 10:39 am
you should add some of them dancing hamsters. everybody loves a site with dancing hamsters.
Comment by Rich — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 10:53 am
The site works fine in Blazer on my Palm. (Ha, even the mobile IE sucks :-)
As far as the design, I love it.
As far as the usability… well, since I use Opera, all I had to do was press Control+G to drop the page style sheet and voila! Or I could use the Links Panel (http://tntluoma.com/opera/lover/7/09/) and browse the list of links, or press Control+J to get list of the links in a panel.
So I’d say keep it… it’s just another great reason to use Opera :-)
ps - a /latest/ link would be good, as would a /last5/
Comment by TjL — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 10:59 am
I liked old way better(direct access to the latest post). That page is ugly(IMHO) and slow.
Comment by Jorma Tuomainen — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 11:10 am
Fun idea, glad that you showed it to all of us — but definitely not a good long-term design for the site.
Comment by Anonymous — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 11:18 am
Love it. Or rather, I will love it when the oft-requested “where’s the /latest/ url?” is added.
To most of the commenters: man, you people are harsh.
Comment by matt wilkie — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 11:36 am
MP: So, this is my new home page design.
GP: Ah, I get it… very clever.
MP: Thanks.
GP: How’s that working out for you?
MP: What?
GP: Being clever.
MP: Great.
GP: Keep it up, then… right up.
Guess the movie reference! :-P
Comment by Giulio Piancastelli — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 11:38 am
Nice piece of art.
Bad web page.
Comment by Mr. Nosuch — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 11:40 am
I think this is a cry for help. (grin)
Very cool effect. I’m guessing this is fed from the same source as the mini-link bar you had on the left previously? Autogenerated from bookmarks, perhaps?
Also- useablity is relative to purpose. If the purpose is to provide list of links for purusal, then yes, usability is fairly low. But if the purpose is a link-dartboard (just close your eyes, swirl your mouse around a bit, and click; then see what kind of link-goodness you’ve found) then usability is excellent.
Comment by Jason Clark — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 11:43 am
Hate it. Sorry. Love (almost) everything you have to say, but if that sort of design were to catch on it would be the #1 reason to switch to reading sites exclusively through NetNewsWire. :-)
Comment by Brian Hess — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 11:48 am
according to my asst: “what a nerd!”
I don’t know if I love it or hate it. hate hate hate that I have to squint to read the b-links. love the unbloggishness of it.
would like much better with a hair more contrast between the b-link text and the actual background color, and if the latest box included the excerpt (because yours are usually actually well-written) and maybe how many comments.
would be very curious to see the visual concept, to some extent, extended to the rest of the site. it might actually be an innovation in personal site design!
Comment by Elaine — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 11:49 am
Hate it. Requires additional mouse click and it’s harder to see if there’s actually something new there. Nice concept though.
And sorry for echoing what most other people have said, but you did invite comments ;).
Comment by Neil T. — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 12:05 pm
Conceptually: Neat.
Visually: So-so. (a literal symmetry is the other hobgoblin of little minds.)
Usability- wise I have two problems:
1. Nothing to indicate what the links are (are they your personal bookmarks, or trackbacks, or what?)
2. I often read an article, neglect to bookmark it, and then two days later want to find it again. I usually remember the path I took to find it (Let’s see, I remember I went to Dive into Mark then to Simon Willison then…) . But the layout of this page makes it much harder to re-find a link that I visited.
Comment by Mike H — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 12:06 pm
Hate it… hard to navigate ‘b’ links, no quick access to your latest posts…
but, if your goal was to get people to switch to NetNewsWire, you succeeded
Comment by Matt — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 12:25 pm
I’m afraid I’ll have to vote with those that hate it. I liked having the main page with the latest post at the top plus links to the few most recent posts… that way I can easily find out if I missed something since the last time I stopped by. Its a pain to dig through the archives.
Comment by Nathaniel — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 12:30 pm
yes for the idea, it’s very cool looking, haven’t seen it done before.
no for the fact that it distracts me and makes me seizure because of the fast changing links ;-)
Comment by Brendyn — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 12:36 pm
Love it!!!!! Very inventive.
And….as far as usability goes - know your audience.
My grandma might have trouble with this page, but my grandma likely won’t be reading your site.
Comment by Emily — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 12:45 pm
unique but annoying as all hell. i, like many others, liked coming directly to your latest post. you could keep the splash page if i could go to say, diveintomark.org/blog/ or something to also get to the latest post easily.
Comment by kim — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 12:51 pm
Talk about a site map. This is just another example of a functional, alternate display in webspace, within a digital world.
Comment by skebrown — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 1:02 pm
Sorry. Sure, it’s different, and “cool”, but I don’t like it.
Comment by Roger — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 1:06 pm
10 out of 10 points for style, but negative one million for good thinking.
Sorry, don’t like it. The front page doesn’t match the rest of the site, which disturbs me. Also, don’t visit every day, so sometimes I’ll want a list of the last few posts since last visited. Your old style had a list of about 5 of the last posts and if I hadn’t read it I could backtrack. This was better than a calendar because if I hadn’t read in a while, flipping through the previous days to see if I remember the posts takes too long.
That, and it totally is not you Mark :)
Comment by Adrian — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 1:30 pm
Asthetically, it’s one of the cooler things I’ve seen.
That said, I would definitely like an way to jump to the most recent post directly with a Web Browser without having to see the front page every time.
I also found it kind of funny that the #4 result on google for the b-link “things people build with blackjack and hookers” is a circular reference to diveintomark.org’s front page (from which I clicked the link), which matches against the text of that particular link.
Comment by Cameron Watters — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 1:57 pm
Also:
Maybe you already know…and maybe I missed the part where you mentioned it previously, but are you going to do anything about the funky way the navigation displays in Safari on Panther? Not that you owe it to me or anyone else;just curious.
Comment by Cameron Watters — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 2:00 pm
It would be even better if the B-links in the background were to <BLINK>. Or even better, doesn’t Safari support the marquee tag now?…
Actually I do like it. I read the b-links with via RSS anyway, so they just turn into a cool background and I don’t suffer any great usability issues. A URL which always points to the latest entry is missing.
The tabs look nice with their new rounded corners, but once I roll over them in Camino they become square. They work correctly in Firebird, though.
Comment by Chris Burkhardt — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 2:03 pm
It’s cool, but not at all useful. If I want to find an old article, I’ll use Google. I don’t want to try to find a title in a sea of little grey letters.
I’d get rid of it.
Comment by Tim Buchheim — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 2:39 pm
I like it a lot. I like the concept with all the links representing the web, and your link buttons representing your site as a drop in the ocean. Very simple, very striking and very effective.
Looks terrible in Lynx, though.
Comment by Peter Karlsson — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 2:46 pm
looks cool. not as usable as your siite usually is, but I like it. I wouldn’t put it on my site, mind you, but I like it on yours 8)
Comment by Bryan L. Fordham — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 2:59 pm
sucks sucks sucks. and sucks in a very webby way!
Comment by Robert Sayre — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 3:25 pm
Ick. Fine (quite striking, actually) as a one-time “isn’t that cool” site to visit, but it obscures the content–which is the reason I come here. :/
Comment by Liz Lawley — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 3:30 pm
Definitely one to vote for the hating aspect of the game. Mainly because, as many before me have said, I really liked have one link to go to for the latest post.
And the links on the splash spage seem mostly useless to me other than eye candy, since no way in hell am I going to try to read what it says.
And I won’t be arsed to start reading http://www.diveintomark.org/mobile/.
Comment by Mark Miller — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 3:39 pm
It looks great. It should take a week or two for the novelty to wear off, then the benefits of usability will be evident again. Until then, could you do us a service to make both a splash page and a post index?
Comment by Lenny — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 5:06 pm
welcome to the dark side!
random: obviosu is one of my favorite typos.
Comment by xian — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 7:18 pm
Yuck.
Comment by Seyed — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 7:44 pm
You can keep it as long as there’s a URL to the latest posts. That extra click to get to the content is quite annoying.
Comment by Rick — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 8:12 pm
I’m not a fan. I think it looks cool, but I’m tempted to change my bookmark of your site just to avoid it. It would make a nice entry to a portfolio, or something like that.
Jeez. A LOT of people commented on this, didn’t they?
Comment by Simon Jessey — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 8:14 pm
how ’bout something like diveintomark.org/latest? save a click and a page load ;)
looks good, though.
Comment by vlad — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 8:22 pm
I think it’s rude. Why should reading your latest posts require any clicks at all?
Comment by Anonymous — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 9:06 pm
It was interesting the first couple of times, but please put things back the way they were.
Comment by William Denton — Wednesday, November 5, 2003 @ 11:50 pm
Count me in with the “not having a latest page makes it unusable”. I right click on a folder, wash the dishes, bundle up my laptop and get on the ferry. By the time I read your page I’m well away from any net connection, so as I blow through my list of daily reads and prioritize for what I will actually take the time to click on when I am on line, it gets shut.
A few more days where I notice such a page is consistently not getting read in my daily reads and it loses its hallowed place in that folder.
Comment by Dan Lyke — Thursday, November 6, 2003 @ 12:57 am
If I could have commented in the first 30 I would have been incisive & erudite. Right now all I can say is, where are the links to the old version so I can compare & contrast?
Comment by Fred — Thursday, November 6, 2003 @ 1:29 am
You’re MAD!! MAD I TELL YOU!!!!!
Comment by macguiguru@spamcop.net — Thursday, November 6, 2003 @ 2:35 am