Welcome to DelawareLiberal 3.0
If you are reading this, hopefully the site looks very different than it did the last time you visited. If not, I screwed up again.
Our new site is designed to improve your access to the best stories that we produce, while keeping all stories alive longer. We hope you like it. As always, we welcome any suggestions and constructive criticism.
Over the next few days the site will have some of its edges smoothed and we will get the hang of the special ways to improve our posting appearance. Also, DelawareDem will have a rundown of the new rules of the road. These are somewhat of a moving target, but we felt it was important to quantify them.
Thanks for continuing to make DelawareLiberal the best political blog in Delaware.
This site finally is on par with my Coolness!
LOL. Wow. It is great. I think I speak on behalf of my fellow contributors at DL when I say LiberalGeek is the MAN. He worked months on this, day and night. We all owe him much appreciation.
Ugh! No, this is not an improvement. The “featured stories” node might grow on me, but the new design just doesn’t impress me at all. The old DL logo, with the Cesar Rodney quarter in it, was distinctive and your “brand” logo.
Dana – I’ll put that request in to the art department. They are, quite literally, color-blind… But we like him.
LG
Not sure I like the posts being reduced to a smaller side element rather than the central element of the page. But I’ll give it time to see if it grows on me.
I do agree with Dana that I liked the old logo much better–maybe a scaled down version of that?
My biggest gripe is the recent comments bar, which no longer shows what thread the comments belong to. I have always thought that was one of the best pieces of functionality on the site, as you could check in with a glance and tell whether I thread you were following was getting action, and from whom. Now you can’t.
Mean (seriously) as constructive criticism, because I do know how much thankless time is involved in this.
While you in the mood to criticize go give art downs some constructive criticism
With any redesign, people generally hate it at first. I remember all the redesigns of Daily Kos, and how most hated it. Give it some time.
Steve – I’ll look into that. I think I can pull it off.
Looks nice. As with anything new, it will take some time to get used to. Mazel Tov.
We can consider modifying the banner logo to reintroduce the Caesar Rodney quarter. But the official logo of Delaware Liberal now is the initials DL in blue and yellow.
OK, having posted a comment on another thread with a blockquote in it, I see a real problem:
The text font for blockquotes is way too light.
I’d also suggest adding the comment quicktags plug-in, to enable commenters to format their own comments without having to know the codes.
Big agreement with Steve in regards to recent comments bar – that was your BEST feature. My only gripe was that is wasn’t long enough.
Your new logo is very Ron Paulish – bleech.
I can appreciate the work that LG did, but I honestly don’t see this as a change for the better. The old site, well, it just worked.
Welcome to the new site all: this is not a jab, I like the new site and hope you all like the video it is funny:
It looks like you took the edit comments piece away. Another nice feature gone. 🙁
Good suggestions, Dana. We will work to fix the quoted text font.
A1 – I am modifying the banner logo.
The blogroll now required clicking to see “middle”, “right” contributors, etc rather than the straight vertical….harder to get pass thru hits….
A1 – you don’t have the edit comments feature? Hmmm. Working on it…
I got a “you are posting comments too quickly…slow down” automated message…
John – Yes, I know that. It is a little bit of a bummer, but the blogrolls were taking half of the screen space.
the edit feature is the same and working just fine for me.
maybe the blogrolls can scroll?
🙂
@ John Young – LOL. I am already swimming WAY above my head…
me too.
Hi LG,
I am using Safari 4.0 on a Mac.
blockquote problem fixed.
A1 – perhaps try to clear your cache… ?
I’ll look around for other possibilities.
The new look is great.
Very excellent.
Mr Geek wrote:
I guess we’ll see, soon as I hit the submit button! 🙂
I do like that you’ve added gravatars.
New site, new President…..just 6 short months ago….
WTF have you done Geek?!
(kidding)
How do I get a gravitron?
Amish asks question. Go to gravatar.com and set up your account.
BTW anyone commenters can have an icon as well. If our Amish leader can do it, you can.
John Young,
what code did you use to get your youtube clip
to embed so nicely on here?
My vid’s link came through just fine, but I was
going for what you did.
Rich,
You must copy and paste the full embed code for the video at the You Tube site. I edited John’s comment and will edit yours shortly.
Thank you, Del Dem!
I too miss Ceasar & the quarter, the edit button, and the numbering of the comments.
Keep up the hard work Geek…you’re gettin’ there.
Susan..
You should have the edit button, for as far as I know, that feature has not been removed. We will check that.
it’s gonna take some time to get used to…..but good work, LG!
A1
I also use MAC with Safari 4.0 and there is no edit button here for me either.
Is there any view that simply shows all articles in the order in which they were posted?
Hey Steve, there are still some things we can agree on! 🙂
(Actually, there is far more that we agree on than disagree on.)
Confirmed Steve Newton’s bug in Safari.
Fix is for Steve to use Firefox in Mac. 🙂
I think that the AJAX plugin needs some adjustment. It worked in Safari 4.0 before on this site and others.
OK, is it still broken? If so, I might have a painful fix…
For DL 3.0’s actual B-day:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utVMxahPm24]
Yes, still broken.
Other comments for usability – active content such as the “recent comments” should be closer to the top of the page than the static content like the blog roll. I recommend putting the blog roll stuff under the featured comments
Also, having to click through to find the featured stories is a no-no in user interface design. The user should be able to find information as quickly and effortlessly as possible. Scrolling is much easier than clicking.
As plain as the old site was, it was still highly user-friendly in its design. This one has great potential; just keep asking yourself if you are making the content as easy and effortlessly to find and navigate as possible.
A1
Go back and check my very last comment to you in thread about Wendy Jones.
Teh Awesome
My son keeps trying to make me use Firefox, too.
Is that a sign he’s going to grow up and be a liberal?
LOL Steve.
anonone, regarding browsing the site, the new design gives us more stories on the front page.
The feature stories will stay up a little longer than the other stories which will cycle through.
Teh Awesome:
Tell me how burying the feature stories so all but one are invisible on the Homepage makes sense. Unless you’re designing for the News Journal, it doesn’t. Talk about burying the lead!
Steve,
I’ll be in touch somehow or other. In the meantime, tell your son that Safari is faster than Firefox, and remind him that faster cars also crash more frequently.
And we can all hope that he is growing up to be a liberal. 🙂
I got to see how I warm to it.
I got use to Ceasar.
Tell me how burying the feature stories so all but one are invisible on the Homepage makes sense
Wait… do you see the feature stories scrolling through? Or is it just one displayed unless you click on the numbers?
SCROLLING
[youtube= http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utVMxahPm24%5D
LG
The feature stories are not scrolling on Safari–A1 and I are having the same problem.
Ahhh. OK, then it is a Java problem… I’ll see what I can do.
If you click on the Banner/Logo at the top of the page (the Home page), it takes you to the page that shows only the first feature story and the numbers underneath. If you click on [Featured] it shows all the stories.
I think that the “Featured” page is should be your home page.
Nice to see you moved the “Recent Comments” to the top!
They scroll on this page:
http://delawareliberal.net//category/1-featured/
but not on the Home page:
http://delawareliberal.net//
A1 – for the rest of us, the featured stories scroll past every few seconds. But it is a Java function, just like the AJAX editor…
I’ll look to see if I have changed any of the java files.
LG,
The scroll past every few seconds is cool technology, but is a poor HCI. Why?
Letting your users see all of the headlines at once is much faster for your users and lets them choose immediately what story that they want to read, rather than having to wait seconds to see one headline at a time. The only site that I know that uses this is the News Journal, and I hate it.
Again, it is all about delivering the content as quickly and efficiently to your users as possible. Don’t force your readers to wait.
If you are determine to use this, another idea would be to do both: have the headlines scroll through and have them directly underneath.
Edit: If you are determined to use this, another idea would be to do both: have the headlines scroll through and also have them directly underneath so impatient users like me can just scroll down manually.
If it makes you feel better, you won’t have to scroll through 5000 words about how F’in cool someone is to see if they have selected someone to run for the Democratic party for Thurm’s seat…
I’ll consider the point, but I would ask for you to give it a week to settle in or so.
That second comment is actually more likely… I may be able to pull that one off.
How’s that A1?
I love the new banner. I hope we don’t bring the quarter back.
Excellent, LG. The best of both worlds. This way the user can both see what you’re featuring and be able to scroll down see all the articles.
I likes it!
At this point, I am still only imagining the Java scroll as it does not work on Safari, yet.
Like someone said upthread, everyone hates new sites at first, but then gets used to them. I think the same thing will happen to me.
I think the scroll not working is a feature, not a bug. I like the site better with scripts turned off using NoScript.
Also, I recognize these kind of sites are basically set up with templates and themes, and it is usually not a good idea to make a lot of fine-tuning by hand. So take my comments with a grain of salt. That said, since you asked….
1. Recent Comments no longer tells you which thread the comment is part of. Instead it includes the first 3 lines of the comment. A bad swap in my view. Sure you can hover to see the thread URL… but I’d rather see the thread name up front, and hover if I need to see the first three lines.
When I am deciding which recent comment to click on, I now will be making my choice based more on WHO said something than WHAT they said or the topic they are talking about. So for example, if I see a Recent Comment by LiberalGeek, I will click on it because I am “following” LiberalGeek, without even knowing what the topic is. And if I see something by Protack, I might not click on it at all, even if he was saying something important (OK, bad example). This is part of the devolution in blogs that de-emphasizes content, where it matters more WHO says something and LESS what they are saying. Call it the Twitter-ization of blogs.
2 Featured Articles are is basically old articles, which are displayed most prominently and in the largest heading font and in the widest column width.
But if you want to see the latest articles (Other Recent Articles), that is in a smaller heading font and narrower width. That is the way DailyKos does it – but they can get away with it because they have a community rating system that can push an article from “Recent” to “Featured.” DL3 doesn’t have that automatic rating system (does it?), so Recent vs. Featured is somewhat baffling. The criteria for making an article Featured, and then for retiring it from Featured, are not clear.
3. The “Other Recent Articles” column doesn’t seem wide enough. The center column can probably be removed to make more space, and its contents put in the third column.
The title of the the post for a comment in the “Recent Comments” section is being worked on. It is surprisingly not as easy as I had hoped. I have opened a support ticket on it.
The idea behind “Featured” was that sometimes a contributor would spend days researching a post, only to have it relegated to the second page within a day. This way we will have a number of “Featured Articles” available for a longer period in the prime rotation.
So we will have the five most recent well-researched (hopefully) posts at the top and the 15 most recent altogether below that in traditional blog style.
All I can say is this took a heck of alot of work, for a site that was already working for me. Geek, couldn’t you have saved this for some school project/assignment or something?
Do you really need a calendar, bigger than when I’m trying to book a flight?–That size should include past, and next month also!
I know you’re married to DL 3.0 as stated, but the lettering? I thought I tapped into Delaware Penal–expected to see mug shots. You don’t want the quarter–fine–we’ll have windmills.
I REALLY miss the exposed list of local blogs of all flavors–if nothing else it was a civil courtesy of what all you hard core bloggers yearn for–traffic.
I agree-return the edit button.
Tough to follow the R column of comments, to which article.
It’s a shame featured article gets buried so soon.
And the font–why oh why–can’t someone just use a solid dark Royal typewriter font? This is thin and light, an eye to credibility thing.
And lastly, was Polly Mervine Adams consulted on any of this?
DelLib, this was a TON OF WORK–and not to be unappreciated, but overhandled, so now I’m overwhelmed, and sorry if over critical. Congratulations, on your plastic surgery, cause this ain’t no make-over!!!
.
I really don’t understand the blogroll complaints. It is still right there, in the far right column (no pun intended), right under the recent comments. Yes, we have created a tab system, but that is for efficiency and use of space.
Yes, but I like use of space for the local blogroll, not my flight calendar :)!
LOL. Yes, the calendar is big.
You need to change the code so that folks can tell what post comments are going to.
Otherwise the conversation is hard to follow.
The idea behind “Featured” was that sometimes a contributor would spend days researching a post, only to have it relegated to the second page within a day.
I know how they feel. Sometimes I spend a whole five minutes researching a comment…
RWR:
Geek is working on that.
One of the nice things about the thread title in Recent Comments: In the absence of a community ratings system, the Recent Comments list is a good quick and dirty way to see which topics are still hot and active.
In other words, “Featured” is the editor’s choice of what’s hot, while Recent Comments is the reader’s choice of what’s hot.
The About This Site link (over the poll) is broken… probably not necessary at all.
I take it back, it’s not broken… it brings up the About topic in the Featured box.. I’ll refrain from commenting on the site unless I turn scripting back on…
I have to say that I really like the DeLib Facebook graphic/link you have here. Everytime I see it, it reads like this: “F Delaware Liberal.”
😀
We aim to please Smitty.
Hey, shouldn’t you have more grey and more beard in that avatar? 😛
We aim to please Smitty.
A lesson on proper grammar (comma usage)…while I am certain you aim to please the masses, I really do appreciate you aim to please me, above all things!
For what it is worth… Much easier use from phone!
OK, recent comments thing is fixed.
And the friggin’ calendar is fixed.
Thank you Liberal Geek. You are a God.
test
Works. Check it anonone.
LG
Edit button now appears on Safari thanks
Hi Steve,
And I assume that the homepage feature box scrolls now?
You da man. My typos have just been slashhed by 15%!!! Also I love the scrolling thing.
Yeah it does; didn’t even notice before
I still like the Facebook link you have -> “F Delaware Liberal”
WHOOO!