BlenderNation Homepage layout poll: round 2
So last week I asked you about the layout of the homepage: do you prefer the current two-column layout, or do you think a ‘traditional’ 1-column layout is easier to scan? Here are the results!
So from your responses I’ve learned I should keep the current layout, but add the ‘infinite scroll’! I’ll get that online asap – there seems to be a bug in my theme that needs fixing first.
And while we’re on the topic of the homepage now anyway – what is your opinion on the big ‘featured content’ content slider (the four large blocks of content on the homepage, directly below the navigation) ? My main reason for putting it there is that I can give really good stories some extra ‘air-time’. But I’m curious if you ever use it, if you consider it a waste of space, or if you have any other suggestions?
Again, vote here and leave other ideas for improvement below. Thanks!
Ugh.
I *hate* infinite scrolling. Also, 40,9 % of people against it is quite a lot. Since there was no option “I don’t care”, I assume there was probably quite a few people just clicking yes, thinking “Whatever that is, sounds good to me.”
Any chance to make that at least optional?
Can you help me better understand why you hate it?
https://xkcd.com/1309/
http://www.zdnet.com/article/google-tries-to-save-the-web-from-the-curse-of-infinite-scrolling/
http://www.sitepoint.com/ux-infinite-scroll-good-bad-maybe/
Personally, I don’t like it.
For people that do, please list similar blog style site that implements it well.
to me the problem is when you want to go through pages to find something from some time ago and you don’t remember anything about it and you need to look trough pages, infinite scrolling makes you go through everything, and you cant just jump a few pages to get to where you need… or maybe there is some kind of mix, i’d implement regular scrolling but add arrow keys as shortcuts to change to the next / previous page and post, that’s how vimeo does it, and it’s comfie.
To me, infinite scrolling is good as long as there is also a paged chronological archive available (as in: i can browse all posts from 2015 -> March, without further categorization).
Paged is better for the archive because if one wants to search by year/month, he/she is likely to have an idea of whether the thing is at the beginning or at the end of the moth, so he/she may want to go to a page relevant to that.
Paged is actually pretty stupid – the homepage is always page one etc, so the numbers change all the time :-/
@Luciano – that’s a good point, jumping a few pages often makes sense… Hmmm
I kind of agree: Infinite scroll, but with headers for month and year that can be linked to. Maybe it’s not easy to implement, but it has the benefit of both sides.
I’ll consider it. It would really depend on how many people would use such a feature as it could take me a lot of time to add. A matter of priority I guess :) I’ll add the idea to the list and will revisit in tha future poll!
Hi Bart,
thanks for reading.
Yes, it is mainly the point that Luciano stated below (or will it be above once I post? ), which I think is a pretty big point to consider. Plus performance issues that I have seen in the past and also the reason the xkcd comic states, that if I don’t watch out, I’ll completely lose where I was.
Also under Firefox I use the middle mouse button scroll technique (hold your middle mouse button, then navigate with the mouse to quickly *slide* up and down), which also does not work well at all with infinite scrolling.
The feature header might be nice for occasional visitors, to quickly check the highlights. But for daily readers like me it’s pretty much useless as I’ve already seen the content
Yeah I guess that’s the thing I need to solve – for occasional visitors, it’s a great tool. Maybe you should be able to hide it if you’re logged in?
> Bart on January 19, 2016 6:19 pm
> Paged is actually pretty stupid – the homepage is always page one etc, so the numbers change all the time :-/
For archiving, if you sort by date in ascending order, then the oldest post is always on the first page. Paged archiving isn’t stupid. It’s just that at the moment there’s no big difference because we cannot choose sorting method.
Sorry, I didn’t write that correctly. Your suggestion wasn’t stupid, but the way WordPress handles it: it doesn’t sort in ascending order (by default at least).
Still, if it WAS ascending, you have to consider there’s *10* years of content here. I’m pretty sure you don’t want to start at the beginning :) So I’d have to add year filters etc, and this thing would quickly become a search tool, and no longer a simple browser. I wonder how many people would actually need that instead of the simple search that I offer now?
My apologies if I sounded rude!
No offense taken, but the suggestion wasn’t mine, it came from GSPIN, so apologize to him/her if you feel inclined. I just wanted to point out that paged archiving has its uses that doesn’t presents the problem you mentioned.