The Style of Techrights

Dr. Roy Schestowitz

2010-09-17 23:57:17 UTC
Modified: 2010-09-17 23:57:17 UTC

Summary: Techrights wants to make you happy, so help us help you better by remarking on the site's style

n order to get an idea across to many people it must be made interesting, not just important . Any scientist who sees a scientific paper transformed into something that's popularised on television (Cosmos for example) knows it very well. Making information a little more lively and animated need not degrade or detract from its accuracy. It need not have the messenger labeled "an entertainer" (at worst "a k00k") or the messages declared invalid, either.

“Making information a little more lively and animated need not degrade or detract from its accuracy.”Here at Techrights we chose an approach which retains accuracy, keeps the facts very dense (reuse through linking and concision for speed), makes the readers want to read, and provides as many external links as possible for claims to be validated and for readers to depart to sources of choice. Not everyone agrees with this approach.

Techrights uses a style less conventional among trade journals (which rarely contain any links at all) and verbal/graphical decorations are intended to please the reader, not to distract from the overall message. It's not as though I have not published scientific papers or produced articles for magazines. I adjust my style based on the audience and platform. For instance, the smiling GNOME fish in daily links hopefully makes readers happier. These posts contain positive news almost exclusively.

If the message and its presentation can be improved, please advise. When it comes to feedback, everything is taken into account and has real impact. We're here for readers and we are here because of the many readers. ⬆

Comments

hexx

2010-09-19 07:01:17

This is not about the blog content but rather about the website usability.

I have been reading this site for a while. Usually I check once every few days, catching up with news on the front page as well as the old articles. This envolves going back many pages.

One thing that has been bothering me for a while is a difficulty finding and clicking the link to previous articles. Here is how the links are shown at the bottom of the page:

€« Previous Page — €« Previous entries €« Previous Page €· Next Page €» Next entries €» — Next Page €»

Here is a quiz, which links will show the older articles?

"Previous Page" is equivalent to the browser's "Back Button", which everyone knows how to use. Back button is not something you expect to find at the bottong of the page and it's not something you are looking for. What's worse is that "Previous Page" link gets shown twice, hinding the link you really want ("Previous entries") in-between. Not to mention that the capitalized word "Previous" steals the attention and makes the link very hard to find. From a usability point of view this is a nightmare.

Please spare my sanity and leave only two links: €« Previous entries - Next entries €».

Dr. Roy Schestowitz

2010-09-19 10:15:17

I've known about this problem for over a year. It's a CMS issue that's not simple to resolve.

twitter

2010-09-19 20:29:37

It's not much of a problem. I've read this site for years and never noticed it. If I want older articles, I do a site search or hit Google with, "site:techrights.org search_terms". Google usually pulls up archive pages and the url scheme is easy enough to follow. The feed is even easier to search if you use a good client like akregator. Please stay sane, Hexx.

The Style of Techrights

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