Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Netcenter and non-headline-like links

Author:Tim Moore
Posted:3/16/1999; 10:28:39 AM
Topic:Netcenter and non-headline-like links
Msg #:4176
Prev/Next:4175 / 4177

The UI of Netcenter is heavily biased towards sites with a list of headlines which point somewhere and little other text on the page. This tends to work OK for a lot of sites, but there are problems with the unofficial Scripting News 2 channel.

Dave's style is different, where there is a paragraph or two of text which usually (but not always) has a link somewhere in it. The link text often doesn't make sense out of context. Here's what My Netscape shows right now for Scripting News 2.

That's a problem. It makes the whole thing basically useless.

The solution is tough. One easy one is to consciously make links understandable out of context. That seems like it's not such a bad idea regardless, but it has its own problems. For one, it requires Dave to change his writing style to suit this style of syndication, which he may or may not want to do. Secondly, it means that I still miss out on his comments -- one of the primary reasons I read the site in the first place!

Alternately, he could change the format of his site to make it more like Slashdot (i.e., giving each story its own page). Again, it might not be such a bad thing, but obviously requires him to make significant changes that he may not want to.

This may require adjustments to the RSS format to get right.

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