New among them are the so-called "dynamic views" which promise to completely change the way one might interact with a blog such as this. To get an idea how Monster Island would look different, Blogger has allowed a preview of sorts. Below are the various dynamic views, roughly in order of my own preference:
Frankly, I'm one of those "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" kinda bloggers. The Marmot changes his layout more often than his hanbok, but I've only made one major change, when I went from the color scheme found in the template used by Dokdo Is Ours to one that I'd customized to draw in the colors of Korea's Taegŭkki flag (and I wonder if anyone every picked up on that).
The truth is, I like the format now. This is a text-intestive blog, not a photo-intenstive one, and maybe it's better if the headlines and copy are there for all to see. At the very least, I wouldn't want to change to any of those dynamic views unless I could keep my current color scheme.
I'm also not sure where ads, links to other blogs, and "about kushibo" stuff are supposed to go.
Anyway, I'd appreciate readers chiming in.
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I guess flipcard would be the best, but I've browsed a blog like that and they can be annoying after clicking on a pane. Perhaps you could have a clickable photogallery at the bottom with photos that directly link to the associated post. That is much preferable than reading a pane. Also, you could add a tag cloud on your sidebar to access articles on the same topic.
ReplyDeleteHi Kushibo
ReplyDeleteI prefer reading your blog as is, compared to the other samples. I find a lot of the blogs I read chage their format and it gets a bit exasperating, particularly if you have to further click on it to continue reading, etc.
Just my 2 bob's worth!
I noticed those too and played with them, but got annoyed after a few minutes.
ReplyDeleteI like the way you have it now. The only thing I would change---and really it's not a big deal---would be to tinker with it and make it a little wider. But that's just a personal preference and I agree it ain't broke.
I like blogs that look like blogs. Long, with sidebars and without a ton of ads outnumbering content or "click here to read this tangentially-related article" between the paragraphs. I don't like when you have a mess of pictures and blocks representing posts and you have to spend way too much time figuring out which is the newest, or have to click several times to actually read the post.
itissaid,
ReplyDeleteI will look into doing a tag cloud. I think Blogger has a gadget for that. Maybe a photo gallery, too, but I'd rather not do that unless it's filled with a lot more actual photos actually from me. Right now I use a lot of jpegs found online.
Anonymous,
Thanks for the two bobs' worth. I don't care much for the click-to-read-further stuff either, and will only do so for a very, very long post (but a good chunk should be visible already). For the mobile device version (which is how I see my blog when I look at it on my iPhone), it necessarily has a click-to-read-further layout, but for that, I guess it's okay. (And just now, I did change the basic layout to reflect the red in this blog).
Brian,
I sorta got tired of the dynamic stuff, too, but I just wanted others' opinions. As for the width, I agree with you that the text should be wider. The problem is that I've customized the blog (particularly the color scheme), so Blogger prevents me from changing the width without ditching the entire customization. If I can find the time to record my color settings and find a new and wider template that is sufficiently similar, I will try to do that.
You may have noticed that on my The Sonagi Consortium site that's the cousin to Monster Island, I opted for wider text (and a somewhat simpler layout), while incorporating some of the same color scheme. But that was because I had picked an all-new wider template from the beginning, before customizing the colors.
Anyway, thanks for the opinions!