filed under: programming, rainskit.com, tagging, tru_tags, usability

Posted 85 days ago

I’m working on the next version of tru_tags and one of its major features is the ability to create a tag-based archive page, like this one. After implementing the feature, I tried it out, and I liked it so much that I decided to use it on this site. Specifically, I removed the old “About” page, merged some of that content into the “Links” page (and generally edited that page), and put the “Archive” page in where the About page used to be.

This should all make sense if you look at the menu links at the top of the site. For those of you reading this via the feed – click here to see it.

It’s a really interesting page to browse through – I find it strangely fascinating to see so clearly all the articles I’ve written, and how they clump together. I’ve also used it a few times as a faster way to get to a specific page. It’s somehow more powerful than the normal tag cloud, functionally and emotionally, and that surprises me.

Or maybe it’s just late :)

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filed under: rainskit.com, usability

Posted 215 days ago

Inspired by my copy of The Principles of Beautiful Web Design, I’ve been working on a redesign of this site since last March, and I’ve finally finished it and published it. The redesign doesn’t change the actual content at all, and in that sense is somewhat unimportant. It does dramatically change the look of the site, though, and in that sense is somewhat interesting. I also took the opportunity to refactor the underlying code that generates the site, to make it easier to maintain and redesign in the future.

Of course, if you’re reading this via the email feed, it’s not going to look much different! Click here to go to the website and see it for yourself, and/or read about everything that changed.

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