Our new community site for web application developers 29 November
Seeed is a side project we launched this week. It's a place to discuss the business of web applications - developing, marketing, financing and selling them.
There's a highly focussed forum, with a weekly email summary of the best discussions.
If you're thinking of starting, or are currently running, a web application of your own then we hope you'll find it an interesting and inspiring place to meet like-minded people.
All three of us here are active members, and happy to answer questions about the work we've done on Litmus.
I look forward to meeting some of our readers on Seeed!
Comments
Great idea. I'll definitely participate.
I know your going for minimalism but it would help me to be able to track conversations (send me an email when somebody responds to something I'm tracking)... Wait, never mind, I just figured out how to track conversations with your RSS feeds–great.
One design note: displaying the user information (avatar, name, etc) under each post throws me off a bit. It's probably something I can get used to but it was a little bit confusing at first because it is not the common way.
Keep up the good work.
Posted by Jeremy Olson on December 7, 2007 5:20 PM
Thanks Jeremy, great to have you on board.
Regarding conversation tracking, I agree with you. Although it can be done via RSS I'm not sure this is ideal for everyone. I'm going to try to add optional email notifications for threads next week some time, exactly how you describe.
It's interesting you mention the name coming at the bottom being uncommon. My thinking was to mimic blog comment threads rather than the traditional forum style. I might try positioning it differently. Would having the name above their post be clearer, do you think?
Posted by Paul Farnell on December 7, 2007 6:22 PM
The problem may not actually be the position but the presentation. On most blog comments, I don't even notice that the name is below the comment–it is just natural. This is probably because the names on most blog comments are not visually prominent (like on this blog). You don't notice them unless you are looking for them.
The names on Seeed are visually prominent. Not only do they have a special gradient and triangle, but they have a avatar (sometimes colorful).
There is also a problem of separation. The name gradient fades into white: the same background as the next comment which visually suggests to me that they are connected.
Also, because the names are on the bottom and there is no separation, it is very confusing when you have scrolled down and the top visual element is the name and avatar and the next visual element is the text of the next post.
I think the bottom line is that the position is a superficial problem: the real problem is the presentation. Here are some ideas: try providing some kind of barrier (thin line or something) between the name and the next post. You could also try making each post element more of a solid element by having one background color for the whole element and then dividing the elements by white space (like you do on this blog). Personally, I think getting rid of the gradient and then providing some barrier (probably a thin line) between posts would do the trick.
Hope this helps.
Posted by Jeremy Olson on December 8, 2007 1:44 PM