New Directions

A little while ago, Jason Kottke made a few changes to the look of his site, mainly that he would now mix all his post types in the main column, including his “remaindered links” which used to be in the sidebar. They used to be identical to a blogroll, they would now appear between regular posts, so would book and movie reviews and quotes from comments he made on others sites, each type having a slightly different look so a reader can skip over what (s)he doesn’t like.

He got loads of comments and linkage, a lot of people called it re-defining the blog. A bit of an over statement even if I agree that it’s an interesting development. There are however other less publicized changes happening in a couple of other blogs. Let’s have a look.

Laurent recently closed his blog and moved to a new one sporting a new look, as you can see (fr.) all the usual components of a regular sidebar are now in columns filling most of the page, as are the categories although they have in turn become lists of recent entries instead of just one link leading to a long archive page. Even his main posts are now a simple link list at the top of the page. I’m still unconvinced on that system but a bold evolution.

Today it was Scrivs’ turn to make a change, if Laurent’s feels like a portal, this one—as he notes himself—is much more magazine like. It’s pushing the minimalist trend even further, taking not only the look but even the content to the minimum, just one entry displayed at a time, the others are in a simple list underneath, next to the archive’s category links. Look wise I’d like a little more “hoompf” but on the layout side, I like it. Might not work for everyone, some people often have very short entries that would look weird with that setup but since he writes long articles, it’s a great setup.

Three new ideas, sadly one was much more discussed than the others but they are all pushing the format, it will be interesting to see how much further they go, if they go back to “the old ways” or if they—or others—come up with something new yet again.