Blog user interfaces

[dougo]

Steve Yegge posts longish essays about various things to his blog, usually relating to his job at Google working on next-generation JavaScript stuff. His latest post was about why his posts are longish, which I didn't actually find all that interesting, but it referred to his first post, from March 15, 2006, about all the things he wishes blog UIs had but don't. Surprisingly, many of the things he missed then still don't seem to exist now: inline comments, revision history, per-post configuration. What's up with that? I guess he's not the typical blog poster; most blog posts are too short to need inline comments, and don't get revised enough to need history tools, although I still see (and make) one-paragraph posts that have "Edited to add" appendages. But you'd think that the technology would have advanced more over the last two years than it has. Maybe everyone's too busy blogging to write code.

Comments

[mshonle.livejournal.com]

I'm more surprised about most wiki interfaces: Something that actually does need edit history. The WikiMedia software is the best hands down and has all of the required features, yet all of the other wiki software I've seen just can't even compare.

The comment systems for most blogs suck. Livejournal seems to be the rare exception to allow threading.

[artname.livejournal.com]

"Evolve" is right. Why should someone invest the effort in something like in-line comments when people probably care more about 'more icons' or something?

[rhysara.livejournal.com]

I noticed that you added me to your friends list but 'm afraid I haven't a clue who you are so I thought I'd say hello...

[dougo.livejournal.com]

Hi! I think we did the hunt runaround together (I'm on Central Services).

[rhysara.livejournal.com]

Then I guess we did! Though I have no idea which person you were.