some sort of fast access plugin

[Col. Kurtz]

please look at this . I love the thing with all the entries on the sidebar. 1|2|3| etc...

I think its a great gimmick to browse through a blog. Can anyone write a plugin for this?

Also look at the "whats new" option on the left.

[garvinhicking]

I think this is the worst way of presenting an entries list I've ever seen. I would never click through all those things, I would always prefer a "Previous / Next" pagination, like you also get when installing the HTML-Meta Link plugin and using the mozilla extension for pagination.

Writing a plugin for this would though be very little work. Only one SQL query and 3-4 lines of PHP:

Code: Select all

$data = serendipity_db_query("SELECT id, title FROM serendipity_entries WHERE isdraft = 'false' ORDER BY timestamp DESC");
$maxcount = 5;
$count = 0;
foreach($data AS $row) {
  $count++;
  if ($maxcount > 5) {
    $count = 1;
    echo "<br />";
  }
  echo '<a href="' . serendipity_archiveURL($row['id'], $row['title']) . '>' . $row['id'] . '</a> |';
}

Wrap that in a simple sidebar plugin and you're done with.

I think the "What's new" is something like http://blog.s9y.org/archives/2005/05/summary.html or http://blog.s9y.org/archive which I personaly find sufficient. But of course a plugin could also make the same listing, though I think with out caledar browsing it's solved better.

I hope I didn't sound too destructive, I didn't want to!

Regards,
garvin

[Col. Kurtz]

I really dislike those "previous/next" navigations. You never know where youre at using those. And if you have to look for an older entry it takes time to get where you want to. (Given theres no other form of navigation)
Here you at least get an idea how many entries there are. Hmm just an idea. Different people prefer different navigation.

I think the "What's new" is something like http://blog.s9y.org/archives/2005/05/summary.html or http://blog.s9y.org/archive which I personaly find sufficient. But of course a plugin could also make the same listing, though I think with out caledar browsing it's solved better.

Oh I overlooked that one. By the way, your achives are goin back to Dezember 1979 ?!

[garvinhicking]

Yeah, that's because Jannis made a dummy entry there. Poor soul. )

Regards,
Garvin

[gwilsonmail]

Blogs (compared to websites) don't seem to be structured for finding articles.

They are more "in the moment" presenting what is current.

Then hiding old material in archives, categories or tags.

I did see an s9y site with prev and next replaced with the title of the previous and next articles. At least you knew what you were about to read.

You could perhaps keep the usability of prev and next and add a drop-down that allows you to jump to the n previous or the n next articles

Code: Select all

                  [X] <<<prev   next>>> [Y]

X would be a drop down that shows a pick list of n [u]previous [/u]articles.
Y would be a drop down that shows a pick list of n [u]next [/u]articles.

[Col. Kurtz]

Well I´d agree with you if all blogs were just online diarys, telling about peoples lifes in chronological order. Pretty much like novels or autobiographies. But as we all know a lot of entries refer to different things, they present views, opinions that might were written at a specific time, but can be read without the impression of whatever made them come up. Take for example Garvin´s own blog with lots of movie and book reviews. Other people might just write random ramblings or some sort of photo-blog, with stories for each photo. Content of this kind is nothing you just skip via previous|next. You might want to read a specific thing or whatever. Or, like if you just use those numbers I thought about, you can go to a random entry, because you dont know what´s behind that number.

[gwilsonmail]

You might want to read a specific thing or whatever.

Certainly. We see it all the time - lots of review sites and many product sale sites as well.

I've seen other blogs deal with keeping certain entries current.

http://www.problogger.net has additional menus in the header to get to articles by topics

http://ffaat.pointclark.net/blog/ has a sidebar plugin entitled "Articles" to highlight specific keepers.