Through the Interface

A couple of blog enhancements

I've made added a few new features to this blog over the last few weeks, to help people find related content and to get content in their preferred language.

At the bottom of each post – both on the individual posts and the index pages – you'll find a set of thumbnails delivered by LinkWithin which link – hopefully, at least – to related posts on this blog. Going by the number of people using them to access additional content on the blog, it seems to be of benefit to some readers, at least.

I've also just integrated a translation widget from Microsoft in the left-sash (as it's too wide to fit on the right). If you need to copy & paste code, I still very much recommend using the original page: I haven't yet added custom tags to tell the translator to ignore code blocks (and I'm not sure I can easily do so, retroactively, in any case).

Hopefully both tools will be of use to people: if you have feedback, either way (such as "the LinkWithin choices aren't very relevant", "the quality of the translation into Turkish is poor", etc.) please do post a comment.

8 responses to “A couple of blog enhancements”

  1. Ari C. Raimundo Avatar
    Ari C. Raimundo

    Hi Kean,

    I'm used to read blogs with Google Reader just like any regular developer. Unfortunally, your blog doesn't support full post reading in Google Reader.

    It will be great if you could create such a feature.

    Thanks.

    Reply
  2. Xue (Weslley) Wang Avatar
    Xue (Weslley) Wang

    Hi Kean:
    My company use websense. I can read your blog but not the comments. Is it possible to make it work?

    Thanks,

    Reply
  3. Kean Walmsley Avatar
    Kean Walmsley

    Hi Ari,

    Is it my blog, in particular, that doesn't work, or is it a) all TypePad blogs or b) all Autodesk blogs?

    I believe some people manage to read using Google Reader (which - perhaps because I'm not a regular developer - I don't use 😉 because I see it in the viewing statistics. Perhaps they'll not using full post reading, though.

    Ah - hang on... is this about having the full post in the RSS feed? That's a deliberate choice... my posts are mostly too long to push out completely via RSS (they break various netiquette rules about RSS size - hence the decision to send out excerpts + links).

    Regards,

    Kean

    Reply
  4. Kean Walmsley Avatar
    Kean Walmsley

    Hi Weslley,

    Same question as for the previous comment: is this a TypePad issue, an Autodesk blog issue, or just my specific blog?

    Depending on the answer there's a limit to what I can do (and there may be, anyway).

    Regards,

    Kean

    Reply
  5. Ari C. Raimundo Avatar
    Ari C. Raimundo

    Hi Kean,

    I can do full blog reading in Google Reader with the blog below. I think is not a problem with TypePad.

    civilizeddevelopment.typepad.com/

    What kind of reader do you use?

    PS: Thinking about the size of your posts I think you're right in your decision.

    Regards,

    Ari

    Reply
  6. Kean Walmsley Avatar
    Kean Walmsley

    Hi Ari,

    I actually just use Outlook for RSS reading.

    I do think this is because of RSS: Isaac publishes his full content via RSS.

    So I'm afraid this unlikely to change anytime soon.

    Regards,

    Kean

    Reply
  7. Xue (Weslley) Wang Avatar
    Xue (Weslley) Wang

    Hi Kean:
    What I know about websense, the blog owner (you) need notice them, you are a technology blog, not a sex or game. but for comments in blog, I did not get a clue yet.
    I can read some of Autodesk blog(between the line, Lynn Allen, etc), but not all of them(The Building Coder - Jeremy Tammik).

    Thanks,

    Reply
  8. Kean Walmsley Avatar
    Kean Walmsley

    Hi Weslley,

    I've emailed Websense to try to recategorise these two blogs (which will hopefully allow you to read their comments, too).

    Regards,

    Kean

    Reply

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