Steve isn’t doing a year in review post, and I believe part of the problem is that he is hampered by his tools. I can sympathize, I felt the same way when I started. In fact, I used my Year in Review post as an excuse to finally do one of the things I put off when I re-designed this site: a revamp of my archives.1
Pages of full-content posts are great for reading through, but not so great if you’re looking for a specific post. The new archive pages allow you to visually scan a list of up to 100 posts (by date, title and topic) per archive page, and load in the ones you’re interested in on demand.
You can see the new archive pages in action by choosing any category or month from the sidebar. It also works for yearly archives (which have an URL like: alexking.org/blog/YYYY). I’ve left the daily archives (which have an URL like: alexking.org/blog/YYYY/MM/DD) as full-content views since a day’s posts isn’t too much content to scroll through.
I’ve also finally rewritten the inline AJAX comments (Note: this is the loading of comments for a post from the home page or an archive page, not posting of comments) code so that it’s faster, smaller, IE friendly and much simpler and lighter weight. I even created my very own spinner image… how very web 2.0.2
Still some refinements (and bug fixes?) needed, no doubt, but I believe it’s an improvement.
- This is another area I feel most blog engines could improve on. [back]
- Is that still
cool 
in 2007? [back]
Popularity: 7% [?]
Erik J. Barzeski adds this Comment:
Inline AJAX with a custom spinner? This I’ve got to try.
January 2nd, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Alex adds this Comment:
Perhaps I’ve oversold the spinner, I just made one with colors to match this site.
January 2nd, 2007 at 1:56 pm
Brett adds this Comment:
For your web 2.0 throbbing needs: AJAX Loading gif generator
January 2nd, 2007 at 2:12 pm
Dan adds this Comment:
Are you planning to release some of your site’s plugins?
January 2nd, 2007 at 2:38 pm
Alex adds this Comment:
I’ve released a bunch of them. This is less of a plugin than it is a theme feature.
January 2nd, 2007 at 2:46 pm
Mr. Biggles adds this Comment:
in one of your erlier articles you said you would send “your version” of ajax inline comments to the editor, askin if he will release it… ?
January 2nd, 2007 at 5:08 pm
Alex adds this Comment:
Instead of continuing to make changes to that plugin, I did a completely different implementation based on the archives implementation. The other plugin is still available as far as I know.
January 2nd, 2007 at 5:14 pm
Mr. Biggles adds this Comment:
I suggest this is some kind of a “no, I won’t share my invention with you”, right? anyway, thanks for your quick reply and sorry for my sarcasm. I was just wondering if you could help me, in my german blog I added a commentform too to, but with some trubble handling the css, so I removed it. what I’m talkin about here is my general problem with umlauts in comments, cause they aren’t displayed… would you mind helping me?
I really like your blog, nice technics, nice design and your skillz… awesome man! what about writing a mail, helping a fan of your work? 
January 2nd, 2007 at 7:52 pm
shorty114 adds this Comment:
Okay, I want to try this. I’ve been thinking of doing AJAX comments myself but I don’t see much actual benefit other than the fact that it’s cool.
January 2nd, 2007 at 8:48 pm
shorty114 adds this Comment:
Soo… either I’m doing something wrong or whatever, but no AJAX?
January 2nd, 2007 at 8:48 pm
Alex adds this Comment:
Mr. Biggles– no, that was exactly a “since I am not revising the other plugin, I have nothing to send to that plugin’s developer.”
January 3rd, 2007 at 1:20 am
amos adds this Comment:
thank you for all your great apps!
January 3rd, 2007 at 8:23 am
hubs adds this Comment:
will you be releasing your rewritten inline ajax comments plugin?
January 4th, 2007 at 9:53 am
Alex adds this Comment:
I haven’t decided yet, the necessary theme changes are not simple. It would be quite a bit of work (really, a lot) to try to package it with proper instructions.
January 4th, 2007 at 9:55 am
lynnlovestennis adds this Comment:
Just checking the coolness of this plugin in action. Love your stuff btw, so I’m prepared to be blown away.
April 11th, 2007 at 2:56 pm
tecosystems Redesign | alexking.org adds this Pingback:
[…] also integrated my AJAX archives and comments into the RedMonk theme. This required some customization and additions to the Sandbox theme […]
April 18th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
fan adds this Comment:
simply great
May 9th, 2008 at 12:47 am
Black Ice adds this Comment:
nice system
July 10th, 2008 at 12:25 pm