Originally Posted by NeilGunton

I know this thread isn't supposed to be about crazyguyonabike, and I'm not the one that kept bringing it up. But since there are some really gratuitously disparaging comments being thrown around, I think I have a right to respond.

I respectfully disagree that anything about crazyguyonabike is "outdated". That is purely a matter of personal opinion. The website has a purposely simple design in terms of html, one that has scaled just fine from 100 to over 10,000 journals. Crazyguyonabike is unusual in that it has been developed and run from day one by a single developer - me. As a result, the website hasn't seen any of those "total redesign version 2.0" fiascos that so many other websites have fallen prey to. As in, you have a website that works, which the users know, and then one day the developers get some bright idea about "updating" it to use the current shiny new back-end resume-friendly buzzword application framework, and on the front end here come the inevitable pastel shaded boxes with rounded corners and huge fonts and popup menus everywhere and way too much white space. And, usually, in the process of doing this total redesign, this "we'll get it right *this* time", you lose all the little bits and pieces of design wisdom that had been accumulated over the years that the original version had been developed. So you have the new rewrite, with a new look and missing features and maybe even a new website focus, and the users hate it. And often you never even get back to the same level of functionality that you had before. Eventually the users might get used to it, just in time for the next redesign churn cycle. I don't like it, never have, and I don't want to subject my users to it. I like the design of crazyguyonabike, there's nothing "outdated" about it. There are real links to every part of the site (and they are real links that you can bookmark, not fake Javascript magic buttons that break bookmarking and the "Back" button). You can get around anywhere on the site with a few clicks.

Is it pretty? Does it have rounded corners? Does it have pastel shades? Nope. But it works! And it's fast. And most people find the design much more intuitive for ACTUALLY READING A JOURNAL than most of those "modern blogs" people go on about. When I go to one of those modern blogs, what do I see? A page that takes 10 minutes to load because it has ten zillion full size pics on it, ordered latest first, with no table of contents, and no way to easily get an overview of the journal (or, sometimes, even find the journal). The page takes so long to load because it has lots of Javascript junk and 10 different CSS style sheets to load separately. What's better about that? Hey, if you like a simple design that asks nothing at all of the user and copies Facebook's braindead ethos, then good for you. But my website is functional. It works. You read a journal by clicking 'Next' and 'Prev'. There's text and pics, in a simple layout that emphasises the content, not the ego of the website designer. What's wrong with that? Is functional and "just works" outdated now? If so, then I take pride in being outdated.

And what is so "uninviting" about the Serendipity page? It shows 30 thumbnails in about the simplest way possible. You are getting a random sample of over two million pictures, and you can very quickly see if there's anything there that looks interesting. If so, you just click on it, and there you are in the relevant journal (or forum thread, or whatever). What's "uninviting" about it? Is it that I don't present them one at a time with a billion ads? Or that I don't tease you with "You won't believe what pic 17 shows you!"? I'm not interested in all that manipulative crap. Here's 30 thumbnails, you're an adult, do you really need to be hand-held to figure out if any of them look interesting? Come on.

Secondly, the comment about it being run by a cash-strapped developer and not being likely to change anytime soon. I am still actively developing the site. It's true that I have my pits and troughs when it comes to getting things done. I've been running the thing for a long time, for free, so please give me a break if I don't always run the site like a corporation that has a team of 10 developers and 4 sysadmins and a marketing department and who knows what else. I do everything myself. And in the meantime I try to have a life as well as answering people's questions (often within 5 minutes of them asking). So sorry.

In any event, I do have big plans for the site, new features, improvements to the layout for small screens, special apps for Android and iOS which will have cool features leveraging stuff like location services, a new maps browser, a wiki section to replace the Resources, ability to subscribe to journals and authors, social networking features (as makes sense - the good stuff, not the evil)... lots of stuff. And I'll update the sparse design as and when it makes sense to do that. I'll use Javascript and CSS when I think it makes sense. And I'll continue to do things in the most simple, bare, minimalist manner which makes sense to me as a developer, and appeals to me in terms of user interface design and functionality. It's never been about flashy graphics or pastel shaded boxes for me, it's always been about what works.

I don't want to turn this thread into an argument, but I didn't bring up crazyguyonabike, these other people did. Some of them seem to have a definite chip on their shoulder - is it personal? Some of these comments seem a little bit unnecessarily spiteful, coming out of nowhere, when the thread wasn't even supposed to be about crazyguyonabike. So please, post your pics here, but if you don't like my website, I don't see why you have to go spreading such gratuitous negativity.

Moderator, I hope you'll let this post stand, I don't intend to pursue an argument here, but since I seem to have been the target of some really disparaging remarks, I think I had the right to respond.

Neil