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Techdirt Testing Quicklinks

Techdirt

from the making-your-life-easier dept

Tue, Apr 24th 2001 6:53pm — Mike Masnick
Okay, in our never ending effort to make life easier for you, we're testing out some new features. The latest is Quicklinks technology from our friends over at Quickbrowse. You should notice that on the bottom righthand corner of the front page of Techdirt, there's now a little blinking thing. If you click on this, and then on a bunch of links on the page, and then click the blinking thing again - all of your links will open up in a single page. Thus, when we pick a whole bunch of incredibly interesting articles for you to read, you can read them all in a single browser window. We've been testing it internally for a while, and it's pretty cool. I'm not sure if it works with all operating systems/browsers. Anyway, I was also quoted in an Office.com article about the Quicklinks technology. Let us know what you think. Update: Okay, people seem to hate it. Really hate it. And, perhaps, hate me for even thinking of using it. We obviously failed to test it out completely, and I apologize for some of the oversights we made. It was up for about 12 hours, but it was obviously a mistake. If you still want to see what it was, it's now on a separate page. We're also talking with Quickbrowse about fixing some of the problems people had, but any updated version will always remain on that separate page for now.
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16 Comments

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  • identicon
    alternatives, 24 Apr 2001 @ 8:25pm

    Yet another tracker.....

    And doubleclick tracks users so they can better sell us stuff.

    Oh, how about "I'm from the goverment and I'm here to help you"

    Or, how computers will lead to the paperless office.

    Or, how push technology will serve you data you want.

    Or, .....

    I'm underwhelmed. And, I'll keep deleting any of their cookies.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Ann Onymous, 24 Apr 2001 @ 8:45pm

    No way, no how, not now, not ever

    I will not turn on Javascript to enable your little toy. I've been a daily visitor for a couple of years, but I don't put up with this kind of crap.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    alternatives, 24 Apr 2001 @ 9:14pm

    Broken on FreeBSD

    Using the native FreeBSD Netscape causes a crash.

    So much for multi-platform. (more java crap)

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    DonKeyshot, 24 Apr 2001 @ 9:16pm

    Ain't working

    Tried a couple of times, just out of curiousity. Page failed to load each time. Hmm.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    szap, 24 Apr 2001 @ 10:48pm

    Nothing in mozilla, and konqueror can't handle it

    Mozilla 0.8.1 (very stable for me, thank you) just acts as if nothing's there. Javascript/ECMAScript turned on. That's a good thing for mozilla to ignore things it can't handle, because konqueror 2.1.1 just renders all the windows before the main page, and it's damn annoying.
    Until most browsers work with it, chuck it on a separate page. We (I think) don't need it, and we don't need the extra download times. Middle-click or "Open in new window" works just fine.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Duffman, 24 Apr 2001 @ 11:46pm

      Re: Nothing in mozilla, and konqueror can't handle

      I'm afriad I sort of have to agree. It works fine with IE, and it is kind of a new neat toy, but with the pop up, which has been advocated against before on this site, and especially without universal usability, I would say at least move it to a different page. I liked it, but it wasn't really worth my time to select all the links and wait for the new page to load up. Great initiative, though, a pat on the back, Mike - everyone else seems to be pretty negative. I haven't seen this anywhere else yet.

      [ link to this | view in chronology ]

      • icon
        Mike (profile), 25 Apr 2001 @ 12:42am

        Re: Nothing in mozilla, and konqueror can't handle

        Ok. I hear you... So far most people don't like it. Personally, I find it very useful. I'm going to leave it up a little longer to see what other people have to say. But, it looks like we'll get rid of it, or switch it to a separate page.

        I'm a little surprised at the level of anger about this. I was just trying to make the site more useful, and it's just a test, and everyone acts like it was a personal insult.

        As for the "tracking" issue... I have no clue what you're talking about. We're not tracking squat.

        As for download time, I haven't noticed any additional download time in using it.

        As for pop up windows, I'm not sure I know what you're talking about either. I don't see any pop up windows... Please let me know where they are?

        [ link to this | view in chronology ]

        • identicon
          kai, 25 Apr 2001 @ 4:44am

          Re: Nothing in mozilla, and konqueror can't handle

          I'm not angry at it, I think it's a neat toy. Works fine on Linux/Netscape, and gives me some ideas about user interface. But I can answer what some people are probably mad at.

          Obviously, QuickLinks knows exactly what pages you've clicked on (otherwise how could it display them?) So, the tracking issue is whether QuickLinks is actually saving your IP along with that link information. So some people are intuiting that QuickLinks is grabbing tons of information they don't want QuickLinks to have.

          Download time... well, your pages are longer, and you have to run some programs locally (javascript), but I didn't see anything.

          The popup problem is on my system (Linux/Netscape). WHen you go to techdirt, quicklinks is popping up a window explaining itself. I clicked on 'don't show me this again' but it does anyways. That was annoying, since I get perhaps 3 popups if I come directly to techdirt.

          [ link to this | view in chronology ]

          • identicon
            todd, 25 Apr 2001 @ 4:56am

            Re: quicklinks

            Love that you are striving to make Techdirt even better, but must say that I do not like Quicklinks -- it DOES increase download time for the page, and clicking on a link in a story appears to have no effect for, say, 20 seconds.


            Plus the pop-up window -- oooh do I hate those.

            My $0.015: flash over substance ratio is too high.

            [ link to this | view in chronology ]

        • identicon
          Regular Guy, 25 Apr 2001 @ 8:42am

          Re: Nothing in mozilla, and konqueror can't handle

          Mike,
          As a daily visitor to your site, I want to say that you did a great job to create and maintain this site. This is a very helpful and informative site!
          However, I must agree that I didn't like this new feature. The usability of this feature is very badly designed.

          [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Disgruntled, 25 Apr 2001 @ 4:01am

    Crap

    Get rid of this intrusive, broken crap now, or you've lost a reader. This kind of "technology" is a total waste of time.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    xdroop, 25 Apr 2001 @ 8:19am

    Another vote against

    I don't run javascript on any browser I do day-to-day browsing on -- too risky. IE, Netscape, and Konqueror (all on multiple platforms) just can't handle it. Too risky. So sites which depend on it for formatting or whatever just look bad to me.

    Now, keeping it or dumping it is entirely up to you, but I wonder if the content of the site will over-ride the nuicence factor of a badly formatted page...

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    ScooterBoy, 25 Apr 2001 @ 8:58am

    Ok.. I've taken the quicklinks down now.

    Hey all,

    So i've taken the quicklinks off of the homepage, since apparently there were some oversights in testing them out that I failed to make..

    For those of you that want to see what all of the hubub is about, the quicklinks version of the homepage will always be available at: http://www.techdirt.com/quickindex.shtml.

    As for the issues raised in this thread: Even though the image is served from quicklinks, I am not aware that they are tracking any user activity on the sites that use quicklinks. The popup does happen once, but once it is turned off, it has stayed turned off for me. I have not done extensive cross-browser testing, and for that I apologize..

    So -- I've taken the little new feature down for now, until the feature can be added for those that like it, and unobtrusive for those that don't. Maybe I'll make the availablilty of the quicklinks a configurable personalized feature.. once I finish user login, that is.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 25 Apr 2001 @ 9:38am

    Winstar in bankruptcy?

    Isn't the company that operates Office.com now in bankruptcy proceedings?

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    mhh5, 25 Apr 2001 @ 10:15pm

    I'm out of it for a little while...

    I think this breaks all Techdirt commenting records. I tried out the new feature too. Hate it as well. Good effort, mike. But the popups are pretty annoying....

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]


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