Techdirt Testing Quicklinks
from the making-your-life-easier dept
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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Yet another tracker.....
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.
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No way, no how, not now, not ever
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Broken on FreeBSD
So much for multi-platform. (more java crap)
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Ain't working
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Nothing in mozilla, and konqueror can't handle it
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.
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Re: Nothing in mozilla, and konqueror can't handle
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Re: Nothing in mozilla, and konqueror can't handle
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?
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Crap
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Re: Nothing in mozilla, and konqueror can't handle
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.
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Re: quicklinks
Plus the pop-up window -- oooh do I hate those.
My $0.015: flash over substance ratio is too high.
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Another vote against
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...
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Re: Nothing in mozilla, and konqueror can't handle
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.
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Ok.. I've taken the quicklinks down now.
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.
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Winstar in bankruptcy?
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Re: Winstar in bankruptcy?
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I'm out of it for a little while...
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