Hey, I've been working on an idea for the last month or so and now have it public.
http://wwwatts.net/ -- Drive Different, Drive Electric
There are two things this site does: a) WWWATTS Search, b) News & Blog aggregation
WWWATTS Search is a custom search engine that targets searching only sites that themselves specialize in electric vehicles and related technology. The list of those sites are the ones I've collected on www.7gen.com. I've been playing with it and it looks to be useful. If desired the search engine can also be embedded in visforvoltage.org or any other site.
The news & blog aggregation is meant to help bring together the discussion about electric vehicles from various places.
At this stage I'd like feedback as to the design and anything else you see.
I think it's going to be useful (or I wouldn't have put it together).
Hi David - I like it!
On the design front I'd have the "page jump tool" on the upper right of the screen above the other links. I find it disconcerting to have it float on top of the articles - but I do think it's worth keeping in the viewable window rather than have it disappearing.
Alternatively if you want to be fancier you might have the articles take up the entire page with three very small discreet buttons that float and remain in view: (1) open search; (2) jump to page; (3) show links. That way you can clearly identify that the articles are the main thing of interest on the site and they clearly get all the attention. Such a design will also aid with viewing the site on the smaller screens of mobile devices.
All the best,
John H.
John H. Founder of Current Motor Company - opinions on this site belong to me; not to my employer
Remember: " 'lectric for local. diesel for distance" - JTH, Amp Bros || "No Gas.
Minor point, but a little whitespace on the left margin would make reading much easier. I already read ABG, so a lot of the material is familiar.
I have done some work on the layout of http://wwwatts.net - thank you for the feedback.
I'm still wondering just how to handle the header stuff properly. I really like having the header stuff floating at the top of the page full time rather than scrolling out of the viewport. I'm also learning how to use jQuery ... experimented a bit with making articles collapsible which ought to help once I get satisfied with an implementation.
Something I'm pondering is - the search engine is designed so the search engine query box can be embedded on any web site. I think the search engine is useful because it's set up to search through EV-specific web sites. I'm hoping any EV-related site would find it a useful addition to their site and the question is how to present the idea to embed the search ...
- David Herron, The Long Tail Pipe, davidherron.com, 7gen.com, What is Reiki
You really need to either skinny up that header (look at all that wasted white space) or don't have it float. I'm planning on getting one of these: http://openpandora.org and that means not much screen real-estate. I certainly don't want to be wasting it looking at this essentially empty floating box...
John H. Founder of Current Motor Company - opinions on this site belong to me; not to my employer
Remember: " 'lectric for local. diesel for distance" - JTH, Amp Bros || "No Gas.
Ooh, looks like a cool device. Ah, occurs to me I can use my ipod touch to help with designing this.. Hm, the header area will also have to be shorter not just skinnier. Which means using a shorter logo.
- David Herron, The Long Tail Pipe, davidherron.com, 7gen.com, What is Reiki
David,
I still have all the original files used to create the Logo and can resize it to fit a new header. Just let me know what size you want it to be and I will be happy to make the adjustments.
Chas S.
Yes, if you can get a good design for the iPhone without a phone (the iPod touch ;)) that would certainly be space efficient. I think when designing new portal sites like this it is definitely worthwhile considering small screen portable devices.
The pandora does look cool - but there's been various snafus delaying it. I hope to get mine early in '09 (I have my place in the queue). :)
John H. Founder of Current Motor Company - opinions on this site belong to me; not to my employer
Remember: " 'lectric for local. diesel for distance" - JTH, Amp Bros || "No Gas.
I am so glad to find your site ! that wind generator is somthing !! thanks LaTeR
thank GOD I wake up above ground !!!!
Sad news about Phoenix Motors :(
John H. Founder of Current Motor Company - opinions on this site belong to me; not to my employer
Remember: " 'lectric for local. diesel for distance" - JTH, Amp Bros || "No Gas.
FWIW I've done some layout improvements. It looks better on my iPod Touch but not perfect. The browser in the iPod isn't responding to the CSS as does the real Safari on my Mac.
- David Herron, The Long Tail Pipe, davidherron.com, 7gen.com, What is Reiki
I like this version much better. Thanks - I think this is a great site and I hope to get into the habit of reading it.
John H. Founder of Current Motor Company - opinions on this site belong to me; not to my employer
Remember: " 'lectric for local. diesel for distance" - JTH, Amp Bros || "No Gas.
I've got a new revision of http://wwwatts.net ... This is beginning to look cool.
The idea I played with tonight is to make the content collapsible to make better use of the screen. It looks pretty nice on my desktop browser and I'm real pleased with it. But on the iTouch the show/hide button is too small ..ergle.. bigger icon maybe.
- David Herron, The Long Tail Pipe, davidherron.com, 7gen.com, What is Reiki
Call me an awkward SOB (many people do!) - but I preferred the old style of just presenting the articles in place - I could go to your site and just scroll down the page and speed read the articles focusing on ones that looked most interesting. It was simple - and that was it's appeal.
Can you keep the old style in place as another page on your site? Pretty please?
John H. Founder of Current Motor Company - opinions on this site belong to me; not to my employer
Remember: " 'lectric for local. diesel for distance" - JTH, Amp Bros || "No Gas.
hm, it's just a matter of running a different script...
It seemed to me -- and I'd like your opinion on this -- that the old style took a lot of space and required lots of scrolling to see everything.
I also changed how the category pages work: http://wwwatts.net/categories/electric-vehicle-blogs/index.html
Do you think having articles collapsed in that style is helpful? Would it help to have a visible couple lines from the article?
- David Herron, The Long Tail Pipe, davidherron.com, 7gen.com, What is Reiki
Hi David,
I like how it's looking right now (1/15 9:26AM EST). I think the categories menu on the upper left is useful.
The reason I like having the stories visible like this is then it's like a magazine I can browse. I surf to your site and I can quickly find something to read just by using the scroll bar (or scroll wheel) without "click, expand category, {click in, read, don't like, click back, scroll down a bit,} repeat". Sure, it's not THAT much different but I just like the fact that your website makes it all immediately visible with very little else. That's the key feature for me - your site shows me JUST what I want and NOTHING else.
John H.
p.s. you might want to make the source more prominent - maybe part of the title rather than small text at the foot of the article. That will help folks who are following a few blogs quickly see there's a new article worth reading. Plus, it helps disambiguate articles - folks writing blogs use titles such as "range test" which is entirely reasonable within the "electric civic conversion blog space" but is not very useful in the "entire EV blog space". So how about:
Civic Electric Car Conversion: Range Test
{ article here }
All Cars Electric: All Electric 2009 Ford Focus BEV Test Drive
{ article here }
etc.
John H. Founder of Current Motor Company - opinions on this site belong to me; not to my employer
Remember: " 'lectric for local. diesel for distance" - JTH, Amp Bros || "No Gas.
Hey John, thanks for the feedback. I suppose I'll leave it the way it is, and I agree it's nicer to be able to see the text along with the titles.
I got an inspiration from greenoptions.com and did some presentation tweaking which, I think, makes the categories and sources a little more usable. I like the navigation much better now. I think the look is pretty well straightened out, the left sidebar still tweaks me out a little.
Unfortunately.. I incorporated gas2.com last night but their terms are creative commons no-$$ and that puts a little kink into the thought to eventually put advertising on the site. Meaning monetization will have to be indirect.
For putting the source in the title ... I'd thought about that and...oh..uh.. I hadn't seen how to do it right but just clicked on an idea. It might be there by the time you read this.
- David Herron, The Long Tail Pipe, davidherron.com, 7gen.com, What is Reiki
Hi David,
Looking good. One thing though - you need to fix your style sheet. On FF3 when a title wraps to more than one line the thick green line on top of the title ends up getting messed up and "crossing out" the title.
John H. Founder of Current Motor Company - opinions on this site belong to me; not to my employer
Remember: " 'lectric for local. diesel for distance" - JTH, Amp Bros || "No Gas.
;) :) Hi David
I realy love your site ! and that new alias car from zap ? WOW!! I have no criticisim.. keap up the good work . LaTeR
thank GOD I wake up above ground !!!!
Hey, thanks all. I fixed that crossing out the title effect by removing the border for the title ..uh.. couldn't figure out any other way. It was a nice visual effect except for those postings where the border crossed out some of the title.
The Electric Vehicle Podcasts section is beginning to be useful as well. And it works perfectly in iTunes too except that the image is wrong.
- David Herron, The Long Tail Pipe, davidherron.com, 7gen.com, What is Reiki