Dynamic

Many of you who visit the blog directly will notice a few changes. Change isn't always a comfortable thing, but I'm really excited about this decision and I hope you are too. I thought I'd talk about why things are changing and where you'll find things now.

We are all quite different readers and have different visual preferences. Some people like to read all of the stories. Others like to quickly flick through the pictures. Earlier this year, Google blogger launched Dynamic View blog templates as a way of giving readers a choice in how they see information. If you're a direct reader, then you'd know that my blog like many others was locked into that dull reading format we've seen over the last decade. The sidebar, main column and header -- It's tired, washed out and lacks oomph. So why not let readers pick how they see things?

Maybe you like the feel of a digital magazine or maybe you just want a gallery of images? Now you have a choice when you visit Badskirt directly from your computer. And when you use your favorite feed reader, things shouldn't have changed.  Note: to reduce bandwidth issues, mobile devices have a simple view enabled for now. I'll look at updating that in the very nearish future. Small steps.

So what's new? First - the blog opens up in Magazine view that you see above. Here you'll find recent articles with short recaps. Clicking expands the articles for the full post.  I'm still unsure on which view to make the default, so if this leaves you flat just shout out!

As I mentioned, you've got a choice of views.  Using the pulldown menu in the upper left, you can select from a range of views. One of my favourites is flipcard which gives you a quick visual thumbnail for each post. As you hover over it, the image flips over to reveal the blog post title and number of comments. Again, just click for more. What I loved about this one is that you can keep scrolling and it will load the images all the way back to the very beginning. There I am rocking the Emmeline apron and playing with some hideous fabrics!

There are some subviews within Flipcard too.  They seem to work with just the last six months of posts.

If you're a traditionalist, Classic view will give you formatting akin to that seen on most blogs. Of course, the search bar is still there too. Though, I'll be honest Google's blog search feature is strangely disappointing from the search powerhouse. Hopefully by using views like flipcard, you'll find what you are after quickly.

If you have time (unlikely in the holiday season), have a play.  As I mentioned, it's new. If you run into problems just drop me an email. I'll work out the bugs and try to make it a better experience for you, the reader.

Some of you might be missing the things from my sidebar like my tutorials, product reviews and helpful lists. I'm slowly working on adding those back as independent pages at the top. The tutorials are already back and now have thumbnails. much nicer yes?

I thought I'd let people have a bit of a play and leave some comments before I go farther with the development. I know I need to add back product reviews and create some snazzy buttons for RSS feeds and following. Those things aren't automatic.  I think that's one of the reasons it hasn't been widely and immediately adopted. The other is that is doesn't fit the "sidebar sponsorship" model which, of course, isn't an issue for Badskirt. I've got headers to build and some colours to adjust. fun things to do. 

I'd love to hear what you think first. Do you like it? Do you have a favourite view that you'd pick for the home page? Should we drop it all together? I'd love your feedback because it will steer where we go.

Happy Dynamic Reading!