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Happy Monday, you may have noticed that this past weekend InsideRIA.com went though a face lift. The majority of the changes were focused on user experience. We have a new navigation system which is now based solely on tags and search. You will notice that the Tag Cloud is now prominently located on the right side of this page. The tag set is an expanding set with the most popular shown by default. Speaking of the right navigation pods, you will also notice that we now have pods for our current Poll, latest features, latest news and events, recommended products, etc.
The main content area now have a wider presence allowing for easier reading of our content. It also includes the much requested printer formatted link.
The search feature which has been moved to the header, now allows you to search within InsideRIA or a new option to search the entire O'Reilly network.
We are confident that these changes mark a great improvement of the user experience of InsideRIA. Please let us know if you agree or disagree or have additional suggestions by leaving comments on this post or contacting me directly at rtretola@oreilly.com.
Special thanks to Rachel and Laura for their hard work in making this upgrade possible.
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Is it just me or am I weird for just wanting a simple button-style user interface on a website? I guess I just don't understand the attraction of the "tag cloud" as the sole means of navigation.
I would say that the attraction of tag-based navigation is that it's flexible and open, while at the same time very precise. In my experience, a static navigational structure built around a few categories or topics can quickly become stale as the content of a site evolves. Particularly with tech sites, things change often as new technologies become popular. And that leads to sloppiness, constant creation of new categories or shoe-horning content into categories that don't make sense, which I think provides a bad user experience. With a tag-based structure, a site can evolve organically with the interests of its audience and writers.
I'm curious, what makes you prefer the button-style user interface?
On InsideRIA, the old categories were preserved as tags, so you can still find Development, Design, and Standards content.