So I hadn't visited hubski for about 2 weeks (I was busy, my dog ate my homework...). I just noticed 2 little things that might be worth improving.
1. The title on the pages are "feed" or "submit" etc. If it was me i'd change them to "Hubski.com - Feed", "Hubski.com - Submit". It just looks more polished and is a really easy change. Also the profile page has no title at all and displays as "http://hubski.com/at?id=Kaius" in chrome....
2. On the "feed" page we have the Vote, URL, Poster and tag links all on the left side. And then all the way over on the right is a tiny link for the comments. How about the following:
(Vote) (URL) "domain" by [Poster] to #[tag] - [icon #num "comments"] - [hide] - [save] - [search]
Now this pushes everything to the left which makes it easier to see/click, I dont need to scan across to see how many comments a item has, also the comments is a larger link and easier to hit. The downside is that the right side is empty but adding a list of trending posts, tags etc could be placed there.
3. Add some javascript helper to the tag field on the submit screen to show a list of tags as you type.
Just some ideas, feel free to ignore if there is already a reason behind the current layout.
Edit: I found one more
4. Change the "target='blank'" on all links to "target='_blank'". When you call the target "blank" that means you are giving the new window the name "blank". When you click another link in hubski it will open the 2nd link in the same window as the first because the window is named "blank"... change it to "_blank" and all the links will open in new windows which I think is what was intended.
Edit(2): I found some more 5. Make the textarea on the submit page resizeable to the width of the post. The table cell it sits in needs to have a colspan="2 or 3" attribute added.
6. On the tag page e.g. "http://hubski.com/tag?id=space" I'd like to see how may people follow that tag. I noticed i post a lot to #articles (I may be the only one) but I have no idea of how large an audience there is...
7. Ordering, when looking at a list of links on the feed or tag pages id like to order by number of comments or votes. This allows me to filter for popular/interesting/controversial topics. It will be essential when the number of items gets larger.
8. Tags - Its hard to find them! Right now I click community, look at the list of trending/popular tags as this is my only source. a. Give me a list of tags with some stats (number of posts/comments/activity etc) b. Make it really really easy to follow a tag. Right now I have to go Community > click Tagname which loads a new page, click follow tag which loads a new page, then click back twice to return to the list. Just list the tags and give a small [+] or something beside them to follow and [-] to unfollow... It saves me 4 page loads!
9. Let me style lists in Markdown. Right now I cant seem to list anything nicely ( i may be missing the correct symbol), the item above has a nested list but it doesnt display correctly.
10. Fix the URL links on the profile pages. The one on my profile works because I included "http://" at the start of the URL but if you look at theadvancedapes profile it doesnt work as the URL starts with www.
Yes! I was going to make my own comment, but I figure I'd get my views across better if I piggyback (pardon me). I often have lots of tabs open. LOTS of tabs open. At any time. It's how I browse. I've been looking into "tree tab" extensions, but I don't feel like learning a new browsing style. Oftentimes, the website thumbnail on the tabs go away because I have so many tabs open. The simple "feed" and "submit" are lifesavers when it comes to finding tabs.
Well if you bookmark a page and see it a week later with the title "feed" then that doesn't help remind you what the page is about. Also it's important in terms of branding. I don't mean in the sales or marketing sense, just in terms of people familiarity with the things they use. It helps build an attachment to the things we interact with. There is an argument for reducing the title to something like "Hubski - Feed" or even just "Hubski", but i'd argue that either one is an improvement.
Thank you! I feel you on the too many steps to follow/ unfollow tags. I'd suggest that it should be easier to quickly follow/unfollow people too. Great suggestions.
9 and 10 really need to happen. And tag stats would be cool, except people may fall into the trap of thinking they have to use preexisting tags. (Kaius: #articles is pretty general; most of us who post articles regularly narrow it down a bit, and some more specific tags have more followers.) Don't agree with the rest of the changes, for the record.
You don't agree with ANY of the others? Not even fixing broken links? Point taken that #articles is a general topic but I think of it as "interesting reads". Some articles fit into an existing tag but others don't and creating a new tag would relegate them to never being seen by anyone really. Sometimes I want to read an interesting article without specifying the topic.