August 12, 2008
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Xanga Feature Suggestion: Easy Linking
The other day I was trying to explain to a friend who was not knowledgible about HTML how to create a hyperlink in Xanga to another blog entry. I explained it. It wasn’t too hard but as I was writing up the explanation I started to think… boy this is an AWFUL lot of steps. I mean can’t we make it even easier to link?
Whoever developed the idea of a Wiki is a genius. It’s power largely comes from collaborative linking that is easy enough that the layperson can do it. That makes it so everyone can participate in adding knowledge to the wiki. You don’t need to know anything about HTML.
Wouldn’t it be cool if Xanga had some sort of an Easy Linking System like that?
I know it’s not a big deal. Since, you know, html isn’t really all *that* hard to pickup. It’s more intimidating than anything else. And you can use the icons too which are pretty clear too.
But still it’d be awesome if you could just link to someone’s blog by typing their username in brackets and the system would automatically translate that into the correct hyperlink to that blog. Since blog usernames are unique, I should think it’d be significantly easier to do that then to setup a wiki. So typing [nephyo] would automatically create a link to my site.
But the holy grail would be linking to articles or entries within a site easily. Here’s how I’d make that work. Typing [My Article Title] would automatically link to the article within your own blog by default. If there are more than one entry iwth the same name, it links to the most recent entry titled that way or maybe an auto-generated TAG page that has a list of all entries with that name.
Typing [Nephyos's Article Title @ nephyo] would create a link to the coment page of Nephyo’s Article Title on nephyo’s blog as well as a link to that blog’s home page. Ambiguity again handled the same way For example if I wanted to write this:
Hey everybody, please go check out the Writing Assignments Index@nephyo and join in the fun!I could write it as
Hey everybody, please go check out the [Writing Assignments Index @ nephyo] and join in the fun!Of course the separator character and the ends characters can change. You also need an escape character or character sequence so that people can write your ends characters when they actually want to write brackets or whatever. (as an aside there really should be some sort of literal block sequence you can use that says everything between this symbol and that symbol which I type should be rendered exactly as I have typed it without alteration. That would make quoting easier and typing greater than and less than symbols and other stuff like that which trips people up.)
You can add additional complexities too. Like certain keywords [photos@nephyo] [videos@nephyo], [pulse@nephyo] etc. And maybe key symbols or words to link to special places [TAG: My Tag @nephyo] or [BROWSE: January 2007 @ Nephyo] and so on and so forth.
And that’s it. I wonder how hard it would be? Most wikis run on their own special software designed to optimize this kind of linking. But I think this sort of easy linking is easier that the wiki problem becuase articles are owned by individuals. I could be wrong about that but that’s my instincts. There must already be a layer of code that translates what we type into HTML. The question is, how complex can that code become without damaging the user experience? Could it support easy linking?
And the bigger question is, even if it is pretty easy to implement, would it be worth it? Would you use it if it existed?
I think it would encourage people to link to one another more often and share the love. But maybe I’m wrong. What do you think?
Comments (17)
Um, if I want to link to something else on Xanga I just use the hyperlink icon on the Editor page.
I can see that it might have its uses if I want to add a link to a comment or something, but even that isn’t as complicated as having to know html as it stands now anyway, surely? That was really bad grammar, sorry.
Anyways, I don’t like sharing the love – it’s creepy …
I use the hyperlink icon too, whether in the weblog editor or a comment box like this one. I don’t use HTML… though I’ve thought I should find a book at Barnes and Noble on basic HTML so I can adjust my site’s layout.
@Katiefinger - @fullmetalbunny - The hyperlink icon requires you to know what a URL is and where to locate it, to know that the icon exists, and to have a browser that supports and allows the small javascript popup box that appears. In addition you have to understand that you need to delete the http:// that appears if you are copying a link from the address bar and that the url you put in has to begin with “http://” a strange sequence of symbols which means absolutely nothing to the layperson.
In addition browsers and sites can render the hyperlink icon incorrectly or even obscure it or remove it. What if you are running a purely text based browser? or if you are using a cell phone partial browser? I’ve seen a lot of sites where the theme teh user is using or something seems to mess up the comment window and make it appear weirdly and sometimes you don’t even see the icons above the comment box.
But Edit HTML always works. and in fact you can put html in without even clicking the edit HTML box and the link will still render correctly. But then you need to know what the heck you are doing.
What I am proposing is WAY simpler. All you’d have to remember is brackets. [fullmetalbunny] would create a link to fullmetalbunny’s blog like this: fullmetalbunny. And [My nana would be proud of me @Katiefinger] would create a link to the blog entry titled “My nana would be proud of me” on Katiefinger’s blog like so: My nana would be proud of me@Katiefinger
You don’t need to know anything. And you can do it without interrupting the flow of your writing. You can put a link in without having to find the article, without having to find the URL without having to press CTRL-C or CTRL-V and without having to find the icon on your comment window.
Some browsers won’t let you hyperlink? That kind of thing is why I stick to Internet Explorer. It may be kind of n00b of me, but it works all the time, darn it. Haha.
@fullmetalbunny - use firefox! it kicks ass
but yeah i mean no browsers won’t support hyperlinks in general, but some might not render the form that xanga uses for creating new blog entries or commenting on blogs in the same way. fairly frequently when writing a complicated website you end up with a lot of code that looks like:
if user is using Internet Explorer – do this, if user is using Firefox – do that, and Opera and Safari etc.
You only cover the major browsers and the standards cuz you can’t cover everything.
Ideally all browsers would follow the standards perfectly and you’d only have one set of code that works for everyone, but even then you’d need versions for older browsers because people hadn’t upgraded. Anyway, IE doesn’t follow the standards very well at all, and won’t until version 8 or so the rumors say. So more sites will render correctly right now if you use firefox or safari.
Plus firefox is more fun!
Ack, I just use IE. And I’m obviously a bit more computer savvy than I realise
. I thought everybody knew how to use that hyperlink icon in the Editor. Silly me! I tend to use square brackets a lot instead of curvy brackets when I’m posting onto Xanga … would that be affected by your suggestion? I don’t want to stop using my square brackets, dammit.
@fullmetalbunny - @nephyo - Ay, firefox is more fun. haha
I like your idea. And you state it in a clear, concise and friendly manner. Thank you.
Well I type everything with the HTML editor, so I can’t be arsed to go back to normal just for linkage. But I code with CSS, soooo…
>.>
Deviantart already uses a system like this. It really confused me when they first implimented it because I was like, “What?! It can’t be that simple! I’m doing something wrong…”
I don’t have any trouble with the system as it is because I do know some basic html, but I can see where this would be really helpful for other people.
@Katiefinger - nope. They can set it up to use any end character they want. Curly braces might be a good idea cuz they are less common. Or it could even be something like [[nephyo]]. Just so long as it’s quick and easy. They could even make it an option to select the end character in the option menu. Also, there’d definitely be a way to still type the character. Using standard computer programming you’d probably type it like: [ to create a “[“ and to create “” you’d type “\” The backslash is called an “escape” character which is used to create a system specifc character.
@The44thHour - haha. but I actually don’t mind the offensively written suggestions. it’s just not my style.
@HeartOfPandora - it would all still work the normal way for you if they implemented my suggestion
@elvesdoitbetter - oh so you use deviantart huh? Xanga’s dark nemesis! Traitor!
Just kidding, I have a deviantart too but I don’t use it very much so I didn’t know they had that feature at all.
@nephyo - What? I thought livejournal was Xanga’s nemisis.
Ya, I use deviantart, but it only has sketches on it because the vast majority of my finished pieces are too big to scan.
sounds like a great, and more importantly, well-thought out idea. kudos
I don’t get it. This is complicated for me. I find making hyperlinks on posts easy enough as it is.
Sounds a bit like “Apture”.
@elvesdoitbetter - No livejournal is Xanga’s Rival. But they’re both goody-two-shoes sites compared to DeviantArt. DeviantArt is the dark side.
@CareyGLY - I’ve never heard of Apture but I looked it up and it sounds way more complicated than what I’m proposing. All I want is to be able to type a link without knowing html and without having to break stride and use my mouse or anything.
@kingofblur - well I wouldn’t get rid of the way things work now so you could still do it with html or clicking the add link button. But although I may not be explaining it very well, what I’m proposing is really very very simple. Right now you would type: anchor tag href equals attribute, full path to blog in double quotes (“http://www.xanga.com/nephyo”), word to be linked (nephyo), end anchor tag. The new way you could accomplish the *exact* same thing just by typing: [nephyo].
At the very least, you have to admit my proposed way is a lot less typing right?
@nephyo - I think I slightly get it now. But yeah, definitely less typing, and less clicking around too!
I am intimidated by everything… so I would wait until I couldn’t stand it any more and then jump in and try it… and kick myself for not doing it sooner.