Hey friends, thanks for your interest in my little history site. I appreciate all the support and encouragement; I really, really do. With the circus that is the internet, there are plenty of other places to spend your time. I really want this site to be nourishing–really feeding your mind and your soul–and feeding a genuine curiosity that will change the world. Not just a voyeurism that serves up empty calories. (Hope I am not mixing my metaphors too much!)
History is like that. It is good for the mind and good for the soul.
I also like to change things up a bit from time to time, and I wanted all the fans of the site to be in on the new stuff. First, you will notice that the font family for the site has changed from Arial to Trebuchet MS. After pondering the change way too long, I decided to take the plunge. Tell me if you prefer it to the old look. I also change the banner from all uppercase to upper- and lowercase bold italic. It give the home page more of a dynamic look. I had long struggled with the way the all-uppercase banner seemed to “shout” at readers. So loud was the banner that the only site name that actually looked good in it was the old blog title “The Raft,” which was a really cool name for a blog, but didn’t either brand this site nor relate to the actual content. By fooling around with the code I was able to reduce the size of the font in the banner and thus was able to consider other titles for the blog site. For now, I have chosen “modernera.us” to match the site’s URL and hopefully help readers and lurkers to easily remember the address and to spread the word more easily.
You will also note a change on the video blogs on this site. The generic Viddler logo has been replaced with a new History Video Blog logo featuring the portrait of the Site Muse, French philosopher Gabriel Marcel (who was a champion of genuine curiosity), with “HVB” for History Video Blog superimposed in a sort of electric peacock color. I hope it inspires, rather than distracts, you.
The last feature is one I am nervous about, so I really care what my readers think. I just installed a nice little tool on this site called Snap Shots that enhances links with visual previews of the destination site, interactive excerpts of Wikipedia articles, MySpace profiles, IMDb profiles andAmazon products, display inline videos, RSS, MP3s, photos, stock charts and more. When your cursor rolls over a link on this site, a “cloud” appears with a “snapshot” preview of the linked site. Some subscribers to Snap shot also use icons that appear superscripted following the links, but I thought that was too distracting and decided to stick with the linked text alone. those who use the icons think it is easier for readers to find the link, but I am not convinced of that. Seems like a surer way to market Snap Shots, but I am not sure how it helps the blogging experience. What do you think?
Anyway, sometimes Snap Shots bring you the information you need, without your having to leave the site, while other times they let you “look ahead,” before deciding if you want to follow a link or not.
Should you decide all this snap-shottiness is not for you, just click the Options icon in the upper right corner of the Snap Shot and opt-out. My readers’ having the ability to opt out of this function helps me to feel a little better about the experiment. Please tell me what you think of this and all other changes. I really listen to you, my friends!
Stay curious, my friends!
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