Thursday 19 September 2002
Say goodbye to useless calendars
Does anyone regard the standard weblog monthly calendar as even vaguely useful?
When I started blogging with Radio UserLand, I assumed that the monthly calendar was one of the signifiers of a weblog and I carried this belief with me when I switched to Movable Type. But as I begin to redesign my MT templates, it occurs to me that I never use the monthly calendar to access previous posts—on my own site or any other site I visit. And, a quick check of my blogroll revealed that only a third of the sites displayed the standard weblog calendar on their main page. Those who don’t have a monthly calendar include links to either monthly (the majority) or weekly archives.
(Did the Blogger people invent weekly archives? Or someone else—in an act of spite? Is it OK to say how much I detest them? Google’s index can occasionally be nearly a month out of date. So unless a weblog has dynamic searching (like MT-Search), anyone trying to locate a particular archived post may have to open and do a Find on four times as many pages on a site with weekly archives as one with monthly archives. Now that I’ve got that off my chest, someone will no doubt leave a comment explaining why weekly archives are fantastic.)
I guess this is a circuitous explanation for why I’ll implement Mark Pilgrim’s full-screen calendars (inspired by Mena Trott). Being able to see the post titles for a whole month is really useful and makes fossicking a snap. Perhaps I’ll use the space previously occupied by the calendar to display a random photograph (using Mert Yaldiz’s a neat PHP script).
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Yes, dump it. I've been thinking the same thing for a while. It also dumps a pagefull of code.
There are some game you can play with your tiny calendar: use it as a pixel screen and post each month accordingly. And for New Year, read what you have written !
I ... umm ... borrowed Mark's code the same day he posted it. Although I haven't gone so far as to remove my standard calendar, the full-screen calendar with titles (I also added MT excerpts to the title tag so there's a short blurb tooltip for each title) absolutely, positively rocks.
I dropped mine. I didn't realize what a usability nightmare it was until I went looking in my own archives for an old post to link to. When I switched tools I moved to just having a monthly archive and no calendar.
First thing I excised from the default template when I first got MT installed....neener neener neener!
It makes an awful lot of sense for those bloggers who have multiple daily blogs, but for those with one a day I can't see it being a huge improvement.
Still, feeling like wonderchicken in his prime, I will elso be embracing it ;-)
Might just get me blogging a bit more to fill in the blanks.
So when does the full page calendar come to Radio?
Phil, you're probably better qualified to answer that question than me...
I use the calendar, but I would find a search engine specific to sites more useful. Does it exist?
Unfortunately, Miguel, the free Google search is restricted to searching a domain (e.g. blogs.salon.com) rather than your specific blog so that's out. Atomz Search used to be free but it doesn't look as though it is any more.
I keep putting mine up and taking it down... all it really serves to do is remind me that I don't always blog regularly, and makes me feel guilty.
I think I'll leave it off, and just try Mark Pilgrim's big calendar. That sounds far more useful that just bugging me to write.
This discussion is now closed. My thanks to everyone who contributed.
© Copyright 2002-2003 Jonathon Delacour
Yes, dump it. I've been thinking the same thing for a while. It also dumps a pagefull of code.
Posted by: Michael Webb on 19 September 2002 at 05:32 PM