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On a related note, what people's take on using "read more" style links on blogs (especially ones publishing longer form content)? Meaning, the main list of arti
by imrehg 11y ago
On a related note, what people's take on using "read more" style links on blogs (especially ones publishing longer form content)? Meaning, the main list of articles on a blog shows the first few paragraphs of the posts, and then have a "read more, or "continue reading" link for the full article.
Does this make the blog's information more manageable, or is it also crappy design?
- onli 11y agoTrade-off, evidently. Better to get an overview of what the blog is about, worse to read the actual entries. I personally dislike it very strongly. Reminds me of feeds without the full article, and means to generate clicks.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoI was similarly opposed to those but then I found myself writing quite long posts and enabled "Read more" links for the sake of making the front page useful. Google searches return links to full articles anyway.
- oneeyedpigeon 11y agoWhy not just say something like "Read more about [link usability]" so you have the best of both worlds?
- jerf 11y agoBecause it's auto-generated by the blog software usually, at the cut point. Yes, you could make it an option, but then only the most careful %X would use it anyhow.
- jerf 11y agoWell, speaking as someone who has pretty much gone full-on "nothing but 10 page+ essays" on my blog after starting with the snippet style when I first started, inlining all the content is impractical on the front page.
- jschwartzi 11y agoOn a front page it makes sense because it allows you to review what's available, but when you've clicked through and are trying to read the article it's terrible. The New York Times pages are terrible for this, because they'll give you 200 or 300 words and then a Read More link which is sometimes below an interstitial ad. If I don't notice the link below the interstitial(which is usual on my smartphone) then I'll leave the article wondering how a journalist graduates from school totally unable to write a concluding paragraph. Another thing to consider is that the text of the article is dwarfed by the bandwidth and latency introduced by ad networks, so hiding parts of the article text to speed up page loads is counterproductive.
- cableshaft 11y agoPersonally I only like 'Read More' where when you click it, it doesn't load a new page, but instead just adds the rest of the article inline.
- snowwrestler 11y agoIt is there to measure engagement. People who click the "read more" link are measured as engaged readers, and people who don't are measured essentially as bounces. I doubt that it is there for a usability reason. The browser window effectively hides content in a standard and predictable way. Additional content hiding rarely improves usability.