Paradox Designs

This week, I have rolled out a few new features. Nothing major, but small things designed to improve your experience on this site. Things such as email subscriptions, related posts, Microsoft points icon, and a return of sharing.

Microsoft point icon

Since I cover a lot about the Xbox360, i need a Microsoft point icon, as typing out 800 Microsoft points is quite tedious. So, i wrote up a little script. Now, all i have to do is enter a quick tag, and presto, you get this: 800. When you mouse over it, it will tell you what the symbol means (most people don’t need this) and the amount.

Sharing

I have been experimenting with various ways to allow people to share posts. On the very first version of Paradox Designs, i did a lightbox. The second version saw a share icon, upon clicking would spawn a popup with a bunch of share links. The third version had this same icon, but the popup was ajax and inline, so a bit faster. v4 has not had share links, up to this point. Now, at the bottom of each post (full view), there will be a short bar of share links. Nothing too long, nothing ridiculous. Just the ones i feel are important. I don’t like websites that don’t have any buttons, nor do i like websites that have 5 rows of buttons.

Similar Posts

I try to link my posts together as well as i can, but sometimes i just forget to link something, or you might want to browse around. Now, when you view a post in full, at the bottom you will see another section on top of the very bottom, labeled “Doppleganger” Depending on the post, this may or may not show up. It will have at most 5 links to similar posts, using a custom algorithm to define what is similar.

Subscribe to comments

In the past, if you wanted to keep track of one of my discussions, you had to either use an RSS reader, or an RSS to Email translator. Now, you can get emails from the site, directly. When you go to post a comment, there is a checkbox that allows you to elect to receive emails for every comment. But since I don’t like forcing people into things, it is unchecked by default.

When you subscribe, you have the option to later come back and unsubscribe.