It was not broken. Why did you fix it?
The user experience of the full page topic layout was great:
1. I could scan at a glance a large number of like minded blogs
2. There was an editorial chosen blog stickied at the top
3. Many blogs stayed visible on the page for a few hours, because thumbnails were arranged in a grid
This is a great user experience for both bloggers and readers (and some of us were both). It was a great resource to find material and link to material.
The user experience of the new topics reader is abominable:
1. You cannot scan a large number of blogs at a glance. You have to keep swiping down. This MIGHT be OK on a pad, but on a desktop machine it is very cumbersome.
2. In fact, you can only scan easily the one or two posts that are momentarily visible at the top. And because there there no thumbs, one or two posts is all you see on the screen. So not only is the swiping experience cumbersome to begin with, you force me to do a lot more of than I should!
3. The old topics layout changed, but not instantly. So if I didn't link to or read a post right away, I could remember where it was (by position and thumb) and return to it. There's no way to do that with the new reader, except by swiping ever downward (and who knows for how long, since there's no pager).
4. There are no longer any editorially chosen stickied posts. That's fine, but it also gives the impression that the posts are justed dumped into the reader as an afterthought, and WP doesn't actually care to read and evaluate the content its writers produce. Is that the impression you wish to convey?
Everything about the new topics reader is bad. I get the impression it was created for a pad, and then simply ported to the desktop. Has nobody heard of the @media attribute? If you must have this reader for the pads, swap it in on the pads, and don't destroy an excellent UX on the desktop. However, even on a pad the reader experience is awful -- for all the reasons listed above. Why are you forcing me into an endless loop of swipe, swipe, swipe where I used to be able to take in everything in a single glance?
NOTE Apparently there's another URL the topics page can be accessed from. That's not an answer. The old topics page should be the default, for reasons stated. The old topics page also got me more hits. Not a lot, but more.
The blog I need help with is ipadgardener.com.
timethief
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thelinensash
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