Reviewing The Quicklinks Mess
from the what-to-do... dept
Following on yesterday’s debacle with our innocent (we thought) test of the Quicklinks technolgy, we quickly learned that you guys hated it for the most part. You can still test out quicklinks on our seperate quicklinks enabled page, if you dare. Marc Fest, the founder of Quickbrowse, who makes the Quicklinks technology was interested in all the feeback you guys submitted (either posted publicly, or emailed privately which I forwarded to him). He’s written a response, and is interested in any additional feedback you have, as he tries to solve some of the problems that you experienced. The note is below (click to the comments page to read the note).
Hi, I'm Marc Fest, the guy behind QuickLinks who caused you all the misery ;-)But seriously: of course, the last thing we want to do is cause you headaches. QuickLinks is really supposed to be a neat and useful functionality (we're a very small outfit, by the way, just three guys 2 blocks off the beach, here in Miami Beach; you can read our story at www.quickbrowse.com/story/).
Which brings me to your feedback. I look at it as an oppportunity to improve what we have, maybe even to a point that you will find it useful... :-}
Let me address some of your points.
Cookies: those remember whether you have chosen the "don't show me this again" option in one of the pop-up windows. No other evil tracking is going on there ;-)
Those pop-up windows. You are *so* right. Your feedback made me realize that you shouldn't be bothered with them, unless you actually use QuickLinks. So how about we get rid of that initial pop-up window, the one telling you to check out the hovering QuickLinks button in the bottom right of the screen? That way, you won't see any intruding pop-up windows at all. Only if you click on the QuickLinks button you'll see a window with some instructions, but I think that would be OK, since, after all, you have chosen to use the feature. Also, that window, too, has a "don't show me this again" feature. And if you never use the hovering button in the bottom right (most people may not even notice it) nothing will behave differently from what you're used to.
Regarding the tracking issue: we're not tracking anything for anybody...
Some of the other bugs you reported were due to some outdated code that was used for the QuickLinks implementation you saw.
Obviously, QuickLinks makes most sense on a page with many links. Maybe it would be more useful on a page like the "older stuff" at https://www.techdirt.com/search.pl. What do you think?
All in all, I want to thank you for taking the time to send your feedback. I'm more than eager to learn from you (also, please drop by if you ever come to South Beach; we love meeting people who are into the Internet as much as we are). The thing that I'd like to know from you most is how, in your eyes, QuickLinks should behave so you find it useful.
Thanks a bunch again to Mike for being brave enough to give QuickLinks a trial and to you, for taking another look at it ;-)
Best,
Marc.
Marc Fest
Founder, Quickbrowse.com
marc@qb.com
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Comments on “Reviewing The Quicklinks Mess”
Quicklinks
I rather like the idea. I’m usually reading half of the stories posted here anyway, so getting them all in one fell swoop is a pretty cool idea.
Re: Quicklinks
Yay! I knew I wasn’t the only person who found it useful… 🙂
Anyway, the quicklinks site is still available, but you just have to go to it seperately for now.
Re: Re: Quicklinks
I really like the idea of eliminating the initial pop up window, and only having Quicklinks start if you select it. I mean, right now, I have about 10 windows open for stories and comments and such from Techdirt. I will probably use it in the future. I also think that keeping it on a seperate page will keep the people who don’t like it quiet.