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Eye rant

I spend a lot of time on the Web, and a lot of those hours are taken up by reading blogs. Yes, I am one of those bloggers who actually read blogs! Lots of them! I hear that people like that are hard to find these days. But that’s not the subject of this post.

My blog was created using a template offered by Blogger, which I tweaked a tiny bit, mostly to change colors. I am no designer and I don’t know much about page layout but as a reader, there are certain things I cannot stand, things that will make me stop reading a blog after two sentences, not because of the content but because it is simply unreadable. And that’s too bad. Why do people still insist on:

-Using the tiniest font possible?
-Using a noisy background?
-Using the tiniest font possible on a noisy background?
-Using the full width of a page to publish their text instead of wrapping it around and making it easier to follow the lines?
-Writing very very long blogs and publishing them using the full width of a page?
-Choosing a dark font on a dark page? Or a pale font on a pale page? Please give me contrast!

In our desire to be original and different, have we forgotten that it is not fun to read more than a few paragraphs on a screen, and that there are simple things we can do to make it easier for our readers? Or do we not care whether people actually read us?

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New RSS feed for ni vu ni connu

The new version of Blogger is allowing us to publish RSS feeds. I already had one, but I wasn’t allowed to publish the full version of my posts, which annoyed a few of you. The new version by Blogger offers the full content. Could someone with an aggregator test this new RSS feed for me and let me know if this is working for you? I would appreciate it very much!

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La grande illusion

Isn’t it interesting how many people dream of writing a book? It’s sweet, and it’s (mostly) harmless, and I guess I once semi-shared that dream, and I guess one or two brain cells still make room for the possibility that I will someday write a book (fat chance). But, but, but … Then I followed the book-publishing industry for 15 years.

Ah, la perte d’illusion quant � la publication d’un livre! Un blogueur qui conna�t bien le monde de l’�dition � �crit un billet tr�s confrontant sur la futilit� de l’�criture et du r�ve de publication. Les nombreux commentaires qui ont suivi sont tout aussi int�ressants � lire. Il vaut peut-�tre mieux imprimer le tout et aller lire �a dehors parce que vous allez y mettre du temps. Mais la r�flexion en vaut le coup!
(linked via Bookslut)