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I'm working on building the sidebar at the minute, and have added a "Share on Twitter" link to the bottom right of every post. This generates some text using the topic subject and a short-url to the post.
The sidebar will/could have:
- Twitter Feed
- Box mentioning Accessibility Wiki with a link to a topic about it (not created yet)
- Search box? (search needs improving first)
- Latest posts?
Thoughts?
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Nigel Peck / MIS Web Design
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I've done as much as I've time for today, and managed to do enough so that it was good enough to make live. You'll see the "Latest Tweets" in the sidebar. New tweets are checked for every fifteen minutes and stored in the local database.
Any problems/comments/suggestions please let me know.
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Nigel Peck / MIS Web Design
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Great work Nigel, thanks. Well done for getting the Twitter links to open in the same window. It all looks great!_________________
James Coltham - Local gov web manager by day, web and accessibility blogger at lunchtime, freelancer by night. Tweets at @prettysimple.
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Good work Nigel!
For the sidebar, forthcoming - relevant - events?
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Blogging at: AWTS (Accessible Web and Training Solutions)
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Events is a good idea, and could perhaps form part of an Accessibility Wiki? And be pulled in from there?
I've made some further changes to the sidebar tweets, drawing attention to recent tweets and adding a "Read more..." link that jumps to the next tweet on Twitter (well actually the last one displayed in the sidebar).
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Nigel Peck / MIS Web Design
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I added "Currently Online" to the sidebar, and removed it from the bottom of each forum page (since I changed the code to always report users online across the site rather than, on forum indexes, showing the users browsing that forum)._________________
Nigel Peck / MIS Web Design
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I updated the "Latest Tweets" in the sidebar, adding <acronym> to RT and linking [NP] to my profile, [JC] to James' profile and [GM] to Gary's profile._________________
Nigel Peck / MIS Web Design
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I find a sentence that starts with "RT: @sloandr @MarcoZehe" to be off-putting and difficult to read, even though I've been using Twitter for a while, so I'm sure it's much worse for people who aren't used to Twitter, and terrible for people with cognitive disabilities who don't use twitter!
To try and make the sidebar more legible, I've moved all re-tweet info to the next line, and put it in a different colour, so:
| Code: |
| RT: @sloandr @MarcoZehe Oracle to stop the Sun Accessibility project http://www.digitaldarr... this is daunting! #accessibility |
becomes:
| Code: |
| Oracle to stop the Sun Accessibility project http://www.digitaldarr... this is daunting! #accessibility
RT: @sloandr @MarcoZehe |
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Nigel Peck / MIS Web Design
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Nice tweaks Nigel - you should develop a Twitter app, you could make millions! 
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James Coltham - Local gov web manager by day, web and accessibility blogger at lunchtime, freelancer by night. Tweets at @prettysimple.
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| James Coltham wrote: |
| Nice tweaks Nigel - you should develop a Twitter app, you could make millions! |
Millions would be nice, in fact so would hundreds of thousands, even tens, failing that a couple of grand would come in handy...
I made one more update before I go and do something I get paid for!
All bit.ly URLs are now resolved, and then shorted to be 22 characters with the full URL in the title of the <a>.
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Nigel Peck / MIS Web Design
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Does the date/time need to be shown on Tweets? I've left it off but should I put it in? Just something short like "yesterday" or "two days ago" etc. (like most Twitter apps seem to do it) or is it just clutter and can be seen by visiting our Twitter page anyway?_________________
Nigel Peck / MIS Web Design
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| Nigel Peck wrote: |
| Does the date/time need to be shown on Tweets? |
I think it's useful, especially to show how up-to-date the tweets are. Could you maybe just show it for the most recent tweet, to reduce clutter?
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James Coltham - Local gov web manager by day, web and accessibility blogger at lunchtime, freelancer by night. Tweets at @prettysimple.
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| Nigel Peck wrote: |
| I added "Currently Online" to the sidebar, and removed it from the bottom of each forum page (since I changed the code to always report users online across the site rather than, on forum indexes, showing the users browsing that forum). |
Since it's now in the sidebar, do we still need it at the bottom of the home page?
Love the refinements BTW!
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Blogging at: AWTS (Accessible Web and Training Solutions)
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| Gary Miller wrote: |
| Since it's now in the sidebar, do we still need it at the bottom of the home page? |
I did consider removing it from the home page, but decided not to since it's always been there (so people look there for it) and also fits well alongside the other information. Do you think it should be removed?
| James Coltham wrote: |
| I think it's useful, especially to show how up-to-date the tweets are. Could you maybe just show it for the most recent tweet, to reduce clutter? |
I think you've got a good point there. I'll have a play with it and see what works.
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Nigel Peck / MIS Web Design
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Fair point...
How about leaving it there for a while, then remove it from the home page and see if you get any hate-PM about it?
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Blogging at: AWTS (Accessible Web and Training Solutions)
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