Linking to stuff in your posts
Sometimes when I write a blog post I’d like to refer to a list of links but I can only hyperlink under one word, so what most people do is this:
eg. A lot of people have talked about this, and I have mentioned it here, and, here…
I think this is a bit awkward, the proper way is to list all the titles of the posts, but sometimes you can’t just do that in the middle of a post, it may ruin the flow.
So what if (I think I may rename this blog what if…) you could choose the word to put a link under and then when someone clicks on that link an ajax box pops-up listing all the title’s of the links. This is very clean and you get to see the names of your links, although I’m not sure if search engines would pick up these links, which would be a problem.
I guess another way is that when someone clicks the link it will go to another website like clipmarks, where you have made an entry listing all those links, but then this is pushing people away from your site, and ruining the flow.
Actually I’d love this expanding or collapsing type feature for lots of stuff, as sometimes webpages get cluttered, and in contrast just having a link to something that is on another page kills the flow…hiding the contents within the same page is a great idea.
Imagine the sidebar of your blog, you could have a link for your tag cloud, blogroll, etc…and when you click on it, it expands right before your eyes…this saves space without losing content.
I guess this idea came from when you mouse over a link and a description box appears.
More to this imagine your blog posts as title’s and expanding them to see the contents…this is like a title index or full-text in the one click (this is done by posting from an outline to your blog).
[ADDED 14/06/06: Here’s an answer, or even better check out the 3spots expand/collapse post.]
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I agree with your concern about numerous links within a post ruining the flow. And, though i’d love the traffic to the clipmarks site, i also agree that the right solution would not push people to leave your site. I like the expand/collapse idea, specifically regarding the sidebar…so much so that we’re changing the entire left side navigator on the clipmarks site to be modules that do just that. These changes will be sometime this upcoming week.
Comment by eric goldstein — December 3, 2005 @ 6:38 pm
Nice idea, and one that can perhaps be implemented with a little javscripted tooltip and a (relayed?) feed from a social bookmarking service (displaying resources tagged with either a blog post specific tag or an appropriate tag combination).
I did something not totally unrealted in this post on seaarchlinks.
I use a social bookmark feed to display links in eg blibliographies/further reading lists, and elsewhere (eg my livelinks posts).
tony
Comment by Tony Hirst — December 5, 2005 @ 2:11 pm
Tooltip Links
“Sometimes when I write a blog post I’d like to refer to a list of links but I can only hyperlink under one word” - how about a tooltip like this…
Trackback by Micro-Info — December 5, 2005 @ 5:13 pm
Important to note that the words in a link impact SEO too, so a link that references a site name votes w/ google juice, & adds value to the destination page. A link that says to read more go _here_ is neither as descriptive for the reader nor as potent in terms of added value for the destination site. I guess a pop-up box like the ones you see for http://www.mybloglog.com/ that say “4th most clicked link” could include the name of the site, or author info, or a brief post excerpt… Clipmarks might be a bit much. A bulleted list at the end of the post, though, might work? Old school, but straightforward, & doesn’t break the flow of your prose?
Comment by John — December 5, 2005 @ 8:38 pm
John
I agree, thanks for bringing up mybloglog, that’s a perfect example of a mouseover box that could list links, although when you move your mouse it disappears, I was thinking something that stays there until you collapse it again.
Comment by Johnt — December 6, 2005 @ 1:56 am