Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
I’m looking at all the possible areas where one can apply Ajaxian technologies to a weblog. Some uses strike me as just pushing the bits around for the fun of it. Others, such as my live preview for comments, seem to be so handy they’re worth having JavaScript turned on.
Before blasting script, willy nilly at my sites, I wanted to gather opinions from those most impacted: you. Of the following, which do you consider useful as compared to frivolous? Are there any you consider important enough to introduce invalid XHTML?
- Live Preview, where a comment is previewed as the person writes it.
- Spellcheck of comment. Which of the two options: Live spellchecking or the current open new window spellchecking.
- In-place editing of comment as compared to server-side editing of comment (as currently enabled at this site).
- In-place editing of comment as compared to having no post-comment editing.
- Live update of list of comments or posts, as you’re reading and without page refresh.
- Expanding comments in the main page when the comments link is clicked (in-page reading).
- Animated or otherwise activated menus, such as the one currently implemented at ScriptTeaser.
- Dropdown menus that expand to show all menu options.
- Summarized posts on the front page, which then expand when a plus sign (’+’) is clicked.
- Be able to turn photos off, and have the site remember to filter photos.
- Only display photos if a button of some form is clicked (or if JavaScript is disabled).
- Expand code blocks on demand.
- Being able to re-arrange weblog page and have the new arrangement ’stick’. (IE being able to size main content, sidebars, move sidebars, eliminate sidebars, and so on.)
- Being able to pick stylesheet.
- Being able to choose font: family and size.
- Being able to change site colors based on a pick list.
- Autosaving of longer comments, as they’re being written.
- Expandable metadata sections for each post.
- Mouseover that pop up information associated with post, such as related posts.
- Use of microformats for reviews, events, where microformat exists.
- Being able to access Google/Yahoo map through link, metadata, expandable section, or live embedding when post is somehow geographically related (such as with photos, events, and so on).
- Being able to add your tags to post.
- Being able to add other metadata, such as related links, to the post.
- Being able to expand a photo in the page.
- Add a slider to darken or lighten the page text.
- Adding a live chat feature.
- Being able to opaque everything but a post you’re currently reading (remove distraction).
- Persist commenter’s name, email, and URL.
- Live search (posts/comments returned as search term being input)
- Games. Yes, games. Just like the paper mat you used to color on when you went out to the pancake house when you were a kid.
If I missed any ideas, let me know. Appreciations for the feedback.