New HuffPost Features: More of What You Come Here For
From the beginning, HuffPost has worked to bring our users the most dynamic mix of breaking news and opinion possible -- and to use the latest technology available to improve the user experience, and to bring you more of what you come here for.
With this goal in mind, we are rolling out a number of new features that will continue to make HuffPost a go-to web destination for up-to-the-minute news and fresh takes on the stories everyone is talking about.
For starters, we know that our readers have always loved the rapid updates on HuffPost's front page, so we've switched over to an Ajax interface that lets our stories and images load faster -- making the site more vibrant, and the updates more seamless. No more clicking and waiting for the site to refresh; the latest news stories, blog posts, and comments now automatically appear on the page.
We've also upgraded our Quick Read feature, which allows you to get the gist of a story without clicking to a new page. Now, when you open a Quick Read box, you are also shown four other stories that your fellow HuffPost readers have been drawn to -- and you can rapidly check out each of those stories without ever leaving the Quick Read box you initially opened. If you've never used the Quick Read feature, give it a try.
HuffPost's upgraded Quick Read feature
And we've added a "Most Popular on HuffPost" feature on the right hand side of every section's home page that allows you, at a glance, to see the hottest stories and blog posts from the last few days. It's continually updated and showcases a rotation of the top 12 HuffPost pieces at any given moment. And if you have your own blog site, you can add our Most Popular widget to it.
Of course, since these changes have been made with you in mind, we want to hear what you think of them -- good and bad. Let us know by sending an email to updates@huffingtonpost.com.
Thanks again for reading, posting, talking back, and being such an integral part of what we do. And if you haven't made HuffPost your home page, you can do so by clicking here.
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Thank you for all do you Arianna!
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Arianna,
I have done as you asked and sent my comments and ideas to HuffingtonPost.comPost.com. As a courtesy to all, I'm including my post here, in as many parts as it takes...
Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2007 11:27:46 -0800 (PST)
From: RTIII
To: huffingtonPost.comPost.com
Subject: The New Changes - problems/issues
MANY comments, hopefully all useful. Preface: I've been a HufPo reader for a VERY long time - maybe since the beginning, though I don't know when that was exactly - though I signed up only recently so I could chime in on the comments section. I come back because I like it. Please take EVERY commenty below as intended in a helpful spirit of "you can't make it better if you don't know there's a problem!" You, all involved with HufPo,including the commenter/public-readership, have done a great job and are to be commended...
First, the technical:
Keep the news about the Spears family on the Entertainment page, PLEASE!
How about an OFF TOPIC button so we can deal with idiots like AmmoBob, who's postings aren't ABUSIVE, they're just OFF TOPIC -- intended to derail any intelligent conversation.
Another thing I'd like to see would be a "Best Comment" button -- so the QuickRead would show you the "Ten Best Comments" made on a particular post.
Otherwise, I find the QuickReads useless. Maybe if they were roll-over I'd bother to use them.
I'd like to see the comments sorted as oldest-first to newest-last. Would make the comments much easier to read.
I love all you do, but like others have said, this place is getting ever so SSSLLLOOOWWW.
Aaaaarrrgghhh!
Still getting that IE cannot open the internet site... Operation Aborted, which slips into the generic "The page cannot be displayed" window.
But! Should this problem also be bedevilling you, if you move really, really fast to link to ANY story, you can move beyond it.
Hoping you and your staff are reading all these comments, let me add:
I agree with those who are distracted by all the Entertainment fanfare on the site. I think you left Salon to create your own site with your own, more serious style. But the front page is increasingly resembling Salon.
Other than that, and some other minor gripes, I love you Arianna, and I always will! I even saw some clips of your old Strange Bedfellows act, back when your were a poor benighted Republican, and I still love you.
I'd like to see comments on 23/6.
Skimming through these comments, I find many complaints linked to the use of Internet Explorer. Firefox works fine and I've not experienced any of those problems. Just the yellow screen of obscurity. Where did what I was reading go and why did it go there?
When I try to pull up the Huffpost main page, I get a message, "Internet Explorer cannot pull up this page." Very frustrating. I don't know what's wrong.
Getting rid of the Hollywood crap is a step in the right direction, we get enough of that on the "NEWS" And it don't matter all that much in the big picture.
The new and improved web site is terribly slow. I often abandon huffpo out of frustration waiting for pages to load.
I like the changes, and it all works fine for me...in IE7, Opera, and Firefox (I hate not being able to go somewhere on the web just because one browser's support team has managed to dork their offering up...).
Of course, I've made sure that all three browsers have their latest patches and upgrades, and perhaps more importantly I have this week's latest release of Adobe Flash player, Adobe ShockWave, and Microsoft's Silverlight installed.
Yup, I just got on the 'net yesterday...trust me.
Apparently another new feature is " Being Censored by Apple."
When I click on the " Apple Shuts Down Product Rumor Sites" story link I get a
" Safari can't access page message" on an otherwise blank screen.
What's up with that ?
I rarely even look at the fluff pieces, but agree with others that they are starting to get a bit overwhelming.
Why can't you keep this stuff strictly on the Entertainment page, so that people can go there if they want to read the latest about Britney, Paris or whatever.
As I've said before, there is simply too much clutter creeping onto your home page, which has been slowing loading down to a crawl.
I'd like to see the site open onto a news page, containing just a few key stories, perhaps with links to relevant editorials on Page Two, or something of that kind. Please keep the pages simple, easy to load and scroll.
A clickable index up front might also be useful as a way to help people sort through the increasing amounts of content.
A "letters to the editor" section, as I've also mentioned previously, and perhaps some forums where people can create topics and exchange ideas, so that we don't get as much off-topic posting.
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Posted December 20, 2007 | 05:00 PM (EST)