Tatiana Azundris

Apparently, WP has "newer" and "previous." Weird. What's wrong with "newer" and "older"? Or "younger" and "older", for that matter? : )

The point was specifically that "previous" and "next" allow for different interpretations -- WP has one, s9y has another, thereby needlessly creating confusion. "Older" and "newer" on the other hand is clear; it won't mean one thing in s9y and another in WP.

And then of course fixing it in my weblog won't do me a blind bit of good when visiting others' logs, will it?

No prob. Hope prvs comment didn't sound rude, got one of those "emergency" kinda calls before I could edit for style.

And yes, that's part of the problem, it's not like s9y were wrong, and WP were right (or vice versa, for that matter). It's just confusing that they're different, so it would be nice if they used the same "right," or the same "wrong" scheme. : )

Or maybe, everybody's using feedreaders these days anyway, and it doesn't matter. : )

Not quite sure how to proceed myself, I could change it for this weblog, but that would probably just add to the confusion.

Which I guess brings us straight to the treacherous waters of semiotics and affordance.

"Back" and "Forward", "Previous" and "Next" might just as well be left and right arrows (where of course, the above problem persists).

I find it interesting that outside of the previous/next paradigm, there seem to be no readily apparent symbols for "older" and "newer" outside of calendar dates or page numbers, of which we'd always need at least two to determine the direction by means of comparison.

An icon of a baby and one of an old person might be a first idea for younger/older, but in the context of a weblog, this could possibly be ambiguous ("Does the baby symbolize younger entries, or entries from when the author was younger?"). And that's not even taking into account the fact that most would likely prefer textual navigation over icons. (Or would they?)

Can of worms.

As far as icons go, a large stack of pages to symbolize "towards more recent entries" and a smaller one ("towards the beginning") might work. Strictly speaking, the beginning would have happened on a single page, but we wish to illustrate more/fewer, not one/many. Of course, this is still deep within the realm of theory.

On a more practical note, it just occurred to me that all web-comics I know seem to mirror the transport bar of a tapedeck/VCR/CD-player/DVD-player:
|� � � �|
(first, previous, next, latest)
"Left" always signifies "back in time;" the (implicit or explicit) "play" button points right, towards younger - and ultimately, future - content.
I guess if there is widely recognized standard, then that's probably it?

While I consider page-numbering a minor point, here goes.

Consider this: If the first page we see (the top page, the latest items, the latest page), is page #1, then the first article we see (the top article, the latest article) should be article #1.

That's not how it is. Both pages and articles are displayed in reverse chronological order, with the latest one first (or "on top"), but one is numbered up, and the other down.

As a result of the way the pages are numbered, links to pages are not stable. As a result of the way articles are numbered, links to articles are stable. And yet, both are displayed in reverse chronological order.

This illustrates that display order is independent from item-order. Having stable links however is dependent on item-order.

Adjusting page-order to be analogous to entry-order would make things more consistent. It would also allow stable links to pages. It would break no existing links to pages.

"The first to be shown" may change with each new article. "The first ever written" won't.

There's more, though.

Stable links to pages would arguably only do any good if page_n always contained the same items. So if he we had 21 entries, ten articles per page, page1 would have entries 1..10, page 2 would have 11..20, and page 3 would hold articles #21. Yes, the cover-page would only show one article at this point. I'm sure this is not for everyone. (It would however provide a spatial metaphor -- "Y? Oh, I remember that was on the same page with X and Z." -- which arguably is more than we have now.) It would also imply that deleted articles still count towards the article-count on a page, so that page 2 would always have articles 11..20, even if I delete articles 5..8. (Which really means that articles/page is a cap -- there could be fewer articles on page, but not more.)

So, can of worms.

Whether changing that would be worth the effort is anybody's guess, but just as we have shown that item-numbering and item display order are really independent, let's not forget that item-numbering and (layout of) navigation are independent. Even if we leave page-numbers be, that doesn't mean we can't make navigation consistent across s9y, which it isn't at this point.

This is not my main gripe, though. Static page numbers would (arguably) be good in some ways, and problematic in others -- see there.

At this point, I consider them nice to have in some ways, but possibly not worth the effort.

What bothers me much more that s9y's navigation is inconsistent. Below the original article, you'll find two links, one pointing left and linking to the chronologically previous item ("left == older stuff"), one pointing right and linking the chronologically next item ("next == newer stuff").

On the overwiew-page however, you'll find a left arrow referring to newer stuff, and a right arrow hurling you towards older stuff.

With the single exception of on s9y's main page (on s9y's article page, s9y's comic page, WP, and in fact every last web-comic in the world), left always means "older."

Older. As in, previously added. Not as in, previously displayed. All I'm asking for is consistency. "Older" (and "newer") may or may not be a good paradigm, but it's the established one. Introducing a different one for no pressing reason will needlessly confuse people. Especially if you use both opposing metaphors in the same UI.

Be my guest.