Lighter Footstep’s New Look: A Quick Tour

By Chris Baskind in News

If you’re a regular visitor to Lighter Footstep, you’ve probably noticed our new look.

We rolled out a major revision to our layout over the weekend. After a few days of tuning, most of the elements are in place. Welcome to the new Lighter Footstep: simpler, cleaner, and easier to read. It’s the first phase of some exciting changes we have planned for the summer.

Please browse around and tell us what you think. If you’re reading this through our RSS feed, please pop over to the site and have a look. We’re particularly interested in bug reports, so if you notice something that seems broken or out of place, please drop us a note or leave a comment. Our team will get right on it.

To help you get started, we thought we’d offer a quick tour of what’s new. We’ll begin our walkthrough at the top of the home page.

Reader favorites

It’s sometimes a little difficult to find the best of a website the first time you visit. That’s because many of a site’s most popular articles are buried far from the from page.

Our new Reader Favorites section is designed to put these articles where you can see them. You’ll find them in the yellow highlight section topping each page:

We’ll be keeping these selections fresh, based on whatever readers deem popular. It’s also where you’ll find the Search box; RSS subscription tab; a contact link; and seasonal articles, as they become appropriate.

Feature section

Lighter Footstep’s freshest feature articles are showcased in the large area directly below the main navigation bar:

If you’re just hitting the home page to see what’s happening at Lighter Footstep, the feature section is probably a good place to check first. The blue tabbed box will let you quickly see which articles people are discussing. Speaking of discussion: You’ll also find our latest from Twitter right next to the blue tweetie bird. If you’re not already following us on Twitter, please give this a click and join the conversation.

Scroll through more articles

Below the features, we have a new animated which allows you to scroll through recent articles:

Use the arrows at the far right to move forward or backward through about a dozen stories. These update as new articles move down from the features section.

What we’re reading

We read a lot of websites. Here’s a small new feature we’ve added to share some of the better articles we find:

This list may cycle several times a day. If you see something worth adding to this shared section, use the Contact link at the top of each page and pass it along.

And that’s the home page. You’re reading this article on what our designers call a content page, where there are also some changes — particularly with the commenting system and the way Lighter Footstep connects to services such as Twitter, Facebook, Stumbleupon, FriendFeed, and Reddit.

Share and save what you find valuable

Below each article, you’ll find a new toolbar to make it easier to archive or share Lighter Footstep on your favorite web services:

Just mouse over an icon and click. In most cases, the toolbar will fill in most of the blanks for you, though it’s possible you may have to correct punctuation on some services. File away an article on Delicious. Give us a Buzz at Yahoo. Send an article to your page at Facebook or MySpace. Share an interesting story on Twitter or via email. Spreading the green via social media helps Lighter Footstep grow, so thanks for taking the time.

Below the toolbar is a summary of the number of times an article has appeared on other services. You can click through for more detail.

Improved Comments

We love reader comments. Some of the best tips on Lighter Footstep have been offered by readers, and your input — and occasional criticism — improves our site.

Some readers found our old commenting system cramped and a bit confusing. We’ve dropped it in favor of simpler, easy-to-read comments. While we are considering the option of site registration (which will add features for Lighter Footstep members), our Comments section is open to everyone.

You’ll notice that some readers have custom avatars. These are from Gravatar. Sign up there — it’s free — and you avatar will appear when you comment  Lighter Footstep or thousands of other websites. Just supply the same email address you used to register with Gravatar.

Commenting gets more social

We’ve also begun importing relevant comments made on other services about Lighter Footstep articles. Share an article on Twitter, and your tweet will eventually find its way home. We currently support about a half dozen services, including FriendFeed, Reddit, and comments made on other websites. Here’s how it looks:

Here, a couple Friends of Lighter Footstep have mentioned a cycling article on two external sites. Jill, who goes by the name @barefootbadger has linked us on Twitter. Charlie Anzman has commented over at FriendFeed. These mentions have been applied to the appropriate article (which you can view here).

Next to most of the comments, you’ll see a new button marked “More from Author.” This is a great way to get to know more about other Lighter Footstep readers. It clicks through to the author’s public profile at Backtype, a comment aggregation service. Here’s an example:

In this case, the comment was connected to the Lighter Footstep Twitter account. It links other tweets about the article. The information displayed depends on the originating service, and whether or not the author has chosen to register with Backtype.

And that’s just a start

We’ve a few more things for you to discover on your own, and there’s more on the way. Kick the tires, try some of the new features, and let us know what else you’d like to see on Lighter Footstep. We hope you like what we’ve laid out so far. Thanks for reading.

Originally posted 10. Jun, 2009 | Tags: Annoucements, Facebook, FriendFeed, Lighter Footstep, Social Media, Twitter