User Interface to Indicate Posting Activity

User Interface to Indicate Posting Activity by Chris AldrichChris Aldrich (Boffo Socko)

Today I saw a note that led me to the Internet Archive which I know has recently had a redesign. I’m not sure if the functionality I saw was part of this redesign, but it’s pretty awesome. I’m not sure quite what to call this sort of circular bar chart given what it does, but circular widthmap seems vaguely appropriate.

Instead of using color gradations to indicate a relative number of posts, the UI is measuring things via width in ever increasing concentric circles. The innermost circle indicates the root domain and successive levels out add additional paths from my site. Because I’m using dated archive paths, there’s a level of circle by year (2019, 2018, 2017, etc.) then another level outside that by months (April 2019, March 2019, etc.), and finally the outermost circle which indicates individual posts. As a result, the width of a particular year or month indicates relatively how active that time frame was on my website (or at least how active Archive.org thinks it was based on its robot crawler.)

I enjoyed the idea of these heatmaps and charting. I added the sparkline graph last week after I saw them on Chris's website. I may create a separate web site page to keep these. I don't know how useful they are, but they are just cool. I would also love a way to display some of the JetPack graphs.

These are the yearly JetPack stats from 2010, the year Automattic first offered the, to 2019.

2013 was the best year for this website.

But I get more "responses" that I did in earlier years. I suspect more of these are from semantic responses on other platforms, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram since. It's, and the time I started using some of the IndieWeb software.

Below is the Internet Archive graph for 2018, compared to 2012. Traffic has fallen off.

2013 Internet Archive Circular Widthmaps
Graph
2018 Internet Archive Circular Widthmaps

Bad UI: MacOS 10.14’s Software Update Release Notes

Bad UI: MacOS 10.14’s Software Update Release Notes

It was a good idea to move system software updates out of the App Store app and (back1) into a System Prefs panel. System software updates aren’t from the App Store, and System Prefs is — duh — the correct place to manage the system. But everything about the presentation of release notes in this sheet is obviously bad. Macs have displays ranging from large to giant, but these release notes are displayed in a fixed-size pane that shows less text than an iPhone SE. Seriously. The rigidity and clear lack of thoughtfulness makes it feel like a dialog box from some other operating system, like an old version of Windows. If this sheet were part of a student’s assignment in an intro to Mac programming class, a good teacher would send it back and explain how to make a sheet resizable, how to make text selectable (and thus copy-able), and how to make URLs clickable.

Maybe John's complaint will get Apple to fix this.