@eolaí Getting the opinion of experienced users is just as important though. I’m disappointed there hasn’t been a study into blog vs weblog navigation, across user-types (experienced, non-experienced). It’s potentially interesting.

@Darragh I feel the same because I can rely so heavily on rss feeds. If content is well structured, with keywords highlighted or with headings I find it much easier to digest. When a post is broken up with relevant (which is the keyword here) images, I find that… pleasing too. Sometimes there might not BE a relevant image, but they’re thrown in anyway. Always leaves me wondering… why?

@Frank I would suggest that when composing a blog post not to increase or decrease the default text size unless it’s for a heading/sub-heading. I think the big mistake that is made (and I’m sure I’ve done it myself) is including nondescript links within a blog post (using HERE, or THIS etc.,) as the text for a link. Meaning the user doesn’t know where these links will take them. Breaking a long blog post into headings/sub-headings is a great way to keep the user reading though.

F

There was a major internet use survey a couple of years back which said that X% of people didn’t read blogs. But it also claimed that Y% didn’t know what blogs were. It struck me at the time that if people didn’t know what blogs were, how would they know that the sites they were visiting weren’t necessarily blogs?

I think people are in different places in terms of how they use sites, blogs or other kinds, and usability itself is evolving as people’s habits grow.

For now though, as publishing is so easy, I don’t think most non-tech or non-commercial bloggers give much thought to how their site is navigated by others.

You know, sometimes I get pretty bored looking at Google Reader and go direct to the source if there have been lots of updates. Find all that scrolling is bad for the eyes, heh. I’m pretty sure there is a desktop RSS Readers that keep the blog design, but the name escapes me.