In keeping up with the site updates, some very small ones were rolled out today:
Sidebar:
- Removed “The Latest 5” box. Since the sidebar only appears on the home page, it was unnecessary to show the latest five posts again. The box still exists in the footer, which is shown on every page.
- Smaller QR codes, now in one box. Before, the Google Currents and Poken QR codes were 150x150px and in their own boxes. They also had text links to click. Rather than waste about 550px of space, the QR codes are now 90x90px, clickable if you can’t scan them, and joined together in one box. This makes the sidebar significantly shorter.
Pages and posts:
- Every page, except for the home page, which is getting fixed, and every post can now be translated inline into number of different languages. Simply click the blue Translate link and your language of choice to have it automatically translated via Bing. Why Bing? Two reasons: 1) last year, Google removed the Google Translate API that just about every Google Translate plugin for WordPress relied on and 2) the translations from Bing are just as good, don’t require a page refresh, and are a heck of a lot faster than Google was. However, Bing translations are still machine translations. There is absolutely zero guarantee that they are correct, complete, and will always be available. They are being provided as an option more than a service.
Speed:
- Permitting your own internet isn’t still in the AOL age, the site should now be loading significantly faster than before. It’s now using a new, more aggressive, and more efficient page caching plugin. Many of the third-party plugins used on the site, especially the Google+, have also received significant Javascript overhauls that give many a much-needed performance boost.