The Unstatement

Can’t help but notice some of the great improvements in Tumblr lately. They could have been the reasons for the recent downtimes.

- custom text to post to twitter - it’s great that it gives us the ability to edit the actual text to be actually posted to Twitter.
- new UI iPhone app - sorry Android boys if this ain’t for you. For iOS fans, you’ve got a reboot in the interface of the iOS app with Tumblr 2.0. Now you can view and reply to messages for each of your blogs.
- the newly optimized Tumblr web view for iPad - again, this is for iOS fans, specifically those who are owning an iPad like me!

It looks organized. But what I really hate about the new Tumblr Dashboard is that from the Dashboard it’ll take you two more clicks to get to the front page of your blog. You will yet need to click that particular blog, and click open that blog.

And one more thing: the Open that whatever opens in a new tab/window. I really hate that! If I want to open a link to a new window, I can easily do that with a right click!

Now, from the dashboard, I think I’ve only one way to go directly to the front page. That is, typing the url in the address bar.

What about you? Do you like these new improvements/diminutions in the Tumblr Dashboard?

What I currently have in mind is changing to a new custom cleaner theme. But before that, I’m cleaning up this theme as well, which I intend to offer as free theme in Tumblr. 

With a minimalist theme means I have to de-clutter the presentation. Thus, I have removed some unnecessary items:

1. I have removed the Disqus commenting system. I don’t receive too many comments in here anyway, except for maybe a couple of posts which they find through search engines. The scripts at the commenting system adds to the page load, so I guess it’s better to do away with it, especially when posts don’t really have comments in them.
2. I have removed some Adsense ads. I don’t earn as much as well in them, so why bother. And they are not acceptable when you upload a theme to the Tumblr themes directory.
3. I have removed the Twitter Timelines and the Facebook Likes scripts. Again, they are javascripts that often add to the page load times. And I don’t think anybody would care about them (LOL!).
4. I will start unfollowing some many Tumblr blogs moving forward to de-clutter my sidebar and my dashboard. I will just stick to Tumblr users who I know personally and who already picked my interest. I should share the same interests with who I follow — that way they won’t *spam* my dashboard. By sharing the same interest — it also means that we need to be looking at the same horizon — to put it more simply we should be of the same age bracket (LOL!).

I hope you enjoy the new minimalist me, as you currently see, and in the future.

So what do you think of these changes?

ubermoe:

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Personally, I think that having comments enabled on personal blogs specially of people who have nothing to do with the blogsphere and its echosystem is optional, because enabling or disabling them would not make a difference at all.

If you don’t know my style of blogging then I tell you that I am hardcore old school blogging guy who have nothing to do with comments and people around, because I am just writing my personal views and thoughts that do not represent or affect anyone else but me. I believe that I am speaking my mind out and providing comments is just a matter of a personal view.

I totally believe in and love these clean and clutter-free blogs that just represent ideas and thoughts of their bloggers. I used to send an email to the writer to discuss a point or something regarding a certain post and I always get a reply and reach an ending point with brief conclusion. That’s what I love.

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Personally, I’m contemplating about redesigning this tumblr blog and disable comments altogether. I don’t receive too many comments in here anyway. Talk about de-cluttering the presentation. 

I’m still thinking about displaying notes or not, though.