Leloblog

Virgílio A. P. Machado and Alda M. A. Vieira

Leloblog is a Last Entry Last Ordered Blog. A blog is a reverse chronological publishing tool. It has the entries ordered in the oposit order: last entry or post first.

Ever since one of the authors first blog Logística 2006 there was a need to handle subjects too long to be written in a single post. There were two alternatives. One was to enter the last section first, so that it could be displayed and read in sequence from top to bottom. The other was to post the sections in sequence, search the first entry, move up, read the next entry, and so on.

Blog hosts, aware of this problem, give instructions on how to write «books». Blogger, for example, answers the question “How do I post a book?” WordPress explains “How to write a book”. Well, as they say, “almost.” They explain one way you can write something that is chapter based. This was done in Logística de uma Rede de Hipermercados with the material from Logística 2006.

What if you chapters are really short and numerous like the entries in a diary or posts in a blog? In fact, Stone, from Google, describes a blog as “a personal diary, a daily pulpit” with the entries in chronological order. What if they were displayed in that same order but with the most recent post showing in your monitor when you open the blog. Then you would have to scroll up to see the previous posts, instead of scrolling down. That’s when and why “Scroll up & down” was written. Scroll up & down asked several questions, wondering out loud what it would be like if blog hosts displayed posts from the most recent up.

Why one could not scroll up to see the previous posts, instead of down. Why were posts added to the top instead of the bottom. Why one did not have the option of going to the last line of the last post and fill the monitor screen form the bottom up with the most recent posts. Or go to the first line of the last post and fill the monitor screen form the top down with that last post, placing a few of the preceding posts above, in chronological order. The reasoning was that if one wanted to take a quick look at where the writing ended, that would be what one would do. It was like going over a book’s galley proofs.

People who write from left to right normally fill a diary, notebook or whatever that way. Not form the last page up, so that the last thing they wrote is always on top. But then they would not scroll, either. They turn the pages. If the diary were opened at the last entry, the pages would be turned from left to right or from the top down to check or review the previous entries. New entries would be added after everything else.

All this suggested an analogy with the way Microsoft and others keep designing new versions of Office suites. Saved documents always open on the first line of the first page. If you were working on a document several pages long, you might be more interested in opening it where you left out, with the last line you wrote at the bottom of your screen. That, of course, is only one Ctrl+End away. Going to the beginning would also require a Ctrl+Home only.

Was a leloblog a good idea? Was it available from some blog host? Determined to find out, “Scroll up & down” was sent to support@wordpress.com". The answer was that “"A blog is a user-generated website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog. It's what every blogging site does because we all blog..”

That sounded awfully like “that’s the way we’ve been doing this, why change”? So I replied: Come on, you can do better then that. What I was writing about is golb not blog. No definition for that. Not even in Wikipedia. Looks like it has not been invented yet. Got it now? Think about it. If WordPress doesn't do it first, what if somebody else does? Has anybody tried it yet? I will not. Sorry, not my area of expertise. Will WorldPress be a leader or a follower?

Still, that was the way it has always been done. I was told: “WordPress has been creating blogs for years, Blogger did before that. The order of posts is how it is....” How many awful things were done for years, for centuries, for millenniums? Is that a good enough reason to keep doing it?

Some people seem to agree. Check out what happened after posting “Scroll up & down” to WordPress.com Forums, under «Ideas». You might learn something. Someone was suffering from a serious case of heartburn or there was an heretic on the loose! The fire was kept burning. Big mistake. Always ignore and do not reply in similar circumstances. Another reply and presto: it didn’t take long before things turned ugly. Oh well, live and learn. One last twisted attempt was made to calm and stir things up. It was a good learning experience. Now you know how Internet bullying is like.

You already know not to put all your eggs in one basket, so compare that train wreck to what happened to the same post on Google Groups, blogger general discussion, under Scroll up & down. There were so many people trying to help and making nice suggestions that it took a while until there were all checked out.

Take a look at the clue Peter Chen (enviroman) provided. Peter has a post, dated March 22, 2006 (please see below), on How to change order of the posts on his blog Dummies Guide to Blogger for Beginners (read the entertaining story of Blogger for Dummies). This “How” is the old fiddling with dates and times, which has the nasty drawback of making them meaningless. You can read about a very crude way to get around it on this “Posting” page and see the result in the blog “Home” page.

Peter mentioned that “If you want to reverse the chronology of the post using scripts, refer to Change order of Blogger posts.” Peter’s post (How to change order of the posts) generated a bit of enthusiasm form a few readers (14 comments). Nate charged in Dec. 21, 2004: “There are a lot of complaints from Blogger users that they can't reverse the order of their posts from latest to earliest. They are stuck with seeing their new posts at the top of their list.”

Nate then provided some very useful information. “TypePad users have this ability.” Now TypePad is not free and is not Google/Blogger or WordPress.org/com, so it would be great if you could do it in Blogger (like Nate says) and WordPress.com. Despair not, Nate is coming to the rescue: “With a little Javascript DHTML mojo, [you] can!” A somewhat “coded” exchange followed (13 comments), but excitement turned to elation.

Leloblogs, of course, go a step further, they not only change the order of posts but also the way they are displayed and how you move from one post to another. The entries are in chronological order. They are displayed in that same order, with the most recent post showing in your monitor when you open the blog. Then you scroll up, "turn" the entries from left to right or from the top down to see the previous posts. New entries are added after everything else.

There was great care in choosing this new jewel of Internet jargon: leloblog. It was very important to choose the right word. To end up in a list like The top 10 unintentionally worst company URLs was to be avoided at all cost. If you find it flawed and/or have a better idea, please make yourself heard. There is still time to change it. That is one of the reasons blogs are so nice. Next time you read this post, leloblogs might be called something else.