While working on my submission to the Boxes and Arrows redesign contest I stumbled across an idea.
While browsing through the site to get a feel for the content I came across a number of articles in the archives that I hadn't read and thought I'd like to sometime soon. I already have a stack of shortcut icons on my desktop from previous forays there and wasn't really feeling up to adding yet more icon clutter to my desktop.
Then the "dreamers discontent" set in and I thought, "Wouldn't it be wonderful if I could mark articles as 'read later' and then when I return to the site they'll be in a box on the front page waiting for me."
In theory it doesn't sound to hard to implement. On a primitive level, you could have a small server side script that would accept the URL as a parameter, set a cookie (if there's no login system in place), and return the user to the article. Each article page could check for the cookie as it loads. If the article is already present, then a "remove from reminder list" link would be available. If it's not in the list, then a "remind me to read this later" link would appear. Sounds simple enough.
It's definitely worth pondering, and I think worth coding too.
Just an idea.
Posted by TheIdeaMan at August 10, 2004 10:18 AM | TrackBack