I guess it's an occupational hazard, being a WDUSSEW (Web developer using software somebody else wrote)... I'm never satisfied with OPWS (other people's Web sites). Townhall.com is spiffy, no question, and the concept of leveraging conservative activism online a la BC04 campaign ROCKS (no acronym here). Still, there are just a handful of things I'd like to see handled differently.

Layout.
Liquid design, people. Please. Fixed table widths are SO 90's. Or at least center the darned table so my super-honking wide-screen display doesn't cram your itty-bitty content column way over on the left side with the window maximized. But really, give me a liquid design and my pushing-40 eyes will praise your name to the skies as I juice up my font size and rejoice in reading more than three words of conservative genius per line.

Podcasts.
Aaaaah... God bless you, TH, for offering one-stop podcasting for so many of my favorite shows. I signed up for a bunch of 'em. TH gave me a single URL for all of 'em. One URL == one podcast, so iTunes naturally thinks they're all the Hugh Hewitt show. Bill and Dennis and Michael may not love that. If the description doesn't include the host's name, it's anybody's guess. Download 'em all? Love to! But not all at once. How about separate podcast URLs for each show? Use the user's hash as a unique ID and pass the show's ID in the query string... done, without really straining the old carpal tunnel.

Blog post topic.
What if my post relates to more than one topic? What if my post's main topic isn't on the list? Should I lie? Of course we want to classify posts as much as possible to make them searchable and useful, but the noise/signal ratio will go up as people are forced to pick something from the topic list that may be only tangentially related to their actual topic. How about an "Other" or "NOTA" classification, at least?

But then there is the plus that outweighs all the nits I can pick: This site offers an orderly, action-oriented window on a massive amount of information in an amazingly wide range of formats. Would that my desk were half so well organized.

Like I said in my measly excuse for an opening bio, I'm going to be starting slow. The next couple of posts, when I put them up, will identify what topics I'll be blogging about and why my perspective on those topics is relevant to anyone outside the first person.

In the meantime, though, I have some podcasts to sort through...
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