I think the time spent on writing a summary for each paragraph could be better spent editing the paragraph to its essence, such that a summary isn't necessary.
I really don't get the point. Why not just have two divs inside one paragraph, where the display property alternates whenever you click on it? Also why use an id when what you're actually doing is alternating certain classes of divs? Am I missing something?
I'm not sure where I saw it, but I once saw a blog post that just had the main line of each paragraph bolded, and at the top said "For the TL;DR read the bold bits"... as much as random bolded sentences through an article can be kind of annoying, in some circumstances it works quite well.<p>Also easier than clicking each paragraph to see the point.
It is a very good idea. However, I feel that there is something off. Maybe the excess clicking. Maybe that it's not clear whether a paragraph is expanded or collapsed.<p>Don't want to discourage you, quite the opposite. Give it some more thought and try to refine these points, I'd really like to see a new iteration
Puh...I'm not sure if I like that. Yes for skimming a text it might be useful, but then why not just write a very good description/summary at the top or bullet-point conclusion at the bottom.<p>Also the first sentence of a paragraph should provide a summary of the following paragraph if following good writing guidelines (kinda <a href="http://www.une.edu.au/tlc/aso/students/factsheets/paragraph.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.une.edu.au/tlc/aso/students/factsheets/paragraph....</a>)<p>On the other hand, collapsible blog posts could help the writer. For instance after writing a blog post I would love if in iAWriter or WriteMonkey I could collapse all the paragraphs to just their respective first sentence. If the collapsed text would still bring my argument across I did a good job, if not I'd have to rework it.
Interesting effect. I've done things similar to that in the past on my Tumblr. <a href="http://sfbne.ws/PH8kO8" rel="nofollow">http://sfbne.ws/PH8kO8</a><p>It does have some downsides, and alas, the biggest ones show up in the reblogs of the content on Tumblr — you reblog that post and you see everything. My suggestion would be to see if you could do the collapsible effect with a p title tag, rather than setting two paragraph with two CSS classes, and embedding the Javascript into the post. That way, the effect follows people on Tumblr reblogs.<p>I'm a bit of a nut for visual effects like this, though. I might try it at some point. Good work.
Ummm... it works in Chrome, but not in Firefox.<p>Firebug shows this error:<p><i>TypeError: e.srcElement is undefined<p><a href="http://david-bieber.tumblr.com/post/30907535147/collapsible-blog-posts" rel="nofollow">http://david-bieber.tumblr.com/post/30907535147/collapsible-...</a><p>Line 372</i>
As a former magazine editor of 20+ years, I think the idea shows great promise. I agree with your statement in the comments that it might be better used as Expandable Blogging. But try stuff out--see what the market likes!
This doesn't really work for me: whenever I read articles on the internet, I tend to select text by double-clicking and dragging, which trigger the collapsation. Neat concept, though!
The idea itself is right. Kudos for that. I could see it in combination with something like redraftable as a powerful mechanism for expression and collaboration.
Very cool effect! I did something similar, in reverse, on my personal site- <a href="http://andrewcantino.com" rel="nofollow">http://andrewcantino.com</a>