Microfeatures I Love in Blogs and Personal Websites

submited by

Style Pass

2024-06-24 10:30:02

Some time ago, Hillel Wayne published an article titled Microfeatures I’d like to see in more languages . In this article, he described three kinds of features in programming languages: fundamental features, deeply engrained features, and nice-to-have convenience features. Hillel’s premise was that language designers tend to focus on the first two; however, because the convenience features are relatively low-overhead, it’s easier for them to jump between projects, and they provide a quality-of-life increase.

I’ve been running a blog for a while — some of the oldest posts I’ve found (which are no longer reflected on this site due to their low quality) were from 2015. In this time, I’ve been on the lookout for ways to improve the site, and I’ve seen quite a few little things that are nice to use, but relatively easy to implement. They don’t really make or break a website; the absence of such features might be noticed, but will not cause any disruption for the reader. On the other hand, their presence serves as a QoL enhancement. I find these to be analogous to Hillel’s notion of “microfeatures”. If you’re interested in adding something to your site, consider browsing this menu to see if anything resonates!

One last thing is that this post is not necessarily about microfeatures I’d like every blog or personal website to have. Some ideas I present here are only well-suited to certain types of content and certain written voices. They need not be applied indiscriminately.