Blog updates, fixes and things like that

We've made a number of small changes here and there, so this is a good time to summarize them:

+ We changed the way the widget at the middle of the top of the main page behaves (the box with the light blue background). We now only load the updates for the featured button. The rest of the buttons only include links to the actual blogs.

+ We tried but we were unable to find a simple way to have the buttons load only when someone clicks on them. Before that, they were loading regardless - every time the page was loaded. This change improves page loading time for the front page of the blog, especially when our friends at feedburner are having a little bit of a slowdown. We will instead add more reference and resource content to those buttons in the next few days

+ We removed a couple more widgets from the sidebars in order to improve loading times. Please let us know if you noticed any improvements

+ we are trying a new blog-post rating widget from PollDaddy.com. You may see it on article pages, in the right corner of the main column.

+ As always, if you have any feedback, suggestions, requests or complaints, please let us know