SCOTUSblog 3.1: The New “Round-Up Sidebar”

When we updated the layout of SCOTUSblog at the beginning of this Term, one of our goals was to separate original content from the links to other sites by moving the Round-Up off the main scroll and on to a new sidebar.  This was not done to devalue the links – after all, there’s so much great Court-related content out there, and Eliza spends a lot of time and does a great job collecting all of it – but rather to make the main page less cluttered and make information easier to find.  We came to realize, however, that our original design didn’t do the Round-Up links justice; not enough people understood that the Round-Up sidebar is continuously updated throughout each day.

As a reaction to that, yesterday we introduced a revamped Round-Up sidebar that we think will fulfill our original goal of spotlighting the best Supreme Court content on the web while still keeping the main scroll as uncluttered as possible.  To start, we’ve moved the Round-Up sidebar closer to the main scroll, to emphasize that it, too, is “live” and not static.  Moreover, the colors of the links will change based on how fresh they are: the newest links will appear at the top of each category in bright red, and will fade to darker shades as their time on the blog wears on; you can also see exactly when the links were added in a parenthetical next to each link.  Individual Round-Up headings will also have an “updated” icon next to them if there have been links added recently, so that you can immediately tell when there is new content.

These changes to the Round-Up aren’t revolutionary, but we wanted to ensure that we were giving sufficient attention to all of the great work being done both in the mainstream media and around the blogosphere on Supreme Court-related topics.  As always, please let me know by email (jharrow@akingump.com) if you have any thoughts on the changes – and be sure to use the new Round-Up sidebar to check out all the links that go up throughout the day!