I discovered Dzone when I started this blog, in march 2008, I was googling for some Swing references to write a new post and found a reference to one of my previous post on DZone ! Someone, I think Bloïd, found my post interesting enough to share it with other people !
Since then I posted all my blog entries on DZone, I was wondering if my posts would make it to the first page and I was hoping for more feedback on my entries, and I got a lot.
Reading the Top Popular Links in the last 24 Hours
Almost every day I use half an hour reading the first links of the day with my coffee, it is always interesting and it is the best way I found to stay in touch with the developer's news.
RSS Everywhere
This is one of my favorite Dzone's feature, you want to stay in touch with a specific subject, use the tags and you'll get the RSS feeds for either the new links or the popular links. You can even filter the links in the RSS feed!
The Search
I guess this feature is not as popular as it should be because it is a little hidden in the top right corner of the site page. But it is really accurate as it seems that not only the links title and description are indexed but also the content of the link itself. And guess what? You can even get a RSS Feed on your search, you don't want to miss any DZoned Swing links or any other subject that does not have his own tag posted to DZone? You got it!
You want to check all the links of a specific domain? just type the following: "domain:yourdomain.com" and you'll get all the domain links that have been posted and as always there's a RSS !
The only tiny problem is that the search don't make difference between the new, popular or burried links.
You want to share some DZone Links? you can send them, or you can add them to your shared list that has it's own RSS !
The New Links Queue
I guess this is one the best DZone Feature. And this is what makes DZone really driven by the developer community. In order to get to the front page a link has 72 hours to prove himself valuable enough to receive enough votes and clicks to actually get there. The rising list helps the best get the last votes and clicks needed.
Most DZone readers only read the popular links, only some devoted users read the new link queue. This is the DZone insurance that only the most valuable links will make it to the popular links. The draw back is that some really interesting links can get lost in the queue, if a link is posted with lots of new links it can sink.
Posting Links
You read an article, you find it interesting, don't you want to know if others would find it interesting? I post lots of links, and I am now totally addicted ;-) Will this link make it? I have bookmarked my submitted links page and check it every once in a while, few times per day. And sometimes a link literally starts to fly ... ;-)
As a DZone daily reader I have often imagined some new features I would like to be able to use , what do you think about it?
DZone is great to stay in touch with developers news but as the time goes and the numbers of links grows DZone becomes a really great search engine. You want to find the best CSS trick ever? If you try google you will get some results but if you search DZone you'll know how other developpers have rated those links and would be able to check links starting with the best one. But in order to do all this the search need some improvements. As I said the DZone search does not the difference between new, popular and burried links and you can't sort the results by votes, clicks, etc.
I believe this would a great way to browse the links, as I am sure that
this kind of link affinity would improve the browsing of the new links
and as more people would votes for interesting new links there would be
less interesting links buried.
With time the DZone's popularity is growing, so as the number of links. To avoid missing some interesting links it would nice to be able to filter the links using some advanced criteria like, members that have voted for, domains, some key words, etc.
But in the end what I really love the most in DZone is that it is really community driven, every members are making DZone what it is. Combine this with the link nursery(as I call the New Links Queue) and you are guaranteed that the content is always as good as possible.
