A Pattern from the HTML Pattern Language at Anamorph

New Document Notification

This pattern seems obvious to me, yet it's rarely seen except at very large sites.

My bookmarks now number in the mid-hundreds. There isn't enough time to revisit the sites I like, looking to see what's new. A few times lately, I've gone to sites that looked promising, found nothing of interest just then, revisited a month or so later, and found that the site had metamorphed into something extremely relevant to my work. It would have been nice to have those sites notify me via email as new material was added; a lot of excess Web-surfing time would have been saved.

So this site provides New Document Notification. On the first page, close to the bottom, is a field for email addresses. We will send notification of any new material to anyone who wants to know about it.


Related Patterns

Known Audience
Locatable Documents


Discussion

A related pattern (not implemented or discussed here) might be Changed Document Notification. This would allow people to provide their email address on a document-by-document basis to be notifed when a document that particularly interests them has changed.


References


A Pattern from the HTML Pattern Language at Anamorph
Last Updated: May 17, 1995. Created May 17, 1995
Copyright 1995 Robert Orenstein. Your Comments are welcome: atempaddress@netscape.net