Online Newspapers, Offline

“It supports dynamic, scalable full page layouts, unlike the narrow column of content we’re stuck with in the web browser.”

Perhaps I am missing something, but after nearly a decade of doing web design and development I am left thinking. ‘what in the sam hell are you talking about?’ You are not stuck with anything in a web browser. The role of the browser is to present information in an accessible format to your audience (it’s role is to not be your desktop). If designers choose to only use 50% of the landscape they are given then that is a deficient design. Utilizing the totality of the landscape available is not some elusive promise land that you make it out to be.

“No, not at all. I recommend trying the Times Reader so you can get a sense of how it works-- the content is dynamic and rendered using all the power of your desktop PC and video card”

And some how your browser does not?

What if your paper prints something embarrassing to somebody and decides to “pull” a story, 1984-style? Unless somebody (maybe Google) has cached it, it’s gone forever.

I’ve only heard of the San Jose Mercury News for precisely one reason: Gary Webb’s expose’ of the CIA/drug trafficking connection. Whether Webb’s story is true or not, the SJMN has pulled this groundbreaking story from their website, and you can only access it from other sites which wisely cached it.

What if the publisher’s server is swamped with requests, a la the Slashdot effect? What if it’s a small publisher with a low-bandwidth server under the best conditions?

I like having my offline copies.

You know, I’ve heard about a different “offline mode” for the New York Times. The resolution on this mode is amazing: much better than any monitor that I’ve seen. You can either purchase one day’s worth of news, or get a subscription that they’ll send to your home every day.

And the best part of the “offline mode” is that it comes with its own hardware. Whether you have Windows, Macintosh, Unix, an old Atari ST, or no computer whatsoever, it just works.

Jeff, I’m a bit astonished that you like the NYT website so much, because I think that it’s quite the opposite of what you generally preach (simplicity) and what you stated in your last article.

I agree, I was surprised too. But I missed the features of the web site, not necessarily the layout. Unfortunately the desktop reader has ads, too, but they’re a little less aggressive, more like static magazine ads.

Perhaps I am missing something, but after nearly a decade of doing web design and development I am left thinking

You really have to try the Times Reader to understand. The content reflows around the size of the page in a fluid, dynamic way. It would take heavy-duty javascript and AJAX to accomplish this in the browser, and it would be a ton of code.

Seriously: try the Reader. It’s worth signing up for, or just use bugmenot credentials.

Jeff,

Have you visited NYC lately? Living on the left coast doesn’t make ‘the commute via mass transit’ a daily event, but the last time I went to the big apple, I noticed the majority of Times readers (that I saw… clearly I’m not in people’s homes) checking out their copy on the train or the subway. Offline mode for the ‘electronic set’ may be their answer to a paperless newspaper.

Given that, does the idea of the cache make it a poor idea still?

g

Jeff, thanks for the great post. When you began by extolling the virtues of the Reader, I kept thinking “but, but…” But then you said it: in the end, reading the NYT in the plain old web browser is a better experience. Like you, I loved the idea of the Reader and was impressed by it, but found myself soon switching back to the website. The chopped off, no-vertical-scrolling nature of the Reader makes it too constricting on the whole, and things like font sharpness weren’t really any better with it. In the end, experience trumps theory, always, in usability matters.

Do you know the company name that helped nytimes build my nytimes application?

thx!

Did you look at the nytimes.com home page? Too much information to scroll through just on the home page.

I prefer the format of newspapers simply because it’s easier to read what’s important and filter out what is not important.

Yes, it won’t give you everything, as that is what Google and the Internet is for.

http://www.rheacountynewspaper.com/newsinfo/heraldnews_suicide-policy.html

umm – before I spend half an hour typing my message, I’ll just test now and see if this chat site lets me in and posts this test message –

Hoky doky, here’s my take on T.Reader –
…To me, its only downside is the 15 clams a month, and I wouldn’t expect that to yield to some permutation of BugMeNot. I even tried resetting the system date and the nag box (“24 days left on your 30-day free trial”) didn’t even bother sneering at me. It wasn’t fooled.
…Now the advantages of T.Reader (and I am astonished that browser designers are not leaping all over its technology to get these advantages):
…It lets you read at least ten times as much text from an article as a website (such as NYTimes.com) presents, without clicking PageDown or some other button. Sure, you can enlarge the website to more than full screen and focus with the left-right slider bar, but then you get only a few lines in a gigantic font, and have to hit page down (or your space bar or side ribbon) even more often, to read that one story.
…In contrast, T.Reader lays the whole story down across your screen, in half a dozen readable narrow columns and in the smallest font you’re comfortable with. A full average article fits within one such massive screen, and a long article has a page 2. Unlike the paper edition, the jumps are not skinny buried fragments you have to stretch and struggle for; just a click-arrow at lower right, then another full page of text.
…Sure, the website has more exciting stuff, including lots of story teaser links and those obnoxious flashing and wiggling ads. But when you curl up with a good book, do you want porno TV and rock music at the same time, plus biting flies, acid stomach and a hailstorm? I’ll take the simple calm of T.Reader, thank you.
…It puzzles me that the standard website page ended up being a high rectangle with even narrower columns and many down-clicks required, when all the screens it would go out to were low wide rectangles (and now getting wider). Are the designers that dumb?
…For me, T.Reader has an extra beauty because I am breaking in the most detailed monitor ever made: Its big LCD screen has a 3840 by 2400 resolution, so fine that with my nose on the screen I still can’t be sure I see pixels. You can imagine how impressive T.Reader is on that.

Well, you might be swimming in bandwidth in the US but here in NZ we are struggling with 2Mbits down and 128kbits up and we have usage caps on top of that. WiFi is not that prevalent in public places. In my suburban street we are the only WiFi presence.

In NZ, I would argue that offline is a big thing since it stops the reader having to repeatedly download the same piece of content. Our usage caps are what stand in the way of this. That and the abysmal upload speeds which limit the rate at which TCP packets can be acknowledged. Of course, being the other side of tha pacific doesn’t help either. :slight_smile:

In NZ the incumbent Telco that provides the DSL infrastructure has a “our resource is precious” mentality which means that data caps are probably going to be around for quite some time. Local loop unbundling is starting to happen but it will be quite some time before it reaches my exchange in Christchurch. Until that time, I will be stuck with data cap issues, and possibvly for some time thereafter.

So, in summary, offline reading may not be that important in the US with typical broadband plans but it is important in countries where data caps are present.

its a long time before HTML catches up but what about a hybrid such as flash or silverlight. yes not a universal or idea solution but it puts you in the ballpark while html catches up.