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The New York Times Introduces a Web Site (1996)

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Re: The New York Times Introduces a Web Site (1996)

#11
post #3

The oldest snapshot on Archive.org is from November 1996: http://web.archive.org/web/19961112181513/http://www.nytimes... Back then, they even had a low-bandwidth version of the site: http://web.archive.org/web/19990117023050/http://www.nytimes... The website included various tutorials on how to use it, including a guide that covers the different browsers. None of the browsers listed are actively developed today: htt…

I checked the markup for the second example you posted here and I found REALLY some weird HTML tags like , , ...etc Anybody have any idea what are these?

My guess it's leftover semantic markup from whatever internal system they were using to author the page.

Re: The New York Times Introduces a Web Site (1996)

#12
post #3

The oldest snapshot on Archive.org is from November 1996: http://web.archive.org/web/19961112181513/http://www.nytimes... Back then, they even had a low-bandwidth version of the site: http://web.archive.org/web/19990117023050/http://www.nytimes... The website included various tutorials on how to use it, including a guide that covers the different browsers. None of the browsers listed are actively developed today: htt…

I checked the markup for the second example you posted here and I found REALLY some weird HTML tags like , , ...etc Anybody have any idea what are these?

Since older browsers will skip rendering tags (or rather just pretend the tag wasn't present at all) that they don't recognize, custom HTML editors and CMSs can inject metadata as custom html tags in order to help track page sections.

Re: The New York Times Introduces a Web Site (1996)

#13
I like to call the incognito window my nytimes reader. I paid for the nytimes for a bit but it costs more per week than a monthly netflix subscription and it feels stupid to pay for not knowing how to use the incognito window. It's like a "I don't know how to use software" tax.

Re: The New York Times Introduces a Web Site (1996)

#16
post #13

I like to call the incognito window my nytimes reader. I paid for the nytimes for a bit but it costs more per week than a monthly netflix subscription and it feels stupid to pay for not knowing how to use the incognito window. It's like a "I don't know how to use software" tax.

For me, paying $3.75 a week (or in my case $1.88 since I have an .edu address) is worth it. It's about the same as a drink at Starbucks, and I do go to their website and also use their iPhone app every day.

Re: The New York Times Introduces a Web Site (1996)

#17
post #13

I like to call the incognito window my nytimes reader. I paid for the nytimes for a bit but it costs more per week than a monthly netflix subscription and it feels stupid to pay for not knowing how to use the incognito window. It's like a "I don't know how to use software" tax.

> it feels stupid to pay for not knowing how to use the incognito window

That's not what you're paying for. You're paying journalists to research and fact check important news stories, and for developers to build interesting and novel ways to display content, and about a million other things that I'm not going to list here. It's one thing to get around the paywall because you don't read NYT often or don't have the money and wouldn't pay anyway, but if you've got the means to pay then you probably should.

And before someone says something to the extent of "the NYT is a rag, they print misinformation all the time!" I'll preemptively say that every writer has their own internal biases and you should ready multiple news sources if you want to distill some semblance of the "truth." I don't think there's any denying that NYT is at the very least in the upper tier of news organizations today.

Re: The New York Times Introduces a Web Site (1996)

#18
post #10
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That awkward moment when website you made 20 years ago is better to read articles.

Seriously. No big list of social media icons. No big sidebar of "most emailed" and "recommended for you." Actual structure to the front page. I once saw a scene in a movie from the 1990's where the character used the NYT website to look up an article. My reaction: jealousy.

Pro-tip: click the print link for clutter free reading. Works on a lot of news sites.

Re: The New York Times Introduces a Web Site (1996)

#19
post #4

come on NYTimes, update the iOS app for iPad Pro --- it currently is gigantic (I presume because the screen design is just a scaled-up version of the iPad Air)

It is a valid concern and an excellent bookmark to their original challenge with multiple browsers. Today people read the web on phones from 4" diagonal to tablets 12" to laptops 12" to desktops 37". And designing something which is consumed comfortably across that range is not a trivial task.
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