Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The New York Times Introduces a Web Site (1996)

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 97 posts

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

#51

Post by briandear »

Nelkins wrote: post #17
VeilEm wrote: 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 mo…

However it costs something like $37 per month. I've been a long time subscriber but that's very steep considering that barely cheaper than the print version.

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

#52

Post by briandear »

"..the Web as being similar to our traditional print role -- to act as a thoughtful, unbiased filter and to provide our customers with information they need and can trust."

Unbiased? Some quality reporting to be sure, especially when politics aren't involved, but they jumped the bias shark a long time ago.

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

#53

Post by jrcii »

hackuser wrote: post #47
jrcii wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how many design, UI and functionality choices would you make differently? I'd start by not hijacking clicks with JavaScript. In Firefox, double clicking the body of the article (which I do often to search for terms in the article) changes the font size (??), clicking in some parts of the body activates a link to another article. It's been like this for years.

Tip: The website works better with JavaScript disabled. Occasionally you need to turn it on for some special graphics, but 99% of the time I'm happier without it.

I do, in fact, disable JavaScript for NYT using a Firefox addon called YesScript.

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

#54

Post by avyfain »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #20

The electronic newspaper (address: http:/www.nytimes.com) hilarious, but—then again—the colon-double slash still isn't clear to most people.

[The Web’s Inventor Regrets One Small Thing(]http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/the-webs-inventor-r...)

"If he were do it over again today, would he do anything differently? Any regrets?

Mr. Berners-Lee smiled and admitted he might make one change — a small one. He would get rid of the double slash “//” after the “http:” in Web addresses.

The double slash, though a programming convention at the time, turned out to not be really necessary, Mr. Berners-Lee explained. Look at all the paper and trees, he said, that could have been saved if people had not had to write or type out those slashes on paper over the years — not to mention the human labor and time spent typing those two keystrokes countless millions of times in browser address boxes. (Today’s browsers, of course, automatically fill in the “http://” preamble when a user types a Web address.)"

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

#55

Post by whyenot »

briandear wrote: post #51
Nelkins wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 mo…

However it costs something like $37 per month. I've been a long time subscriber but that's very steep considering that barely cheaper than the print version.

It's $15 a month (3.75/wk). I don't know why you believe the cost is $37, but that is not accurate.

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

#56

Post by joe5150 »

briandear wrote: post #51
Nelkins wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 mo…

However it costs something like $37 per month. I've been a long time subscriber but that's very steep considering that barely cheaper than the print version.

It may be cheaper than the print version! The daily subscription to the paper is close to $900 a year if you calculate the cost after the promotional period ends; however, weekday-only and Sunday-only home delivery subscriptions are ~less~ than the cost of Unlimited Digital access alone, and include Unlimited Digital access as part of the deal. Funky economics.

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

#57

Post by joe5150 »

whyenot wrote: post #55
briandear wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However it costs something like $37 per month. I've been a long time subscriber but that's very steep considering that barely cheaper than the print version.

It's $15 a month (3.75/wk). I don't know why you believe the cost is $37, but that is not accurate.

It's $3.75 a week for Web and smartphone access only. For Web and tablets it's $5 a week, and for both it's $8.75/wk.

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

#58

Post by lotso »

hackuser wrote: post #41

After 20 years, they still are adapting to the 'new' platform. Look through their site with fresh eyes: If you were designing a news website (rather than moving a newspaper to this new platform), how many design, UI and functionality choices would you make differently? A quick start: * The separation of different forms of content: They don't really mix text with video, images and graphics, even though most web-native…

>* The separation of different forms of content...

Disagree. The NYTimes is at the forefront of dynamic content and page layouts. They inspired a couple of startups to build publishing tools after their Snowfall article was published http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/#/?part=tunne...

For more interactive articles, check out this http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/us/year-in-interacti...

>* The font in their title... Serif fonts aren't dated, and this is part of their branding and aesthetic. Of course a company founded in 1851 will not have the same aesthetics as a company founded in 2016. As a designer, I think their text and page layouts are some of the best I've seen.

>* The discoverability of content... Unless you have access to their analytics, you aren't in a position to criticize their page layout. The problem with these armchair critiques is they are never argued with data.

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

#59

Post by JeremyNT »

epc wrote: post #24
mc32 wrote: post #7

My impression is the mercury news from san jose had an earlier, if paid, presence. Funny how the NYT wanted to charge nearly two dollars to allow you to print older articles. Asking people to pay for the own digitization.

I'm pulling this mostly from my decaying memory but nando.net (Raleigh? News and Observer) was neck-and-neck with the SJ Mercury with a web presence. Many of the early newspaper web sites were simply HTML variations on existing online presences (CI$, Prodigy, AOL, etc).

Not only did they pioneer web news content, before that nando.net was even an ISP - in fact, it was my first ISP.

It seems odd looking back now, seeing how "newspapers" have all become lumbering dinosaurs, but at the time this particular newspaper was on the bleeding edge of innovation.

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

#60

Post by plg »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #19
plg wrote: 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.

I agree it's a challenge

I am also a paid subscriber and so I have a vested interest in seeing them do this right

Post reply on HN