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Experimental New York Times Interface

prototype.nytimes.com

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Re: Experimental New York Times Interface

#31

Post by kennyroo »

lisp_padawan wrote: post #11

I for one like it, I think it does a good job of providing an 'at-a-glance' overview of stories, it fits a good number of stories on one screen (20) and it is suitably uncluttered for my aesthetic tastes. The only thing I would change is have the animation effects a little faster, say 25%, just to increase the 'snappiness' factor a little. A good job well done IMHO.

One of the nice things about traditional newspaper layout is that story placement and size help readers instantly understand the relative importance of each news article. (Of course "importance" is an entirely subjective notion, but you see what I mean.)

Other than the 2-box story at the top-left, having both X and Y axes and same-size boxes makes it difficult to determine what's worth reading and what's not. It would be interesting combine the grid with a Hacker News/Digg-like point system that reordered the stories by popularity.

The fact that you lose access to the Skimmer interface after clicking on a story seems weird, but that's fixable.

Still, I like that they're trying new ideas. And I love having a small photo with each headline.

Re: Experimental New York Times Interface

#32

Post by lisp_padawan »

kennyroo wrote: post #31
lisp_padawan wrote: post #11

I for one like it, I think it does a good job of providing an 'at-a-glance' overview of stories, it fits a good number of stories on one screen (20) and it is suitably uncluttered for my aesthetic tastes. The only thing I would change is have the animation effects a little faster, say 25%, just to increase the 'snappiness' factor a little. A good job well done IMHO.

One of the nice things about traditional newspaper layout is that story placement and size help readers instantly understand the relative importance of each news article. (Of course "importance" is an entirely subjective notion, but you see what I mean.) Other than the 2-box story at the top-left, having both X and Y axes and same-size boxes makes it difficult to determine what's worth reading and what's not. It woul…

I see your argument re: the 'importance' of stories - the 'above the fold' placement in print papers is the same idea - but I think, at least in terms of my own reading, that I can judge for myself what the important stories are.

Thinking about it this is one of the top selling points to me of this design. I don't CARE what the editors think is an important story, show me the article summaries and I'LL decide what I want to read about. This system is great because I can quickly scan the stories for those topics I'm interested in (Science, Tech, Business, Politics) and never have to look at sport or fashion or Britney's new tongue piercing etc

But either way, as you say, nice that they're trying out new ideas

Re: Experimental New York Times Interface

#33

Post by sant0sk1 »

briansmith wrote: post #13
sant0sk1 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

re: 'killer fonts' I can't imagine it'd be too hard to include server-side fonts akin to stylesheets in the HTML header of sites. Ok, the major obstacles are: 1) Browsers need to support the functionality 2) Operating system-specific font rendering Wouldn't this really open up the possibilities for web designers?

IE 4.0+ (yes, four-point-oh), Firefox 3.1+, Opera 10+, and the latest Safari builds all support @font-face.

Very nice. I must've been living under a rock! =]

Re: Experimental New York Times Interface

#35

Post by gabrielroth »

ewiethoff wrote: post #14
alecco wrote: post #9

Good step forwards towards interaction. Some more things that could make it a killer: * Graceful degradation for noscript; maybe do a simple CSS fallback option. * The page-slide animation is eye-candy but IMHO with time it might get annoying, make it optional. * It shouldn't be hard to add an X on top-right corner of boxes to remove or shade things you read already. * Some killer fonts, it's the New York Times!

> Graceful degradation for noscript > The page-slide animation is eye-candy but IMHO with time it might get annoying, make it optional. The page is utterly useless without JS. I keep JS turned off. It's a good thing I read here about the animation eye candy before trying to turn it on to explore the NYT page. Side-to-side movement on a screen gives me brain seizures. If NYT sticks with this new plan, that will be yet…

I don't think there's any reason to call it a 'new plan.' It's an experimental prototype, not a plan.

Re: Experimental New York Times Interface

#37

Post by babo »

amr wrote: post #16
Gonsalu wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, for an "Article Skimmer" using a grid layout was not the best choice as it kinda hampers skimming through the news...

It reminds me of http://oursignal.com . Maybe that's why I am having hard time with it. Except for the lead story, all articles have the same size square and color. Lack of visual anchor makes hard to read.

Comparing to http://oursignal.com the NYT version is when engineers tries to copy a designer's work.

Re: Experimental New York Times Interface

#39

Post by marbletiles »

lisp_padawan wrote: post #32
kennyroo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the nice things about traditional newspaper layout is that story placement and size help readers instantly understand the relative importance of each news article. (Of course "importance" is an entirely subjective notion, but you see what I mean.) Other than the 2-box story at the top-left, having both X and Y axes and same-size boxes makes it difficult to determine what's worth reading and what's not. It woul…

I see your argument re: the 'importance' of stories - the 'above the fold' placement in print papers is the same idea - but I think, at least in terms of my own reading, that I can judge for myself what the important stories are. Thinking about it this is one of the top selling points to me of this design. I don't CARE what the editors think is an important story, show me the article summaries and I'LL decide what I…

I think the point is that the editorial placement of stories is relieving you of a burden, not telling you what to think. It's like the ordering of stories on the HN front page -- to say "I don't CARE what other HN readers think; I want to go through each one and decide for myself" is to miss an extra dimension, somewhat.

Re: Experimental New York Times Interface

#40

Post by gamerates »

kennyroo wrote: post #31
lisp_padawan wrote: post #11

I for one like it, I think it does a good job of providing an 'at-a-glance' overview of stories, it fits a good number of stories on one screen (20) and it is suitably uncluttered for my aesthetic tastes. The only thing I would change is have the animation effects a little faster, say 25%, just to increase the 'snappiness' factor a little. A good job well done IMHO.

One of the nice things about traditional newspaper layout is that story placement and size help readers instantly understand the relative importance of each news article. (Of course "importance" is an entirely subjective notion, but you see what I mean.) Other than the 2-box story at the top-left, having both X and Y axes and same-size boxes makes it difficult to determine what's worth reading and what's not. It woul…

As far as combining size/importance; maybe something like newsmap: http://marumushi.com/apps/newsmap/newsmap.cfm
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