7 ms·

I work for a large newspaper, and we're not very amused by the built-in "Reader" (removes ads and crud, like Readability): http://www.apple.com/safari/whats-new

by friism 16y ago

I work for a large newspaper, and we're not very amused by the built-in "Reader" (removes ads and crud, like Readability): http://www.apple.com/safari/whats-new.html http://www.apple.com/safari/whats-new.html ... for users, it looks like a good feature though.

tuxychandru 16y ago
If I understand it right, the ads are displayed initially and are still in the background when reader is on. If an ad is interesting enough, the user would still see and click it.
- kmfrk 16y ago
  There's an annoying habit of linking to the print version of articles, regardless of the look of the site and article, though.
  - FluidDjango 16y ago
    Well, Safari5 Reader's approach may make that feel less necessary - since one can easily click in and out of Reader-view. And an advantage (as I test-drive it) is that turning the Reader-view on/off for a given article is almost instantaneous: whereas with Readability to move _out_ of Readability-View involves _reloading_ the entire page (which I find annoyingly slow on pages like TechCrunch, RWW, etc where there are tons of ads to be (re)loaded. I think the Safari-Reader approach may increase time I spend with a full, ad-laden page open.
    - kmfrk 16y ago
      It's a trend that has to be fought---if "fought" is the right word. I assume Instapaper has a lot to do with this trend.
  - masklinn 16y ago
    Because non-print versions kinda blow. Spanning a single article over 10 pages with a few dozen words per page just so you can get 10 times the ad impression is not acceptable.
    - kmfrk 16y ago
      Some do. Spanning an article over 10 pages is fine as long as you offer a single-page view like nytimes does. Unfortunately some don't offer this.
jwr 16y ago
I'm afraid people will have to deal with the fact that it's the user who controls the browser. You can't just shove stuff down your users' throats — it's their browser.
- friism 16y ago
  I agree! :-)
- sandGorgon 16y ago
  I also want to present the counter viewppoint - http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/03/why-ad-blocking-is-devastating-to-the-sites-you-love.ars http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/03/why-ad-blocking... Newspapers were dying because nobody wanted to pay for news, which they could get for free at Google News. Newspapers were told to suck it up and instead move online - to an ad supported model. No more ads. I dont think the newspapers are the bad guy here.
  - ThomPete 16y ago
    Newspapers are dying because they are staffed to heavily, not because people don't pay. Now look at smaller publications such as Gawker, hyper local news. They are doing just fine. Wired sold almost as many iPad versions (75.000 at 5USD a pop) as they did paper version since they launched it. Thats excluding advertising. Clearly there is a market for news. It's just not going to be of the NYT kind.
    - dhotson 16y ago
      Yeah, good journalism costs money. To have a staff of correspondents reporting around the world isn't cheap. But I think it's worth it. I think in order for newspapers to survive, people have to learn that they need to pay. Advertising alone isn't going to pay the bills. I personally think that charging people money for things on the internet isn't such a crazy idea. ;-)
      - ThomPete 16y ago
al_james 16y ago
I have been spending less time on 'large newspaper' sites lately because I find it annoying that the text columns are becoming narrower and the ad columns multiplying to their right. If CPM rates are dropping from your advertisers, maybe its because you are cramming too many ads in!
- jokermatt999 16y ago
  I always view the print version of the article. They get their ad views when I first click on the page, but I'm not going to be annoyed by some idiotic animated banner while I'm trying to read the news. If the ads are static, I generally don't mind, but animated (and even worse, ads that ad appear over the content) ads are too much of a nuisance and too distracting.
mbateman 16y ago
It also automagically displays the text of the article in one page, despite the obnoxious effort of a site to require you to click through to multiple pages to read a single article. As far as I can tell, the point of splitting an article into more than one page was just more ad exposure. So it's a double whammy: graying out and background the ads, and decreasing the number of ad-ridden pages one needs to read the article. Awesome in my book.
- JeffJenkins 16y ago
  I actually like multiple pages. I find reading some of the longer (8ish page) NY Times or The Atlantic articles difficult when it's just one enormous piece of text. I like that it's broken down into small chunks, and it offers a convenient place to stop if I don't have time for the full article. I also don't like it when people here link to Print View instead of the main article page. Partly for that reason, and partly because the text columns tend to be way too wide on print view pages. There's also frequently no way to get back to the non-print-view page.
  - Terretta 16y ago
    Set your margins the way you like them: http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/ http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/ Design the page for you, not for the ads.
- al_james 16y ago
  Wow... I wonder how that works. 'next' and 'previous' links?
  - jokermatt999 16y ago
    Yeah, this technology has been around for a while. Take a look at AutoPager for Firefox. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4925/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4925/
bonaldi 16y ago
If your site is full of "crud", it's hard to be sympathetic.
pope52 16y ago
There has been an uncharacteristic quiet at the New York Times about yesterday's iPhone announcement. Usually, there is at least a more prominent article in the Technology section (Their current blurb is the lackluster "On Newest iPhone, Another Camera"). I wonder if "Reader" has anything to do with it.
ahk 16y ago
I wonder if that's an indirect attack on Google. Very nice feature though.
logic 16y ago
At the risk of parroting a good chunk of other folks here: your employer's business model is dead. My personal suspicion is that we're moving quickly toward a world dominated by local newsrooms covering local stories (with international distribution), rather than large international news organizations and centralized reporting. Add in a few companies (some traditional, some not: Reuters, Google, et al) surviving as international news aggregators and licensing hubs (perhaps similar to an MPEG-LA model). However, none of this plays out well for organizations like the New York Times or other large traditional print companies. "Be flexible."
callahad 16y ago
If your site is designed well and respects your users, they'll have no reason to ever engage Safari 5's Reader on your site. It fixes the "I want to read this, but it's hard to read" problem. If you don't have that problem, your users won't use Reader.

by friism 16y ago

tuxychandru 16y ago

If I understand it right, the ads are displayed initially and are still in the background when reader is on. If an ad is interesting enough, the user would still see and click it.

kmfrk 16y ago
There's an annoying habit of linking to the print version of articles, regardless of the look of the site and article, though.
- FluidDjango 16y ago
  Well, Safari5 Reader's approach may make that feel less necessary - since one can easily click in and out of Reader-view. And an advantage (as I test-drive it) is that turning the Reader-view on/off for a given article is almost instantaneous: whereas with Readability to move _out_ of Readability-View involves _reloading_ the entire page (which I find annoyingly slow on pages like TechCrunch, RWW, etc where there are tons of ads to be (re)loaded. I think the Safari-Reader approach may increase time I spend with a full, ad-laden page open.
  - kmfrk 16y ago
    It's a trend that has to be fought---if "fought" is the right word. I assume Instapaper has a lot to do with this trend.
- masklinn 16y ago
  Because non-print versions kinda blow. Spanning a single article over 10 pages with a few dozen words per page just so you can get 10 times the ad impression is not acceptable.
  - kmfrk 16y ago
    Some do. Spanning an article over 10 pages is fine as long as you offer a single-page view like nytimes does. Unfortunately some don't offer this.

jwr 16y ago

I'm afraid people will have to deal with the fact that it's the user who controls the browser. You can't just shove stuff down your users' throats — it's their browser.

friism 16y ago
I agree! :-)
sandGorgon 16y ago
I also want to present the counter viewppoint - http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/03/why-ad-blocking-is-devastating-to-the-sites-you-love.ars http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/03/why-ad-blocking... Newspapers were dying because nobody wanted to pay for news, which they could get for free at Google News. Newspapers were told to suck it up and instead move online - to an ad supported model. No more ads. I dont think the newspapers are the bad guy here.
- ThomPete 16y ago
  Newspapers are dying because they are staffed to heavily, not because people don't pay. Now look at smaller publications such as Gawker, hyper local news. They are doing just fine. Wired sold almost as many iPad versions (75.000 at 5USD a pop) as they did paper version since they launched it. Thats excluding advertising. Clearly there is a market for news. It's just not going to be of the NYT kind.
  - dhotson 16y ago
    Yeah, good journalism costs money. To have a staff of correspondents reporting around the world isn't cheap. But I think it's worth it. I think in order for newspapers to survive, people have to learn that they need to pay. Advertising alone isn't going to pay the bills. I personally think that charging people money for things on the internet isn't such a crazy idea. ;-)
    - ThomPete 16y ago

al_james 16y ago

I have been spending less time on 'large newspaper' sites lately because I find it annoying that the text columns are becoming narrower and the ad columns multiplying to their right. If CPM rates are dropping from your advertisers, maybe its because you are cramming too many ads in!

jokermatt999 16y ago
I always view the print version of the article. They get their ad views when I first click on the page, but I'm not going to be annoyed by some idiotic animated banner while I'm trying to read the news. If the ads are static, I generally don't mind, but animated (and even worse, ads that ad appear over the content) ads are too much of a nuisance and too distracting.

mbateman 16y ago

It also automagically displays the text of the article in one page, despite the obnoxious effort of a site to require you to click through to multiple pages to read a single article. As far as I can tell, the point of splitting an article into more than one page was just more ad exposure. So it's a double whammy: graying out and background the ads, and decreasing the number of ad-ridden pages one needs to read the article. Awesome in my book.

JeffJenkins 16y ago
I actually like multiple pages. I find reading some of the longer (8ish page) NY Times or The Atlantic articles difficult when it's just one enormous piece of text. I like that it's broken down into small chunks, and it offers a convenient place to stop if I don't have time for the full article. I also don't like it when people here link to Print View instead of the main article page. Partly for that reason, and partly because the text columns tend to be way too wide on print view pages. There's also frequently no way to get back to the non-print-view page.
- Terretta 16y ago
  Set your margins the way you like them: http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/ http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/ Design the page for you, not for the ads.
al_james 16y ago
Wow... I wonder how that works. 'next' and 'previous' links?
- jokermatt999 16y ago
  Yeah, this technology has been around for a while. Take a look at AutoPager for Firefox. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4925/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4925/

bonaldi 16y ago

If your site is full of "crud", it's hard to be sympathetic.

pope52 16y ago

There has been an uncharacteristic quiet at the New York Times about yesterday's iPhone announcement. Usually, there is at least a more prominent article in the Technology section (Their current blurb is the lackluster "On Newest iPhone, Another Camera"). I wonder if "Reader" has anything to do with it.

ahk 16y ago

I wonder if that's an indirect attack on Google. Very nice feature though.

logic 16y ago

At the risk of parroting a good chunk of other folks here: your employer's business model is dead. My personal suspicion is that we're moving quickly toward a world dominated by local newsrooms covering local stories (with international distribution), rather than large international news organizations and centralized reporting. Add in a few companies (some traditional, some not: Reuters, Google, et al) surviving as international news aggregators and licensing hubs (perhaps similar to an MPEG-LA model). However, none of this plays out well for organizations like the New York Times or other large traditional print companies. "Be flexible."

callahad 16y ago

If your site is designed well and respects your users, they'll have no reason to ever engage Safari 5's Reader on your site. It fixes the "I want to read this, but it's hard to read" problem. If you don't have that problem, your users won't use Reader.