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NYT Skimmer
- nodata 15y agoI find the right-scrolling thing unintuitive. Nice though.
- joelanman 15y agofrom playing with it on my ipad I think it's optimised for tablets, where it's easy to move left and right with a swipe.
- princeverma 15y agoI think NYT launched it as Google Chrome app.
- ninthfrank07 15y agoit's really nice with the keyboard shortcuts
- gary4gar 15y agoThis look exactly similar to their Chrome App: http://www.nytimes.com/chrome/ http://www.nytimes.com/chrome/
- schrototo 15y agoThis is horrible. Why can't I scroll? Why do I have to use the sidebar to go through the sections? Why do I have to click the tiny arrow thing at the bottom to get to the next page?
- icebraining 15y agoAgreed. More: Back/Forward doesn't work; When you're in the first page of the first article of a section, the 'back' arrow sits there but doesn't do anything (if you've been browsing backwards, you might not know you're in the first article).
- tintin 15y agoAnd why is it slow as hell? It reminds me of the days when all sites where converted to Flash.
- wmeredith 15y agoAgreed. I love the layout and the UX, but it's just not fast enough.
- erikb 15y agoI don't know, maybe with a touchscreen you can move it without the buttons.
- shimonamit 15y agoUp/down arrow keys to scroll sections (vertical), left/right to scroll section pages (horizontal). I think it is brilliant.
- akie 15y agoNice! But it would be nice if they could please make it work with the swipe left/right on the macbook pro... that would be brilliant.
- mrandre 15y agoI haven't looked into this, but it's definitely a possibility, provided the events are sane.
- absentbird 15y agoI think it is handled the same as the horizontal scroll on normal mice. Here is a relevant stack overflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2842041/jquery-horizontal-scroll-with-mousewheel http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2842041/jquery-horizontal...
- dw0rm 15y agoFrom the layout selection, choose the one called "Stack".
- RyanMcGreal 15y agoI hated it until I figured out you can use arrow keys. Now I love it.
- juliano_q 15y agoSame here. From horrible to fantastic. Really liked it.
- vidyesh 15y agoTry these shortcuts Arrow keys - As it is :) Spacebar - Scroll down J - Go down the sections K - Go up the sections F - Hide sidebar R - Refresh T - Top News Btw this is what the chrome webstore App is, why is everyone shocked!?? http://www.nytimes.com/chrome/ http://www.nytimes.com/chrome/
- rokhayakebe 15y agoUnrelated: I think every web application should use keyboard shortcuts. This is possibly my favorite gmail feature. I can pretty much do whatever I want (save Logout and Attach File) using my keyboard.
- BoppreH 15y agoCounter point: I configured my browser (Opera) to heavily use single-letter shortcuts, such as Q/E to navigate to next/prev tabs, W/S to scroll up and down, T to open new tabs, etc. This and mouse gestures were a great improvement in my browsing experience. Things get horribly broken with pages that have their own shortcuts too. For example, when I'm quickly pressing E (next tab) to see all my tabs and happen to find an open Gmail tab, it'll archive the message displayed, no questions asked. Thankfully Gmail allows the user to disable such shortcuts, and there's always the "undo" button, but I'm not willing to hunt this option in every single website I visit. I have the NYT page open right next to this one, and I get stuck whenever I come across it because none of my shortcuts work there. I think individual websites shouldn't be able to dictate what I can or cannot do with my browser. It should be a browser option to ignore such shortcuts, but while that doesn't happen, be mindful of users like me.
- MatthewPhillips 15y agoI disagree, I think it is the browser's job to get out of the way as much as possible. That the browser provides you shortcuts shows that it thinks of itself as being more important than the websites it renders (Opera knows Web APIs and chose to implement a feature that butts heads with one because it's rarely used).
- mrandre 15y agoHi! Andre Behrens, creator of the app here. You can't scroll because I happen to think scrolling for reading is broken. Scrolling is a mechanism for micro-managing the position of content at a pixel level. As a creative producer, when I'm producing creative, I like this a lot. When I'm reading, I find it borderline exhausting; Scroll, re find position, think about when it's time to scroll again, do so, re find position. Did I scroll to far? So Skimmer uses pages whenever it can. You just activate "next", and there's more to read. "Next." "Next." "Next." This wouldn't work at all for editing a photo. But if you haven't tried it for reading longform content, you really ought to try it. Of course, if you really do like the classic web scrolling approach, you can just use nytimes.com, and neither I, nor anyone else at the Times would complain.
- Luyt 15y agoI scroll with ease through large wads of text using a simple gesture on the touchpad. I find it much more important that a long piece of text is broken up by scannable subheaders, than that it designed to avoid scrolling.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- oinksoft 15y ago> You can't scroll because I happen to think scrolling for reading is broken. You can't be serious. This is one of the foremost expectations in the user experience, fortified by almost two decades of websites that have done it this way.
- spazmaster 15y agoScrolling is cool, and I advocate it all the time, but not for longform content.
- jeffreymcmanus 15y agoI wouldn't call news stories "long form content".
- jasonmcalacanis 15y agoisn't this a year old? is there something new to the skimmer?
- obtino 15y agoIt seems to be more suited to tablet use.
- creativityhurts 15y ago-1. This is not a redesign, it's their Chrome app.
- jamesbritt 15y agoSomewhat amusingly it crashes the Chrome browser on my G2.
- creativityhurts 15y agoThat's because it's not a mobile app but a Chrome browser app.
- jamesbritt 15y agoFunny reason to crash a browser. Firefox handles it OK. Still, it isn't the first time I had a problem with the Google Chrome browser on my Google phone viewing something either made by, or made for, Googley things.
- creativityhurts 15y agoI didn't mean that's the reason it crashes on Google Chrome for Android (which I don't know how stable it is in the firts place) but I guess they didn't optimized it for mobile because it's out of its purpose since it's primary a Google Chrome webapp. NYT has a decent mobile version an it also has Android and iOS native apps.
- mrinterweb 15y agoThis is the first page I have seen that crashes chrome on Android. I am using Android 2.3.4.
- mrandre 15y agoFWIW, your G2 is not running the Chrome browser. There is almost no relation between Chrome browser and the Android browser, save WebKit. This is puzzling, but true. And unfortunately, the Android browser just isn't up to snuff yet.
- FooBarWidget 15y agoIt crashes my Android browser.
- AshMokhberi 15y agosame here, pretty bad.
- vlado 15y agoSkimmer is there since early 2009 http://www.google.bg/search?q=skimmer+nyt&hl=bg&client=firefox-a&hs=xhf&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&sa=X&ei=CZUuTufaM9C7hAe8wfwr&ved=0CA4QpwUoBg&source=lnt&tbs=cdr%3A1%2Ccd_min%3A01.01.2009%2Ccd_max%3A01.03.2009&tbm= http://www.google.bg/search?q=skimmer+nyt&hl=bg&clie...
- drcoopster 15y agoThat's more or less the same interface that their iPad app was (and maybe still is, I don't have an iPad anymore).
- majmun 15y agoThis is more than that other guy (in other HN topic) was hoping for. it even lets him to change layout in click of a mouse as he see fit. as opposed to spending many hours on desining new layouts and templates like he did. they did new things but didn't broke old things. i like that approach better
- prawn 15y agoI assumed the other guy was angling for a job somewhere rather than trying to get himself a better NY Times layout.
- marknel 15y agoThis redesign is an interesting step forward for a site who's future you would expect to be based primarily in the tablet scene. After a few moments, I found it particularly easy to use, however I believe integration with scrolling if they're going to use left-right, then let the user drag the page etc.
- mojuba 15y agoWhy is it asking access to my local file system (Safari/OS X)? And if I say No the page doesn't show up at all?
- MatthewPhillips 15y agoIt caches the articles.
- raphman 15y agoAnd cache it does. Opera brought up a dialog box telling me that 5 MB wasn't enough persistent storage for NYT.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- greyman 15y agoMoving through the sections is ok, but reading an individual article is impractical, imho. There, I prefer the old way of scrolling through the whole article by mouse wheel...much more comfortable than using keys or clicking on small arrows.
- g123g 15y agoWould love to read Hacker news in a similar format. Any suggestions on the best way to read hacker news on iPad? I tried Flipboard and Feedly but not very happy with them.
- krmmalik 15y agoI've had to rely on Flipboard for now i'm afraid (i know you've mentioned it already). There was the news:yc app, but its iPhone only, so doesnt take advantage of the iPad screen real estate. I suspect the developer is working on an iPad version.
- cabounous 15y agoAgreed. Can you port a version of Skimmer for HN?
- Duckpaddle2 15y agoYea well look at this, execution is everything (choose smaller font in upper right on a 1680 by 1050 res monitor) http://www.nytimes.com/skimmer/?pagewanted=all#/Top+News//6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/26/who-made-that-penny/ http://www.nytimes.com/skimmer/?pagewanted=all#/Top+News//6t...
- e_proxus 15y agoThey scale that really beautiful. Try resizing the page.
- Duckpaddle2 15y agoOn my Firefox at that resolution the last line of the quoted text is guillotined. My feeling is the text should display without requiring the user to do anything. I am sure this is a minor bug, but my experience is the fix sometimes is slow and cumbersome.
- MatthewPhillips 15y agoI find these types of sites that break normal browser behavior to be offensive. Why are developers like this and OnSwipe changing native scrolling in favor of javascript scrolling? What is the benefit, aside from lag, to moving sideways? Web pages aren't magazines, and they shouldn't be. I love javascript but just because something can be done with it, doesn't mean it should be.
- yid 15y ago> web pages aren't magazines, and they shouldn't be. Um...why not? I happen to quite like Flipboard-style magazine layouts. More importantly, why does anyone feel qualified to comment on what the web "should" be? The technology is powerful enough to accomodate new uses, and I call that room for innovation.
- mrandre 15y agoHi, Andre Behrens, creator of the app. I would argue it is the web itself that is broken. At the very least, it's an infinite web, and there's room for an awful lot of stuff in there, even the parts you don't like or understand. The advantage of moving sideways is that that's how every reading experience a user has ever experienced works, outside their computer. More importantly for us, it's how a newspaper works. The fact that this thing works a lot like a newspaper and they love it is something our customers literally won't shut up about. The simple truth is, the only people I've ever heard complain about the navigation scheme, scrolling, javascript, etc are on Hacker News. For instance, what you are calling lag is the animation. Most people find computer navigation hostile because things move around and they don't know where they are going. Animations give their brain time to process that things are changing. Research over the years suggests that most people think animated transitions are faster, even if they are technically slower. In the case of scrolling, I find scrolling long documents a hostile user interface. It requires a great deal of user interaction and minute control over position. Pagination simply requires "next", "next", "next". I don't think every web site should work this way. But for long form content, it works a treat. And for the record, I didn't use JS just because I could. I used it because it helped me solve my design goals.
- 15y ago
- scriptproof 15y agoIf the mouse has a forward and back button, it is very easy to use. Great design for me.
- raphman 15y agoOne more site that absolutely requires JavaScript. Disabling JS gives you a blank white page. While I understand such a decision for interactive apps like Twitter, I think quasi-static websites should at least have plain HTML fallback.
- apl 15y ago> I think quasi-static websites should at least > have plain HTML fallback. http://www.nytimes.com http://www.nytimes.com
- ZoFreX 15y agoWow, so it's just like the Gridlocked Wordpress theme but way, way slower. Awesome! http://themeforest.net/item/gridlocked-minimalistic-wordpress-portfolio-theme/245947/ http://themeforest.net/item/gridlocked-minimalistic-wordpres...
- tezmc 15y agoThe design is ok, but I don't like the way they've broken usability, standards and everything else. I had hoped people would have learned from the Gawker disaster that requiring javascript to be able to see any content at all is a bad idea. I use the NoScript plugin in firefox and all I got was a blank screen at first.
- mrandre 15y agoAndre Behrens, creator of the app here. My inbox has been flooded over the years with effusive messages about how much people like the way this works. The only people I've ever seen complain about usability are on hacker news. Skimmer makes extensive use of standard javascript, css3, and HTML5 technologies. So I'm not sure what standards I've broken. I think the meaning of the Gawker debacle might be open to interpretation without further data. For one thing, you should know that users with JS disabled make up a vanishingly small part of nytimes.com's readership. And since Skimmer has enjoyed a largely enthusiastic response from readers, it stands to reason that most users are just fine with a js-heavy app. Most of our readers, anyway. That said, if you hate this way of doing things, the entirety of nytimes.com is there for your classic web design enjoyment, and I certainly have no problem with your continuing to use it. I would say maybe try the app for a while before you decide. Try the different layouts. Use the arrow keys. Try it on an iPad.
- simcop2387 15y agoThe standard you've broken is to not have some kind of message for those that don't have javascript on. even having a "Please enable javascript to use Skimmer" would be a huge boon to everyone in that boat.
- mrandre 15y agoIt's a very very small boat with only nerds in it.
- simcop2387 15y ago
- iron_ball 15y agoMakes xScope crash to desktop on my HTC Thunderbolt.
- varjag 15y agoI don't like that browser back button has no effect.
- marknutter 15y agoThat's easy enough to fix.
- portman 15y agoNot sure what "already did a redesign" means. This was actually first released in 2009 [1] and then updated mid-year during 2010 [2]. I use it every day, and it has not substantially changed since last summer. [1] http://firstlook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/18/article-skimmer-update-all-the-news/ http://firstlook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/18/article-skimme... [2] http://mashable.com/2010/12/07/new-york-times-google-chrome-app/ http://mashable.com/2010/12/07/new-york-times-google-chrome-...
- someperson 15y agoPresumably a response to: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2805658 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2805658 I for one would like HN headlines to be clear, concise and include context :P
- a3camero 15y agoI'd appreciate it if more submitters would make the first comment more context on the issue.
- kaichanvong 15y agoTrying it on OSX with Google Chrome. Broken. This makes me sad.
- joeybaker 15y agoSkimmer is an experiment that simply re-packaged the content of the times. There are lots of problems with contemporary news design that skimmer didn't even try to address: • The article is a fundamentally bad unit of news for the internet. http://www.buzzmachine.com/2011/05/28/the-article-as-luxury-or-byproduct/ http://www.buzzmachine.com/2011/05/28/the-article-as-luxury-... • Customization is one thing, but being able to choose from a dozen different layouts is a sign that none of them are likely right. Good design is about what's left out, not overflowing options. • The complete lack of social/comments/human interaction is distrubing
- damoncali 15y agoAm I the only one who can't read this? I find it almost painful to move my eyes from one headline to the next - there is nothing for my mind to anchor to. As a result, I'm just staring blankly at the screen.
- codeodor 15y agoI see a blank white page with 3 links in the bottom right corner that appear to do nothing, and a lone copyright symbol in the bottom left corner. Using Google Chrome 12.0.742.122 on Mac OS 10.6
- jivejones 15y agoIts kind of like that Gawker redesign that everyone hated.
- donohoe 15y agoExcept it pre-dates it (2009) and there has been nothing but positive feedback (years of it) going Andre's way since it launched.
- joshuarrrr 15y agoThat's because it's totally optional, and anyone who doesn't like it can stick with the default. I'd wager that if they switched the main site tomorrow, there would be some negative feedback.
- Vadoff 15y agoNow, this design might actually work if they implemented click-dragging for changing pages/sections.
- bluekite2000 15y agoGleebox doesnt work w/ the new version...anyone has the same problem?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- aridiculous 15y agoI like the interaction, my problem is with layout. There's information overload and lack of hierarchy (at least on the default layout theme). The typographic hierarchy is fantastic, but the squared grid is too standardized to communicate meaning/importance. The eye wants to be guided, not given a ton of equally-sized boxes. newsmap.jp understands this principle and is a much better design. If only you could combine the hierarchy of newsmap with the typography, aesthetic, and interaction of the NYT skimmer...
- mrandre 15y agoGo to "layout" and try something like the Overview skin. Is that more what you're looking for?
- nona 15y agoDoesn't seem to work on Epiphany 3.0.4 - but I like it in Firefox. I don't mind the lack of scrolling, but it would be nice if the mousewheel event was used for page flipping.
- nin_appa 15y agoIt was originally made only for Chrome browsers.
- famedriver 15y agoI love experiments like this. We can all learn alot. But the most import thing to take away is that there is no one way an article or website has to be presented. The articles do remind me a bit of the IHT (International Herald Tribune) from 10 years ago. http://www.smokinggun.com/images/pages/page_22.swf http://www.smokinggun.com/images/pages/page_22.swf (last slide)
- rgarcia 15y agoFor those curious about the tech behind this: http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-technology-behind-the-New-York-Times-HTML5-Chrome-app http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-technology-behind-the-New-Y...
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- plnewman 15y agoWhen I opened the page, my browser threw this warning. The website “http://www.nytimes.com” http://www.nytimes.com” is requesting 10 MB of disk space to store “Stored content for nytSkimmerSections” as a database on your disk. I'll pass on that. edits: formatting.
- ceejayoz 15y agoThat's fine, it'll still work, you just won't be able to read content offline.
- hammock 15y agoThis is awesome! Finally something online that gives me an experience which is close to reading an actual physical paper. Except this is a little more convenient because everything is on one page, no awkward folding or anything. I have been waiting for this a long time, how come periodicals haven't done this before? (Or have they?)
- pk2200 15y agoThe most compelling feature of the skimmer is that it circumvents the paywall!
- daviday 15y agoGood job, I really like it, but I didn't understand I could use arrow keys until I came here and read comments
- ricardobeat 15y agoAnother awful iPad experience.