4 ms·
Recently the news broke that Microsoft may be working on another browser instead of IE. After reviewing the available evidence I’ve come to the conclusion that,
by ynniv 12y ago
Recently the news broke that Microsoft may be working on another browser instead of IE. After reviewing the available evidence I’ve come to the conclusion that, although Microsoft is making a few adjustments, and a name change for IE might be a good idea, the new browser will essentially be IE12. Still, I think we web developers should support the “new browser” narrative.
This is how you start an article. I didn't read any farther, but my already high opinion of quirksmode.org is even higher.
- beaner 12y agoWhy? I don't get anything particularly insightful at all from this snippet.
- brink 12y agoI think that he means that there's no storytelling cruft that just fills paragraphs and wastes time. It's short, concise and rich in information.
- rictic 12y agoYeah, the first paragraph summarized the entire article, which is incredibly respectful of the reader's time. Presumably many sites intentionally leave this out in order to maximize revenue and "engagement."
- nailer 12y agoIt would save more time and avoid the appearance of impropriety if they declared their Microsoft sponsorship in the second paragraph, rather than after the article. Edit: if it's unclear, this is not accusing anyone of bias: good writing should make any involvement in the subject matter explicit. See http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appearance_of_impropriety http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appearance_of_impropriety The article is sponsored by modern.ie which is a Microsoft initative. I happen to agree with the article, however being forthright about these matters would strengthen its point.
- emn13 12y agoNo, it would just waste everyone's time. Why would you intentionally want to preface the meat of an article with disclaimers like that, especially if (as you say) the disclaimers wouldn't actually affect your interpretation of the article? That's pretty much the definition of cruft.
- nailer 12y agoMy own personal evaluation of Spartan is beside the point. The sponsorship is relevant and should be explicitly disclosed.
- danatkinson 12y agoThis is not new information though. Every page on the QuicksBlog contains the sponsorship information at the bottom of the page.
- nailer 12y agoOther quirksmode articles, eg Introduction to JavaScript (front page, first article) do not take explicit positions on Microsoft technologies.
- icantthinkofone 12y agoI've read him for years. He's not afraid to rake Microsoft over the coals and has done so for years.
- gpvos 12y agoAlthough he left out all the details, after the first paragraph you know enough to decide whether you want to read the rest of the article or not. The "inverted pyramid" someone else linked to here means that the information is presented from most to least important, so you can stop reading the article anytime when it starts to bore you, and still know you have read everything you want to know.
- jmduke 12y agoIn case you weren't aware, this is referred to as the inverted pyramid (and of course I totally agree -- this is how you start an article): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid
- jn 12y agoAbsolutely agree. I cringe every time I see a long blog post with a self-effacing "tl;dr" block, especially when it's placed at the end of the article. Just follow this "journalistic" style instead and you'll be doing the reader a big favour.
- hawleyal 12y agotl;dr is the headline/title.
- Brakenshire 12y agoIt's probably one of the reasons why the BBC News website is popular. All articles were originally written so that the first three or four paragraphs could be cut off, and presented as full articles on teletext (a tv text service), so the whole story had to be summarized within that space. They still write their articles in that way, even though teletext is increasingly un-used. I should say, though, that it does mean that the content of that summary, and of the headline, becomes extremely important. For instance, you could nominally cover a news story, but write a boring headline and summary, and very few people will trudge through that to find the really important details later on. You do sometimes find that occurring on the BBC site, especially when it's a story which might raise a lot of controversy within government.
- Mahn 12y ago> teletext is increasingly un-used. Was there a time when teletext was actually used? Honest question, I was under the impression that it just never managed to catch on.
- 12y ago