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Comment by m52go | Hacker News Reader

I just want to say: that was the most beautiful article-reading experience I've ever had on a publisher's website.

No sidebars, suggestions, social buttons or anything...just quality content presented cleanly with just enough branding and functionality. The moving images with the sound was an excellent touch, and although it's specific to the purpose of this article, I love the idea of looping moving images that aren't obnoxious and add to the content.

I don't read the NYT very much, so I apologize if this is something that's been around for a while.

EDIT: I had loaded the site with Ad Block turned on...so I didn't see the social buttons. Frankly even those are done very elegantly, and if I were a user of those social networks, perhaps I'd even appreciate them.

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Despite your glowing praise, I think this is actually an understatement. Every once in a while someone makes a point that is somehow simultaneously fresh and immediately obvious -- so obvious you can't believe you've never thought of it before. To me, this article did exactly that. Sometimes the design of things leaves element(s) that cause the user or experiencer pain, but we learn to stuff it in the back of our minds and forget it's even there. I've never even considered that the acoustic noise a place generates can contribute so much to the "feel" of it. Why don't we put more emphasis on this in our cities and working environments?

For me it would have been better if the movies only played on hover. Anything that moves catches my attention and distracts my reading.

I have to disagree. There were movies every two paragraphs. It is hard to read when something is moving around an inch from the text. Further the movies took forever to load. I sat and waited 10 minutes for one. So I really had big panes that were still for 15 seconds and then suddenly jumped.

The article would have been much better technically if the movies didn't load or play until asked for. I'd argue it would have been better still if the author removed half of the movies and expanded on his point more. I didn't get much more than what it says in the title. Is it good or bad to hear so much in a library? What are the differences between buildings designed by architects that pay attention to sound and those who don't?

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