Experimental New York Times Interface | Hacker News Reader

Experimental New York Times Interface

prototype.nytimes.com

95 pointswheels38 comments

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.

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

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.

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

Ditto.

Any idea where to access that mode from the traditional NYT frontpage?

I don't think you can (yet?), but its was linked to from NYTimes blog for new features and announcements.

http://firstlook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/sunday-browsin...

Why do the newspapers think they have to reduce themselves to news feeds?

I like the physical newspaper for the editorial value it provides: it places emphasis on certain stories (by making them larger and more accessible) and demotes others. This is real value, that I am willing to pay for.

The new interface makes almost every story identical.

Now, on the internet we have plenty of news feeds, and very few entities who can actually provide that editorial value. So I just can't understand why The New York Times would want to get rid of its biggest competitive advantage?

I don't think they're replacing anything with the Skimmer, it's an experiment.

The news that has been coming out of the newspaper industry recently is mostly comprised of how their model isn't being as profitable as it used to be and their struggle to stay afloat. I actually applaud the NYT for the experiments they've been playing with. The interactive info-graphics, their openness, and little apps like this Skimmer really do set them apart.

I doubt they just invented this and ran with it. I think they're just coming out with new tools and techniques and just seeing what sticks. I don't see anything wrong with that.

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 one more site that's off limits to me.

If I want movement and eye candy with my news, I can turn on the TV.

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

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! =]

A bit too much information in one page... Too many columns, but that's just a personal opinion.

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.

Like you, I find grid layouts hard to skim. Yet other people (e.g. in the comments above) seem to like them, and most newspaper sites use some kind of grid layout.

Anybody know of serious usability testing of these grid layouts? I'd be interested to know if I'm just unusual in finding it easier to read down than across.

Looks like cuil.com

I would prefer they made a simple list like here on hn instead. Is there some general news site with a simple list of news on the web?

This s a really nice interface. That said, doesn't matter if they have best interface in the world, readers are going to be really annoyed if they keep asking people to log into read articles. That and their paper edition.

So how are the articles ordered? Does this order change over the course of the day? Sure it's a great way to expose me to tons of info with very easy eye movement, but it's also tons of real estate. How do I re-find an article or is that not really a problem? If they're not going to foster user added content, then no; if they are, then it's a big problem. I sure hope they also have a sortable list view (by post, by title, by author, by location, by popularity over a time period). They have a big challenge and I agree than the present form could be improved, I'm just not sure this is the only best way to go. Nice to see them pushing the envelope a bit though as it shows the get it and want to improve- two plusses in my book.

I like it to some degree, but I think they're missing the point. Their traditional audience would have a very hard time reading the newspaper like power web users do. I think that you have to have a way to distinguish the "headline" news from the "hey, read this over here" second tier stories. I do think, it's a good experiment and worth exploring more.

It's not bad, but I believe it would be much clearer if every article had 'category' icon instead of a photo. At the moment it takes to long to filter information overhead.

I'm loving the keyboard shortcuts.

Hold 's' to see section numbers. Hold 'a' to see story numbers.

So to see section 4 (US) just type: 14s Once you're there, to see story 71 once you're there, just type: 71a

It's cool, but is it a real solution to a real problem facing news readers?

Pretty cool. Perhaps they should make it a bit more like http://shortformblog.com/ . Now that'd be pretty rad.

I think a simple list of links with comments and the ability for readers to up- and down-vote would be better.

Yeah, like HN, really.

I would appreciate thumbnails of photos with headlines under them, similar to traditional newspaper format.

Love it. I like the idea of sitting back and scan the information without the need of scrolling.

Where will the advertisements go?

To Craigslist and Google. (I'm so sorry. Fish... barrel...)

Manages to break alt left-arrow "back" shortcut.

ha, this is similar to the interface on my site's homepage: freemontpost.com

Cool. Reminds me of Drudge.

wow that looks really terrible

I don't like it either. It is not very dense at all. I prefer the list of titles for skimming, like the HN frontpage.

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