Experimental New York Times Interface

http://prototype.nytimes.com/gst/articleSkimmer/

by wheels • 17 years ago

95 38 17 years ago

prototype.nytimes.com

andr• 17 years ago

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

Dauntless• 17 years ago

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

Gonsalu• 17 years ago

I agree, for an "Article Skimmer" using a grid layout was not the best choice as it kinda hampers skimming through the news...

amr• 17 years ago

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.

danohuiginn• 17 years ago

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.

prakash• 17 years ago

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.

yeahit• 17 years ago

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?

tom• 17 years ago

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.

_zeo8• 17 years ago

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

alecco• 17 years ago

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!

sant0sk12• 17 years ago

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?

briansmith• 17 years ago

IE 4.0+ (yes, four-point-oh), Firefox 3.1+, Opera 10+, and the latest Safari builds all support @font-face.

ewiethoff• 17 years ago

> 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.

gabrielroth• 17 years ago

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

eli_s• 17 years ago

wow that looks really terrible

notaddicted• 17 years ago

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.

lisp_padawan2• 17 years ago

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.

MikeCapone• 17 years ago

Ditto.

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

atarashi• 17 years ago

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...

kennyroo• 17 years ago

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.

lisp_padawan2• 17 years ago

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

gamerates• 17 years ago

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

kwitek• 17 years ago

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.

jwr• 17 years ago

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?

yan2• 17 years ago

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.

yan2• 17 years ago

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

rrhyne• 17 years ago

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

omnivore• 17 years ago

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.

anewaccountname• 17 years ago

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

joanou• 17 years ago

Cool. Reminds me of Drudge.

ieatpaste• 17 years ago

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

stevenjames• 17 years ago

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

maxniederhofer• 17 years ago

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.

tutwabee• 17 years ago

Where will the advertisements go?

steelhive• 17 years ago

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

Experimental New York Times Interface

Related Stories