NYT Article Skimmer: Recreate the Sunday Morning Paper in Your Browser
The New York Times just released an interesting new online product that tries to recreate the experience of spreading out the newspaper on Sunday morning. The new 'article skimmer' gets back to the basics with a streamlined interface that lets you quickly scan the top headlines in every section of the Times. Basically, this is an experimental new interface for reading the Times online, though the links to the actual articles still take you to the standard NYT pages.
As Andre Behrens points out in the announcement, the Times is trying to recreate the skimming experience of the physical newspaper, where you often discover random articles that you would probably never notice in the online version.
The layout of the new online application is somewhat similar to that of the Times Reader desktop application, but the team is also trying out some new features. Older articles, for example, gradually fade out as they get older. The newest articles just have a white background.
Overall, the app feels very fluid and lightweight, and the article skimmer provides a great interface for browsing the site's content. It is just a shame that you can't actually read the articles in the same interface.
The New York Times has done a lot of interesting things on the web lately, including opening up an API that allows developers to search the newspaper's articles.
The newspaper business is clearly struggling to reinvent itself on the web, and this experiment is only a small step in this direction - but it is experiments like this that make it clear that there is still a lot of life left in the online newspaper business.
Disclosure: ReadWriteWeb has an existing syndication arrangement with The New York Times
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This looks like a good layout, but skimming means I get to ignore parts of the article while the ones I care about get into my head. When my browser does that for me I'll be happy. Developers, get to work :p
Very cool concept and UI, however, it COMPLETELY fails for accessibility. Simply disable JavaScript or try to navigate with the keyboard. App developers really need to start and pay attention to accessibility when developing their apps. Relying on JavaScript for XML parsing and page rendering is an insult to accessibility.
At the very least, the developers should be using some of the techniques described in the WAI-ARIA draft.
this is an outstanding format, wish that we could setup our social media mash-up in this format..
this ui isn't really new, but it is good.
Ralph: I guess that displaying a rss-newsfeed with a title + e.g. 50 first characters from its description would make something similar. It could utilize SimplePie as its architecture.
Looks quite good, but what fails is the non-intuitive URL. And don't tell me to bookmark it. Out of curiosity, I also downloaded the desktop-based "Reader." Meh.....
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Looks like the Drudge Report to me. If you can't beat'em join'em.
As much as I've lived online for 20+ years, I still love doing my reading on paper. Creating better new ways to make long form content comfortable to browse, skip, flip through, or what-have-you online is still an unsolved challenge. Bravo to NYT for taking it on and continuing to experiment here. I'd love to discover that they come up with something so compelling that I'd pay for a subscription (or otherwise help them monitize) a carefully edited/curated view on the most important news and issues of the day.
Netvibes now has a "magazine view" that will do this sort of thing to an RSS feed. (More attractively, with no impact on accessibility.)
To me this looks like a sop to obsolete habit. Just because news has traditionally come in 8 columns on a wood-based medium doesn't mean that columns or paper are intrinsically superior.
I really dig this interface, but I think it needs a way to filter by date.
@Joe McCann (#2)
"it COMPLETELY fails for accessibility."
First - I would say that Accessibility standards FAIL in general. They can't keep up with the direction the web is going and should be over-hauled. This is an increasing concern.
Second - Yes, you could do more on this in terms of accessibility but this isn't meant for mass consumption. But the sites called 'prototype' for a reason...
pro.to.type
Pronunciation [proh-tuh-tahyp]
noun, verb -typed, -typ⋅ing. –noun
1. the original or model on which something is based or formed.
2. someone or something that serves to illustrate the typical qualities of a class; model;
Its a playground for developers at NYT to try out new things without having to going though a full project production cycle. If this were on the 'real' NYT site I'm sure it would have gone through more checkpoints.
MSN has a much better UI for similar usability concept at http://www.wonderwall.com Clearly NYTimes content would need different styling, but I really like wonderwall's side-scrolling feel.
This looks way to much like http://www.newser.com/, except worse.
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neat concept but not really anything new!
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this in terms of accessibility but this isn't meant for mass consumption.
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Its a must read…
. Bravo to NYT for taking it on and continuing to experiment here. I'd love to discover that they come up with something so compelling that I'd pay for a subscription (or otherwise help them monitize) a carefully edited/curated view on the most important news and issues of the day
looks like a good layout thanks.
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The new york times published in this browser is a really nice application
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. Bravo to NYT for taking it on and continuing to experiment here. I'd love to discover that they come up with something so compelling that I'd pay for a subscription (or otherwise help them monitize) a carefully edited/curated view on the most important news and issues of the day
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Here is an article that can help you decide if your project is doomed.
Bravo to NYT for taking it on and continuing to experiment here. I'd love to discover that they come up with something so compelling that I'd pay for a subscription (or otherwise help them monitize) a carefully edited/curated view on the most important news and issues of the day
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