This is horrible. Why can't I scroll? Why do I have to use the sidebar to go through the sections? Why do I have to click the tiny arrow thing at the bottom to get to the next page?
You can't scroll because I happen to think scrolling for reading is broken. Scrolling is a mechanism for micro-managing the position of content at a pixel level. As a creative producer, when I'm producing creative, I like this a lot. When I'm reading, I find it borderline exhausting; Scroll, re find position, think about when it's time to scroll again, do so, re find position. Did I scroll to far? So Skimmer uses pages whenever it can. You just activate "next", and there's more to read. "Next." "Next." "Next."
This wouldn't work at all for editing a photo. But if you haven't tried it for reading longform content, you really ought to try it.
Of course, if you really do like the classic web scrolling approach, you can just use nytimes.com, and neither I, nor anyone else at the Times would complain.
There are some usability concerns with your implementation.
1) A 24x20 arrow is a tiny target compared to using a scroll wheel anywhere on the page. Scroll bars are also an infinitely wide target when the window is maximized. Fitts' Law and all that.
2) Scrolling requires a lower cognitive load on the user because they don't have to make a decision about turning a page and having everything they're looking at vanish. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/scrolling-attention.html
3) This one is just a bug. I had to reload Skimmer because the first time it came up the pages would not turn. The animation would play, then it would jump back to the first page. Not all the little article squares were loaded, so that may have had something to do with it. Opera 11.50 on Vista with 80% zoom.
4) Not scrolling, but navigation-related. The site doesn't play nicely with my back button. I had to click the close button in the upper left corner of the screen instead of clicking the back button. Confusing.
With your #1, for many people the time to target is instantaneous with a scroll wheel or trackpad. They just scroll without having to search for a target. The time to target is essentially zero, so any sort of control on the page will inevitably be slower.
> You can't scroll because I happen to think scrolling for reading is broken.
You can't be serious. This is one of the foremost expectations in the user experience, fortified by almost two decades of websites that have done it this way.
Mac(Book)s (and Macs with the magic apple mouse) have two finger scroll which is the same thing, but isn't supported (but should be, please!) on say the headline box in the Skimmer "Spread" layout.
They are almost the same thing. They perform the same function but because they are physical invisible they are even less likely to be used by an average computer user.
I have some anecdotal evidence on the contrary. My wife is a very casual computer user, but uses two-finger scroll all the time. My sister-in-law is very similar - not a computer person, but has an Apple laptop and uses two-finger scroll. Also, Apple mice support scrolling[1], and almost any third-party mouse you buy will have a scroll button as well. Scrolling with a mouse or trackpad seems like an integral part of user interaction.
And every Mac user I know is well aware that for the web, <space> scrolls a page forward, <shift-space> a page back. So still no good argument for on-page controls.
I scroll with ease through large wads of text using a simple gesture on the touchpad. I find it much more important that a long piece of text is broken up by scannable subheaders, than that it designed to avoid scrolling.
I love the implementation of the app and think the UI is very well thought out. I'm sure you already know this, but people love to criticize to feel important. Skimming the concerned replies, almost all are pedantic usability tradeoffs I'm sure you considered. So just wanted to say good job, dude.
Hi Andre. I actually really like the skimmer - been using it for some time with Chrome. After reading your take on scrolling - I have to agree my brain prefers not to deal with the finding and readjusting part of having to scroll through long content. It is just easier to hit one forward and one backward key to find everything on the page.
I've never thought about this before but it actually makes a lot of sense. I can think of countless times that I've highlighted a piece of text while reading an article in a browser just to use as a bookmark while scrolling around.
Thanks for all the responses on this thread. I've found it incredibly interesting.
There has been some excellent feedback on this topic already. I just want to point out a distinction that has been glossed over - OSX laptop users have a very different scrolling experience than Windows users (laptops or desktop). The two finger scroll method is very pleasant, and highly accurate. I don't ever have to re-find content while scrolling, because of how tactile and accurate the feedback is.
As interfaces get better, I believe the vertical scroll method will be preferred, because it allows the user to quickly skim, jump ahead, or reference previous content, within the same context.
To be fair, I had forgotten how different scrolling is with a traditional mouse. This design trade off (arrow keys and next buttons) is probably excellent for windows and traditional mouse users.
I prefer this approach, too. However I would still like to be able to use the scroll wheel to navigate pages when not on a mobile device. Scrolling up/down to move the pages left/right would be ridiculous, though. It would have to be set up to let pages flow up/down. Another problem on a desktop browser (and another reason to have pages flow up/down) is that the forward/back buttons don't behave as expected.
Bookmarking a page should work. If it isn't, that's a bug. You can bookmark sections and articles quite Well. It's a little hairy if the article gets a little old, but a solution is in the works.
That might be true, but it does not negate what he is saying. I really like Skimmer,especially compared to the regular site, however I do miss scrolling with my wheel. The point is to A/B test within Skimmer.
Just wanted to let you know that I don't think you're crazy, and I really like the design of your app. Most people are so used to scrolling that to see it unused probably upsets them. And the scroll wheel is easy to use with your finger, but not so much with your eyes to re-adjust. Perhaps you could take advantage of the scroll wheel and when a user scrolls with it, you could flip to the next page or section?
It's more than that. It's a usability upgrade, EASY to implement. The same for the "Page up" and "Page down" keys.
How hard is it to bind those keys to the "next page" event that is fired by the little arrow? (haven't checked the code, but I assume something like that going on).
Unrelated: I think every web application should use keyboard shortcuts. This is possibly my favorite gmail feature. I can pretty much do whatever I want (save Logout and Attach File) using my keyboard.
Counter point: I configured my browser (Opera) to heavily use single-letter shortcuts, such as Q/E to navigate to next/prev tabs, W/S to scroll up and down, T to open new tabs, etc. This and mouse gestures were a great improvement in my browsing experience.
Things get horribly broken with pages that have their own shortcuts too. For example, when I'm quickly pressing E (next tab) to see all my tabs and happen to find an open Gmail tab, it'll archive the message displayed, no questions asked.
Thankfully Gmail allows the user to disable such shortcuts, and there's always the "undo" button, but I'm not willing to hunt this option in every single website I visit.
I have the NYT page open right next to this one, and I get stuck whenever I come across it because none of my shortcuts work there.
I think individual websites shouldn't be able to dictate what I can or cannot do with my browser. It should be a browser option to ignore such shortcuts, but while that doesn't happen, be mindful of users like me.
I disagree, I think it is the browser's job to get out of the way as much as possible. That the browser provides you shortcuts shows that it thinks of itself as being more important than the websites it renders (Opera knows Web APIs and chose to implement a feature that butts heads with one because it's rarely used).
Boppreh said he or she configured Opera to use those keys, are you suggesting that a browser ignore user configuration to better "get out of their way?".
If so, I strongly disagree with you. But I would agree that a browser's default configuration should be as unobtrusive as possible --but when configured it should meekly obey and not let websites act against your expressed will.
The browser is more important than the websites it renders, up to where preferences are concerned. Would you like websites to override your pop-up blocking preferences?
No, but that's a security preference, I don't want the browser overriding well-known Javascript APIs. Here's another example: Firefox for Android uses a swipe to the left to get to your tabs and a swipe to your right to get to favorites/navigation controls. This means that any site that uses swipe gestures for UI are broken. Google+ doesn't work on Firefox for Android for this reason. To me this is browser fail, not website fail.
Agreed. More: Back/Forward doesn't work; When you're in the first page of the first article of a section, the 'back' arrow sits there but doesn't do anything (if you've been browsing backwards, you might not know you're in the first article).
I find these types of sites that break normal browser behavior to be offensive. Why are developers like this and OnSwipe changing native scrolling in favor of javascript scrolling? What is the benefit, aside from lag, to moving sideways? Web pages aren't magazines, and they shouldn't be. I love javascript but just because something can be done with it, doesn't mean it should be.
I would argue it is the web itself that is broken. At the very least, it's an infinite web, and there's room for an awful lot of stuff in there, even the parts you don't like or understand.
The advantage of moving sideways is that that's how every reading experience a user has ever experienced works, outside their computer. More importantly for us, it's how a newspaper works. The fact that this thing works a lot like a newspaper and they love it is something our customers literally won't shut up about.
The simple truth is, the only people I've ever heard complain about the navigation scheme, scrolling, javascript, etc are on Hacker News.
For instance, what you are calling lag is the animation. Most people find computer navigation hostile because things move around and they don't know where they are going.
Animations give their brain time to process that things are changing. Research over the years suggests that most people think animated transitions are faster, even if they are technically slower.
In the case of scrolling, I find scrolling long documents a hostile user interface. It requires a great deal of user interaction and minute control over position. Pagination simply requires "next", "next", "next". I don't think every web site should work this way. But for long form content, it works a treat.
And for the record, I didn't use JS just because I could. I used it because it helped me solve my design goals.
I think you're still designing for print, not the web.
Your aversion to scrolling seems like a personal preference. Nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't mean everybody feels that way, or should be denied scrolling.
In a distant past, books used to be scrolls, too ;-)
In the part of the past where books were scrolls, almost nobody could read, and most of what was written was data. Interestingly, relatively soon after the arrival of paginated books, public reading becomes commonplace.
relatively soon after the arrival of paginated books,
public reading becomes commonplace.
Oh no, it was because of the alphabet changed everything. And because some nations required universal education (technically, first among boys).
Books (in the codex form, versus scrolls) were indeed very helpful in reading, the way dvd is an improvement over a cassette tape. It made navigation easier (reading in one case, listening in the other). So your example is indeed relevant to the point you are making, but not the way you made it. (IMHO.)
The reasons the codex format supplanted the scroll format had everything to do with physical properties, specifically that codices use material more economically, are more compact, easier to handle and transport.
In fact, as far as reading is concerned, the primary advantage of the codex over the physical scroll was, conversely, also the main advantage of scrolling over pagination on the web: the ability to easily jump to any point in the text.
> The advantage of moving sideways is that that's how every reading experience a user has ever experienced works, outside their computer.
Most of your customers are comfortable with the default scrolling experience. Those that are not are older; they are not your future. The fact that you have to include navigation instructions for your page shows that you're breaking expectations.
> For instance, what you are calling lag is the animation. Most people find computer navigation hostile because things move around and they don't know where they are going.
I was actually referring to the lag I experienced when testing the site on an iPad. The scrolling is jittery, it is pretty smooth on desktop Chrome though.
> In the case of scrolling, I find scrolling long documents a hostile user interface. It requires a great deal of user interaction and minute control over position. Pagination simply requires "next", "next", "next". I don't think every web site should work this way. But for long form content, it works a treat.
We've had a solution for long documents in HTML forever: the fragment identifier. I've recently seen a few clever sites use a fixed position div to provide a table of contents that updates as you scroll down the page. I wish I could find one; the affect is gorgeous, and still conforms to the normal web UX (and degrades gracefully).
> I would argue it is the web itself that is broken
And you would be wrong. There's no problem with you creating an alternative design but claiming that the web or scrolling is broken is plain wrong and invites pointless controversy.
> that's how every reading experience a user has ever experienced works, outside their computer
You do realize that this view is outdated by 10-20 years?
You are certainly welcome to your opinions but to assert them as fact is presumptuous.
I would never use Skimmer on a PC but it's terrific on an iPad (to some extent because the NY Times app is so miserable).
I think you've done a really nice job with this. I've already replaced my nytimes.com bookmark with skimmer. One small request - could you put friendly time stamps on the articles, i.e. "posted 3 hours ago" "posted 2 days ago" and/or mark articles that have been read somehow? would just make it much easier to scan the page and look for unread stuff on return visits within close proximity to each other.
I just want to note that if you use friendly timestamps ("posted 3 hours ago"), you take a big responsibility of having them _always_ be correct in any situation and automatically update without reloading the page, etc. They also need to index to Google properly, in a non-friendly format.
Is there a way to disable the animations? Maybe I've just used computers too extensively, but I (and I imagine a lot here) find them really slow and unnecessary.
> web pages aren't magazines, and they shouldn't be.
Um...why not? I happen to quite like Flipboard-style magazine layouts. More importantly, why does anyone feel qualified to comment on what the web "should" be? The technology is powerful enough to accomodate new uses, and I call that room for innovation.
I've had to rely on Flipboard for now i'm afraid (i know you've mentioned it already).
There was the news:yc app, but its iPhone only, so doesnt take advantage of the iPad screen real estate. I suspect the developer is working on an iPad version.
This was actually first released in 2009 [1] and then updated mid-year during 2010 [2]. I use it every day, and it has not substantially changed since last summer.
The design is ok, but I don't like the way they've broken usability, standards and everything else.
I had hoped people would have learned from the Gawker disaster that requiring javascript to be able to see any content at all is a bad idea. I use the NoScript plugin in firefox and all I got was a blank screen at first.
My inbox has been flooded over the years with effusive messages about how much people like the way this works. The only people I've ever seen complain about usability are on hacker news.
Skimmer makes extensive use of standard javascript, css3, and HTML5 technologies. So I'm not sure what standards I've broken.
I think the meaning of the Gawker debacle might be open to interpretation without further data. For one thing, you should know that users with JS disabled make up a vanishingly small part of nytimes.com's readership.
And since Skimmer has enjoyed a largely enthusiastic response from readers, it stands to reason that most users are just fine with a js-heavy app. Most of our readers, anyway.
That said, if you hate this way of doing things, the entirety of nytimes.com is there for your classic web design enjoyment, and I certainly have no problem with your continuing to use it.
I would say maybe try the app for a while before you decide. Try the different layouts. Use the arrow keys. Try it on an iPad.
The standard you've broken is to not have some kind of message for those that don't have javascript on. even having a "Please enable javascript to use Skimmer" would be a huge boon to everyone in that boat.
I have been trying out Skimmer and do thing it is certainly a very interesting way to lay things out and get at the news. I have not decided my full opinion on it yet.
However, this unprofessional response from you does make me wary of it. A personal attack like this I feel was entirely uncalled for.
Second, I think this boat may be larger than you believe it to be. According to Mozilla[1], there's nearly 2 million potential browsers out there with some form of JavaScript filtering on by default. This is calculated from the number of browsers checking for updates, not from the download statistics (88 million at current writing). While other browsers[2][3] do not boast this large of a user base they are continuing to grow (3000 a week for chrome).
That's uncalled for. And really is it that hard to give the small number of users that disable JavaScript some indication that your website would work if they enabled it?
This is awesome! Finally something online that gives me an experience which is close to reading an actual physical paper. Except this is a little more convenient because everything is on one page, no awkward folding or anything.
I have been waiting for this a long time, how come periodicals haven't done this before? (Or have they?)
This redesign is an interesting step forward for a site who's future you would expect to be based primarily in the tablet scene. After a few moments, I found it particularly easy to use, however I believe integration with scrolling if they're going to use left-right, then let the user drag the page etc.
This is more than that other guy (in other HN topic) was hoping for. it even lets him to change layout in click of a mouse as he see fit. as opposed to spending many hours on desining new layouts and templates like he did.
they did new things but didn't broke old things. i like that approach better
Skimmer is an experiment that simply re-packaged the content of the times. There are lots of problems with contemporary news design that skimmer didn't even try to address:
• Customization is one thing, but being able to choose from a dozen different layouts is a sign that none of them are likely right. Good design is about what's left out, not overflowing options.
• The complete lack of social/comments/human interaction is distrubing
Am I the only one who can't read this? I find it almost painful to move my eyes from one headline to the next - there is nothing for my mind to anchor to. As a result, I'm just staring blankly at the screen.
I like the interaction, my problem is with layout. There's information overload and lack of hierarchy (at least on the default layout theme). The typographic hierarchy is fantastic, but the squared grid is too standardized to communicate meaning/importance. The eye wants to be guided, not given a ton of equally-sized boxes.
newsmap.jp understands this principle and is a much better design. If only you could combine the hierarchy of newsmap with the typography, aesthetic, and interaction of the NYT skimmer...
I love experiments like this. We can all learn alot. But the most import thing to take away is that there is no one way an article or website has to be presented.
The articles do remind me a bit of the IHT (International Herald Tribune) from 10 years ago.
FWIW, your G2 is not running the Chrome browser. There is almost no relation between Chrome browser and the Android browser, save WebKit. This is puzzling, but true. And unfortunately, the Android browser just isn't up to snuff yet.
Funny reason to crash a browser. Firefox handles it OK.
Still, it isn't the first time I had a problem with the Google Chrome browser on my Google phone viewing something either made by, or made for, Googley things.
I didn't mean that's the reason it crashes on Google Chrome for Android (which I don't know how stable it is in the firts place) but I guess they didn't optimized it for mobile because it's out of its purpose since it's primary a Google Chrome webapp. NYT has a decent mobile version an it also has Android and iOS native apps.
On my Firefox at that resolution the last line of the quoted text is guillotined. My feeling is the text should display without requiring the user to do anything. I am sure this is a minor bug, but my experience is the fix sometimes is slow and cumbersome.
Moving through the sections is ok, but reading an individual article is impractical, imho. There, I prefer the old way of scrolling through the whole article by mouse wheel...much more comfortable than using keys or clicking on small arrows.
One more site that absolutely requires JavaScript. Disabling JS gives you a blank white page. While I understand such a decision for interactive apps like Twitter, I think quasi-static websites should at least have plain HTML fallback.
That's because it's totally optional, and anyone who doesn't like it can stick with the default. I'd wager that if they switched the main site tomorrow, there would be some negative feedback.
