programming and human factors
by Jeff Atwood
One of the premium features of the New York Times website is the Windows Reader. It's free if you subscribe to home delivery of the paper, otherwise it's $14.95 per month.
One of the key attractions of the Times Reader is that it lets you read the newspaper offline. The application runs silently in the background, caching up 7 days worth of news, which you can browse through at your leisure-- with or without an internet connection. And for that, it's great. But given the increasing prevalence of internet connectivity everywhere, through cellular networks as well as WiFi, does offline mode still matter?
In many ways, the Times Reader is a superior newspaper reading experience. It supports dynamic, scalable full page layouts, unlike the narrow column of content we're stuck with in the web browser. And the typography features (through Windows Presentation Foundation) are desktop publishing quality. The "pages" are artfully presented, free of webjunk, and transitions between the articles are all beautifully animated, iPhone style. All of this is nearly impossible to do in a standard web browser.
I encourage people to try out the Times Reader. If nothing else, it's a window into some of the missed opportunities of viewing the online world exclusively through the lens of a traditional web browser.
But after using the Times Reader for a few days, I can't shake the feeling that the newspaper reading experience it delivers is still inferior to the web browser. Despite the many technical merits (and the offline mode), dividing the browsing experience between two different mediums is not a good idea.
The Times Reader version of the paper lacks much of the dynamic content offered on the web page:
I miss this stuff. I always jumped directly to the most popular stories, and I can't do that in the Times Reader. I also find the the constrained view of the reader unnatural. I prefer the large scrolling content area of the web browser. I can use my mouse wheel to scroll to different sections in the reader, but it's alien.
The web browser is clearly the design focus for the New York Times. Perhaps that's the way it should be, as that's how most of the world will experience the paper online. In comparison, the Times Reader feels like a B-movie version of the genericized RSS content with better special effects. It just doesn't get the same attention as the home page.
Maybe this is a classic case of Don't Repeat Yourself. The Times Reader is a great effort. It's certainly pretty to look at. But I think the Times would be better served by focusing all their effort on delivering an outstanding web experience-- and, if necessary, offering programs that cache sections of the website for offline browsing.
I think I agree, if they had put that same effort into the online experience, or finding a way to view the cached online version offline, I think they'd be better off. Maybe they've got it down, but every time a feature changes they have to decide if it's worth translating to the reader, or if it can be at all.
Still the reader looks very nice, and they obviously did research in making it a nice experience. It'll be nice when a lot of that is more easily possible online.
Morgan on September 5, 2007 2:02 AMAs much as I love what they did with the NY Times reader, I'm frustrated with their business model around it. The reader's design was evolutionary for its purpose, but it's just a shame that they locked it down to NY Times content.
The guys at DNR talked about this with Markus Egger of CoDe Magazine. He has a project called Xiine (http://www.xiine.com) which is similar to the NY Times reader in the sense that it gathers subscriptions and allows you to read them off line (and designed in WPF of course), but it's not locked down to Code Magazine content. Markus is trying to build an whole community of publishers, and there's already a fair amount of content that you can add to the Xiine reader. It also recognizes CoDe Magazine subscriptions, so you can go back to any issue and read the content. They say it will eventually become an aggregator for feeds as well. The DNR episode is definately worth listening to: http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showNum=257.
Cheers,
Jeff
So the offline reader just caches what amounts to a bunch of PDF files and lets you view them in what amounts to a PDF viewer?
They need some true off-line functionality, perhaps some Ajax love with Google Gears. Most of the dynamic online content, like the ones in your "dynamic content offered on the web page" list, could be done also, but with a delay of course and updating when connected to the Internet (plus, cross platform).
Rather than think of the reader as a computer based version of the print version, they should think of it as an offline version of the online version.
The thing that stands out to me about the screenshots you've provided is that the online version dedicates a lot of screen/page real estate to navigation and ads (that MSNBC ad is huge). Vs the offline reader version has more space for nice typography and layout because the navigation is implied and simple (turning pages). Many newspapers print, on the front page or on the inside of the front page, a little "menu" of sections and features, allowing you to use "page number/page turning"-style navigation to get to them. This little print-based "navigation widget" (for lack of a better term) is hardly intrusive in the print version of the paper -- why does the navigation in the on-line version take up so much space?
Andy on September 5, 2007 3:18 AMI wrote a Greasemonkey script that replicates some of the NYTimes Reader functionality within Firefox and is applicable to other sites as well:
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/9022
The script provides a multi-column paginated view of articles, like the Times Reader. It's missing the typography and offline features (though the offline stuff could possibly be implemented using the Firefox DOM Storage stuff or Google Gears). But, the price is right :) I too hope that most or all of the Times Reader functionality will eventually be implementable on the regular Web.
Raking Leaves on September 5, 2007 3:28 AMI haven't tried the Times Reader yet, but two thoughts.
First, my father, who says he hates to read from a computer screen, absolutely loves the TR. I don't know why, but I suspect it's mostly because the layout looks more familiar, and after 70 years of reading print papers, he'll gladly put up with horizontal scrolling in return for something that looks more like what he expects.
Second, I'd probably have TR by now if I had to fly as much as I used to. Maybe the world is increasingly blanketed by Wi-Fi coverage, but there are still significant gaps. One of these is airplanes, and another is airports. Admittedly, there are some pay options for the latter, but I think I'd rather just load up my laptop with reading material before leaving home.
bjkeefe on September 5, 2007 4:05 AMSo the offline reader just caches what amounts to a bunch of PDF files and lets you view them in what amounts to a PDF viewer?
No, not at all. I recommend trying the Times Reader so you can get a sense of how it works-- the content is dynamic and rendered using all the power of your desktop PC and video card. But it is exclusively the articles and content. It doesn't duplicate all the features of the website, many of which are quite useful.
Just realized another obvious and *major* problem with the reader: how do I get the URL address of an article if I want to share it with other people? That's a showstopper.
The speed of the interface is fantastic, though. No delays whatsoever moving from article to article, as it's all cached on the hard drive.
Jeff Atwood on September 5, 2007 4:06 AM[...] given the increasing prevalence of internet connectivity everywhere, through cellular networks as well as WiFi, does offline mode still matter? [...]
it only matters in cases of limited connectivity (maybe in the US it isn't so, but there are other areas of the world where connectivity IS still an issue).
further, it matters in the event of a disaster: the server is down, you AT LEAST have your offline copy.
Under the missive "I miss this stuff" you list two items that, in regards to news and some other web content, i would be happy to go without - personalization and top (n) most popular/emailed items.
These seem symptomatic of an the ever increasingly ignorant and divided electorate that we are becoming. Personalization means that I get the news that I want when I want it but is that really news that informs and educates? If I view and forward only the most popular are we not also just dumbing down to the least common denominator?
Michael Fitzpatrick on September 5, 2007 4:22 AMOffline Mode very much matters to me. I'm in a very similar situation to Gordon - being in Australia.
Wireless Data costs (over GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA, etc) are horrendously expensive, so whilst you might be able to get good coverage in most reasonably populated places, nobody can really afford to use it. Paying per kilobyte for both inbound and outbound traffic, on a connection that can do up to 8Mbit in the right conditions is outright dangerous. Especially if you happen to be using it right when Windows decides it needs to download 100MB of updates!
There's also a lot of places where WiFi just isn't available. Where it is, there's a good chance you'd have to pay to use it. And that's certainly not an inexpensive proposition either.
All in all, offline mode matters.
Will Hughes on September 5, 2007 5:19 AMThe website has too much noise.
Just look at the screan shot you provided.
The add for NYTimes and NBC has as much weight as the featured pictures. Its animated and anoing. (why would i care about a NYTimes ad when you are at the NY Times site?
Navigation on the left side has a multitud of choices, which is over whelming. It suggests that you may be able to find something, but with that many categories, you probably wont. Wasting your time as you do page refresh after page refresh navigating.
The Dashboard on the upper right is busy and in the way. Stock quotes Opinion and Travel sections? like i care. I know they are probably what a majority of readers like. But the lowest common denominator needs to learn to bookmark that section. It shouldn't be on a main page.
Deal of the Day! um like i wanted news please.
Honestly it looks like vomited mess of hyperlinks and images.
It is interesting to see the discussion that NYT should put more effort into their web site. The web is a long way from supporting a model that gives full value to the deeper journalism and longer articles of a paper like the NYT. The web is for short information snippets, it is painful to read more than a page or two. The NYT reader is a good reading experience. For me it is a near thing as to whether I would rather read the NYT via their reader, or the BBC web site, even though the BBC has, in my opinion, much better news coverage.
That the reviewer misses the most read links probably indicates that he is looking for a web browsing experience, not a news reading experience. The NYT reader is aimed at those who are looking for a news reading experience, and would like an alternative to paper. A very different market.
The recent rains here in Puerto Rico killed my DSL connection for the last 3 days. I save Slashdot/WarNerd/CodingHorror articles in my laptop at uni for reading at home. Please /underline do not make your apps online only.
Still wishing I could cache GoogleEarth on my HD,
Petskull
"Perhaps I am missing something, but after nearly a decade of doing web design and development I am left thinking. 'what in the sam hell are you talking about?'"
And after a decade of web design development I'm left thinking "why the hell can't I specify a width of 100% - 20px". It's taken far too long to allow the sophisticated and powerful layout such expressions suggest.
"Just realized another obvious and *major* problem with the reader: how do I get the URL address of an article if I want to share it with other people? That's a showstopper."
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/timesreaderhelp.html
See the links under "Sharing your thoughts with others".
Sign in and a trial software? No thanks.
And lack of interaction is the reason I stopped using RSS reader. When I'm offline, I'll pick a book. We're using the Internet differently now.
n3txpert on September 6, 2007 4:28 AMI think the offline reader is a good step in the right direction.
I still prefer reading books and news on real paper, that's why I'm just waiting for these cool digital paper gimmicks to get mainstream products.
Then you won't have to waste paper for your news each morning, just switch on your digital (news-)paper, and read through the latest news.
Then the NYT reader looks very much like what I'd like the digital paper software to be like.
Also I totally agree with brian, I would have blocked all the spam images right at first.
Jeff, I'm a bit astonished that you like the NYT website so much, because I think that it's quite the opposite of what you generally preach (simplicity) and what you stated in your last article.
Just realized another obvious and *major* problem with the reader: how do I get the URL address of an article if I want to share it with other people? That's a showstopper.
I dont think it was intended to be another web browser, but to replicate reading the paper on your computer. So, just like you would with any paper, the section and the page number.
Mike on September 6, 2007 6:02 AMThe new iPod Touch would benefit from some nice offline caching feature since people will want to access content on it between WiFi hotspots. iTunes does the job for audio and video podcasts, but do they have anything for other web content?
Greg Graham on September 6, 2007 8:26 AMThis may be a case of DRY violated, but I love the desktop version. Maybe that's just me though - I *always* prefer the desktop when given a choice (I'm getting a bit weary of the tyranny of the browser). I don't like having all the extra crap you mentioned to look at (isn't that precisely what yesterday's post about limiting choices and keeping it simple was all about?).
This reader is exactly how I would like to read my newspaper - exactly like the printed version w/o the paper.
I took a trip to Italy for two weeks and I realized how much bandwidth we waste. I had a slow dsl link via wifi, from my cousin's doorway of his office (and from inside when he was there, which wasn't often.) From my mail program syncing every imap folder to all the little checks in the background that every program does. Because I normally have broadband I don't mind most of it. Using Google gears with the Google reader for two weeks for my news and having the images missing and links dead made me realize how useless firefox's offline viewing is. I need a temporarily offline viewing mode, (who would stay offline?), so I can cache up the pages when I have a connection and read everything when I don't.
Francis on September 6, 2007 9:21 AM"It supports dynamic, scalable full page layouts, unlike the narrow column of content we're stuck with in the web browser."
Perhaps I am missing something, but after nearly a decade of doing web design and development I am left thinking. 'what in the sam hell are you talking about?' You are not stuck with anything in a web browser. The role of the browser is to present information in an accessible format to your audience (it's role is to not be your desktop). If designers choose to only use 50% of the landscape they are given then that is a deficient design. Utilizing the totality of the landscape available is not some elusive promise land that you make it out to be.
"No, not at all. I recommend trying the Times Reader so you can get a sense of how it works-- the content is dynamic and rendered using all the power of your desktop PC and video card"
And some how your browser does not?
drozhonovich on September 6, 2007 9:50 AMWhat if your paper prints something embarrassing to somebody and decides to "pull" a story, 1984-style? Unless somebody (maybe Google) has cached it, it's gone forever.
I've only heard of the San Jose Mercury News for precisely one reason: Gary Webb's expose' of the CIA/drug trafficking connection. Whether Webb's story is true or not, the SJMN has pulled this groundbreaking story from their website, and you can only access it from other sites which wisely cached it.
What if the publisher's server is swamped with requests, a la the Slashdot effect? What if it's a small publisher with a low-bandwidth server under the best conditions?
I like having my offline copies.
Honeypaw on September 6, 2007 11:31 AMYou know, I've heard about a different "offline mode" for the New York Times. The resolution on this mode is amazing: much better than any monitor that I've seen. You can either purchase one day's worth of news, or get a subscription that they'll send to your home every day.
And the best part of the "offline mode" is that it comes with its own hardware. Whether you have Windows, Macintosh, Unix, an old Atari ST, or no computer whatsoever, it just works.
ChipUni on September 6, 2007 11:49 AMJeff, I'm a bit astonished that you like the NYT website so much, because I think that it's quite the opposite of what you generally preach (simplicity) and what you stated in your last article.
I agree, I was surprised too. But I missed the *features* of the web site, not necessarily the layout. Unfortunately the desktop reader has ads, too, but they're a little less aggressive, more like static magazine ads.
Perhaps I am missing something, but after nearly a decade of doing web design and development I am left thinking
You really have to try the Times Reader to understand. The content *reflows* around the size of the page in a fluid, dynamic way. It would take heavy-duty javascript and AJAX to accomplish this in the browser, and it would be a ton of code.
Seriously: try the Reader. It's worth signing up for, or just use bugmenot credentials.
Jeff Atwood on September 6, 2007 12:21 PMJeff,
Have you visited NYC lately? Living on the left coast doesn't make 'the commute via mass transit' a daily event, but the last time I went to the big apple, I noticed the majority of Times readers (that I saw... clearly I'm not in people's homes) checking out their copy on the train or the subway. Offline mode for the 'electronic set' may be their answer to a paperless newspaper.
Given that, does the idea of the cache make it a poor idea still?
g
Garret on September 7, 2007 5:15 AMJeff, thanks for the great post. When you began by extolling the virtues of the Reader, I kept thinking "but, but..." But then you said it: in the end, reading the NYT in the plain old web browser is a better experience. Like you, I loved the idea of the Reader and was impressed by it, but found myself soon switching back to the website. The chopped off, no-vertical-scrolling nature of the Reader makes it too constricting on the whole, and things like font sharpness weren't really any better with it. In the end, experience trumps theory, always, in usability matters.
BrianC on September 8, 2007 3:39 AMDo you know the company name that helped nytimes build my nytimes application?
thx!
blupeak2 on September 19, 2007 2:27 AMDid you look at the nytimes.com home page? Too much information to scroll through just on the home page.
I prefer the format of newspapers simply because it's easier to read what's important and filter out what is not important.
Yes, it won't give you _everything_, as that is what Google and the Internet is for.
Kashif Shaikh on September 27, 2007 12:44 PMhttp://www.rheacountynewspaper.com/newsinfo/heraldnews_suicide-policy.html
Edward on October 12, 2007 11:03 AMumm -- before I spend half an hour typing my message, I'll just test now and see if this chat site lets me in and posts this test message --
David R. on December 29, 2007 7:01 AMHoky doky, here's my take on T.Reader --
.....To me, its only downside is the 15 clams a month, and I wouldn't expect that to yield to some permutation of BugMeNot. I even tried resetting the system date and the nag box ("24 days left on your 30-day free trial") didn't even bother sneering at me. It wasn't fooled.
.....Now the advantages of T.Reader (and I am astonished that browser designers are not leaping all over its technology to get these advantages):
.....It lets you read at least ten times as much text from an article as a website (such as NYTimes.com) presents, without clicking PageDown or some other button. Sure, you can enlarge the website to more than full screen and focus with the left-right slider bar, but then you get only a few lines in a gigantic font, and have to hit page down (or your space bar or side ribbon) even more often, to read that one story.
.....In contrast, T.Reader lays the whole story down across your screen, in half a dozen readable narrow columns and in the smallest font you're comfortable with. A full average article fits within one such massive screen, and a long article has a page 2. Unlike the paper edition, the jumps are not skinny buried fragments you have to stretch and struggle for; just a click-arrow at lower right, then another full page of text.
.....Sure, the website has more exciting stuff, including lots of story teaser links and those obnoxious flashing and wiggling ads. But when you curl up with a good book, do you want porno TV and rock music at the same time, plus biting flies, acid stomach and a hailstorm? I'll take the simple calm of T.Reader, thank you.
.....It puzzles me that the standard website page ended up being a high rectangle with even narrower columns and many down-clicks required, when all the screens it would go out to were low wide rectangles (and now getting wider). Are the designers that dumb?
.....For me, T.Reader has an extra beauty because I am breaking in the most detailed monitor ever made: Its big LCD screen has a 3840 by 2400 resolution, so fine that with my nose on the screen I still can't be sure I see pixels. You can imagine how impressive T.Reader is on that.
Well, you might be swimming in bandwidth in the US but here in NZ we are struggling with 2Mbits down and 128kbits up and we have usage caps on top of that. WiFi is not that prevalent in public places. In my suburban street we are the only WiFi presence.
In NZ, I would argue that offline is a big thing since it stops the reader having to repeatedly download the same piece of content. Our usage caps are what stand in the way of this. That and the abysmal upload speeds which limit the rate at which TCP packets can be acknowledged. Of course, being the other side of tha pacific doesn't help either. :-)
In NZ the incumbent Telco that provides the DSL infrastructure has a "our resource is precious" mentality which means that data caps are probably going to be around for quite some time. Local loop unbundling is starting to happen but it will be quite some time before it reaches my exchange in Christchurch. Until that time, I will be stuck with data cap issues, and possibvly for some time thereafter.
So, in summary, offline reading may not be that important in the US with typical broadband plans but it is important in countries where data caps are present.
Gordon J Milne on February 6, 2010 10:14 PMits a long time before HTML catches up but what about a hybrid such as flash or silverlight. yes not a universal or idea solution but it puts you in the ballpark while html catches up.
Mike Johnson on February 6, 2010 10:14 PMThe comments to this entry are closed.
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