jducoeur | NY Times Skimmer

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Reload page in style: site light

I hadn't previously come across the New York Times' new web interface. Skimmer is based on HTML5, so it'll only work if you have an up-to-date browser (Chrome, FF4, IE9, something like that), but it's impressively slick: a smooth Flash-grade UI with a lot of clever ideas. I found it via this Times article on the rise of HTML5, and it makes a compelling case for why it would be great for folks to get up-to-date sooner rather than later.

I'm finding it deliciously intuitive -- a rare example of an old-media company that is showing that they are really *getting* the new medium. And it makes it more plausible that people might actually pay money to use it: it's a very nice way to skim the news and drill into it...

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

tpau

oh my. wow. that is... really really well done.

From:

jducoeur

Yeah -- the past couple of years have been teaching me a lot about good UI design, enough to be able to appreciate the hard work that clearly went into designing this thing...

From:

dsrtao

Based on five minutes perusal -- it's obnoxiously slow, with gratuitous sliding panels and no response to my scroll wheel or arrow keys. It's hard to keep track of what you've read already, if you don't read in sequence. It's hard to navigate quickly to a new part of the paper.

It looks like it's supposed to mimic an iPad.

From:

jducoeur

... that sounds like it's not working properly for you. What browser are you running? In my Chrome instance, the thing runs like a dream, and does exactly what I expect with the arrow keys. It has the sliding animations, but they don't slow down the interface -- if you arrow ahead quickly, it simply skips the intervening animations.

(Although, yes, the scroll wheel doesn't do anything. Given the pagelike style, I hadn't actually thought to try that, at least in the default Serendipity stylesheet.)

I have to suspect that it's pushing beyond what your browser can handle, given the apparent difference in experience. They *are* clearly demanding absolutely up-to-date HTML5...