The Web is rife with old-fashioned scroll-centric sites: CNN strikes me as a particularly villainous example, and there are plenty of others, including a few from my old stomping grounds: The Area Telegraph, The Salt Mine Times and The Rinky Dink Newsletter.
The International Herald Tribune's an exception, but not completely. For example, their sports index page is in the typical scroll-down format, as are their blogs (duh), but it appears that any given story is presented book-style. Here is another example, one that shows the easy page-flipping.
I reckon that scrolly sites are like news page designs that rely on jumping most stories and that the IHT site is like a design that minimizes jumps.
And how has that worked out? In the first three months of 2006, I jumped 85 of 226 front-page stories, which is 4.6 percentage points above the editor's goal of 33 percent. To me, the layouts don't appear to be better or worse than in 2005, when I didn't make a serious effort to control jumps. But maybe I'm missing something...
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3 comments:
Hone your AP chop, Daniel-san.
I wonder if referring to whole stories inside is better than jumping them from the front, even they are front-worthy?
Then I guess the criteria for page 1 would be whatever is short enough not to jump...
What about inventing a new form of story -- a synopsis -- with some art and a refer to the full story?
If people don't read jumps, then that would be a solution.
I think we could pioneer a creative solution to the jump thing.
If it doesn't work, so what?
Newspapers don't have anything to lose anymore, and people are seeing that (i.e. look at the Bakersfield Californian).
I've had too much coffee.
This post reminded me of another flip v. scroll-related thing.
Check this link out:
http://ee.thedickinsonpress.com/
Before I left this place, I was getting trained in on Olive software. I designed the wildfire page and the sample paper. Pretty cheesy...
I guess people do subscribe to this. I don't know how many though.
The e-edition of the DP is kinda amusing, anyway, but I'm not sure I'd stick with it after the novelty wore off...
Hmm. Synopsis with art and refer? Could be good. It will be interesting to see whether the Californian is essentially the USA Today of today and whether we'll all be doing that stuff in a couple of years.
Change is fun!
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