[LINK] anyone reading the new Global Mail? - fancy web pages don't work well

[Robin Whittle]

Hi Jan,

I had a quick look at http://www.theglobalmail.org.  The designers of
this site have one less thing to worry about than many other designers
of news, blog, etc. sites - they don't need to force the viewer to see
adverts.

I think the first article, on Saudi Arabia, was readable without Twitter
boxes or horizontal scrollbars getting in the way of text, with Firefox
10.0.2 (Win XP) in a window as small as 639H x 739V.   I tried it in
Google Chrome 17.0.963.56 m and the size limit seemed about the same,
but with seizure-inducing re-renderings as I changed window size.

In neither browser was I able to print an article.  Firefox would print
page 1 and Chrome's preview produced a blank page when I looked beyond
the first page.  MSIE 8.0.6001.18702 behaved in much the same way, with
its preview showing part of the first page, and then just the
background, which has grey-tinted corners to subliminally suggest a
piece of newsprint.  MSIE, during its preview, soldiered away trying to
estimate how many pages in total would be printed.  The number kept
increasing like US government debt.  I killed it when it got past 600 pages.

It is not possible to select the text of the whole article.  Everything
is page-by-page.

I guess this interface of scrolling things left and right is very
iPad-like, and that the relatively narrow text columns improve
readability.  Doing those narrow columns in traditional web-page
wouldn't work for two columns side-by-side.  Since much of the world has
adopted widescreen desktop and laptop displays, this means vertical
space on web pages is relatively restricted, so the only way of doing
highly readable narrow columns on ordinary web pages is to do a single
such column, with the user forced to scroll precisely with their browser
on a frequent basis.

A few minute after doing this, my antivirus program reported that
"pepflashplayer.dll" is safe.  It turns out that Chrome downloaded and
installed this Windows .DLL file - I guess just because I viewed this site.

I prefer ordinary web-pages, but maybe those with iPad and other mobile
devices find this or some other paging format better.  I guess those
folks don't often print.

  - Robin


On 26/02/2012 10:20 AM, Jan Whitaker wrote:

> Linkers,
> There is a new kid on the block: www.theglobalmail.org . . .