[mrandre]

Hi, Andre Behrens, creator of the app.

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.

[Luyt]

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 ;-)

[mrandre]

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.

Scrolls are for scribes.

[cema]

  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.)

[carbon8]

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.

[MatthewPhillips]

> 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).

[pbreit]

> 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).

[mrandre]

Please direct me to a common reading experience that does not happen on a computer screen that does not use pagination.

[pbreit]

But it's paper-based reading itself that is uncommon. My reading is 90%+ via screen (and I'm 41 years old).

[adam]

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.

[kennu]

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.

[usaar333]

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.

[MatthewPhillips]

Thanks for your response. Why doesn't nytimes.com use this technique?

[mrandre]

I don't know how to begin to think about knowing how to answer this question. :)