[kennyroo]

One of the nice things about traditional newspaper layout is that story placement and size help readers instantly understand the relative importance of each news article. (Of course "importance" is an entirely subjective notion, but you see what I mean.)

Other than the 2-box story at the top-left, having both X and Y axes and same-size boxes makes it difficult to determine what's worth reading and what's not. It would be interesting combine the grid with a Hacker News/Digg-like point system that reordered the stories by popularity.

The fact that you lose access to the Skimmer interface after clicking on a story seems weird, but that's fixable.

Still, I like that they're trying new ideas. And I love having a small photo with each headline.

[lisp_padawan]

I see your argument re: the 'importance' of stories - the 'above the fold' placement in print papers is the same idea - but I think, at least in terms of my own reading, that I can judge for myself what the important stories are.

Thinking about it this is one of the top selling points to me of this design. I don't CARE what the editors think is an important story, show me the article summaries and I'LL decide what I want to read about. This system is great because I can quickly scan the stories for those topics I'm interested in (Science, Tech, Business, Politics) and never have to look at sport or fashion or Britney's new tongue piercing etc

But either way, as you say, nice that they're trying out new ideas

[marbletiles]

I think the point is that the editorial placement of stories is relieving you of a burden, not telling you what to think. It's like the ordering of stories on the HN front page -- to say "I don't CARE what other HN readers think; I want to go through each one and decide for myself" is to miss an extra dimension, somewhat.

[gamerates]

As far as combining size/importance; maybe something like newsmap: http://marumushi.com/apps/newsmap/newsmap.cfm