

New York Times - Chrome version - Uncle_Sam
http://www.nytimes.com/chrome/

======
cjoh
I'm just really uncomfortable with a "chrome version" of the New York Times.
How many of us would be freaking out if it was "The New York Times: Internet
Explorer Version"

I don't want versions of the web. That's the whole point of the web.

~~~
yanw
They stated numerous times during the announcement that these apps will work
on all modern browsers, the web store is there to help discovery and
monetization.

The Chrome label on this NYT app is merely promotional as they were launch
partners.

~~~
ootachi
There are -webkit- prefixes everywhere in the CSS. This isn't a cross-browser
site.

~~~
lhnz
Ever heard of graceful degradation?

~~~
hungryfoolish
Gracefull degradation is for making sites work on older browsers. What about
making sites work on modern browsers which are other than your favourite one?

Using just -webkit prefixes everywhere will make sure it just plays nicely
with webkit, and not with IE, Opera or Firefox.

~~~
krainboltgreene
It detects your rendering engine when you connect to the server and only
serves up the relevent stylesheet. This way you don't get -moz, -o, or IE
fixes if you're not on IE, Mozilla, or Opera.

Save bandwidth, load time.

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Yaggo
I would rather like to see it named as "HTML5 version". Oh, and please use CSS
transforms/transitions instead of Javascript animations. Otherwise, nice work.

~~~
rushabh
does not work in Firefox / Safari. I wonder what "Chrome" features does it
use.

~~~
itg
huh? it's working on safari for me (5.03 on OS X 10.6)

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bokchoi
NYTimes likes to sleep around. They've developed quite a few frontends: a
WPF/Silverlight version, an AIR version, and now a "Chrome" HTML5 version.
Next will be an Oracle version in JavaFX.

~~~
adolph
I think I remember a lean-back version. Are any of these still around?

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Kilimanjaro
UX TIP:

To scroll I have to go to the bottom of the page and click on the little
arrow. Go to the other side if I want to go back.

The mouse solved that problem last millenia with the scroll wheel. Anywhere on
the page, if I decide to scroll, it will scroll, right there, without moving
the pointer or my eyes. Simple huh?.

If I want to scroll, just let me scroll. Don't impose restrictions on me.

~~~
jlees
You can hit the right/left arrow keys, and up/down to navigate between
sections and articles. I hadn't actually discovered this before reading your
comment. Whether it's better or not than horiz/vertical scrolling is a
debatable issue.

~~~
Kilimanjaro
Sure, but how hard is it to implement onmousewheel/dommousescroll if we are
showing off an html5 app?

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rianjs
Looks a lot like the Editor's Choice iPad app adapted for a browser. Very nice
and clean.

That said, I'm not sure how sustainable it is, unless they're planning on
turning it into a paid thing. Any significant number of users is going to put
a damper on their bottom line because no ads means no ad revenue.

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brendano
I love how de-cluttered it is. I have a sinking feeling, though, that when a
homepage gets into production, feature creep has to happen because of all the
different departments within the company -- everyone wants a link to their
specific subsite for the traffic.

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MikeCapone
Looks like some of the features aren't quite on the level of the Skimmer:

<http://www.nytimes.com/timesskimmer/>

But it's a good start.

~~~
eli
One notable difference is that the chrome version reworks the article pages,
the skimmer appears to just frame them

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revorad
Resizing the window messes up the layout. Then it hangs saying it used too
much memory.

~~~
ugh
Safari became completely unresponsive when I tried to resize the window, all
its window chrome disappeared and the whole system got so bogged down that it
took me at least three minutes to force quit Safari.

~~~
revorad
Resizing was the first thing I tried because that's what borks my app
sometimes.

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rcoder
Mostly works in Mobile Safari on my iPad, after a prompt from the browser to
allow 10MB of offline storage (which in turn appears to be an iOS 4.2 feature,
since older versions simply silently disabled offline storage when any page's
cached resources totaled >5MB).

Performance isn't _awesome_ , but then again, the flagship NYTimes iOS app
hasn't worked for me in weeks (crashes on startup, fails to refresh articles
when no other app has connectivity problems, etc.) so I might just give it a
shot as a Times UI for a while.

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akvlad
It's not just for the chrome browser because it's built on HTML5 and
JavaScript and can be used on any modern browser. I'm currently using firefox
to view this "app" which is just a regular site, well it's actually a very
clean & impressive design and great UI features. Some of the so-called apps in
the chrome store are merely bookmarked links that go directly to the page, for
instance the gmail "app". I'm having a really hard time to accept these as
"apps"

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soldarnal
Does any know whether "Chrome" signifies the browser or the OS? Everyone here
seems to assume the browser, but my first thought was that it referred to the
new OS since I was reading just yesterday that you will be able to read the NY
Times offline on there. Also, when I opened the link in Opera it asked me if I
wanted to let the site store 10mb of data, which I assumed related to that
feature.

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roqetman
I wish that more news sites had such a clear interface; they're usually so
cluttered. Though I'm not sure why this interface is specific to chrome.

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Florin_Andrei
Looks fuzzy.

~~~
jws
On OS X Safari, the articles are in Georgia 13, but the subpixel rendering is
disabled. The result is ghastly. The type appears randomly weighted and poorly
kerned.

If you copy a paragraph and paste it into TextEdit you can see the same text
still in Georgia 13 without broken rendering.

You can use the assistive zoom to see clearly what is going on. (Hold control
and "two finger up" on the trackpad, or scroll wheel up if you are that sort.)
The color fringe at the edges of the zoomed letters is the subpixel rendering.

~~~
mlgrinshpun
Can you explain why the aa gets disabled in Safari but not Chrome? Seems
strange considering they're both running Webkit.

~~~
jws
I wish I could. I looked with the inspector for -webkit-* trickery in the CSS
and didn't see any on the element.

Antialiasing is still on. The pixels go through shades of gray at the edges,
it is just the subpixel that is off.

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joeybaker
The variety of UI options they give in the "customize" tab shows that NYT knew
they had a problem and didn’t solve it.

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forgotAgain
I really want the New York Times website to look like a newspaper. Changing it
to a non-descript anybody site throws away the richness of its heritage. I
know the richness is in the content but warm fuzzy feelings help you digest
the brain matter.

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wccrawford
What exactly has been done here that couldn't have been done with every other
browser?

~~~
callahad
Nothing, which is kind of the point of the Chrome Store: It's just a new
distribution channel for modern web applications. The upside is the
discoverability, along with the assurance that your end users have a modern
browser.

~~~
stanleydrew
Well technically you don't have that assurance right? Since anyone can hit
your app's "store" URL from any browser.

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davidu
It's great -- but the navigation really belongs on the left side, right-
aligned text.

~~~
weego
It absolutely doesn't, because if you look at it as a touch screen app for a
tablet then the highest portion of users will hold the tablet steady with
their left hand while gesturing with their right hand. If you put the nav on
the left you make people reach across the screen (covering it with their arm).

~~~
davidu
You raise a good point. As a lefty, I don't want to be left out. :-)

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mlgrinshpun
Is there any possibility that they'd start redirecting to this based on User-
Agent?

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craigts
Hopefully anyone checking this out will get the same top headline I got, "For
Obama, Tax Deal Is a Back-Door Stimulus Plan" wow... just wow.

Also, is 'chrome' here referring to Chrome OS or the browser?

~~~
CrazedGeek
Both. Chrome OS is Chrome the browser in a delectable OS form.

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joblessjunkie
Meh. Clean, yes, but:

\-- Back button doesn't work. Must click tiny "close" box.

\-- Rather than simply scrolling, must paginate with tiny "next" arrow.

Usability loses.

~~~
stan_rogers
Esc key closes an article, right and left arrow keys flip pages.

~~~
davcro
They should highlight this to new viewers, I was about to complain about the
lack of scrolling.

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mcritz
It works very well on iPad. It’s responsive to touch gestures.

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RyanMcGreal
Clunky in Chrome browser, broken on Firefox.

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cosgroveb
A bit clunky in Chrome beta... Barely works in Canary build. Maybe I should
stick to stable.

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bvi
Very buggy: <http://imgur.com/GH5C0>

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vegai
Seems to work just fine in Firefox.

