

Welcome to Quartz - phildionne
http://qz.com/welcome-to-quartz
It's great to see someone taking a new approach to news. They really seem to get how people consume content.
======
valisystem
This is UI madness, things hides, moves and pop around with no obvious
relation with my input.

The main news timeline is promising though, but greatly needs visual codes for
differentiating and qualifying content.

It's great to focus on the content while not putting technology asides, but
your publishing tool is also of strategical importance. It's great to have
rethought the general way of showing information, but this is, to me, clearly
half baked.

Comparing that with your submission title (for whatever it means, it evokes
technology), makes me think you have a problem here.

~~~
phildionne
First, I just stumbled on this and am not affiliated with it.

Second, I agree that some parts of the UI are overkill. Keep in mind that it
has been designed for tablets and phones though: "(...) built primarily for
the devices closest at hand: tablets and mobile phones."

The title of this post is taken from the text the link points to. From the
text itself: "Developers and journalists, sometimes one-and-the-same, sit next
to each other in the Quartz newsroom as we continually iterate and
experiment."

I'm simply happy to see someone trying something new.

~~~
wes-exp
_Keep in mind it has been designed for tablets and phones though_

This actually highlights one of my pet peeves: that web pages need special
"mobile enhanced" versions. 90% of the time, a "mobile web page" is just
_worse_ than the original. I have to ask: do the guys designing these "mobile"
web pages actually use tablets or smartphones? Because what part of "mobile"
means "ruin the usability and make sure a lot of awkward javascript-emulated
touch gestures are involved"?

------
rayiner
The future of news has nothing to do with code. That's just "when all you have
is a hammer" talk. We're already trending towards Facebook-ized/Twitter-ized
news, and I don't think anyone is impressed. The problem with the news is
content, and the people, and I don't think technology is going to help with
either.

As an aside, I just bought a subscription to Bloomberg Businessweek on my iPad
(first newspaper subscription ever) and I have to say I'm impressed. Quality
long-form writing, covering business and Wall Street without the conservative
slant of fellatious tone of the WSJ. Very recommended.

~~~
pattern
The first time I have seen the word "fellatious" in the wild - thank you for
bringing this gem to my attention :)

------
rjknight
I hope it's not written in the same code these guys are using!

OK, that was a bit snarky, but this site's design definitely feels too
"clever" and, weirdly, looks like something that might have escaped from a
time tunnel to 2006. Since then, everyone has got into the whole minimalism
thing, and web design has generally been better for it.

------
pbateman
_We publish bracingly creative and intelligent journalism with a broad
worldview_

 _The financial crisis that recently engulfed much of the world wasn’t just a
cyclical decline or a correction or even a bubble bursting. It was a breaking
point. And its shockwaves exposed a fundamentally changed economic order with
new leaders and ways of doing business._

 _Our coverage of this new global economy is rooted in a set of defining
obsessions: core topics and knotty questions of seismic importance to business
professionals._

I hope the writing in their articles is more straightforward.

------
mherdeg
Reading a manifesto is probably not a good introduction to the site — it's a
bit "tell" instead of "show".

Submitted to news.ycombinator about ten hours ago, the qz.com "Check your US
tax rate for 2012-and every year since 1913" might show a little bit more of
the kind of interactive blah responsive blah storytelling multifluidic blah
they aim to do: [http://qz.com/37639/check-your-us-tax-rate-for-2012-and-
ever...](http://qz.com/37639/check-your-us-tax-rate-for-2012-and-every-year-
since-1913/)

~~~
nmcfarl
That article is a way better intro to the site and frankly sold me on qz.

The content is good - and not content I’d seen anywhere else. More of this
will keep me coming back.

\---

Link to the hn thread on that article:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4946820>

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tfb
I'm failing to see what all the fuss is about regarding the UI on this site.
It's relatively minimalistic, easy to navigate, and the header condensing to a
smaller version was slightly unexpected but I wouldn't call it "jarring" or a
deal-breaker by any means. Someone mentioned that Mashable has a great UI and
I'm going to have to strongly disagree. Mashable's UI is horribly cluttered
and much harder to decipher, while I had no problem whatsoever navigating and
understanding the Quartz site.

I did notice, however, that the header will drop back down when choosing
another link or scrolling back up to the top of an article regardless of
whether it's the top of the scroll area. This seems more like a bug than
anything, not something intentional to the UI.

------
jonknee
The future of news certainly is not UI code. Code is definitely important for
reporting, but much more so for analysis and much less so for delivery. If the
NY Times (or anyone else) uses code to crunch through millions of records and
finds an important story out of it, I will read that story in whatever format
they publish in. If it's not some whiz bang "tablet optimized" CMS, I don't
care at all. If I am readying your tablet optimized news site and you don't
have the important stories, I will stop reading.

tl;dr it's the content, stupid.

------
king_magic
I think the UI needs a lot of work. When I think of the future of news, I
think of something like Mashable's latest UI (which I personally think is
quite beautiful).

One comment - when I look at the top bar (side note: the automatic slide is
jarring and unnatural IMO), I see titles like "Low Interest Rates". That makes
me think of spam/advertisements.

Another one: "The Next Crisis"? Again, makes me think of spam.

I honestly just don't know what I'm looking at on this site. However, I think
with some work, this could be interesting.

~~~
stdbrouw
I don't really see how Mashable's UI is in any way new or different. The same
sidebar overdose and jumble of unrelated content thrown together on a page.
Maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part, but eventually I think publishers
will figure out that simpler is better. (Also see
[http://dashes.com/anil/2012/08/stop-publishing-web-
pages.htm...](http://dashes.com/anil/2012/08/stop-publishing-web-pages.html.))
And Quartz, although there's a couple of kinks in their app, is a step in that
direction.

Also, you're probably not their target audience. For someone who reads
business news, those "spammy" topic titles you talk about are all things e.g.
a Wall Street Journal reader is familiar with and cares about.

~~~
king_magic
I'm not far off from their target audience. I am a frequent reader of WSJ and
other similar publications, and when I see a "low interests rate" title
(especially without additional context), I still think of the crappy spam ads
you see on msnbc.com or cnn.com.

RE: mashable, to each their own, I personally like the layout; I thought it
was pretty simple. 3 columns, more detail as you go left to right.

Though I do agree on the sidebar overdose. I dislike that.

------
runawaybottle
I think better examples might be:

<http://usatoday.com>

and

<http://app.ft.com>

------
petercooper
An overreaching, irrelevant slogan title that says nothing. I'd assumed I'd be
taken to an interesting article, not a page of links to About Us type info.

------
tomp
I hope that the future UI of articles online is not scroll based; not on
computers and especially not on mobile devices. I much prefer the "several
pages of columns of text" layout, where I can swipe left/right or up/down to
read the previous/next pages. That way, I don't get completely lost when
scrolling.

------
delambo
I think a lot of the criticism in these comments is overblown. If anything, I
would expect more constructive criticism and feedback from fellow HNers.

Quartz is a fairly new site with a small dev team. The site has had some
kinks, but it is slowly coming together, and I think it has a lot of
potential.

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lewisflude
The bar of different categories is really confusing but I appreciate the idea
behind this.

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cmars
Does not work with Javascript disabled. Temporarily allow qz.com, still
broken. Lots of overly generic and/or suspicious tracking domains blocked. Tab
closed.

------
pdog
I've seen and read about Quartz and qz.com so many times... I still don't
_really_ know what they are or what they're for.

------
heymishy
am I the only person who gets a loading icon and no content? (Chrome
23.0.1271.97 m)

~~~
tatsuke95
Same.

I've seen a bunch of Quartz articles coming up in the variety of aggregators I
use. Unfortunately, they don't load.

Pro-tip: You're trying to get me to spend time reading your content. If I have
to mess with my browsing setup to do so, I'm going to skip your articles. And
I do.

------
pretoriusB
Nope: the future of news will be written in plain text.

Code might help it get some data, evaluate them, present them in addition to
the gist of the story.

But without the plain text, and without emphasis on the plain text, it's not
news: it's a lightshow.

