Normally I don't comment (at all) on posts like this, but this is just bad.
The comments overlay cover up the very text that you're suppose to be reading. This disrupts the reading flow, making it hard to find my way back to where I was reading, especially comments are merely secondary to the actual article. To get back to the article I have to press this tiny close button on the top left corner of the comments overlay. Plus, there's a huge amount of whitespace to the right of the article which you're not using http://i.imgur.com/1JvLWQP.png - why cover important content, leaving large amount of screen space unused when there's perfectly good unused space on the right?
The pagination scheme is terrible. The article is a blog post, not a book. And even if it were, no one would want to read something on screens. (Edit: Firefox 21 beta. I see Chrome that has transitions, which means this is not actually poor performance, but simply missing transitions. I still don't see any reason why Firefox shouldn't have transitions, though) The performance is terrible. I can count seconds between me clicking on the next page button and the next page actually showing up, with no feedback whatsoever that the page is loading.
Document annotation and comment UI isn't hard. When Microsoft Word has you beat in terms of UI, you're probably doing something very wrong.
Interesting points, thanks. I'd disagree with comments being merely secondary to the actual article though. Our point is that inline commentary, if done well, should be as important as the content itself.
The comments overlay cover up the very text that you're suppose to be reading. This disrupts the reading flow, making it hard to find my way back to where I was reading, especially comments are merely secondary to the actual article. To get back to the article I have to press this tiny close button on the top left corner of the comments overlay. Plus, there's a huge amount of whitespace to the right of the article which you're not using http://i.imgur.com/1JvLWQP.png - why cover important content, leaving large amount of screen space unused when there's perfectly good unused space on the right?
The pagination scheme is terrible. The article is a blog post, not a book. And even if it were, no one would want to read something on screens. (Edit: Firefox 21 beta. I see Chrome that has transitions, which means this is not actually poor performance, but simply missing transitions. I still don't see any reason why Firefox shouldn't have transitions, though) The performance is terrible. I can count seconds between me clicking on the next page button and the next page actually showing up, with no feedback whatsoever that the page is loading.
Document annotation and comment UI isn't hard. When Microsoft Word has you beat in terms of UI, you're probably doing something very wrong.