> After 25 years, why do web designers need to create their own page transition mechanics for long-form articles
Why do you need page transitions for articles at all? The only reason I can think of is for more ad displays. Ok, if you have, say, a long manual with multiple chapters that would be several hundred pages when printed it can be nice to break it up, but that's probably not what you meant.
> photo galleries - after 25 years, why isn't there a standard user experience for viewing photos related to articles?
Because there's no one size fits all solution. Look into magazines, newspapers, etc. After a few centuries there is still no standard. Grouped, with captions, position, size, etc.
> why do we need to write CSS to create a basic readable document in the first place
You don't. Browsers can display semantic markup just fine without any CSS. The fact that you even ask this question is why you write CSS, because different people in different times expect different styling, and they don't think the default style is pretty. I agree that the default styles could be improved though after 20 years, but that could lead to breakage of current CSS styles, and why risk that if everybody uses CSS anyway?
And the fact that I wrote this comment is just another reason why you have to write CSS: because not everybody agrees on how the web should look.
It looks like you've brought up the most important point: the design of a page is altered based on advertising revenue.
90% of the JS being loaded is for tracking to increase advertising revenue. Much of the styling for a site that has no advertising can be fairly light.
If we focused less on revenue generation we'd have a much much smoother web experience that would run quickly on mobile devices.
> If we focused less on revenue generation we'd have a much much smoother web experience that would run quickly on mobile devices.
I would flip that: we need to explore ways to generate revenue which don't rely on practices like trackers, structuring content to inflate page-views, etc. which don't benefit the user.
The most obvious example I'd use is ArsTechnica's approach of disabling ads for subscribers – I notice this any time I use a new browser and pages take twice as long to load because web performance just isn't a priority in the ad world.
>>> If we focused less on revenue generation we'd have a much much smoother web experience
But then rather than poor content, there would be next to no content (for the masses) because business have expenses ;)
Speaking seriously, yeah I see what you mean. Maybe reducing ads and improving speed would result in better UX, which would lead to better user retention, which would leave to more ad clicks. But that's a lot of maybes. Why risk that if people are used to ads? Ads often come when subscription is not an option.
You can explore other revenue sources (e.g. affiliate) but they are usually not widely applicable. And other than that, there's not much to do. I don't really think there exists a business model which could replace ads (when, again, subscription is not an option).
On a related note, I think depending on ad revenues is not such a sustainable practice. Its a feast or famine strategy and eventually a lot of businesses are going to realize that. Targeted marketing improves this, but the greater the noise, the more our brains learn to ignore it. Subscription or sponsorship models are a tougher sell but provide more loyalty and consistency for free content.
> Ok, if you have, say, a long manual with multiple chapters that would be several hundred pages when printed it can be nice to break it up, but that's probably not what you meant.
Actually yes this is the use-case I was referring to.
HTML has semantics to define sections, headers, etc.. but it doesn't manage them in any way.
If you write HTML that define sections, for example, it's no different than if you write HTML without sections.
What is your opinion of the section-structured HTML documentation itself? http://www.w3.org/TR/html/ It's all neatly sectioned with anchor links and so on.
Section and header tags were standardized last year, it's definitely too early to tell how browsers will handle them, but with the ubiquity of CSS and for the reasons I already mentioned I doubt they will ever get any styling, unless maybe for when no CSS was defined at all.
Ultimately, I don't think of the web as a page-based medium, it's document-based. Electronic documents that want to mimic pages are a relic from the past, imo. What you seem to want should probably be implemented as browser plugins.
> Why do you need page transitions for articles at all? The only reason I can think of is for more ad displays.
What I read was that it's not for "more ad displays", although closely related. It's because news sites keep (and market themselves based on) a "pageviews" metric, so they try to get as many pageviews as possible out of each piece of content.
Have you tried to disable pagination in reading apps like iBooks or Instapaper?
Long articles and books are more comfortable to read if they are paginated: one small tap, one pageful of new stuff. Far more convenient and less prone to losing your place than scrolling.
Not only do I disagree, I would argue its subjective. I much prefer one long article instead of paginated articles and will regularly refuse to continue past the first page on principal.
You may like pagination but I do not, and I would argue its better suited as an option, not dictated by the author.
Using pages to display text is fine. I regularly use space to scroll a page down when reading a long text in the browser because it is more pleasant than constantly scrolling. But fixed pages should not be part of the document markup in most cases. Reading a PDF on my phone is not a pleasure just because I can't just flow the text to fit my device.
I do most of my long-form reading on devices that don't have a space key.
I am not talking about fixed pages or clickbait websites where you have to scroll anyway and then click a "Next" button, but about having a flexible way to enable pagination of content.
That pagination is one of the reasons why for me the best way to read something like the stories in http://longreads.com/ is on Instapaper (or a similar tool).
Yes. I gave pagination in Instapaper a try, and turned it off after about an hour. I tried to turn it off in iBooks, but there doesn't seem to be any such option in the iOS version.
Why do you need page transitions for articles at all? The only reason I can think of is for more ad displays. Ok, if you have, say, a long manual with multiple chapters that would be several hundred pages when printed it can be nice to break it up, but that's probably not what you meant.
> photo galleries - after 25 years, why isn't there a standard user experience for viewing photos related to articles?
Because there's no one size fits all solution. Look into magazines, newspapers, etc. After a few centuries there is still no standard. Grouped, with captions, position, size, etc.
> why do we need to write CSS to create a basic readable document in the first place
You don't. Browsers can display semantic markup just fine without any CSS. The fact that you even ask this question is why you write CSS, because different people in different times expect different styling, and they don't think the default style is pretty. I agree that the default styles could be improved though after 20 years, but that could lead to breakage of current CSS styles, and why risk that if everybody uses CSS anyway?
And the fact that I wrote this comment is just another reason why you have to write CSS: because not everybody agrees on how the web should look.