24 May 2003 | Brandon said...

I feel like the IHT site is really overrated. Everyone sings its praises, but it feels like a bunch of hacks thrown together.

24 May 2003 | Steve said...

On Safari the page is a big mess.

24 May 2003 | Steven Garrity said...

I've always thought the IHT site looked great and was well implemented, but most of the feature seem to showcase the technology rather than enhance readability. Beautiful site though, and some neat tricks.

24 May 2003 | Anthony Baker said...

Anyone ever implement the hack -- or one line it -- elsewhere? I've been a fan of the IHT site, and have monkeyed with the script that creates the three-column layout, but haven't seen anyone else do it and haven't really gotten it to run successfully myself.

Here's a link to the script.

24 May 2003 | esnet said...

As a continuance of Steve's comment with the addition of Anthony's link: Not only do the pages become awfully muddled when using Safari, but they also have the potential of causing a seizure.

25 May 2003 | Al said...

I remember there being a pretty extended discussion on one of my mailing lists on the usability of their approach, although I can't remember which. CHI-Web? SIGIA? Something like that. I'll dig it up when I get back home in 16 hours - I'm flying home from Japan today! Sorry, couldn't help the bragging... :)

25 May 2003 | Al said...

I remember there being a pretty extended discussion on one of my mailing lists on the usability of their approach, although I can't remember which. CHI-Web? SIGIA? Something like that. I'll dig it up when I get back home in 16 hours - I'm flying home from Japan today! Sorry, couldn't help the bragging... :)

25 May 2003 | abhi said...

hi,
yea saw the IHT site some months back. it looks good. pretty good.

u would want to check out a column making dhtml API by Dan/Michael at 13th Parallel

26 May 2003 | alisha said...

I guess Im out of the loop, I just discovered it by chance. What percentage of the market is safari so far? I guess its not worth downloading it until its more standards compliant?
---
I remember there being a pretty extended discussion on one of my mailing lists on the usability of their approach, although I can't remember which. CHI-Web? SIGIA?
---
Have a safe trip - would be nice to have a link to your discussion.

26 May 2003 | hurley#1 said...

What percentage of the market is safari so far? I guess its not worth downloading it until its more standards compliant?

It's a minor share of the market (probably 1 percent or less, since it's available only for OS X for Macintosh and last I heard more than 50 percent of Mac owners are still using OS 9 or earlier), but more importantly it's still in beta. There's not much point in redesigning a page to accommodate software that's still in beta.

That said, Safari has emerged as the browser of choice for most OS X users, and will probably remain so.

26 May 2003 | Tom Harpel said...

Safari excels at standards compliance, second only to Mozilla/Camino. It is certainly better at CSS rendering than IE or Opera.

As for IHT's widgetiness, Brandon's comment has my vote. The weather map, clippings, and, yes, three column navigation feel more like scripting technology demonstrations than usability improvements.

IHT should get kudos for the generous allotment of white space on their home page. I think that does improve readability over, say, the BBC's home page (though the BBC text-only page still has 'em beat) or CNN.com (I'm not linking to that crap).

26 May 2003 | Anthony Baker said...

Responding to Abhi's comments:

I recall having seen this column API about the same time as I came across the source code for the IHT hack. Frankly, I like the IHT implementation better, particularly given that you can switch the number of columns (from three to two to one). The 13th Parallel version doesn't allow for this, as you know.

Again -- anyone know of another implementation of columns? I know there's a proposal going to the WC3 for a column standard for XHTML/CSS, but that could take years to implement knowing how slowly these things go.

The IHT hack is pretty old now, isn't it? Over a year at least. Am wondering if anything more recent/brilliant has rolled out.

26 May 2003 | walrusjb said...

Dave Hyatt (writes WebCore for Safari) had a bit about this in his blog a while back... it's working in updated (i.e. the forthcoming Public Beta 3) versions - the degredation was caused by Overflow:auto if memory serves correctly.

I still like the approach, though it could use a revision or two on execution. The author said he was "only interested in building a news reading app" or something similar, and that he did the job for a low enough cost that IHT had to sign off on whatever he wanted to do. Apparently a 6 month build? Interesting idea, and not a bad read in practice... there are some usability nuggets to be pulled from it (the panel-level linking to the next "page" for instance).

26 May 2003 | Jim Jones said...

Here is an interview with John Weir, from smokinggun.com:

http://www.ordinary-life.net/blog/archives/001117.php

27 May 2003 | Mixm said...

I think the IHT-web is great. Still now, a while after it's release, it still got that crispy click-friendly look. Great typography as well.

27 May 2003 | Darrel said...

IHT has always been an admirable site. The presentation/layout is quite usable. The widgets are just bells and whistles. I admire them for trying.

I'm not a big fan of columns online.

As for Safari, remember it's using KHTML as the rendering engine...which is also on Linux, so KHTML--if not safari--is probably something you want to start designing for soon.

28 May 2003 | Sander said...

Shame the site misdetects the Opera browser, unless it identifies itself as being Mozilla. The page works just fine then, but if identified as Opera or IE the page looks plain and ugly.

29 May 2003 | Brian said...

One thing I would like to ask the other readers concerning the IHT site. walrusjb mentions the panel-level linking as a good thing, but I have always been rather annoyed by it.

What I was wondering is, does anyone else like to highlight text with their mouse while reading on the computer? This always makes me go to the next page on the IHT site (A lot too -- I'm in the habit of hightlighting a single paragraph maybe 2-3 times!)

If I am the only person to do this, I guess it's not much of a usability problem. But if there are many of you out there, I don't see how implementing panel-level linking is a good usability decision.

29 May 2003 | clare said...

If you go to smoking gun , you can see John Weir's design process of getting his site through IHT, it started off a little different from where it is now. Its rare that you can see the design process, so that was a treat. On another note I just wanted to say that I love this site (IHT that is ... smokinggun.com is impossible!)

29 May 2003 | dan stillman said...

The IHT is pretty ugly now. It used to be a well designed site, but the pages are pretty trashed now with poorly placed banner ads and the design has not been kept up.

As for people complaining about not liking the column articles, just turn it off. There is a button which will default articles to single column view, with a good old fashion scroll bar.

I think that two columns should have been used, rather than three. Three is kind of silly and pointless.

The Clippings are good, especially when you go to

http://www.iht.com/articleindex.html

That page is beautiful, forget the home page. (Also no ad banners!)

The World map has become less useful. It used to have financial information attached to it as well.

As for smokinggun it is pretty damn ugly.

30 May 2003 | Mixm said...

"pretty damn ugly"

Great design analysis. ;-)

30 May 2003 | vsync said...

I notice that it freaks out if I try making the font bigger than their sadly common "this page best viewed by squinting" selection. Therefore it loses.

Plus, columns are unnatural. They work great in print, but simply do not translate to the screen. When will these people learn to stop treating all media alike? I guess if all you have is a hammer...

31 May 2003 | Anthony Baker said...

A few points that folks noted:

(1) You can turn columns off, going to essentially one column, or you can go to two columns if you like. I personally think the column idea is interesting, because it does make reading a bit easier -- given the whole "bite size chunk" way it presents copy. And, again, you are in control.

(2) As also noted, the end site wasn't necessarily what John wanted in the beginning. It's how it ended up, given budget constraints. Sounds like he made the site on the cheap, and given its functionality, hats off to him.

And now a question:

What do folks think of the clippings feature? Was checking this out on the site again today (following a link to an IHT story from another weblog) and I forgot how much I dig it. John also offers the script for that feature -- anyone know if it's more cross-platform and easier to implement than the column feature?

Clippings might prove especially useful as a feature for weblogging, or larger content sites.

/Ant

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