Posted by brandonthedeveloper at May 24th, 2008
I downloaded the NYT mac reader yesterday morning and I guess the most impressive thing about the experience was that it installed and ran on the first try. For me, the whole point of using a technology like the Flash Player or Silverlight is to engage the user and take advantage of the limitless ’space’ not normally available to most html based apps. If you are going to offer (basically) static content, there are easier roads to follow. If you are looking for an app to quickly scan the NY Times, this is not the app to use.
Some thoughts:
First, it’s not a true SL standalone app. The FAQ states, “Times Reader for the Mac is a native Cocoa application, which uses the Safari toolkit and Silverlight to render the pages.”. I’m not saying that’s bad but I don’t think that counts towards a true SL standalone on the mac.
It’s slow loading. Why would you try to load the whole paper at once? Seems like unnecessary bandwidth usage. It would be a lot faster to load in the section ‘home’ pages and then load articles as they are called by the user. Also, I expect to see the front page from the current date when I open the reader. Not the front page from the last day I looked at the reader.
I think its commendable that the Times devs go to such great lengths to preserve the layout of the paper in digital form. However, I think an option for a more *readerish* view would allow for faster scanning of sections/articles. The fact that you can only resize to specified sizes just reinforces my point about having a more *readerish* view.
Section dropdown menus are too narrow and wrap article titles making them harder to read. They also have no rollover effect to show the user their current choice. But, rolling over section dropdown items do fire rollover effects for the page articles underneath even though they are not the current target.
The navigation is different from the online NYT navigation. I don’t see the point in training users to go from a paper mindset to using the web and then changing the navigation on the desktop. Users have an expectation of how to use an app based on prior knowledge. Changing the navigation based on platform seems like a short road to frustration.
I do realize this is beta software and any or all of my usability comments could be in the process of being fixed right now. Nothing like a million users to find flaws you didn’t think were flaws. ;)
I’m not trying to bash SL here (I am curious as to what part of it is eating 140 megs just sitting there). Most of my issues are from a usability stand point. The Times reader for the mac is not what I would call a Silverlight showcase item but at the same time, it does reaffirm the big move in RIA development to the desktop.
