I often hear “I can’t read longer articles on the Internet” from friends. While that’s clearly due (in part) to the low resolution of PC monitors, frankly, most ad-supported sites are hideous.
Blinking, flashing and talking banner ads compete for our attention, and even if you stave off the need to click, you simply can’t avoid seeing the stuff out of the corner of your eye.
That’s why the Readability browser add-on caught my eye. An arc90 “labs” project, it strips away everything but article itself, shearing away the distractions and leaving only the story.
Example?
Here’s a screenshot of your average New York Times story:
The ad at the top is animated, and yes – it’s designed to interrupt your visit to the page. As is pretty much everything else.
Install the Readability add-on (you drag it to your browser toolbar), click, and this appears:
It’s a nifty tool – especially if you’re reading longer articles online.
It’s also another example of an attempt to de-clutter an increasingly cluttered online environment.
Most writer’s blogs have at least one post dedicated to things like clean-screen text editors, and eliminating distractions in the midst of the writing process.
Why not afford your reading time the same courtesy?
A “Clean Screen” Internet?
In the same vein, the always-provocative (and thoughtful) Carr wondered if the in-story hyperlink wasn’t the bounty we assumed it was, and asked if it shouldn’t be relegated to the end of the article.
Interestingly, the Readability folks incorporated just that suggestion into their tool, which will gather all the links and place them at the end of the story if you’d like.
The reaction to Carr’s suggestion wasn’t exactly what you call wholly positive, though it’s hardly surprising that a-list bloggers would resist such a change.
For many on the Internet, a link isn’t information as much as it is currency; a way for a less-trafficked blogger to gain the attention of an alpha dog, who can then return the favor.
In the larger sense, perhaps it’s time we recognized the limits of hyper-connectivity (and hyper-clutteritis).
You’ll note I didn’t gather the links at the bottom of this post. I think it’s an excellent idea for longer, less “how-to/what-to” pieces, but not really needed in a short, 500-word article.
Keep writing (and reading), Tom Chandler.
Ah, the hyperlink. Back in the salad days, *this* was the true revolution of the Internet. Without connections, there is no Internet. And without hyperlinks, there are no connections.
Of course the trick has always been to let the river flow, but eddie those surfers just long enough in your own little bend to get whatever it is you’re looking for (fame, fortune, a job). Blogs became the ultimate eddie for some of us. It also became the ultimate river (perhaps “canal” would be more apt?) with nepotist connections running more rampant than Garry Marshall film.
My take has always been to keep the hyperlinks in (where necessary) but to use “Open in New Window” so that when the visitor clicks off from that link, your page is still sitting there, waiting to be finished.
~Graham
Graham Strong(Quote) (Reply)
Hmm, just realized I didn’t connect the dots there quite well enough.
My take: leave the hyperlinks in *where they are*; otherwise, you have the reader running back and forth to the endnotes (always annoying — isn’t that one of the things hyperlinks solved?). By the time the reader gets to the hyperlink, clicks on it, reads what’s there, etc., it is already out of context.
Leave them in place (with the “Open in New Window” option) and let the reader decide if/when to follow.
~Graham
Graham Strong(Quote) (Reply)
I agree that aggregating hyperlinks at the end of a short article makes little sense.
But in a longer work (New Yorker length), the idea could have merit.
As reading shifts to online formats (browsers, ebook readers, smartphones, etc), I wonder if we won’t see the typographic conventions of hyperlinks shifting to a less-intrusive format.
Underlined blue type is pretty irritating, and I’m not thrilled about the bold type used in this theme (which I may get around to altering, though I like the faint underline).
Tom Chandler(Quote) (Reply)
I’ve never seen this kind of add on before. It looks pretty neat and I will be curious to see if others adopt this or similar technology to remove some of the clutter from webpages. I don’t think many advertisers would like this though–kind of like the FF buttion on a DVR for commercials.
Eric(Quote) (Reply)
A lot of web surfers are already using adblocker software – at least in this case, the advertisers might get a glance.
I think these tools do put the whole ad-supported model of content support under a bit of a cloud…
Tom Chandler(Quote) (Reply)