h1. tt post about article design - mon, sep 8, 2015

I'd pay nice money for a Blade subscription if the article pages looked something like this:

bq. http://toledotalk.com/last-alarm.html  - --(blatant copyright violation. will remove later.)--

... instead of this:

bq. http://www.toledoblade.com/Police-Fire/2014/01/31/Last-Alarm-rings-for-fallen-heroes.html

... or this:

bq. http://m.toledoblade.com/Police-Fire/2014/01/31/Last-Alarm-rings-for-fallen-heroes.html


br. I don't need a printed paper version. I don't need an app. I prefer one website that responds *comfortably* on all devices, loads fast, no mountains of JavaScript bilge, no huge irrelevant images, no ads, no trackers and other  gobbledygook  that bog down page load speed. It would be nice if the article page contained a large-ish font size and a lot of negative space.

I see no need for a bunch of navigation links in the header and footer areas of an article page. The only link needed is a link to the home page. The reader can find all the site's link cruft on the home page.

The only other acceptable link on an article page would be a link to a separate page that contains the Facebook comments, pertaining to the article. If I'm a buying a subscription, I don't want to see Facebook comments loaded on the same page as the article because that slows down the page load and fouls the overall look of the page.  

Give non-paying customers the hideous views, and give subscribers something worth buying. Until this utopia exists, I'll continue reading with JavaScript disabled, which improves the web-viewing experience a lot.


br. While not perfect, good design ideas for an article page can be obtained from this site.

bq. http://motherfuckingwebsite.com

Excerps:

q.
Let me describe your perfect-ass website:

* Shit's lightweight and loads fast
* Fits on all your shitty screens
* Looks the same in all your shitty browsers
* The motherfucker's accessible to every asshole that visits your site
* Shit's legible and gets your fucking point across (if you had one instead of just 5mb pics of hipsters drinking coffee)

bq. "Good design is as little design as possible."
- some German motherfucker

q..


 #media - #reading - #web - #design