Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Publishing: Future of magazines.

The online version of a magazine with the 'flip' function - why it doesn't work? It will work for awhile because it's 'different'. Different from the way content is consumed in traditional portal formats which are deemed 'tired'. However, I have some reservation utilizing this format for online magazines. If the magazine is 80% visually driven then perhaps it'll become more user friendly. But if it was as per traditional magazines, then the pull and click to drag function, zooming in and out will simply prove to be more of a chore than being functional eventually.

Simply because it's not optimized by the current hardware that we have. For travellers who are always mobile, they may not even have a mouse. How would this fare if our screen was small and we're dependant on the mouse pad? How would this fare if you zoom in to read the text but have to keep scrolling from side to side to read the entire paragraph? How does these 'movements' compromise readability and disrupt the entire visual experience? These 'barriers' accumulate and soon after, we just lose the audience.

But compare to this:

The tables turn when we utilize touch screen tablets which allow swift movements like how we would with a real magazine, as featured here by Mag+. Now, here's a different discussion. Till we're supported by efficient hardware such as these, let's just stick to the easy-to-read, easy-to-navigate portals yea? I didn't say anything about needing to look boring, did I?

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