Opera News

Originally posted by AleksOD:

Originally posted by Chas4:

Originally posted by decodedthought:

It is interesting to see what happens when you inject the necessary css code into normal webpages to see how they cope. Good pages with proper semantical markup can be paged quite easy and in astonishingly good quality this way (I already played around with that ) and pages with crappy non-semantical markup become even crappier.

Omg, I need to experiment with this on my webshop

Originally posted by jottosson:

Omg, I need to experiment with this on my webshop

YES! Send us a link and we'll pass it around internally here at Opera.

HAIL HLN!!! \o/

I wonder whether you've already received some reactions from other companies (Mozzila, Google, MS) on this?

This will really strike hard against the iTunes "news-as-application" model, especially that juicy cut from the subscription price. Back to direct reading on the publisher's site?

That is what we can really refer as pages!

Originally posted by hellspork:

Back to direct reading on the publisher's site?

Only if the publisher puts the content online for browsers that are capable to reformat it - and I think it won't be for free. "Apps" are like subscriptions for printed newspapers a sure thing when it comes to money, because the person who bought an app uses it. There are too many distractions (meaning: other web pages you could visit) if you use a browser

I would lik more the explication

Now you have a way of setting aside a whole page for an advertisement in the middle of an article. When done right this can be both very effective and in good taste: it gives you more of the experience of reading a magazine.

WTF?

Better ads. Nicer layout + easier to skip. One page halfway through is MUCH better than flashing bars that crowd in from all sides.

Originally posted by QuHno:

It is interesting to see what happens when you inject the necessary css code into normal webpages to see how they cope. Good pages with proper semantical markup can be paged quite easy and in astonishingly good quality this way (I already played around with that and pages with crappy non-semantical markup become even crappier.

How does it differ from some of the online books already on the web doing that?

Having asked the obvious, I can't find an example. I don't count Google Books as they are unreadable and I couldn't find the one I was looking for from the Gutenberg portal though I think I found a link to it there some time ago.

Originally posted by Weatherlawyer:

How does it differ from some of the online books already on the web doing that?

No PDFs or other browser plugins, no fancy custom javascript libraries. A page should look like an entirely normal browser page; if your browser supports those extra couple instructions, it paginates the content and prepares keyboard navigation for easy reading.

So now we need some examples.

Is the Gutenberg repository available in this new style?
They do store stuff as HTML.

It would be easy to write a UserCSS patch or browser extension, and try it.

Originally posted by hellspork:

No PDFs or other browser plugins, no fancy custom javascript libraries. A page should look like an entirely normal browser page; if your browser supports those extra couple instructions, it paginates the content and prepares keyboard navigation for easy reading.

In that case it is brilliant. I hate having to read some PDFs, their authors have no idea what pleasant set out is, fonts too small, too many columns (WTH do they need two columns on a page?) and no space between lines.

That's the worst one, you can't follow a line and it makes your eyes ache.

And that is a matter of taste. Some people are more comfortable with longer lines, some with shorter lines. It would be nice if they added standard definition for picking your own font size and number of columns, reading the stored preference.

Hi,

I've jumped here from the text of "Opera in 2011" written by Anna Rohleder(AnnaMetro). Wednesday, December 28, 2011 and published on the "Opera News" page.

Firstly, summery - Paged Media is total B.S. It's a cranky idea to cram the manyfold Universe of real life onto two-dimensional screen of IT monitors.

Why B.S.?

Many years ago a lot of efforts were put into creation of Desktop metaphor onto PC world. Vide IBM OS/2 and Microsoft Windows with the first having far more better implementation of the idea.

Perhaps no one paid attention to the man's ability to "read throu images" (RTI) and psychology of vision. Desktop was the Holy Grail of home computing. What I mean by RTI is the man's ability to have a glance around to have an overall image of all shelves, documents on a desk, etc.

Meanwhile the two operating systems tried to squeeze the same RTI image into 15" screen! Screen replete with zillions of icons as graphical representatives of real world objects. Have you ever tried to cope with the "additional" information which demands from user's brain additional processing for translating from the icons to the real objects and vice versa? Have you ever tried to deal with those subsubsub(...)folders as a substitute of second directory of fifth document, put in 12th binder in 3rd drawer of 7th cabinet? Did you opened 40 windows and stack them one behind another on 15" screen, where finding the needed one was a road through hell?

That's why Total Commander and other File Managers were still being developed and never left the PC world with "Desktop metaphor". Never ever!

The Desktop metaphor was doomed from the beginning or a dead end street. The same is/will be with Paged Media - it is highly artificial way of doing "real" things in highly artificial aka digitized world. It is an art for an art. A concept without a "prove".

Why the press didn't copied the real layout of their paper issues? With the first page (cover) over a magazine page over a foreign affairs page, etc. just as it is in real world when one reading the newspaper in a subway turns the pages from one to another? After all every newspaper has its own unique graphical and content layouts. They still think that man is able to read or understand the hundreds small thumbnails and associated with them one or two sentence texts. It is impossible due to human constraints but they still try to sell out their wrong on-line layouts.

So it is the Newspepers that should make changes not browsers. As one of comenters - QuHno (Friday, October 21, 2011 6:14:08 AM) noticed - "Only if the publisher puts the content online for browsers that are capable to reformat it - and I think it won't be for free. "Apps" are like subscriptions for printed newspapers a sure thing when it comes to money, because the person who bought an app uses it. There are too many distractions (meaning: other web pages you could visit) if you use a browser."

On the other hand, is there a real difference between changing pages horizontally with Paged Media technique or vertically via sliders? I do not need the graphical "marvels", what I need is a quick access to needed information. Information served with context, e.g. other thumbnails leading to similar topics (the video above showed pristine, virgin images of pages with only one kind of text belonging to one article; too clinically clean for me).

Perhaps the idea behind the Paged Media has a non-zero chance to be usefully implemented in tablers (TABLet + computER; tablet is an input device for graphical applications, mostly) or any bigger(!) hand-held devices but not for full fledged PCs or small phones. But even in that case you should do more to convince me to the project.

Someone said recently that tablers are gadgets only and they are not suitable for a real work. I do agree. Opera has problems with many websites why to add another top-layer to the existing HTML-CSS-JS mess then?

If Mr Håkon Wium Lie really loves books as he claims so let them thrive in real instead creating another digital ersatz for real objects. It'd be better to modularized Opera (if possible) than adding to it another functionality, this time unnecessary, artificial (out of both worlds - digital and analog) and not worth implementing in every Opera flavors - if ever.

Regards