NYT Skimmer brings the paper browsing experience to the web

It's been a while that I'm trying to completely quit reading newspapers' and magazines' physical versions. However, there is something about the browsing experience we get from these media that is hard to replicate online.

For magazines, I find Zinio a very good attempt to solve this problem. It is not perfect, since it also replicates some of the "old school" magazine model, with weekly or monthly paid subscriptions. However, you really feel like you are turning pages and browsing the whole page.

For Newspaper, the NYT amd WSJ readers for the iPhone were a great first step. However, the need to browse many news on a larger pages were missing. Until now.

Skimmer is an online application offered by the NYT that provide a "paper-like" experience from your web browser. The image above shows it running on Jolicloud (the OS I run in my eee PC), but it can be run on any desktop or laptop.

According to their editors:

... our focus was on the fundamentals of the experience. It is empowering to spread so much information out on a table, so we spread as many stories as we can fit into the space of your screen. It is easier and more relaxing to scan a surface of information than flip through a stack, so information is laid out in a rigid two-dimensional grid. The sections do not flip into place; instead, they slide up and down. If you want to imagine the whole of the content as a giant uncut scroll of paper, don’t let us stop you.

They also comment on the commands built into the web app:

We’re also geeks, so there are plenty of keyboard commands for the efficiency lovers. The space bar takes you down a section, and shift-space brings you back up. Arrow keys do the same. You can navigate sections by holding down the “s” key (s for section), typing the number that appears, and releasing the “s” key. Same goes for articles, but with the “a” key (a for article). If you need a reminder, just click the “?” in the upper right corner.

The application does a great job in solving the browsing experience. They included nice transitions and the pages load very fast. However, when you click on an article, you get the  "web-like" long text strips that makes the in-screen reading somewhat boring. I'd like to see, as a next version, a way to provide the unstructured reading paths that mix texts, images and some callouts, another aspect that makes the off-line experience a pleasant one.

Skimmer is free and the only popular browser it won't run is IE6. Well, if your are reading this blog, you probably don't use IE6, so you'll likely be able to try it now.

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