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The New York Times released a special reader application built in Adobe AIR this past weekend. It's a pretty slick application, and an example of AIR done right.
The reader is similar to the International Herald Tribune reader application that was demoed at Adobe MAX last year. As far as I've been able to tell, that application was never publicly released until now.
The NYT application excels in providing a good user experience in most regards. One of the coolest features is the way the text flows as the window is resized. When large enough the application gives you 3 columns of text; size it down and they flow into 2. The article also has some handy navigation features, letting you search articles, move between sections, and quickly move to the next page. I also like how the "latest news" page shows you a condensed view of the articles, focusing on the headline.
The reader also has an innovative image viewer view, which lets you see the image in your current story in an expanded view and quickly browse to other images:
The "browse" view shows the different stories expanded in cards, iPhone style, and provides a nice graphical way to select between stories:
Lastly, the application features a revamped crossword section. The crossword provides a great user experience, visually connecting questions with rows in the puzzle and letting you check your answers as you go.
As a whole, the application does a better job replicating the "newspaper" experience than reading in the browser. I feel like I've set down to do a specific task, and feel less likely to be pulled off to other random sites on the web (for better or worse.)
My only complaints about the application are small or have nothing to do with the technology. First, the mouse-wheel implementation causes weird things to happen on my mac. Sometimes it scrolls, sometimes it doesn't, and sometimes it scrolls the opposite direction. Flash doesn't support the wheel very well natively, so I can understand the difficulty, though I'm sorry this was something the development team couldn't tackle.
Second, I really don't like that more than half of the content for this application requires a paid subscription to the NYT. The pricing model is reduced for online content, but still expensive: at $3.45 a week, I'm looking at paying $180 a year to read content someone else will probably give me for free. Is your opinion really worth that much, New York Times? This is part of Rupert Murdoch's big push to make users pay for all Newscorp content, but as a person who grew up with the free internet it leaves a bad taste in my mouth and makes me less likely to use the app. I understand that advertising won't pay for everything, but when I'm already too busy to keep up with my RSS reader it's unlikely I'll pay this much to read your digital news.
Otherwise the application is more or less flawless. Clean design and great execution make this a stellar user experience, and something other companies should strive to emulate. Even more impressive, I've had this application running on my machine all morning and haven't noticed any of the performance problems people complain about with Adobe AIR. This is a true testament to the ability to deliver great experiences with AIR technology.
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The Crossword image doesn't work, the rest of the article is great, thanks for the info.
"...to read content someone else will probably give me for free"
Yes, but for how long? High end journalism is going to cost somewhere along the line. If they can't make money via print (that until now has subsidized "free" online viewing), then everyone will need to start paying for content sooner or later - whether in subscription fees or advertising.
I agree with you on the cost of the content. It should be a bit lower, and frankly it seems more natural to pay for the app, and not the content but perhaps that is weird and is just because I am a developer. I would probably pay $10 or more for the app, especially if I could view other newspapers, content.
This application is one of the best designed AIR system I ever installed on my computer. It was an unexpectedly brilliant user experience. One more time, the tech guys from the New York Times did a great an inspirational work. Many newspapers should follow their path.
I disagree on your opinion towards the business model. You are sitting in the right place to know that development has a cost, and this particular application must have cost way more than the average AIR app you can download for free. Not mentioning the journalists work... And the marketing is good here : the feeling of reading a real newspaper is omnipresent, and so you feel like you should pay for it, right?
In every point it is brilliant work. Bravo!
The scrolling is disturbing, but you can feel the developers wanted it to be like that, the small tweet effect speaks of itself ; you are led to display the content the best way for your eyes. I wish they revert back to a normal browser feeling soon, or maybe till then I would have been used to it.
It is true that the tarifation is expansive, and myself wouldn't pay this much as well.
Sorry I did a mistake in my previous comment, "the small tweet effect"... "tweet" was meant to be "tween". And yes, it is very annoying actually.
The developers that NYT used indeed did a very nice job. It indeed gives the closest experience to browsing a newspaper that there is.
However, this is not going to save the NYT. And the reason is that if you go to Google News and search on the term "Bilderberg" in order to bring up news items on the globalist Bilderberg Group's meeting of 2009 being held in Vouliagmeni, Greece, none of the links are from the NYT.
In other words, the NYT has no credibility as a news organization, but instead self-censors itself on behalf of the Bilderberg agenda.
The fact that the NYT, and other large corporate media organs, are stooges for these self-anointed globalist is the reason the news reading public doesn't give a shit about them anymore.
The NYT only reports the news that the Bilderberg globalist approve to be filtered down to the masses.
http://news.google.com/news?pz=1&ned=us&hl=en&q=bilderberg