Nik Fletcher, in On this Safari 5 Reader Hysteria, discusses
the hyperreaction of many link-baiting web publishers to Apple's new
Safari Reader feature, which strips sidebar material such as adverts,
placed links, comments, and syndication buttons from pages to leave
the principal content, the writing that drew the reader to the web
page. Nik sums up his reaction:
Amen to that. If anything, instead of this belligerent whinging, web
publishers should wise up that people visit their sites to read
content. Safari Reader does hide ads, after they - along with the
almost-constant barrage of "Share This", "Tweet This", "Buzz This"
bullshit - are shown alongside each post, and above all: it's not
mandatory to use, or enforced any more than the RSS button. Perhaps
instead of flamebait posts of "Apple are out to get us" media
companies should be asking themselves "how did reading content
online become so sucky"?
There's at least a little irony that Nik's own site has such a high
proportion of its layout geometry devoted to non-content material:
half as much width as the principal content is taken with syndication
"bullshit", and the end of the article devotes a lot of vertical space
to reciprocal links — his own site does not seem to value the
reading experience emphatically above marketing value. But I agree
with what he says; indeed, if he has felt the same need to sacrifice
usability to visibility as the link baiters he so despises, that
actually can only support his point.
The Google era, that which provided browsers with effective tools for
finding the kind of content that reasonably competent web browsers were
looking for, made web content an important repository of knowledge,
one that could be weighed in value against the now-traditional content
available in physical bookstores and libraries. This advance
constitutes a fundamental increase in the usefulness, both
intellectual and practical, of the sum of public human knowledge.
Against that, the Google era began with the technology and craft of
both internet typography and layout lagging far behind that of print, in
terms of supporting readability. And since then, the situation has
become worse: the link-baiting publisher now values the published content
only in drives up visibility, that is, both in attracting vistors to the site who are influenced
by the sidebar content, to perform such actions as clicking on
adverts, so earning per-click income, or in syndicating the URL via
Twitter, so driving up the site's PageRank. Worse still, the
competition that print publications face from online content has
driven many publishers to make deep cuts into their editing and
typesetting functions,
leading to an easily observed decline in quality — a decline in standards
that has impacted accuracy and must surely have impacted readability.
So the Google era makes it easier for readers find the kind of
material they are looking for, but it has undermined the readability
and accuracy that is then read. For most readers, most of the time,
this is a better situation, but many kinds of reader, for whom
accuracy is critical or whose sought information will demand close attention
to the text, it may have become harder to find material that meets
their needs. Publishers who maintain traditional editorial and
typesetting standards have become fewer; the costs borne have become
a badge of quality like the tail feathers of a peacock. Or, to put it
another way, the needs of the many have been mat at the expense of the
needs of an important few.
Innovations such as Safari Reader, together with good technical work
that has been improving digital layout and typography, by raising the
typesetting standards of web-distributed content, may make more visible
the difference between well-edited and poorly edited content.
At least, that is my hope.
