Comment by danso | Hacker News Reader

Comment by danso | Hacker News Reader

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Thank you for taking questions and I apologize for sounding belligerent, I haven't had my coffee yet :)

Can you explain the rationale (besides that it's the default behavior for Bootstrap breakpoints) for making the iPad portrait mode similar to what I imagine the phone version is? Here's what I see on my (Retina) iPad:

http://imgur.com/GUoDwOQ

It's not that the Ukraine crisis isn't important, but this is the kind of treatment I would expect if Ukraine and Russia broke out into full fledged war. In fact, what would the BBC front page look like (on the iPad, or not-full-screen desktop) if war broke out? The current catch-all-and-put-it-into-a-uniform-box doesn't leave much room to emphasize anything. Furthermore, if BBC's top story of the day happened to be something like, well, "China sets growth, defence targets" (which is currently the second story)...I can't imagine this doing anything but killing the habit of visiting BBC as an impulse, because after awhile, as a reader, I'm trained to think that the BBC has ONE BIG STORY...and often, that story is boring.

But as a developer, I see this as, well, they're just using the default breakpoints in Bootstrap. So is that going to be changed? Or is this really what everyone has signed off on? And if so, what are the contingencies? I mean, that is, what happens if: a) War or something like 9/11 * 10 breaks out? or b) Justin Bieber gets arrested for peeing again (more likely)? What are the mockups for those scenarios, and how do they look different than what I've posted in the above link?

edit: And this is what the "Most Read" tab looks like, in every implementation, including stretched browser:

http://i.imgur.com/ulgdLm1.png

I'm assuming that will be changed, but speaking for experience, it's non-trivial to reorganize the fundamental content blocks, especially to add them. I think this is where mobile-first is especially troublesome for content-heavy sites...and in many situations, this kind of view (even though it is given extremely high prominence as the second of 2 tabs) will be left as is, either out of neglect or because, eh, at least it's legible. But what a waste of screen real estate.

Hi,

I'm not sure why you think we're using bootstrap, we're not. Everything in our code base is bespoke (with the exception of jQuery 2). As a result, we get to choose our breakpoints, and they're flexible for now (there's a lot of movement before we go to the next one).

The iPad in portrait mode doesn't have the available width to show the second column without cramming the stories in the main column.

We settled on the breakpoints we have due to the amount of devices we want to offer our content on. We're a service that's trying to work on as many devices as possible, from Nokia 100s to modern desktop browsers. So we did the logical thing of splitting devices into groups, feature phones, smart phones, tablets, and above (desktop & TVs). Some of the larger screened Android phones cause issues since they have a massive resolution, but can't display content as a tablet because it would be hard to read.

You're right, we don't have volume settings right now, so we can't emphasise any of the stories except to make them the "top" story. We haven't got to that point yet, we are after all in beta. All I can say is it will come.

I can't comment on editorial context, just the technology.

The most read functionality is being worked on to be richer.

Thanks :)

Thanks for answering...like I said, it's early, and I'm obviously projecting my various development/design failures on to your team :). And I'm showing my ignorance of frameworks in general, implying that Bootstrap is the Inventor of all Breakpoints (though I don't consider using Bootstrap bad at all, just that its default handling of iPad is similar to the BBC's beta).

I guess I just suspect that news editors/execs are jumping too quickly on the "mobile-first" and "above the fold doesn't matter in cyberspace" movements...not that either of them are bad, but neither do they universally apply. I'm just not convinced that this kind of 2-column view (a smidgen wider than the iPad-portrait-breakpoint) would be a problem to squeeze into the iPad portrait, or even iPad mini:

http://i.imgur.com/mT220OG.png

Whatever it's awkwardness at full-desktop view, to me, that would be just about perfect for the tablet view. Could you shed some light on any analytics insight that's informed the process? For example, I suspect (but haven't ever counted) that the majority of stories I click through on the NYTimes home page were not in the center well or top headlines:

http://imgur.com/UC6VnRn

On the frontpage today, I'd be more likely to click on the E-cigarettes story, maybe the charter schools story, and most definitely the top list of Ramen restaurants...none of which would be top-site news (E-Cigarettes may take the center stage during the afternoon). But if war in Ukraine broke out? I'd probably click on the massive site-wide headline that the NYT would probably use. I like whitespace and sparseness, but I just don't think it plays particularly well to news sites' strengths and weaknesses...especially the weaknesses of the content-management side (which is obviously not in the control of your team, but is inevitably a factor to deal with at most news sites).

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