Opera Proposes Switching Browser Scrolling For 'Pages' 320
Barence writes "Opera has proposed a new browsing system that swaps scrolling on websites for flippable pages. The Norwegian browser maker is looking to remove the side scroll bar for documents or articles in favor of 'pages' of a set-size, similar to an ebook. Text can be reflowed into a column layout, and ads will be moved into the right spot in the text, with different ones displayed depending on the orientation of the device. Pages are flipped with gestures on tablets or with mouse clicks on the desktop. It's an 'opportunity to rethink the ads on the web and the user interface,' said Hakon Wium Lie, Opera's CTO."
Their main focus for this is browsing on tablets.
Sounds interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
The only problem with Opera innovating is that, if an new idea works out, the other browsers will add it. The only alternative is if Opera can patent the ideas. Not something that would prove very popular 'round here.
Re:Sounds interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
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Opera does hold patents and does sometimes patent new inventions. (As an employee, I am forbidden from discussing specifics and I don't know if a patent application was even filed for this particular feature). However, for specifications developed within or submitted to the W3C, Opera is subject to the W3C patent policy.
Re:Sounds interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
So that people know what they're talking about, Opera was the first (or one of the first) browsers to offer:
Tabbed interface (and MDI before tabs)
Saved Sessions
Previous windows re-opening when you launch the browser
Mouse Gestures
Virtual folders in Mail
RAM Cache
Zooming
Integrated search
Speed dial
Undo of closing tabs
Using the user's CSS and Javascript instead of the site's
A lot of others that failed because they were shots in the dark (integrated web server? voice control?)
Others that succeeded that I'm probably forgetting.
Really, if you follow the development of the browser for the past 10 years or so, Opera has basically been the experimental branch of the tree. Features are created by opera, then integrated into other browsers. Recently, Chrome has done some nice experimentations, and Firefox's extensions saw a burst of weird creativity. But for day-in, day-out browsing, Opera has really defined a lot of the features we now take for granted.
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I should also point out, they haven't 'invented' page flipping on pages either. Several websites I've visited either do it now or have done it in the past.
The end result is that the website gets redesigned because while we had to do side scrolling with books, turns out people find it rather obnoxious when the other choice is vertical scrolling.
The smart websites that used horizontal scrolling ... did it in the past ... and not for very long till they switched back to something normal.
Re:Sounds interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
The only problem with Opera innovating is that, if an new idea works out, the other browsers will add it..
That is not a problem, that is a GOOD THING.
Re:Sounds interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a good thing to have everybody copying Opera even though we don't use Opera because we don't like it?
Firefox already suffers from an inferiority complex with regards to Chrome, and feels as though it must copy every annoying aspect of Chrome until there's nothing to differentiate the two. Once functionality of my favorite extensions is available in another browser I'm going to ditch FF like nobody's business. It's like IE vs. Netscape all over again, but now it's FF that's got people itching to leave.
Ahemmmmmm.... (Score:3, Interesting)
You don't like it. We do like it very much. Sure if you are a web developer you need to work much on FF and CR but nonetheless a lot of power users are die hard Opera fans and you know what? They are rightfully so. Also most of the devs I know and respect use Opera and the ones that don't use it are GPL advocates so it's a religious thing...
Opera is the only browser I have been using the past decade that hasn't screwed up big at one point or another. and yes, all the other browsers are copying them because
Re:Sounds interesting (Score:4, Interesting)
Not necessarily. They'd either have to license it (bonus to the inventors, that'll get them to spend even more time on R&D ) or they'd have to come up with their own alternatives. Those alternatives are how innovation starts. Maybe Pages aren't good enough, maybe auto-scrolling is even better. In that effort to get around that patent, we'd find out, instead of becoming complacent and settling for poor carbon copies of features.
Nobody here is going to like what I'm saying, and I'm cool with that. All I can say to that is at least with the patent approach they'd have to detail every little aspect that makes it work. If software patents only lasted a year or so, that'd be pretty bad ass all around.
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bonus to the inventors, that'll get them to spend even more time on R&D
No, bonus to the middlemen (e.g. lawyers) and managers. The reality, not the fiction that you're spouting, is that inventors are rarely rewarded. Look it up. Not tp mention the enormous financial load to society that are patents.
In that effort to get around that patent, we'd find out, instead of becoming complacent and settling for poor carbon copies of features.
No, people still compete. Removing patents doesn't stop that. On the
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Yeah we're seeing a lot more of that now that FireFox isn't so fanboy'licious anymore.
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Opera's getting it's recognition right here.
Ideas are not property, except by government fiat. Strange that all these Randian libertarians believe government should give special protection to people who have a good idea but fail to make money with it. How do we know they wouldn't make more money if they didn't have such special protection? How do we know it wouldn't spur greater innovation if ther
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Not sure about the randian part, but as a regular old libertarian (or anarcho capitalist, anyway) IP is stupid.
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I don't see your problem. Luckily Opera can not patent their brilliant idea anymore because they threw it out in the open already. So bring it on everybodyl
Re:Sounds interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
There's prior art. Page-based documents created via a markup language which supports hypertext linking have been around for a while.
But, then, I like the hyperref package for LaTeX.
Frankly, I'd rather see LaTeX as a language extension. That way, you could have the page itself specify if it's to be paginated or scrolled, and if paginated how those pages should be constructed. The syntax already exists, the parser is nearly bullet-proof (more than could be said of most browsers) and those who actually want such a format (ie: people writing books, papers, etc) are likely the ones who already know the LaTeX language.
Re:Sounds interesting (Score:5, Informative)
Speaking as someone who has spent countless hours writing custom LaTeX macros, bulletproof is exactly the opposite of the word I'd use for LaTeX. As soon as you stray very far at all from academic papers, it suddenly becomes just about the most fragile piece of code I've ever worked with. It's great as long as you never have to do anything custom. As soon as you say the words, "I know. I'll write a custom macro to [...]," you've just crossed the line into despair territory.
To put it in perspective, my novel formatting code is 1545 lines, about half of which are insanely complex TeX macros, versus under 500 lines of CSS that does about 90% of the same stuff (minus the crop marks and page margin bits).
In fact, given what modern browsers are capable of in terms of typesetting, I'd imagine it would be just a few thousand lines of JavaScript to produce a much more fully capable typesetting engine than all of LaTeX put together, but with a lot fewer limitations. For example:
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I agree with what you say, but only uup to a point. TeX itself is a very low level system as you probablyu know having programmed it. I agree that the programming language is nasty and has some astonishing warts, and there are problems with package compatibility.
However, what you are claiming is not entirely fair. If it's built into CSS then it is almost certainly easier in CSS than in TeX. The point is that due to the capabilities of TeX, you can do things that the CSS designers never thought of (like thos
Re:Sounds interesting (Score:5, Informative)
In fact, given what modern browsers are capable of in terms of typesetting
What browser are you using?
My browser doesn't do hyphenation or ligatures, the kerning is probably rather bad, and I don't think that the line breaking algorithm is as good as the one in TeX. Moreover, there is no reasonable way to set the line length (half of the websites use a very small column, and the other half use the full window width which is generally too wide), and making a table of content is a pain in the ass.
And to answer a specific claims:
LaTeX really doesn't have a very good way to say that the end-of-section marker must be on the same page as at least two lines of the previous paragraph
I't called a widow, and you can prevent them with \widowpenalty=10000. By default, they are only discouraged because sometimes they look less ugly that the other alternatives.
Re:Sounds interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with this is... Web is not paper. You are not printing out A4s, you are rendering to my display. I always want everything in a single scrolled page with no margins. If I see something that's broken into 20+ pages, I'll just close the browser window/tab.
Content and presentation both matter, but the user should always be the final arbiter in representation.
Re:Sounds interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
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Actually, it's not. Go to a web site (tom's hardware, Wired, etc), where their long-content articles are broken up into "pages".
And then read the comments, at least on Wired, where 90% of them are bitching about how there's not a "view all" option.
maybe a different gesture to scroll one page at a time is what is really needed on tablets/smartphones, but that should really be the milleau of the tablet OS, not HTML 5 or the browser, because it would probably be useful in more than just a web browser on these
Re:Sounds interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, what you're describing about Tom's or Wired is exactly why this would be a good idea.
A website can split a document across multiple pages if they want to. But to do that, they're actually creating multiple documents. What Opera seems to be proposing is the idea that a single document could be rendered as a multi-page document. In other words, it's up to the browser to render it as multiple pages.
So, why is that a good idea? Because, if it's up to the browser to render a single document in multiple pages, then the browser could also choose not to render that document in multiple pages. The decision of how to view the document lies on the client side, not the server side.
So, instead of complaining about not having a "view all" option, those commenters would simply select the "view as single page" option in their browser and be happy.
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You mean like Safari has in "reader"? Damn, wish someone thought of that.
In the mean time – I don't see why anyone thinks this is a good thing, multitouch on a tablet showed us one thing... how awesome scrolling is if you can throw the document and tap to stop it. Why would you break that by making the user repeatedly make a gesture?
Re:Sounds interesting (Score:5, Funny)
Why would you break that by making the user repeatedly make a gesture?
Every time I have to use Safari, I repeatedly make a gesture.
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I was a surprised to see this article, since I also dislike page flipping.
I read a lot of books on my tablet, but one of the first things I looked for was an e-book reader that would allow me to just seamlessly scroll through the book instead of emulating page-turns.
To me having to turn pages was an artifact of paper books... a useful one because it allowed for fast indexing, but since e-books are searchable and support links it's no longer needed. I find it's less straining to my eyes if I don't have to ke
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Opera already supports a full-screen presentation/projection mode, as defined by CSS (2?). See this example [myopera.com], then press F11 to go full-screen. The content is split into screens/pages, use Page Down to go to the next one.
Except in demonstrations of CSS, I've only once seen this used.
(more details [opera.com])
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I'm not seeing a huge improvement over the Reader button in Safari ... which hides all the non article content btw (including ads). Scroll by page ? I would not like it personally since this is an artificial constraint from the legacy paper based medium. Having a maximum number of word letters for the width of the text is a natural constraint: your brain is more efficient than with very very large lines of text. This is why I keep my code under 100 chars width btw.
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Having paper rolled up in a "scroll" is an even older paper-based medium.
Personally, I don't know what the problem here is. There are "page"-down buttons, and web "pages" have always had the ability to break content into multiple pages with links.
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The book replaced the scroll because you could pack a lot more density into something when you have sheets stacked on top of one another instead of wrapped into a tube. That benefit outweighed the inconvenience of having to reset your brain every time you turned the page. However, the point still remains that when you are actually reading the content, it's much easier to read a continuous scroll because you never have to think, "Oh, crap, how did the last page end again?" and flip back.
With software, you
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Notably, Safari's reader feature deals with this, and loads up all the pages into one.
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You mean like Vadim Lopatin's GPL Cool Reader [coolreader.org] does for RTF files on Android? Extremely useful app. Market link [android.com]. It even keeps track of what page you were on last time you read the file. By the way I downloaded Opera for Android but Android's built in browser also adjusts the divs to make one column. Reflowing layout is what HTML is supposed to be about. I don't get where there is a need to patent this at all. Obvious software is obvious.
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Yeh... Because people round here don't think software patents are bad because they stop other people from using the cool idea.
Don't be so hypocritical, stopping other people using the cool idea doesn't suddenly become good because you like the company.
Crappy websites already do this (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of ad-supported sites will do this. They'll release an article and split it up into multiple pages so they can display more ads. What happens when an article like that gets posted to slashdot? Everyone understandably complains that it's harder to read the article, and somebody posts a link to the printer-friendly version.
Multiple pages are not easier to navigate. Not even on tablets.
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No kidding. If tablets have a problem with scrolling, fix the tablets.
There's a few good reasons (Score:2)
There's also a much bigger computational cost to scrolling versus paging
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You seriously believe that OVER 50% of users do not end up using their MULTI-HUNDRED DOLLAR devices for more than a week? Why aren't droves of people returning them then?
What color is the sky in your world?
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More than four computers in the country was a hype-based phenomenon, then room sized computers were a hype based phenomenon, then furniture size, desktop, luggable, portable, laptop, notebook and even your precious netbook (which have laster longer than I thought they would, though they're now more sub-sub-notebooks then netbook) are hype-based phenomenon. Deal with it.
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Tablets are purely a hype-based phenomenon. While many have been sold, their novelty wears out quickly and most users don't end up using them beyond a week.
The Google Analytics data that allows me to specifically look at iPad usage only goes back to March - but from March to the present day, iPad traffic as a percentage of the unique site visits (on a gardening site I run) has gradually and consistently trended upward. For the past week (October 2-8, 2011) a bit more than 3% of the 5700-odd visitors were using iPads. The iPhone and Android phones were each at about 2.8%, and over that same period they appear to be similarly trending upward.
You're certainly wel
Re:Crappy websites already do this (Score:5, Informative)
Frankly, I think their idea is great, especially considering how many news sites have switched to using pages made with actual different pages. What Opera is proposing would fix that and would let you choose what style you want, directly in your browser. Personally I enjoy pages if the content is long, but I know many here on Slashdot like to read the print version just because it doesn't have paging.
As Opera's focus with this seems to be tablets, it also makes lots of sense. It actually sucks trying to scroll the web browser with your finger. It works better with a mouse and mousewheel, but tablets would be greatly improved if the browser could do the paging itself and show exactly the amount of content that fits the screen. With a single tap you could go to next "page".
This way everyone would be happy, but with tablets and computers, because it actually allows the user choose their preferred way.
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Note that they aren't proposing replacing scroll bars, they're proposing adding "pages" as CSS element. They also say this lets user decide if they want to have pages (great for tablets) or the old style scroll bars.
I'm not sure how that differs from the current method of having a multi-page view and a 'print' view with everything on one page, other than renaming the 'print' view to a 'tablet' view.
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That's great and all, but I laugh at the emphasis on supporting advertisements. Seriously, why waste your time on that kind of development?
The only reason there are still advertisements is because there are 3 types of people in the world:
1) People who don't know how to stop it. Getting smaller all the time.
2) People who do know how to stop it. Getting bigger all the time.
3) People who have constructed a logical argument that advertisements are required and/or necessary, and that the act of bypassing them s
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Nonsense.
Category 4: people who have more important things to do with their lives than worry about ads in web pages probably comprise 98% of the population.
I could mess around with ad-blockers and flash blockers etc, but frankly it just ain't that big a deal to me.
Re:Crappy websites already do this (Score:5, Informative)
I could mess around with ad-blockers and flash blockers etc, but frankly it just ain't that big a deal to me.
I'll offer up my own experience with ads. I've used some form of Linux and Firefox to browse websites for a few years now almost exclusively. When My last netbook died, I went out and bought another with W7 installed. I decided to just try W7 and IE for a couple days as it was installed - no ad blockers.
I have to say, it was an absolutely horrible experience. The ads weren't flashy/blinky as I had remembered them from long ago, but they were really distracting, interspersed throughout any web page I was viewing. I probably wouldn't have had such a problem with the ads had they been either consistently at the top or bottom of the page, or along the side where they wouldn't get in the way. Unfortunately, that's not how most websites are designed.
Once you've gotten used to not seeing obnoxiousness on a web page, it's really hard to accept it again. I've shown a few people how to add an ad blocker to their web browser and I've never heard a single complaint from any of them regarding any missing ads. On the other hand, I have heard complaints from some of these people regarding ads on their work computers after experiencing no ads on their home computers.
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You're wrong about the 98%. However, we can add another category... apathy. You fall into that category. Maybe your category is 15-20%. I doubt it. Most people I run into either don't know how to do it, or are already blocking. You are the first person I ever run into that just does not care.
Why it should be a bigger deal to you is that advertisements are one way that malware is spread. You present a much smaller target if you are not automatically running flash and rendering advertisements on all si
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You are the first person I ever run into that just does not care.
I'm in that category (ish). I have flashblock installed, and that's about it. It doesn't remove all the ads, but it tends to stop the most irritating ones. The rest... I just don't care about.
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I could mess around with ad-blockers and flash blockers etc, but frankly it just ain't that big a deal to me.
It's one of those things many people don't realize is annoying until it is gone.
I've set up ad-blocking for people and, when a browser update breaks it, they let me know right away.
Try it sometime. Ghostery [ghostery.com] is a good one to start with, since it won't accidentally block anything that's not an ad.
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Ah, you mean the same Opera that is the only browser maker that supports ad blocking out of the box and has since well before AdBlock for Firefox? In fact, since before Firefox existed, although it's hard to find an exact date (early support was a bit crude, I suppose).
My impression after skimming the articles was that Opera wanted to position the ads better and less obtrusively. Many sites have ads that completely destroy the flow of text around them (or so I remember: I like many /.'ers no longer see ads
CSS paged media (Score:2)
they're proposing adding "pages" as CSS element.
Doesn't CSS already have a paged media module?
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So what's wrong with letting people use the PageUp/PageDown buttons and clicking off the scroll-thumb for the same behaviour from a scroll bar?
Before you add page tags, you'd need to add flow-control tags to CSS, similar to what virtually every document processing program supports. Anyone with a functioning brain cell that works with large documents relies on flow-control configuration to break up pages, rather than manually inserting start-page breaks.
Then there's the issue of page size, which obviou
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I'm trying to think the motivation behind this through, and all I can think of is that they don't want to use PDF documents for paginated information because PDF doesn't let you embed ads.
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It isn't 'pages' in the same way those ad-ridden sites are. What they mean is that the whole thing is loaded, and displayed in discrete junks. No additional ads, loading times, or clicks. So, it would be a bit like using the Page Up/ Down keys (in a program where those actually go whole pages) or setting your scroll-wheel to jump whole pages, and formating the results nicely to fit into those junks. I have to say, as someone who uses a small (3.7") tablet nearly every day, this would be damn useful for a lo
Re:Crappy websites already do this (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm with you up to the last sentence. There are three main reasons why scrolling is superior for PCs:
On a tablet, these reasons are reduced or even reversed. Paging is easier than scrolling, since both are swiping gestures, but scrolling requires a controlled swipe. Condensed load times doesn't apply, since the idea here is to load the webpage all at once, and display it one page at a time using CSS elements. Ads would only be loaded once, and the really obnoxious types haven't yet infiltrated tablets (AFAIK).
Tablets have some fundamental differences from their keyboard-bearing cousins. Just because pages are an abomination on PCs doesn't necessarily mean they'd be bad on tablets. I'm glad at least one company is looking into making the browser fit the platform, instead of just porting their code over.
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A lot of ad-supported sites will do this. They'll release an article and split it up into multiple pages so they can display more ads. What happens when an article like that gets posted to slashdot? Everyone understandably complains that it's harder to read the article, and somebody posts a link to the printer-friendly version.
Multiple pages are not easier to navigate. Not even on tablets.
rabble rabble rabble prefer scrolls to codex rabble rabble
It's harder to read paginated text... really?
Ads? (Score:2)
What are these ads on webpages that people keep talking about? I don't see any.
Zoom (Score:3)
I like opera, but... (Score:2)
I like opera, and prefer it on my tablet, actually. I run Firefox, Chrome, and Opera on my "real" computers (and IE on Windows), though I usually use Chrome.
The problem I have with this is that, in my experience, non-scrolling (whether it's a page flip or some sort of click-to-advance) alternatives to scrolling tend to be really, really slow if you want to zoom, like, half-way down. Or even worse, all the way down. I know, you could add quick little buttons to go-to-top and go-to-bottom ... but it's just
Seriously? (Score:2)
Seeking to the next line (Score:4, Informative)
Open any plain HTML page and resize the window. Developers have been intentionally overriding this so their page looks the same on every device, whether it has a width of 200 px or 1920 px (methinks most didn't think that one through). I'm not quite sure why this is the favored approach
If lines are more than about 30 ems (60 to 70 characters) wide, it becomes harder for the eye to seek from the end of one line to the start of the next line without skipping a line or rereading a line. That's why so many sites put things like max-width: 30em on an article.
but I suppose it might be because people like to make webpages like magazine pages, where everything is statically positioned, rather than coming up with something that looks good on a variety of browsers, screens, font and color settings.
On a device with a very small screen and a slow, expensive connection, such as a smartphone using EDGE or 3G, your documents are more usable if you transmit and show smaller chunks of information at once. On a device with a very small screen and a slow, expensive connection, such as a desktop or laptop PC using a high-speed wired connection, your documents are more usable if you transmit and show larger chunks of information at once. CSS can help with the "show" but not with the "transmit".
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I'm seeing a regression of webpage, that is once again optimized for less data needed to display content worth viewing, due to Mobile Markets. However to view those pages you must be displaying the proper User Agent String, which strips things like "FLASH" (iPhones, iPads) and Java applets (which don't run very well on Phones). giving you just the meat. Which is wonderful, IMHO.
Refreshing ideas (Score:2)
Especially this might be a quite good idea. Reading screen-wide lines of text can sometimes be a bit of a PITA.
jQuery Mobile (Score:4, Informative)
I like it (Score:2)
pissed off (Score:2)
Young whippersnappers (Score:2)
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39 year old "pro pagination" camper here. Well, at least "pro this pagination idea". The beauty of it is that it's up to the browser to handle the pagination, which means the browser user can choose to paginate or not. So, you get your scrolling, and the "pro pagination" campers get their pages. Everybody wins.
Every browser already has this (Score:4, Interesting)
A dedicated gesture for this would be handy. But that really belongs in the OS, not the browser. We still need the scroll bar (whether it's visible, or hidden and you can scroll by dragging your finger up/down) so you can position text and pictures just the way you want on a page.
Beige Box = Hard Drive strikes again (Score:2)
NO!
If you want it to be universal it belongs in whatever app handles general keyboard shortcuts - so in linux that is your window manager application and in MS Windows that's your Logitech helper app or similar, or a little config thing for explorer.exe in the MS Windows control panel. That way you can change it if you want without a system restart.
The operating system is the thing that sits between the hardware and userspace and does not mean Internet Exp
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It can be used to scroll down or up (press the SHIFT key and then the space bar).
I had never heard about that, thanks.
line printer (Score:2)
Sorry, I just couldn't resist posting that kind of thinking. About time we started thinking of getting rid of a design which is there because we used to use line printers.
Don't even get me started on where 0,0 is.
LoB
One article, one ad (Score:2)
Or one set of ads. Browsers are not for _advertisers_, they are for _viewers_. We can work with advertising to pay for content we want, such as on Slashdot, but forcing additional paging and scrolling for screens of variable sizes and user layouts is simply selling out to advertisers.
lame (Score:2)
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The fact that scrolls (content on a single scrolling medium) predate books (content in paginated format) suggests you might be wrong.
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Not really, books are more convenient for:
- mass production
- structural integrity
- a larger amount of surface area possible without becoming unweildy
- comparatively fast access to any point in the text
None of these problems apply to continuous computer documents.
Scrollbars are better (Score:2)
If you are going through a long document, instead of reading from top to bottom, then going back to the top in the next page, you can keep your eyes fixed on the area of the screen (covering 2-3 lines), and scroll the document so that the current text always matches with that area
One Problem... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Define a "page". The whole point of a browser was to get us away from the confines of a page-based medium, like a book or magazine, so information could be presented without the interruption caused by the finite amount of space a "page" presents. Sure, we still call them web "pages", but that's an analogy used for cognitive purposes. If we go back to the finite page model, who's defining what a "page" is? Is it A4, U.S. letter, U.S. legal or what? Sounds like a step backwards to me rather than an innovation. I'm sorry, but in a digital world scrolling is better than flipping pages, IMHO. Don't get me wrong. I love real paper books for what they are (I own many books), but flipping pages digitally is annoying to me and trying to revert back to that model for digital content seems completely backwards-thinking and wrong.
A page on a medium is a medium-full of information. In print, that medium is paper, so a page is a piece of paper. In the tablet world, a page is a screen-ful of information.
Continuous scrolling is good in some cases, but Opera isn't proposing to replace continuous scrolling with pages; they're proposing to add the option and let sites formally choose to do that.
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I would enjoy Page numbering a-la lynx. After all, some of us WANT to print content out of our screens without guessing how many pages of headers AND footers to "skip" in the manual page printing dialog.
With so much stuff on the web now, and so many printers at home, I see a problem in that you must either print preview, scroll down 13.5 pages AND count them by hand, and then do math so you can place "13" and "19" on the dialog's start and end page #s. "Print selection" gives no estimate of how much paper y
standard resolution? (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering the plethora of screen sizes and resolutions across smartphones, tablets, netbooks, laptops and pcs, this seems like an absurd idea. I'm sure I'm not the only one, but I want the text I'm reading to be at a certain location on the screen. This location covers perhaps 1/4-1/2 of the vertical space depending on the screen. I scroll pdfs all the time, especially textbooks with mathematical equations.
I also enjoy the dynamic rendering of html that changes as I make the window wider or thinner on a wide screen monitor. Depending on the size and resolution I will find a perfect width and zoom level.
This standardization, at it's best, would render pages based on both the screen size and resolution which the browser is running on. However many problems would occur, the simplest would be merely sitting closer or further from a large 1080p screen. I'm assuming if this was implemented by someone other than apple with a new revolutionary device, the result would be chaotic where most pages wouldn't play across all devices well at all. Perhaps apple products would work well since they have a larger enough user base for those standards to work well.
However, this missed the already dynamic nature of the web. As in one of the other posts, badly designed and spammy type websites employ this already. The only site I came across that used it was the IFW, Maine's government agency overseeing fishing and hunting. They post their yearly informative newletter, magazine, which is printed, in a horrible flash 'book' where the page flips are animated. No high resolution pdf, which would be great, where I can control the zoom, think of it, you could just load pdfs if you wanted pages.
Pages that I can scroll down are nicer anyway, like high quality search engines and all the porn sites.
So clearly, if this was something useful, it would have taken off. Unless there are thousands of website developers, catering to tablets, that are begging for this feature, it seems like another mistake from Opera.
Opera changed the browser for the better... (Score:2)
Opera changed the browser for the better, but they screwed up and allowed others to take their ideas and make everything else better.
I was an Opera user. They made huge strides pushing the browsers forward, but they allowed others to adopt their ideas which prevented them from growing. (that and sticking to standards that the world didn't abide by) Soon they had to innovate again and their new ideas weren't up to par. Just like this one.
Thank you Opera. You did wonders for the web browser. Though I'm s
It's really about ads (Score:2)
What this is really about:
The technology ... is adapted to publishers' needs such as full-page "interstitial" ads placed between different pages. "We think there's an opportunity to rethink the ads on the Web," Lie said.
You've all seen those awful sites where each article is spread across many pages. There's a tiny block of text, flanked by ads to the left, ads to the right, ads above, and ads below. There's a whole industry turning out "Top 10 ways to ..." ad farms, and "reviews" that take six screens to deliver one page of content.
Now imagine those with inter-page ads you can't skip.
what is stopping them? (Score:2)
There is nothing stopping web developers from doing this now using CSS and a tiny bit of javascript. You don't need to change the browser or re-imagine how html in rendered.
Already done with CSS and JS (Score:2)
Flipping pages would be the end of Slashdot (Score:2)
Flipping pages would be the end of Slashdot.
No way I would flip 150 pages to see all comments.
NO WAY.
That idea must die painfully in a warm place.
Javascript (Score:2)
Any website that wants to do this can already do it with some simple javascripting.
There's probably a good reason why most sites don't.
I think that is a bad idea (Score:3)
The whole point of the WWW was that it was supposed to be resolution independent - I know a lot of people have forgotten that, alas, since it makes the web more accessible for everybody if you can adjust font sizes.
My eyes aren't what they used to be and I would like a bigger font (and even if you can't imagine it YOU will also be in that situation sooner than you think) - if they lock down font size to get pages that would be bad for accessibility.
But you say, they could reflow and recalculate it. Yes, the could, but then what is the point of "pages" it would still be a long page with artificial breaks.
Plus there is nothing more annoying on the new 'generate as we fly using javascript' pages that you can't search for content.
This is a bad idea.
Re: (Score:2)
You have to love how they specify 'pages' in quotes, like it's something "new" or has some "overloaded meaning."
FTFY :)
Re: (Score:3)
You have to love how they specify 'pages' in quotes, like it's something new or has some overloaded meaning.
It is overloaded. An HTML document is called a page. What Opera is proposing would allow one HTML document (page) to be displayed as multiple "pages." But you were just being sarcastic, weren't you?
Re:No. (Score:5, Interesting)
Why? Pagination is a solved problem for most systems (desktop publishing, word processing, typesetting systems), there's no good reason why it should be any less solved for browsers. If worst comes to worst, develop a plugin for Opera (and other browsers) that supports one of the existing systems and therefore has known pagination rules.
Re:No. (Score:4, Interesting)
This is a good point. I much prefer your plugin suggestion, because it circumvents the requirement that everyone adapt to paginated web sites. The plus side is that those who want pagination can go and get it, while the rest of us who feel that pagination is probably a tremendous step backward can continue doing what we're doing and finding ways to do it better, rather than having to work around yet another browser-specific oddity.
My argument is thus: Pagination is a somewhat archaic work-around for displaying content on a fixed-size media, like paper. It's no accident then that word processors and document exchange formats like PDFs are page-centric since they're typically designed to be printed. I don't have any comparative usability studies on hand, but I would argue that "flipping" a page on a screen-reading device rather than scrolling it is more likely to interrupt work flow--much like turning the page in a book.
Think about when you're reading a book before bed when you're quite tired. You flip the page, your mind wanders, then you have to turn back to reread the last three or four words on the previous page for the purpose of context, and then your entire mental flow is disrupted. Reading from the left page to the right page (in an LTR language) isn't as problematic as actively turning the page, because you're eyes can immediately scan to the top of the following text and continue reading. To this extent, I think scrolling is probably a reasonable compromise between active user actions and passive reading. With scrolling, it's feasible to keep the previous words on the screen for context, and you can continue reading from any point. The biggest disadvantage with scrolling, however, is that it's difficult with lengthy documents to flip back and forth between one section and another while keeping a finger propped between a few pages so you can compare material from an earlier chapter (hint: "flipping" pages on a screen-reading device doesn't have this specific advantage of a book).
I'd argue that flip gestures for turning pages on screen-based devices carries all of the disadvantages of a book while integrating few, if any, of the advantages. That said, Opera might surprise me and come up with an innovative solution that takes advantage of the screen, but the ultimate answer to this question shouldn't be solved by Opera but by a usability expert like Jakob Nielsen--someone who can do the studies to determine the relative advantages and disadvantages with real people.
Not really. (Score:2)
The websites I have made already have a separate CSS stylesheet for print media. Adding another for online paged content wouldn't be that much work. I don't know how much benefit there would be to it, though. Tablets would need to be much more popular before I would consider it.
I'm also curious about how tablet browsers would indicate whether a site is in scroll mode or paged mode. I would hate for them to get confused by the lack of scrollbar and think that the first page is all there is.
Re: (Score:2)
But that is exactly what he is proposing [w3.org]. As far as I can tell, the server won't even know what "flavor" of the page is going to be displayed anymore than it knows whether the print or screen CSS stylesheet is being used now.
In Lie's ideal world, a Web page could come with different CSS formatting code, then show the paged version when appropriate. The HTML, though, which describes things like text and graphics, would be fixed.
Re: (Score:2)
Hmm, I like the "Pages" part, but I don't like the "ads" part. Lets compromise: No pages, no ads. Great!
No Deposit, No Return.
Someone has to pay the bills.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Enjoy not having your site visited.
Re: (Score:2)
But what about per-page advertising? Think of the advertisers!
Re: (Score:2)
No, Apple will not use a scroll wheel, they'll use some mysterious little nipple thing.