How do you get your news in the morning? Do you go to to different websites, get lost in a sea of links and find yourself missing big stories? Do you enjoy reading online, but miss the good old days when newspapers offered a limited supply of articles that you could read through without distraction?
Then you're in luck: the New York Times website redesign offers exactly that.
Let me explain.
My morning routine used to consist of looking through the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and a few other sites/blogs. It would require clicking through numerous pages and I was never sure if I missed something.
Then the New York Times redesigned their site and my morning reading routine changed. I spend a lot more time reading through the Times and a lot less reading everything else. I can read through the entire morning paper by clicking and loading only a few pages. And the reading experience is fantastic. Here's how to do it:
To start, go to the New York Timeshome page and clicking the "Today's Paper" near the top:
That will bring you to a page that tells you that there's "A New Way To Read Today's Paper." Below it is a list of all the articles in that day's paper, but that's the old way of clicking through numerous links to get to each story. The Times redesign offers a new experience.
Click the "Try now" button:
You'll notice that it's only available to subscribers, which makes sense since there isn't a single advertisement in the entire reading experience.
On the next page, you'll get to select which day's paper to read. You can go back to old ones if you'd like, but we want to read the paper from today. After you click today's paper, this is what you'll see:
You'll immediately notice the paper's top story, in this case on the potential effect of removing all U.S. troops from Afghanistan this year on U.S. drone strike capabilities. On the top left side is the table of contents. It shows you the image of the front page of the paper and then each story on it. You can click on any of them and it will immediately bring you to that story.
As you read, you'll notice there aren't any multimedia presentations, extra links or ads on the sides of the story to distract you. It's only the article and a few pictures:
You can scroll through and read the entire article without any distractions. The reading experience is tremendous.
Once you get to the bottom of the article, there is a shortened link in case you want to share it and an email button. That's it. There's no Twitter or Facebook buttons or anything else. And if you want to keep reading, the page flows seamlessly into the next article. You don't have to load or click anything, just scroll down:
Once you get to the end of a section, there's a button to move to the next one. It loads instantly:
You'll notice that the 'table of contents' on the left side will now display the stories in the new section. The top front page story is the top international story as well in this case. You can scroll through there at any time and click on the section and then articles that you want to read. It's seamless as well.
This truly has changed how I get my news in the morning. I still read other sites for different stories or for things that didn't make the print paper, but the New York Times is now my first and longest stop. It's an entirely revolutionary way to read the daily paper. Try it out yourself.