Active Reading
| By Dana Goldstein - Mar 11th, 2007 at 1:20 am EST |
| Also listed in: Campus Progress Blog |
Stop thwarting me, NYTimes.com! My friend and newly-minted Campus Progress contributor Kriston Capps has started a crucial new internet activism campaign, asking the New York Times to bring back free clicking. You know you've noticed it....the annoying dictionary that now pops up to define any old word you double click on in a Times article. Highlighting and clicking while I read online is key to my retention of information. I thought the Times would realize its folly with this useless "feature" and can it in a matter of days. But so far, no luck. So join Kriston and me in telling the Times we don't need to know the definition of "the."
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There are actually well-documented usability standards for action-on-click features. The key, according to the people who study these things, is that you have to make it clear that something will happen on click, but make that cue not so intrusive as to stop non-clicking readers.
The Times got this right when they changed their link color to that gray-filled blue, and they made the whole thing nicer when they switched to Georgia and added line spacing. But this is NYTd run amok.