Slashdot Mirror
Opera Proposes Switching Browser Scrolling For 'Pages'
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.
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.
Opera isn't that kind of company. If Opera patented all their ideas web browsers would be stuck in 1999.
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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.
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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.
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.