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Online Newspaper Vs. Print Version

Good Essays

Newspaper designers have a huge canvas to play with. Their designs can be striking and yet intricate and pack much more impact than a web page; especially because the entire double-page spread is in-your-face in a fraction of a second. Wham, here's the news.

The page in the figure is a great example of the possibilities in print: a large, high-resolution map sets the stage for a story about Chile and does double duty as an information graphic for several data nuggets. More data is visualized in smaller graphics around the page. And, of course, there is room for a large amount of text that is set in high-resolution type and nicely integrated with the headlines and graphics in a pleasing over-all layout that allows the eye to move from …show more content…

When analyzing the "look-and-feel" of a website, the feel completely dominates the user experience. After all, doing is more memorable and makes a stronger emotional impact than seeing.
In print, navigation mainly consists of page turning: an ultra-simple user interface which is one of the printed medium's great benefits. Because page turning is so limited, it is often not even thought of as a design element. In contrast, hypertext navigation is a major component of web design, requiring decisions like

appearance of links how to explain where users can go and where each link will lead visualization of the user's current location information architecture
Response Time, Resolution, and Canvas Size
Print is immensely superior to the Web in terms of speed, type and image quality, and the size of the visible space. These differences are not fundamental. We will eventually get: bandwidth fast enough to download a Web page as fast as one can turn the page in a newspaper screen resolution sharp enough to render type so crisply that reading speed from screens reaches that of paper huge screens the size of a newspaper spread - in fact, I think that newspaper-sized screens are about the limit where it may not make sense to make screens any larger
For the next ten years or so, the differences will remain and will dictate restrictions on web design: less graphics, smaller graphics, shorter text (since it is unpleasant to read online), less fancy typography

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