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May 27, 2010

Is This Really The Future of Magazines or Why Didn’t They Just Use HTML 5?

I just downloaded the Wired iPad application, and like most iPad applications (and most magazines for that matter), I found myself bored with it within the first 20 minutes. I’m sure the content is engaging, I’m sure the articles are worth reading – but I am stumped as to why I would chose this over the physical magazine itself, or their website for that matter. In fact, for reasons I’ll get into below, I’m starting to believe that the physical magazine’s “interface” is vastly superior to it’s iPad cousin.

However, what strikes me most about the Wired app is how amazingly similar it is to a multimedia CD-ROM from the 1990′s. This is not a compliment and actually turns out to be a fairly large problem…

1990′s Here We Come … Again

The only real differentiation between the Wired application and a multimedia CD-ROM is the delivery mechanism: you download it via the App Store versus buying a CD-ROM at the now defunct Egg Head store at your local strip mall. And I really mean that comparison. For all of the interactivity that was touted in the Flash prototype, what we’ve really ended up with is a glorified slide show. Instead of the “Next” and “Previous” buttons you might have been used to on those old CD-ROMs of yore, you instead swipe left and right to change pages (well *cough* images of pages).

There are certain interactive elements to the articles, but – and I apologize to all of the people who put in a lot of back breaking work into this – they’re pretty lame. Tapping on a button-looking element switches out part of the page with another image. You can drag your finger across certain images to make them sort of animate like a flipbook (and in truth, that’s what it is – a series of PNG or JPEG images). There are videos you can tap on to view fullscreen. There are audio clips that you can play. The interactivity in the Wired application is very 1990′s. I am not trying to be insulting either, it’s simply the truth. The Wired application has pretty much brought back image rollovers.

And that’s about the extent of the interactivity. Which makes me wonder if that should be the extent of it or should we be wanting more? I don’t have an answer to that, though my gut feeling is that there is a massive opportunity to reinvent the concept of a magazine – yet we end up with something akin to what the web was like in the mid to late 90′s. This basically boils down to a print designer’s vision of what the web should be like – but in this case it’s a print magazine person’s vision of what an interactive magazine should be like.

If you can think back that far, and you were doing web development during that time, you will glumly remember the frustration of web development driven by print design, where pages were essentially huge images cut and sliced and then reconstituted back into insane table structures for pixel perfect layouts. That’s what we’ve essentially gotten with the Wired app: a giant step backwards and a complete dismissal of the lessons we learned from that dark period of interaction design and development.

Holy Shit, That’s Big

With the Wired app weighing in at a whopping 500 megabytes – just 100 shy of a full CD-ROM – how do they intend to maintain new editions of the magazine? 500 MB is too large for a 3G download (no help from AT&T’s less than spectacular network performance) and for those with iPad’s with the smaller storage, each issue will take a significant chunk of space on the device. With no apparent means for managing which issues you keep on your device, this will become huge issue for a lot of people. Obviously they will fix this with updates to the application, but I’m still wondering what they were thinking to begin with. I’m hoping there were voices of dissent that pointed out the end product was not worth it’s weight in megabytes. A PDF version would have been a tenth of the size, though without the interactivity. But is the interactivity worth the 500MB price? I personally don’t think so.

Why is the magazine so large? Being the intrepid hacker that I am (*wink*) I mounted my jail broken iPad via AppleTalk and quickly tore into the app itself to see how it was constructed. Similar to the PopSci+ magazine application, each Wired issue is actually a bunch of XML files that lay out a bunch of images. And by “a bunch of images” I mean 4,109 images weighing in at 397MB.

Each full page is a giant image – there are actually two images for each page: one for landscape and one for portrait mode. Yes, I’m laughing on the inside too. There is no text or HTML, just one gigantic image. The “interactive” pieces where you can slide your finger to animate it are just a series of JPG files. When you press play on the audio file and see the progress meter animate? A series of PNG files.

Something is wrong with this picture. Something wrong and something very lazy and/or desperate.

Over Architect Much? (or How Desperation Ruins Good Ideas)

I have no inside knowledge on how the Wired app was produced, so the following is all conjecture on my part. That said, my guess is that Adobe sold Conde Nast on doing the thing in Flash. Or if Adobe didn’t do the selling, some Flash loving technologist at Conde Nast sold them on it. Either way, since Flash CS5 was going to be able to target the iPhone/iPad, they’d be able to publish the thing as it had been shown to the press. But then Steve Jobs came along and threw section 3.1.3 into the iPhone licensing terms and … well … Adobe and Conde Nast were pretty much fucked. So fast forward to this moment in time and the best short term solution they could come up with was some jury rigged XML based layout framework and an epic shit ton of images.

The Wired app isn’t alone in this weird architectural choice either. The PopSci+ magazine is based on a very similar architecture. There are also other magazines that work along the same lines, or simply go the route of PDFs with a customized PDF viewer application.

The problem with these XML + images architectures is that they are essentially reinventing HTML with no added benefit. When I showed the Wired app to a colleague of mine, someone I consider to be one of the top HTML/Javascript developers in NYC, his assessment was the same: Why the heck didn’t they use HTML5? We stepped through each “page” of the Wired application, looked at each interactive piece – but failed to find anything that ruled out the use of HTML and JavaScript.

The argument might be that it needs to be cross platform – the very thing Adobe and Conde Nast were banking on by going with Flash – but guess what? For all of the tablets about to fall on the heads of consumers in the coming years, each one of them uses WebKit. If anything was built for this type of application, it most certainly is WebKit. And even for harder interactivity puzzles – in terms of how do we do X and Y – one can easily hook into WebKit to enable that stuff that might otherwise be more difficult to do in straight HTML + CSS + JavaScript. I have yet to see anything in any magazine application on the iPad that would really require this though.

So why didn’t they choose HTML5 and build a custom viewer application around WebKit? It comes down to either a sense of desperation, a sense of Adobe overselling a bad idea or simply a dumb technology decision. Possibly all three. It certainly isn’t a development challenge and it certainly isn’t because WebKit isn’t capable. I had a thought that perhaps memory management was an issue, but by going with HTML5/WebKit, you wouldn’t be showing pages and pages of huge images – you’d actually be able to build those pages the right way. And doing it this way, in my professional opinion, the magazine itself would be slashed dramatically in size, as well as acting and reacting in ways familiar to people who’ve been browsing the web for the last 15+ years. Furthermore, the cost savings from a production standpoint would be drastically lower as Wired already maintains a staff of web developers. There wouldn’t be an impetus for Adobe to create some “solution” at Conde Nast’s expense and a lot of the great interactivity you saw in the YouTube videos of their prototype could very easily come to life.

But as it stands now, the Wired iPad app is even far behind their own website. That’s embarrassing. Did anyone at Conde Nast look at this and wonder why someone would choose to use this over their very own website? That iPad – unless you are in a subway – is constantly connected to the intertubehighway. That fact alone makes one wonder what the point of the whole thing is. Specifically since they’ve not done any sort of interactivity or visual presentation that I think anyone can say is amazing. Sure, it’s a print designers wet dream – but it really should be a consumer’s wet dream. And it most certainly is not that.

So, from a technical perspective, I think what we are looking at is the result of equal parts desperation and ignorance. Desperation on the part of Adobe to carry forward their relationship with Conde Nast in this new publishing market and ignorance on the part of their development team for ignoring the best solution to their “No Flash Allowed” problem: HTML5.

Is This The Future For Magazine Publishing?

I hope not.

I actually think it’s a huge step backwards and I think the wrong people are working on the problem – just like the wrong people were working on the web problem back in the day. Sure, we corrected course and we’re seeing the web done correctly more and more these days – but can the magazine publishing industry afford to get this wrong for any amount of time? Once could argue that the internet is quickly making their industry irrelevant. By the time an article is published in Time, I’ve read six or seven different takes on the same story on the web well before it hits the newsstands. I don’t think that’s a unique or new insight. But now you want me to download 500MB a month just so some print designer can have pixel perfect layouts with custom fonts?

Unfortunately, as long as Conde Nast allows Adobe to dupe them into believing Adobe has a solution, it’s going to fail. They need to go outside the box to get this right, and all the technology to do it is sitting right there in front of them. And they’ve been using it very well … until now when they’ve chosen not to even use it all.

Update

People have been mentioning that you can’t do application specific fonts with the WebKit browser. Not sure why.

Here is a simple iPad app that loads up a custom open type font, and then displays an html file in a UIWebView with that custom font: http://github.com/jawngee/iPadFontExample

So it can be done. Enjoy.

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  • I work freelance for a different publisher in a non technical function on a different iPad magazine app, and I think one of the things totally missed in this discussion is the ability to create the product without restaffing a magazine office with programmers. The magazine I'm working at is a weekly. Magazine staffs do not include web programmers, they do have websites, but that staff is smaller, and separate as a website is just very different from a mag. And the iPad versions of mags that I've seen, with the exception of VF which is not trying to do anything, they are more like magazines than the web, a lot more, and it's in many ways a more satisfying visual experience. Magazines are about visuals, that's one of the important things about their experience.

    Using a purchased add on to inDesign, and managing workflow in inCopy allows a magazine to use software that all the page designers already know how to use to repackage the same content, with bonuses like video and audio, photo galleries, e-commerce without major retraining or large numbers of new hires.

    A magazine usually involves passing the same files through multiple depts where each puts in their text, or credits, or design with images, links etc. Most of these people are writers, graphic designers, photo editors, copy editors and imaging specialists. This last group is probably the most like to have programming skills. You have get everyone to create this content and contribute their part every week. If you use something that makes inDesign turn out a product that can be read on a tablet, then you can just make the same people you have do more work that resembles what they are used to doing somewhat, with just a couple more freelancers here and there.

    Perhaps they should have chosen a program that would make inDesign files into HTML5, but programming HTML5 from scratch would be an insane level of effort for people who already are turning out a print edition simultaneously. I'm stressing that, a profitable print magazine is being turned out simultaneously, on the same schedule, by the same people. You need to make this process the most like the current process possible to make it viable for a national magazine to make iPad apps. The point is always the content, making it interesting, delivering it on schedule using the people who know how to make this content.

    My experience with the mag apps, is they are pleasantly different from the web. The web has a lot of flinging things around the visual field you are looking at. The web can cause you to be distracted from what you are currently reading and go google or follow a link and be at any other website in the world. It's on a computer which usally has icons and other things in your visual field. An iPad app mag takes up the whole visual field, it doesn't have a lot of things in it that take you completely out of the app. You have to turn the ad pages like you would in a mag. It's true the interaction seems a little bit gimmicky for the moment, but there is something about the tactile, and the visuals that are a really nice way to get images and text to your eyes.

    No one who wants the content is going to be griping about the language used, although file sizes they may not be happy about.
  • If you're a smaller publisher I'd suggest going the html5/web route because it seems that as of now.. they solutions are only priced for the big players.

    I contacted one of WoodWing's partners about the cost of their solution (used for the iPad version of Time Magazine) and here was our interaction:

    ME: Hello,
    I'm writing to inquire about the cost of WoodWing digital magazine solution. Understand that I'm not a large publisher, simple a graphic designer that would like to also publish his fanzine in digital form so cost is the deciding factor in whether or not this is the solution I will utilize as opposed to going with a strictly web based CSS3/HTML5 approach.

    PARTNER: Hi Chris,
    I understand that you are needing some pricing for WoodWing's Digital Magazine Solution. Just to give you an idea of the pricing - for entry level it will run you about $14k which includes software, maintenance, and services (installation, training, etc...). Please let me know if you would like to discuss further.

    ME: So basically everything is geared toward the Enterprise level.... there's no solution for the little guy, correct?

    PARTNER: This is the bundle price for one user. The price was much higher, but WoodWing realized that we needed pricing for one users or smaller companies. The bundle price includes Content Station, Enterprise and Digital Magazine - Content Station and Enterprise are required to run Digital Magazine.
  • Daver
    Okay, here is another comment from an arrogant geek in the continuing war of raw programming (remember those old grey type pages that excitede some many geeks during the mosaic daze? bo-ring!!) versus the thinking of visual designers. Okay, so maybe Wired is a little unweildy and predictable in this early iteration of e-publishing. BTW: There IS a process in innovation, and it sometimes starts with where we left off (even if it is back in the '90's). I would like to remind the writer that some interactive publication designers, such as myself, have found flash to be a Godscend to visualization of our ideas. We aren't programming geniuses, many of us at least, and I, for one have an issue with these HTML 5 snobs.

    So, sorry, guys, just be a little patient...the true excitement in e-publishing is just starting to happen. And it probably will happen in HTML 5 or WebKit (what ever that is--pardon my ignorance) Sit back and enjoy the ride and let's all cooperate. We're all in it together, whether we're programmers or mere designers.
  • Thank for your kindness for posting such information.
    keep posting!

    ipad ap
  • JulesLt
    Even with custom fonts, web typography still lags some way behind that offered by Pages, let alone InDesign - and I can't see a good way out of that impasse (either browsers need to add in really complicated text layout engines (H&J for all languages), or we need a more PDF-like spec for absolute positioning of individual letters, ligatures, etc).

    Or we stick with inferior typography as the price of flexible text (the current web way).
  • I'm not an HTML5 expert, but I challenge any developer out there to try and create a high-fidelity, paginated, magazine-like layout, like you see in WIRED's iPad app. There are no discretionary hyphens in HTML5, making fully justified text look horrible, and its impossible to continue text from one DIV into another. Without that latter feature, its impossible to get the sophisticated layouts you get in a magazine.

    Another example. Take a look at the typographic layout in Times Reader 2.0, and compare it to NYT Editor's choice on the iPad. Editor's choice is pretty much the limit of what HTML5 can do to emulate printed layout.

    I hope HTML5 continues to improve and supports more sophisticated layouts, but for now, the control simply isn't there. If I'm wrong, I'd be happy to see counterpoints to the contrary.

  • The problem with fully justified text is that it has been shown to be incredibly difficult for people with cognitive and learning disabilities to read. Dyslexics, in particular, have great difficulty reading justified text.

    http://www.dyslexia-parent.com/mag35.html
    http://juicystudio.com/article/cognitive-impairment.php
    http://www.rnib.org.uk/professionals/webaccessibility/articles/Pages/justified_text.aspx

  • Donna Chen
    Thanks for the blog, I am now thinking really long and hard whether I should get an iPad or not!
  • This shouldn't dissuade you from getting one - there are plenty of good reasons to own one. I've completely cut down on laptop usage at home because of it.
  • Suzy Denim
    I imagine to ideologues it sounds easy to embed say 100 different font variants, and that none of those have complex license compliance or would take any memory (not to mention the custom line-layout engine to drive them). Why did google go to their own Javascript layout engine for GoogleDocs if HTML5's was good enough? (And that doesn't support zooming and nearly the variants required for magazines). But that's probably verboten by Apple's 3.3.1 licensing agreement anyways. I also imagine in the know-it-all's fantasy world, an ARM chip could render all these fonts and pages quickly with great interactivity: in the real world, I imagine 30 seconds per page to render would get frustrating. And still probably 40% of the content of the magazine is pictures anyways. So 40% for images +Fonts+Renderer (not to mention movies and sound they embed) = not much space savings for a much slower/worse user experience. Oh boy.

    What does Zinio and the other magazine viewers use? Oh, the same thing as Adobe. Seems like a lot of haters want to find any excuse to rationalize their hate. It would help if they had a clue about engineering tradeoffs.
  • I call bullshit.

    They could have used PDF's with cached prerendering.

    Popular Mechanics's magazine is 40 megs.
  • mike
    One word: Accessibility.
    Apple's apps, and 3rd-party that stick to native UI elements, are 100% accessible to blind users via VoiceOver. Clearly, a digital magazine that contains no textual data is kind of useless in this area.
  • Another thing to consider is the ePub format. Structurally, it is very similar to HTML and, so, extending it to do more than re-flow text and static images is quite conceivable. Adobe is conversant with the ePub standard (inDesign is widely used to create .epub files) and Apple has, like most of the publishing industry, adopted the ePub standard. What needs to happen is for IDPF (Int'l Digital Publishing Forum) to work with Adobe and device makers such as Apple to bring HTML 5 concepts to the ePub format.

    An extended ePub format could obviate the need for magazines and other pubs to be native iPhone OS apps in order to incorporate rich, dynamic media and become much more interactive. As well, DRM can be added to ePub documents to satisfy the "need" to discourage copyright infringement. It could be a contender.
  • Just guessing but it may have more to do with assuring execs that the content won't be easily shared sans payment. Of course they failed in your case (jailbroken iPhone) but this obfuscation will dampen the ability of pedestrian users to pass the mag on to a friend.

    BTW, mobile Safari does not support the file:// scheme as desktop Safari does. If it did, one could load an HTML 5 web site onto their iPhone OS device and "play" the magazine in fine style.
  • Boob
    about the fonts.

    yes you can physically use any font you want, the trouble is in licensing. apple will reject your app unless you have distribution rights to the font.

    so you have to go the image route.
  • You're telling me Conde Nast couldn't license fonts? Specifically ones designed for WIRED?
  • Littlekidjon
    So it has images, text, videos, sound clips and some interactivity. What more were you expecting? It to amazingly jump out of the iPad screen as a hologram? Obviously as time goes by there will be improvements into the interactivity to make it more of a USP instead of the actual physical magazine. You say what difference does it make from the app to the website. What difference does it make of the magazine to the website then if you want to point that one out. You also compare it to the old CD-ROMs, but they did not fail because of how they were made or how they looked, but because they were being used on a static computer, which meant less interactivity, where a magaizine is to be read on a train or somewhere else on the move. The iPad removes all these problems. Yes the size is a problem, but again, this can be improved
  • Yet Popular Mechanics comes out a month later with a 40 meg magazine with - what looks like - more interactivity, plus updates itself when you're connected to the internet?

    One of us is going to have a hard time defending ourselves when that hits the app store. My guess is that person will be you.
  • manudwarf
    Hi !

    That's an interesting post, would you permit me to translate it for French guys ? :)
  • Go for it.
  • Dean Lockwood
    For those debating (debasing?) the value/necessity of typography or design, it's not about how "essential" fancy fonts or good design is. It's how DESIRED it is and how many consumers put a value on that, even if they don't quite understand it.

    Example: Automobiles. You could absolutely make a more EFFICIENT automobile that only accounted for the absolute ESSENTIALS of the functionality needed for an automobile. You could save all sorts of money on swoopy design lines, leather seats, 8.4 cup holders and 47 different shades of metallic green.

    You could do that. And you'd lose your ass in the marketplace. Because people DO like all that stuff and they are willing to pay for it.
  • I totally agree that an iPad magazine should use the cleanest and latest HTML5 technology making it slim and fast. But the iPad is not a child of the internet alone - its mother is the internet whilst its father is print design. It is a mix of both - offering the interactivity of the net combined with the touch and feel - or better the haptics - of a physical magazine.

    So for me as a print designer it is crucial to have tools that let me work with print layouts which then are converted into HTML5. Yet it seems that only Woodwing (for big publishers) http://37pc.sl.pt and Adobe http://37pa.sl.pt are doing this job.

    Give me the right tools and I am going to use it!
  • My point is, and was and forever will be, print designers shouldn't be designing this stuff to begin with.

    Sorry if that offends you, but I was in the thick of it during the first dotcom bubble when print designers had the exact same mentality regarding the web. And it was a nightmare.

    That's not to say you aren't one of those special multi-discipline guys that can do it all, but it's pretty rare.
  • But isn't the point of almost all of CSS3s innovations to get the web to look more like print? Why would that be the case if not to better emulate the layout freedom offered by print design?
  • iflyhigh
    Yes, to get the type closer to print in terms of control. But that doesn't mean print designers should be doing it because there is also more there for usability/interaction, other functional areas that go beyond making something look pretty.
  • Agreed!
  • Patrick Walker
    Riddle me this though. In an age where one has a digital device networked to the internet, why would you buy a magazine when you can get more information, and likely quicker, but just using Safari or Opera on the device? Wouldn't making HTML5 versions of a magazine seem redundant when you can get an HTML5 version right off the web? I know Daniel Eran Dilger is hoping that the pay-for-view model these magazines pursuing will increase quality but I'm not so sure. People have been sucking at the freebie teat for over a decade now and not sure people are willing to pay for something they used to get for free.
  • gareth1090
    i think the magazine industry is really crossing its fingers that people will pay for content through apps.

    they've seen it with music and tv/movies through the itunes store compared to free illegal downloads and also with games in the appstore compared with free flash games on the web. by that logic people should be willing to buy magazine apps too, especially if they start restricting what content is available online without paying. certainly thats what rupert murdoch wants.

    looks like the freebie teat is drying up.
  • You do know that 20 minutes of attention is a huge amount of time, don't you? And that the average for a print magazine is only something like 25 minutes?

    To put it another way: When was the last time you sat and read a single web site for 20 continuous minutes?
  • Web hosting
    nice job done here i wud like to appreciate the site members for this gud piece or work
  • Mike
    It's pretty ironic that this blog post looks *really* horrible and hard to read on the iPad (portrait or landscape). I had to send it to instapaper just to make it bearable.
  • Then yer iPad must be fubar'd. I wrote the post on an ipad. I'm writing these comments on it as well.
  • till
    Great blog post and right on.

    What I don't understand is why people still read wired. =)
  • Thefreakinweasel
    I was all into this when I came across this story on Mashable: 10 Must Have Apps for the iPad.


    Released earlier this week, Wired for the iPad has already sold over 24,000 copies. For good reason too: Wired for the iPad is a great example of what publishers and content creators can do when they really fire on all cylinders.

    While we aren’t sure if we would buy Wired every month without some sort of better subscription plan, the first
    issue, which includes a look at the making of Toy Story 3, is really worth checking out.

    So basically we have differing opinions here and there.
  • deleted... double post
  • damien
    There is very little that is "interactive" about most websites. Look at any of the top 100 or 1000 websites and tell me what is "interactive" about them beyond being able to click on links. Most of the actual interactivity is pushed out into flash and video.

    As an exercise, take screenshots of the Wired.com homepage and composite them into one big image. then look over the image and identity those regions that have interactivity beyond link-clicking.

    Ok, we are discussing the article in a message board, which is interactive, but its not the kind of interactivity that a print designer "doesn't get".

    Fundamentally, creating interactivity is expensive - far more expensive than creating a page layout or writing an article. Its software, and mostly, a 2000 word article written over the course of a few days will be more engrossing and entertaining than some software whipped up over the same time period.

    At any rate, go to any of the large advertsising agencies or any of the people pumping out magazine sites for the web, and you will find the vast majority of designers working in photoshop rather than authoring html directly.

    Its not a matter of "not getting" interactive design - its matter of working with the tools that give you the most freedom.
  • damien
    There is very little that is "interactive" about most websites. Look at any of the top 100 or 1000 websites and tell me what is "interactive" about them beyond being able to click on links. Most of the actual interactivity is pushed out into flash and video.

    As an exercise, take screenshots of the Wired.com homepage and composite them into one big image. then look over the image and identity those regions that have interactivity beyond link-clicking.

    Ok, we are discussing the article in a message board, which is interactive, but its not the kind of interactivity that a print designer "doesn't get".

    Fundamentally, creating interactivity is expensive - far more expensive than creating a page layout or writing an article. Its software, and mostly, a 2000 word article written over the course of a few days will be more engrossing and entertaining than some software whipped up over the same time period.

    At any rate, go to any of the large advertsising agencies or any of the people pumping out magazine sites for the web, and you will find the vast majority of designers working in photoshop rather than authoring html directly.
  • the magazine bussiness should have sold a unite that would only display mags,



    and "e"books arent that different from regular books, i need virtual books!!
  • Yoursecretninja
    I think you missed the point. What they did was actually a simple solution. I know from first hand experience. I wrote a "book app engine" for the iPhone for a client of mine. The code consists of a few views, controllers and data models. It works with XML files and images to automagically put everything in the right place. It doesn't care what the orientation of the app is or how many pages there are, or how those pages are laid out. It even has optional interactive features that can be enabled on an image-by-image or page-by-page basis. This took a few days to program. The client has taken this code and produced multiple apps with it without ever tweaking or even looking at the original code base. It would be quicker to port this app to multiple platforms than to reproduce the app in the HTML5/CSS/JavaScript. Plus don't forget, HTML5 is not even a final specification yet so you can't really faithfully rely on it at this point in time... it is experimental at worst - near-production ready at best. Objective-C, like other PROGRAMMING languages, is a powerful beast that can make things that might seem complicated incredibly easy to do. Knowing desktop/mobile development tools and web development tools, I'd pick the desktop and mobile tools any day when appropriate as they are more powerful and cleaner to work with. Web dev is still a mess and I don't blame the tools, they are in early stages and at present spearing off in an entirely different direction than their original design.
  • Yoursecretninja
    I think you missed the point. What they did was actually a simple solution. I know from first hand experience. I wrote a "book app engine" for the iPhone

    You make this sound like it is a lot of effort. I wrote a "book app engine" for the iphone for a client of mine. The code accepts images and XML files and "automagically" puts everything in the right place. Doesn't matter how many pages, what page orientation, even includes optionally features that can be turned on/off on a page-by-page or image-by-image basis. End result... less than a week of coding work... now making an app is just art production time. We've rolled out numerous different apps from that code base without a single tweak to the source code. I wrote far less code than I would have had done to achieve the same thing with HTML/CSS/JavaScript and now the designer can create apps without ever looking at source code again. Don't
  • Ok then, then I must have a truly magical and revolutionary device, because I have flash on my Nokia N900, just waiting for v10.1 to make things even smoother.
    HTML5 that fails on the iPad and iPhone works on my phone.
    Apples own iPad page runs like a snail on the iPad! I tried it yesterday on my bosses iPad.
    And isn't thde iPad supposed to be a netbook killer? then why does it fail on basic things?
    I guess if uncle Steve says it's the best thing ever then it must be true.

    posted from my N900
  • Yenson Parfait
    It really sad when you see the comments from the fanbois that were still in grade school during the CDROM fiasco. They simply blow off anything they have not been force fed by the man, and get all huffy.

    Great article, you nailed it.
  • gareth thomas
    After spending a day in front of a screen working I've zero interest in then spending hours holding up a heavy device getting eyestrain to read it. Plus there was an interesting study recently talking about light being beamed into eyes from things such as iPads late at night upsetting your bodies natural clock and causing sleep problems in people.
  • JohnDoey
    Then don't read in bed. Same thing applies to a paper book in bed which requires … a light! Same thing applies to TV in bed.

    iPad is half the size and weight of a net book. People seem to manage net books and even full laptops pretty well and even take them to bed. Maybe the problem is your spaghetti arms. Or maybe you haven't tried an iPad and are just making assumptions. It sits on your lap, you don't even have to hold it up.
  • Vbmjnjsdfbgsdfg
    It's "Conde Nast" -- no trailing e.
  • Sigh
    I find it hard to believe that after 20 minutes with the Wired app, you have out-thought everything Scott Dadich and his team have thought about.

    I guarantee they have thought of, and probably tried, everything you've thought of, and found their solution to be the best solution for now. At this point its like making fun of floppy disks, it's the first app, which was likely developed about 90% of the way before anyone even had an iPad in their hands. Give it a minute, would ya? For god sakes, you can download that magazine faster than I can walk 20 feet to the grocery store across the street and buy it, and way faster than it takes USPS to send the print version. Spoiled, thankless people. But hyperbole gets the attention, being thankful doesn't.
  • dicklacara
    Except... I have 70-year-old eyes, and can't make the text big enough to read.

    I can, on the web version! I can also search, scroll, copy/paste... use a familiar interface,

    I guess this is just another proof of the Palo Alto Postulate:

    "The customer will pay more... for less... of worse"

    and the California Street Corollary:

    "Because worse ins't as good... the customer wants less of it... and will pay more to get what he wants"


    In this case (500 MB), a lot more is a lot worse!

    Dick Applebaum
  • bonelyfish
    I think the reason to this stupidity is that most designers only know Adobe products and not a javascript programmer. Remember their printing business background, learning Adobe is a part of the computerization. However it doesn't mean they are now designer/programmer. They use the tools only. So when come to javascript or HTML code, they are fucked. BTW, set of images are convincing enough when demonstrating to the boss.
  • I disagree big time - just spent 30 minutes reading, interacting and watching video of the Pixar cover story and watching the Lego animation with my 10 year old son. We were sitting on the couch and sharing the iPad - just like in the old days with a Macintosh IIvx with CD-ROM, oh, wait....

    Who cares if it's 500 meg - did you really care how big the last movie was that you rented from iTunes?
  • JohnDoey
    The last movie I rented from iTunes was 1000MB, only 2 issues of Wired, but the movie had a lot more information in it.

    The Wired app only runs on iPad. 12 issues would fill almost half of the 16GB model. Conde Nast has more magazine titles also.

  • I wasn't really talking about the content as much as how it was constructed.

    I enjoyed the ILM video quite a bit.

    The 500MB thing is a real problem. Let's say a bunch of your other favorite magazines go with the same publishing methodology. 4 magazines combined would be 2 gigs of space per month. On my 16gig iPad, I only have about 8 gigs free, and that's mostly audio and games. It adds up.

    And it doesn't even need to be that way to begin with. At the very least they could use PDF's as a base and layer custom elements such as images and text over the top - the space savings would be fairly large.

  • S Banda911
    I can appreciate that they are trying to maintain the design and philosophy of their magazine, but I have to agree with the author.

    It's an iPad, it's not a magazine. It took a while but that finally got across with websites too. The way I see it, they were just trying to stay hip, and let consumers know they are on top of their technology, but they already have a magazine, and a website - why not create an iPad app? that would allow them to create a great product and still define it within the boundaries of their philosphy, that would compliment the print magazine and the website...

    I read a comment down there about having future issues as separate apps to download... you know there is a fundamental problem with your architecture when that is your solution to handling separate issues.
  • Katie
    Why some people will still buy the Wired app, regardless of size: cost.
    For International readers who get stiffed on postage and other markups, a $5.99 or whatever app is much more appealing than paying for an imported magazine. In Australia, I'd pay $AUD14-17 for the latest air freight edition of Wired (or Vanity Fair). Paying $AUD5.99 or so for the app means I can go and buy another one or two magazines, have a latte or two, or something else with that money. And the magazine would be available sooner, not at least 3-5 days after it hits the shelves in the US.
  • JohnDoey
    I don't think anyone here is saying "get the print version." We're saying it could download in 10% of the time and leave you room on your device for 10 times as many magazines.
  • Siklov Boyski
    Just by the fact that one (1) magazine is 500MB says that they went down the wrong route. I normally support Adobe but lately they're not helping me stand behind them. They should start switching all their tools to output in HTML5.
  • Servertood
    None of this would have happened if Steve Jobs wasnt at war with the web in the first place. Making "apps" out of webpages is the dumbest thing I ever heard of. So if objective C is supposed to be better than web technology (which it isnt) and flash isnt better than web technology (sometimes it is), then use the web.

    The problem is noone and I mean NOONE wants to pay for a webpage. And thats what all this is about. Making something that is NOT a webpage so you can get paid for it.

    Stupid Stupid Stupid.
  • ""None of this would have happened if Steve Jobs wasnt at war with the web in the first place."""

    Say, what?

    ""Making "apps" out of webpages is the dumbest thing I ever heard of.""

    Yes, maybe that's why he advocates the use of HTML5.

    "" So if objective C is supposed to be better than web technology (which it isnt) and flash isnt better than web technology (sometimes it is), then use the web.""

    Sense. This comment does not make any.
  • gareth1090
    spot on.

    ultimately all of this must come down to money. publishers want apps to revive their flagging business and give them a digital outlet that people will pay for content. and jobs wants apps to succeed because he skims off the top of every sale.
  • JohnDoey
    You have no idea what you're talking about.

    Promoting HTML5 over Flash (as Steve Jobs has done) cannot be "at war with the Web." HTML5 is the publishing language of the World Wide Web. If it's not in HTML, it is not on the Web. A CD is not on the Web. Flash is not on the Web. Objective-C is not on the Web. The first Web browser and Web server were written in Objective-C. You make browsers with it, not Web content. The Web ran only on a NeXT system for the first year or 2. NeXT is a Steve Jobs company by the way.

    It is Steve Jobs and Apple that brought the Web to smart phones. All the smart phones are using the Apple Web decoder which they ported to ARM for iPhone. Adobe has failed to create a FlashPlayer for smart phones, they are irrelevant in mobile.

    What you see in the iPad browser is the best Web rendering ever, by far, including the touch interface that makes "buttons" into buttons.

    So you simply have no idea what you're talking about.

  • You seemed intelligent, then you wrote the above and spoiled the effect.

    Steve Jobs is promoting a new standard which is less than 1% of the current web traffic (brilliant!) and since developers need to support the remaining 99% (and all the non-HTML5 compliant browsers, this is yet more work for limited budgets, great thinking Einstein)

    The first web browser was Mosaic which was not written in Objective-C. "Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina originally designed and programmed NCSA Mosaic for Unix's" (Source: Wikipedia). So you are completely wrong.

    The first Smartphone came out in 1996; Nokia 9210. The Symbian OS in 2002 provided the first full-functioning web browser. Apple iPhone was released in 2007. (Source: Wikipedia). So, again, you are completely wrong.

    Macromedia (later acquired by Adobe) released Flash Lite back in 2002 which ran on several smartphones of the time. Five years before iPhone was released. The Adobe Player 10.1 works on Android 2.1 and 2.2 so again, you are not only completely wrong, but biased beyond any shred of credibility.

    Who has no idea about what they are talking about again?
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorldWideWeb
    actually, although misguided, JohnDoey is technically correct about the first Web Browser

    Mosaic was perhaps the first cross platform browser, but Tim Berners-Lee worked on a NeXT box when he created the web http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web#History

    shame Jobs did not stay at NeXT, his cult dogma is setting the industry back decades
  • ""Steve Jobs is promoting a new standard which is less than 1% of the current web traffic (brilliant!) and since developers need to support the remaining 99% (and all the non-HTML5 compliant browsers, this is yet more work for limited budgets, great thinking Einstein)""

    Actually, the new standard works on Firefox, Opera, Safari, Chrome and IE8 with some of it also working on IE7. So, it's actually more like 60% of the current web traffic.

    Also, it's 100% of the current web traffic on the iPad, the iPhone, the Android phones and all Webkit based smart devices out there.

    Also: "Great thinking Einstein"? What is this, third grade?

    ""The first web browser was Mosaic which was not written in Objective-C. "Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina originally designed and programmed NCSA Mosaic for Unix's" (Source: Wikipedia). So you are completely wrong.""

    Mosaic was the first COMMERCIAL web browser. The first web browser (period) was written in Objective-C by Tim Berners Lee (the inventor of the world wide web) on a NeXT machine.

    Check: http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/WorldWideWeb
    and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_World_Wide_Web#1980.E2.80.931991:_Development_of_the_World_Wide_Web

    ""The Symbian OS in 2002 provided the first full-functioning web browser.""

    Not exactly what we, web people, can full-functioning. Actually, more of a mess, barely adequate for its' time.

    ""Macromedia (later acquired by Adobe) released Flash Lite back in 2002 which ran on several smartphones of the time. ""

    Yes. And it was crap and not compatible with Flash proper. Never got any real traction. Your point again?

    ""Macromedia (later acquired by Adobe) released Flash Lite back in 2002 which ran on several smartphones of the time. Five years before iPhone was released. The Adobe Player 10.1 works on Android 2.1 and 2.2 so again, you are not only completely wrong, but biased beyond any shred of credibility."""

    Said Adobe Player is not even released. No phone ships with it yet. It's a FUTURE product, a step ahead vapourware. Oh, and the demos of current beta versions are not that good, fast, or battery-efficient either.

    ""Who has no idea about what they are talking about again?""

    You don't really want us to spell it out for you, do you?
  • Jojo
    "But as it stands now, the Wired iPad app is even far behind their own website. That’s embarrassing. Did anyone at Conde Naste look at this and wonder why someone would choose to use this over their very own website?"

    This month's GQ, they took the cover feature video off the website - where it's been published every month for the two years of my subscription - and put it exclusively in the iPad app, at least for the time being. Way to go, guys. :(
  • srnelson
    My problem is that I have to keep a copy of the 500mb file on my MacBook in iTunes in order to keep it on my iPad. If I delete it from iTunes, it deletes it from the iPad. If I switch off iPad syncing with iTunes, it deletes all the apps from my iPad. That's an Apple problem, not a Wired problem, but it gives me less incentive to get big apps.
  • JohnDoey
    The copy on your Mac is the real copy. The one on iPad is a working copy, you can lose your iPad without losing your apps and you can have multiple iPads.

    You don't have to switch off app syncing. There are checkboxes next to apps in iTunes. Uncheck the Wired app and it will be removed from your iPad but stay in iTunes.
  • srnelson
    The one on my Mac is a useless copy - I don't care if it is the "real" copy. The last thing I want on my Mac is 500 mb of Wired magazine that I can't read on my Mac. I only want it on my iPad. But if I remove it from my Mac it disappears from my iPad. What you explained is correct - and that's what I'm complaining about.
  • Guest
    Not to rile up people, but if they really wanted a rich user experience there is no substitute, at least right now for flash. HTML5/canvas is going to take a while to catch up, or maybe never actually will fully catch up with the experience offered in flash. Say what you want about it being proprietary, or regurgitate Steve Jobs words of wisdom, but if people want to make fully engaging apps and experiences, there isn't anything else that comes close right now.
  • read up on SVG, been 'there' for over 10 years... Adobe even thought so themselves before they bought Macromedia and acquired Flash.
  • JohnDoey
    Flash does not run on mobiles. It is Mac/PC only. HTML5 is on all the mobiles.

    In IE/Firefox on the desktop, there is no substitute for Flash. But we are talking about iPad and mobiles, where there is no Flash. It does not exist. On mobiles, HTML5 *is* the substitute for Flash. That is its purpose and function. It does all the flashy things you expect from Flash but with much lower CPU and without crashing.


  • beatpanda
    They're dumb. They don't know any better. End of story.

    A woman who works for Time Inc. told me a few weeks ago that Time has already shed $60 million building their new CMS. I asked the lady why they didn't modify an off-the-shelf open-source app instead, and her answer was "we already spent $60 million".

    The print media industry needs an influx of people who know what they're doing before they're going to get any good at digital distribution, and right now most of those people are working somewhere else.
  • Chances are it would take $120 million in additional development to get the ots-os app to do exactly what is required meet their needs. Sure, it may get to 70% right away, but that last 30% will take longer and cost more to develop than building the whole thing from scratch.

    There are some software systems that are poor candidates for off the shelf, when there are many moving parts, an extensive list of support systems, and very specific requirements the generic product is just going to fall flat. When you adopt one of these, at the end of the day you find yourself cutting corners to do your work their (the software developers) way instead of doing it the way you know it should be done. That's pretty dumb imho.
  • This is just sad. And I've heard worse from other old-media dinosaurs
  • Jakep36
    I agree completely. After using great apps like Instapaper, Kindle and iBooks on the iPad, I've become used to being able to manipulate text. If you store text in images, you can't resize, copy and paste and last but not least it looks bad. You may be able to use some custom fonts designed for print, but they don't render nearly as good as just using text objects on the iPad. The text in the Wired app looks terrible compared to Instapaper. I will continue reading wired via safari on the iPad until they at least make it a better reading experience. Only value add is offline viewing.
  • dicklacara
    Best post so far!

    The purpose of a Car is to get a person from point A to point B.

    The purpose of a Magazine is to get information from the Publisher to the Consumer.

    Automakers and Publishers can add embellishments to their products to make them more attractive and the user experience more enjoyable. But they cannot abandon their reason for existence... their basic function!

    IMO, the Wired app, has lost its way, and chosen Glitz and Gimmicks, rather than Enhancing and Improving the user experience.

    If Wired were an auto manufacturer, their offering would resemble a NASCAR vehicle, and provide little, or no, utility to the average driver,
  • How about my thing: http://www.neverendmedia.com. Better?
  • Ramin
    Um, yes. Care to be more specific?
  • kcheyfitz
    It says a lot about the core problem and it is, sadly, typical of Conde Nast that there is no social media sharing within the Wired app. It'll be added as an afterthought. SI Newhouse, Conde Nast's autocrat, is famously disdainful of audiences and doesn't want the riff-raff mucking with or commenting on his fabulous content. That's probably a bad attitude in print. Online, it's just plain crazy. But that attitude is the likely reason there is no interacting in all the so-called interaction that exists within the Wired app. It's a far cry from the efforts of the Hacks & Hackers weekend [ http://bit.ly/bfNqKY ] that recently concluded. I wrote about a lot of this here [http://huff.to/9fn37A].
  • benxamin
    Interesting... This is really a content management problem. How do you push mobile iPad editions out of your current workflow? I agree that HTML5 & WebKit should be part of that solution.
  • JohnDoey
    If Adobe hadn't bought their only competitor and started killing themselves with Flash, then we might have a solution to that problem by now.

    The problem is that InDesign and Flash and Dreamweaver should all be 1 app that outputs HTML5. HTML5 is the digital paper in iPad.
  • Cliff
    This author is a dick. I couldn't stand to get halfway through the article.
  • JohnDoey
    Thanks for contributing nothing.
  • Jberm
    HTML5 and JS run pretty darn slow in mobile WebKit...Just saying it's not the magic bullet solution you're touting it to be...not yet anyways.
  • JohnDoey
    Not on iPad they don't run slow.
  • gareth1090
  • So it appears that the simplest thing for the designers todo was to output the images from their existing workflow, and hey we now have an app.. So remind me again why Apple thinks that permitting lowest common denominator application/techniques lead to low value applications. Apple stay strong on flash, give me applications that use the platform correctly. Just take a look at elements or hell, doctor suse.
  • engers
    Sports Illustrated demonstrated how HTML5 can do exactly the same job at Google's IO last week. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7uu35xTttQ
  • Tim
    Oh god it stinks...Surely a PDF with hotspots could do all of that..
  • I love the iPad App but I agree that they should have done it in HTML5.
  • As I understand it they worked with Adobe to be able to generate this iPad edition using InDesign. Building an HTML5 version of a highly designed print magazine like Wired every month would be a lot of work and until a designer can just export directly from InDesign to a fully fledged website, without having to pass files on to a developer, there's no optimal solution.

    The best thing about this Wired iPad app is it's fidelity to the design of the print version. Websites are lightweight and efficient but they almost never have the kinds of dynamic layouts that you find in Wired Magazine. Design might not be important to software engineers and web developers but it's sure as hell important to the rest of us.

    If you got bored after 20 minutes without reading any of the articles than you spent a lot more time with a magazine than most people would without reading any of the articles.
  • I think you are spot on here, the print designers do not have the tools to work with html 5 like they can with print. There just isn't a tool out there that can mimic inDesign for the web, especially if they are trying to take their print magazine and make it digital directly.
  • Hello, sorry yes they do - we are a small French technology company and we are currently updating one of our products - eGate - (originally created for generating XML from Xpress and Indesign articles) so that layout artists can build their tablet versions in Indesign. But we don't generate images - we do HTML 5. With the Wired/Adobe version - where is Search ? where is zooming ? Frankly I agree with the author of this article, going with images was a lame decision. But okay with me, Adobe just shot itself in the foot. :/>
  • JohnDoey
    The magazine is images and XML, then somebody had to write Objective-C. Just write HTML5 instead. Same difference. You can read data out of XML and show images in HTML5.
  • Joe
    I've been comparing it back and forth with the print copy. It was confusing to me when to scroll down and when not to. It was easy to get lost and the font size was huge. What I did like was being able to jump via the ToC and the inline music. Many times i've torn out magazine pages and then gone to my mac to look up and listen to a song and such. I wish the videos played more in-line and not in a full screen mode. I guess the size of the app itself didn't bother me, but there is definitely an argument for faster delivery like the Marvel comics app. The roll over animations were confusing at first and way too sensitive. The ads were some of the most interesting parts. I enjoyed watching the Benz video that I prob would not have sought out online when reading a magazine.
  • "So why didn’t they choose HTML5 and build a custom viewer application around WebKit?"

    Er, or maybe just have a URL?

    The app cult does have to end some time.
  • JohnDoey
    Because it's a paid app and nobody will pay for a URL.
  • Stew
    The reason it doesn't use HTML5 is that the output comes from Adobe CS5.

    CS5 outputs images. The XML is what Adobe have added to the mix - it's what tells the actual app where to put "interactive" elements (when the user taps in this bounding rectangle play this video at these coordinates, etc. etc.)

    By using CS5 the same guys who do the print layout can do the iPad layout - and right now that's cheaper, quicker and easier than getting a bunch of web developers in to do it. No new workflows.

    Unfortunately you end up with shitty, unambitious magazines.

  • ..but then again.. it's still early in it's development. A lot of people are complaining and not giving it time to mature. Nothing starts out 100% out of the gate. Where we're at now with this will not likely be where it will be at by next year!
  • Bar_Code
    Having worked at Conde Nast, both on the internal iPhone dev group and the Wired.com site, I can make an educated guess on why the app works this way. First, by making the iPad/iPhone apps (Wired, GQ, Vanity Fair) almost exact replicas of the magazines (including ads), they count towards the distribution numbers for the physical magazine. This helps when ad rates are determined. This also means each issue will be a separate app. So how will they manage new editions? New apps.
    It seems like Wired went the same route as GQ & Vanity Fair, which were done in house. However, there probably wasn't time to really splice things up properly. It's a lot of grunt work organizing everything properly into XML. It can be automated only to a certain extent. Future editions, likely being new apps, will hopefully be much better (maybe smaller).
  • While I agree with some things in this text, I dislike its occassionally condescending tone. I am particularly talking about the claim that "the wrong people were working on the web problem back in the day". I think it is just an utterly elitist and disrespectful statement to make and arrogantly dismisses anyone who fought with and tackled this (then) new form of communication back then. Unless you can make a valid claim that you singelhandedly solved the 'web problem' yourself (not just 'corrected') at some point further down the line, it feels a bit arrogant to make such a blanket statements, especially when you are trying to convince people of something.

    It's well known that new media confront and overwhelm people in a way that the only form they can initially handle it is by applying 'known' and trusted aesthetics and methods. The first wave of photographs were mimicking paintings, many of the first TV-shows had a theatrical pace and setting and, yes, there was a slew of Websites that had paper patterned backgrounds because up until then, paper was more or less all we knew based on a 500 year long . It takes time to develop 'the language' of a new medium and often this language is eventually developed by the same people who 'were wrong' in the first place, because they finally understand. We're just a bit more than 15 years in with the Web and widespread use of tablets is just about to start. Who knows? Maybe we are wrong too with a few of our pet topics and in another 15 years someone will arrogantly claim that he had known all along.

    Same goes for the Wired App. Yes, it might suck. But it's one of the first shots into the dark. Nobody has figured out yet how to do a successful iPad magazine app because the thing is out for a few weeks. You haven't figured out either. That's why almost everything in your critique revolves around technology (HTML5 vs whatever). Suggestions on how to improve user experience, legibility, usability – not to mention business strategies – are nearly absent. So the question I had after finishing the piece: well, how would YOU design a magazine app that rocks after all?
  • it seems sort of obvious that baking page layouts into images is not just a bad idea, but a bad idea that we grew out of over a decade ago. I'd hardly claim to have the solution to "magazine-style" iPad apps, but it seems like the real win would be to assemble pages on the fly from a database of local and networked content.
  • gareth1090
    "the real win would be to assemble pages on the fly from a database of local and networked content."

    hmmm sounds like Adobe AIR to me.
  • What?

    What part sounds like Adobe AIR?
  • gareth1090
    The bit i quoted. I probably should have said: "hmmm sounds like it could/should be Adobe AIR to me."

    AIR is meant to be an easy way to merge online and offline content and allow the flashplayer access to things it doesn't normally get like file system, write files, local storage blah blah blah. Sounds like an ideal solution for magazine apps which might want access to dynamic content off the net mixed with assets inside the app. Plus you can pretty much take an existing website and convert it to a desktop application with very little rejigging.

    Shame AIR isn't allowed on iphone or ipad.
  • AIR is Adobe's last hope to try to force a flawed, dying platform (Fla$h) onto our systems. I've used a few AIR applications before, and all I can say is that they're a poor excuse for a "native" app. Problems like standard shortcuts failing to work and one app somehow wanting read/write access to my Applications directory. (It never got it; I'm not that stupid). The sooner AIR dies, along with Fla$h, the better.
  • Let the God of the WWW get his QQ's in
  • m-Feagins
    Why on earth would you buy an ipad?

    touch-screen Windows 7 laptops are WAY cheaper, and WAY better....as in....not a glorified palm-pilot
  • JohnDoey
    Windows 7 requires a device at least 2x the size and weight, with half the battery life. Windows 7 has no mobile apps and cannot be safely connected to the Internet due to hundreds of thousands of viruses. Banks recommend you don't bank with Windows 7. Windows 7 requires PC level I-T that is beyond the DIY skills of almost all users, which means expensive consulting hours, whereas iPad requires iPod level I-T that anyone can do. Windows 7 is DOS and iPad is Unix. iPad is fast and responsive and modern and sexy and fun and Windows 7 is not. iPad just works. Windows 7 does not.
  • Joe Shawfield
    Great, great article! I am right with you.

    I do hoever think that all things considered, they may have found it to be more valuable to simply be "out there" during the gold rush of the ipad explosion. The tenet of "get out there early" was probably a more important factor than the longevity, standards/compliance of this particular incarnation. This method got out there quick and I am hoping they did so without a large overhead. It likely could be based upon what types of skill sets they had. Shoot quick and right down the middle.

    Also knowing that this was the first version of the ipad and things are likely to change this bought them some time to let the process shake out a bit. They can circle back and do things on the second go around without tying themselves to an uncertain investment in this area technically.
  • Robin S.
    I totally agree with you. The readers don't care about how it's made, instead they want an experience which they will pay for. In my opinion WIRED is the best digital magazine so far. It combines the look and feel of a real magazine with interactive content and that's what I'm willing to pay for. I have an iPad without a 3G connection, so when I'm on the road I can't acces the internet. In times like these, I want to read magazines, which wouldn't be possible with an online web magazine. Even if I had a 3G connection, it wouldn't be enough to compete with the full experience (beautiful images, videos, 3D views) WIRED offers. Oh, and I think buying the digital magazine in the Appstore comparing with buying a CD-ROM at the now defunct Egg Head store is a bit shallow, because isn't that the power of the Appstore? Buying apps anywhere at any time? If I'm waiting for my train to arrive I can easily download a digital magazine, because free WIFI is common these days.

    I still think you're right at some points, 500 MB is way to much and HTML5 is the future, but were at the beginning of something. Digital magazines will evolve and get better.
  • Robin S.
    I totally agree with you. The readers don't care about how it's made, instead they want an experience which they will pay for. In my opinion WIRED is the best digital magazine so far. It combines the look and feel of a real magazine with interactive content and that's what I'm willing to pay for. I have an iPad without a 3G connection, so when I'm on the road I can't acces the internet. In times like these, I want to read magazines, which wouldn't be possible with an online web magazine. Even if I had a 3G connection, it wouldn't be enough to compete with the full experience (beautiful images, videos, 3D views) WIRED offers. Oh, and I think buying the digital magazine in the Appstore comparing with buying a CD-ROM at the now defunct Egg Head store is a bit shallow, because isn't that the power of the Appstore? Buying apps anywhere at any time? If I'm waiting for my train to arrive I can easily download a digital magazine, because free WIFI is common these days.

    I still think you're right at some points, 500 MB is way to much and HTML5 is the future, but were at the beginning of something. Digital magazines will evolve and get better.
  • JohnDoey
    HTML5 works offline. The app would still have a home screen icon and work offline if it was HTML5.

    There are 2 kinds of iPhone OS apps: HTML5 and C. Nobody is saying don't make it an app. We're just saying it shouldn't be 500MB because of the time it takes to download and the storage it takes up on a mobile device with 16GB disk. And the memory and CPU cycles and so on.
  • Laxator2
    Isn't it the ages-old tactic of the print magazine people crippling the electronic version to protect their business ?
  • Mike Edel
    I don't know if anyone has pointed this out yet but you could actually do the same level of interactivity in native PDF. Been experimenting with interactive features inside InDesign CS5 last week and embedded videos and image galleries are certainly no huge problem.
    You need Acrobat Reader 9 though - don't think that the non-Adobe PDF viewers support all of these features yet.
  • JohnDoey
    Those are nonstandard PDF features that carry outrageous security risks. However, they could have done the page parts in PDF and added video and interactivity natively on iPad.
  • Gav
    I stopped reading as soon as I saw "iPad's".

    It's "iPads".
  • Kevin L.
    I'm sure you know, but the majority of people who purchase will never know about the things you complained about, nor will they care. I appreciate that this apparently worked you up to the extent that you felt you needed to write a lengthy post about it, but I'm one of those people who doesn't care about its technical underpinnings. I can see how doing the WIRED app in HTML5 is appealing in a technical way, but it doesn't change the end result and content for me or the consumer. You may be fascinated by the app's construction, but I suspect the customers bought this app for its content. This app seems more esthetically pleasing, easier to navigate, and easier to read than the website. People will always choose something with a slicker UI(Like the WIRED App) over something that works better, but looks worse or is more confusing(The free website). Apple knows this lesson very well.
    I think it's cool, and apparently many others do as well. With the sales they're having right now I really don't think WIRED has any incentive to change anything anytime soon.

    Additionally, why do you assume Conde Nast was "duped" by Adobe? You can't possibly imagine that either Conde Nast or WIRED looked at the possible options and came to the conclusion that Adobe's was best?
    How very arrogant.
  • Marook
    But that is actually why it fails! The magazine is way to big for monthly downloads, there is no in-app purchase of e next issue, the navigation is so bad you don't find the pages 'down under' unless you find them by accident and the wannabe-interactive feature are.. Well.. Simply unusable!
    As I have written elsewhere, it looks pretty but fails to deliver!
  • JohnDoey
    You missed the point. It's made of images and XML, in other words: markup. They invented their own HTML. Had they used the world's HTML, it would run not just on iPad, but everywhere.

    All the Flash propaganda that surrounded this app was that Flash was going to enable it to run everywhere (be careful to ignore Flash does not run everywhere) and they complained they would have to make an iPad version and a version for everyone else. They obviously did not have to.
  • Surely even just a PDF of the real magazine would have sufficed? Making multiple formats of content is time wasting and makes designers/developers want to leave their industry!
  • wired is a 1990's concept anyway... what self respecting digital boffin honestly sits down with a "magazine", ipad or otherwise.

    just sayin'...
  • I do. I subscribe to newsweek and wired because I prefer the print version to the web version.

    And I'm a UI/UX designer. so go figure...
  • djack
    I dislike authors who use profanity and make use of technology discrimination. Unfortunately, I found this article to be intentionally mean spirited and condescending. Keep in mind there are a lot of Flash developers out there who could create user interfaces using their choice of tools that would be very difficult (maybe not impossible) using open standards such as HTML5. I think that HTML5 is a good thing, particularly for people who specifically can't afford to buy extremely powerful tools like Flash to create their content, but this whole argument of HTML5 being better than Flash is just wrong, it's not... The problem, and hypocritical aspect for author's who bash Flash for being proprietary, is that companies like Apple who ban Flash content and promote falsehoods about the technology, are doing so for purely business/profit-motive based reasons. I don't think there's anything wrong with a profit motive, if you are ethical and honest in your business actions. Apple is not being ethical, and similarly Flash hating authors who prop up "open standards" from a perspective of moral superiority are reprehensible.
  • JohnDoey
    We are talking about iPad and mobile tablets, not Mac/PC. Since HTML5 is universal on mobiles and Flash is non-existent, HTML5 is unquestionably, unarguably better than Flash when it comes to mobiles.

  • I dislike readers who are bothered by profanity and don't actually read the article. Unfortunately, I found this comment to be mostly off-topic and uninformed. Keep in mind there are a lot of commenters in here who could create comments using their choice of browsers that would be very difficult (maybe not impossible) using arguments that didn't even appear in the blog post above. It's just that no one wants to hear from them.
  • LLLMMAAOOOO..... thanks I need that this morning.
  • Weak Argument
    Flash lover!
  • Did you actually read the article, or did you just see the words "Flash" and "HTML5" and light up?
  • I mostly agree with the premise that it could have been done in HTML5, but the Wired app does a few things that would be hard (not impossible) to do in HTML5.

    One is that the pages are most definitely NOT slideshows. Rotate the iPad from portrait to landscape and every page (and I mean *every* page -- including the ads) relayout themselves intelligently. They could have done the lazy thing and just scaled things, but they actually reflow discrete elements on the page so they fit in the right place. It's obvious they built a custom layout engine to make sure this worked well across the board.

    On some pages (like the Japanese comic one) the content actually changes too depending on the orientation.

    This also works with columnar formats, so there was attention paid to the reflow fitting in the space allocated without ugly widows getting left behind. My guess is heavy use of the new Core Text features--not very accessible yet in webkit. This isn't something you can do out-of-the-box with HTML5, but it's not impossible through judicious use of tagging and a proper Javascript layout engine.

    The other thing is with caching the content for offline reading. Again, not impossible to do with access to SQLite in webkit or use of the 'cache manifest' mechanism. But for full control over it, there would have to be some javascript tweaking. They probably didn't want to rely on the built-in webkit cache especially with large hi-rez content (and video).

    Finally, if as reported they started with an Air app then they probably built themselves a content display system driven by data so they could put out more issues in the future. There's a good chance the last minute dumping of Flash by Apple made it so they ported the Air playback engine to native code so all their content could be reused. It's possible they didn't trust webkit to let them pull that off. You don't want to go down that path only to find at the last minute some obscure Javascript/CSS incompatibility was screwing you over. Doing it in Objective-C would have been a safer bet--especially under deadline.

    My guess is this is only the first run of their content-management engine and it looks like it was put together fairly quickly. As time goes on, they'll probably do a balance of native and UIWebView to keep download sizes reasonable, but still give you that offline-cache-snappy feeling.
  • JohnDoey
    JavaScript is part of HTML5, "out-of-the-box." So is CSS3.

    There is a JavaScript event that fires when iPad is rotated, you can easily re-layout the page in that case. You create a style called "vertical" and one called "horizontal" and you change the style of the text when the device rotates. You can also create a transition so the changes between the 2 styles animate instead of just changing instantly.

    The Wired app is just images. There is a horizontal and vertical image of each page. No text is flowed or reflowed.

    CSS3 has columns.

    Offline operation is easy on iPhone OS, HTML5 is the original API, C came a year later. Certainly less work than a native iPhone C app. But they could have created an app with HTML5 content in it if their goal was to be in App Store.

    There was no last minute dumping of Flash by Apple. Adobe has 100% ownership of Flash. The misunderstanding was entirely between Adobe and Conde Nast. Flash has never run on iPhone OS and Apple has never said it would. The last minute part is Adobe released their iPhone OS v3 app packager 1 week after iPhone OS v4 app tools shipped from Apple. Adobe was 53 weeks behind iPhone OS which is on a 52 week cycle. Apps made with Flash CS5 packager don't run on iPhone OS v4.

    The idea that you can trust Flash but not WebKit is literally insane.


  • oh come on, Apple has specifically changed their terms to block 3rd party app building. You know damned well the intent was to export the air version of Adobe's Wired to a native iProduct app. What you are being critical of is the quick workaround solution to just get something out there.

    If Apple was so keen on HTML5 and it is as magic as you want to make it out to be then they would shut down the app store.

    These two formerly sweetheart companies started to diverge back when Apple released its own video editing software to undercut Premier/AE. The Flash iProduct story has equal part blame on both sides. Profit from the app store that would have been undercut by Flash is not to be dismissed. The animosity had been simmering for a while and is now at a boil.
  • nobody
    You didn't read the article, did you?
  • informed
    So how is it Adobe's fault Conde Nast made a crappy iPhone app? Sounds to me like the developers don't care, and an exec said it needs to be released yesterday.
  • I actually worked on a concept like that... It was a prototype to see if we could imitate that sort of iPad-magazine style in a browser with nothing but html, css, and jquery.

    To make a long story short, we came up with a pretty good (albeit very beta) product, and our test audiences really took to it.

    In a way the iPad has shown the magazine world was they miss from digital - linear reading, editions, art direction, full and page ads. But instead of realizing this, we've been crowding around the device expecting it to reinvent the magazine.

    That's... not going to happen.

    We could, however, use it as an opportunity to make sweeping improvements to magazine websites. And I think that's the point... if you can do all of this stuff in HTML5, CSS3, and JQuery, why not do it in a browser where everyone can see it?

    Plus, it's much cheaper (and faster) than writing Objective-C.

  • Is there anyway we can see what you worked on? I definitely would love to check it out?
  • Soon. I have a demo video on the way and need to port it to adequate hosting. I'll post a link here when it's ready.
  • Cool... thanx
  • The video, first draft, as requested:
    http://vimeo.com/12282674
  • nice work, commercial or just a proof of concept?

  • Thank you. It's a concept for the moment. I'm looking to commercialize it; it's just a matter of finding a first adopter.
  • I'm VERYYYY interested in this. I published a high quality hip hop magazine did two really great issues but it was too expensive so I moved to the web. I'd love to the first hip hop music magazine to do something like this.
  • Wouldn't Adobe Flash / AIR be better for this?
    Smaller file size and more interactivity?
  • Nels
    That was the original intent. I saw a demo of the Wired digital Magazine and SXSW and they were running Air on a laptop and a tablet. They were under the assumption that Air would get approved by Apple. I think Adobe was trying to use the magazine as a way to get on the iPad/iPhone and then Apple closed the door. Wired was left with no choice but to power ahead with the quickest possible solution (what we see today).
  • I know all that, I saw the demo too.

    I wanted to get responses from people that don't agree with uncle Steve not allowing Flash and AIR on his iDevices. and of course from people who know what Flash and AIR are capable of.
  • JohnDoey
    Flash and AIR don't exist on mobiles. There is a beta of FlashPlayer running now on Android v2.2, but it is only a beta. That fact has nothing to do with Steve Jobs. He is supposed to want to buy the product, he doesn't build it. It's 100% Adobe's responsibility to manage Flash. Since it doesn't exist, the fact that Apple announced they're done waiting after 3 years is moot.

    Next you will be telling me Android is open. (The C API is closed, only Google can make native apps.)

    Enjoy your Gizmodo.
  • Please repeat that?
    I have Flash on my mobile, and except for what wasn't made with touch screens in mind, everything works fine. Just waiting to get flash 10.1 to make things even smoother.
    With AdBlock and Flashblock installed I get no annoying ads.

    HTML5 that fails miserably on the iPhone / iPad also works just fine on my mobile.
    The full Google wave and Gmail works just fine and I never need to go to mobile pages on sites like Facebook.

    I must have a truly magical and revolutionary device.

    I'm sure it wouldn't take much to make AIR work on my mobile either.

    Posted from my Nokia N900
  • I'm sure Wired would have used Flash or AIR if there where a tablet computer on the market right now that allowed flash or AIR.
  • Arby
    Sorry, but could you please explain why you're blaming Adobe for this?? What does Adobe have to do with Wired's app? Please explain. Don't assume your reader automatically knows the details.
  • ben
    I love html5...
  • mcg1969
    Seems that they considered getting something out the door more important than getting a good architecture. I think you're right that they probably needed to scramble after \S3.1.3. Hopefully they have launched a parallel project to do it right, that they can swap in as their default workflow in 1-2 months time.
  • Bob!
    In case you haven't looked at the Yahoo Entertainment app on the iPad, take a look now. Apparently, it's almost all HTML5. The TV guide thing was coded native to do the fast data lookups and synchronization with a database of some sort, but the rest is web. If you look closely, you'll notice the entire app uses a custom font as well. As mind boggling as it may seem, someone at yahoo might actually get new media.
  • Rezmason
    I'm sure that most magazine apps can and should be written in HTML 5. But I don't think Webkit can handle certain interactive content, even if it uses completely open and up to date web technologies. I'm not convinced that it's ready for prime time.
  • JohnDoey
    All WebKit does is interactive content. It can do much more than this Wired app. You can do interactive video as well. The transitions in the Wired app are a WebKit specialty.

    Keep in mind that most of the Web is still made to run in IE, which is 10 years behind WebKit.
  • Of course Webkit can handle interactive content. It's a web browser. It can do anything that any web browser can do, and that includes everything that's been described here about this Wired app.
  • Bob
    What a ridiculous article. You acknowledge that the app is a stopgap because of Flash licensing issues and then complain about it. Silly really.
  • JackT
    Quite likely it's for legal reasons -- the magazine is free to repackage and sell its issues as pure page images without having to get permissions from contributors or pay them royalties.

    It's the same for The New Yorker and The Rolling Stone archives available on DVD -- the products are just page images with a reader and a custom index for searching.
  • Those legal reasons simply require that publications display articles within the context of the issue. (That's based on recent case law, not code law.) There is no requirement that they be presented precisely as they originally appeared, although there was suspicion that might be necessary back when The New Yorker archive was released. If you want evidence, just look at Wired's website—all their articles appear there eventually, all as HTML. This argument is a red herring.
  • "But now you want me to download 500MB a month just so some print designer can have pixel perfect layouts with custom fonts?"

    I'm all for technical efficiency, but there has to be at least some consideration of and respect for the traditional practices that have been the baseline of graphic communication for centuries. Your ignorance of typography as an essential component of the magazine experience is worrisome for anyone who takes the future of the form seriously.
  • JohnDoey
    Another essential component of the magazine experience is that it shouldn't weigh 500 kilos or 500 megabytes.

    iPad's browser has great typography, with custom fonts and ligatures and so on. Better than most people have ever seen on a computer. There has to be some consideration and respect for the state of the art.
  • Dude ... why do typographers demand so much respect for their obscure and often superfluous hobby? Because it was a well-paid job a while ago, mostly stemming from the fact that in QuarkXPress there was hardly anything to do than selecting a typeface? If I could chose between some "fonts" a typographer decided i should read some text in and the ability to copy/paste this text, of course i would chose copy/paste in Comic Sans any time.
  • If you think that good typography is superfluous to what makes a magazine a magazine then perhaps you don't appreciate magazines for what they are and have been. Perhaps if this post was dealing with the future of digital content the above arguments would pack a much stronger punch. However, when you start talking about the future of the magazine you must realize and respect that you are now talking about a very definite cultural form with very definite design vernacular and experience that is entirely different that what we get in the web. The task that magazine publishers are trying to carry out here - and the task by which these "apps" should be measured - is how to bring that experience from the medium of ink on paper and into the medium of pixels on a screen.

    Now, if you don't buy into or appreciate that experience to begin with and you indeed are ok with reading an article in comic sans if it means you can copy and paste a sentence then head over to wired.com. Just please realize that there are some of us in the world that place real value on the what we get from traditional magazines - precise type, layout and graphic communication (the information beyond the text) - and we are happy to see that others who value those same things are at least working on building a raft so that the experience might live after the ship of print sinks.

    And make no mistake - the ship of print will sink. The economics demand it. Paper mills are loosing government subsidies and closing down or raising prices to unworkable levels. Fuel prices are fluctuating and - thanks to incidents like the one currently unfolding in the Gulf - the real cost of oil extraction will eventually be priced in permanently at the pump. Distribution will soon become untenable and mass market print magazines will become a thing of the past. This may take ten years - maybe more maybe less - but if we want to preserve some sense of what makes a magazine a compelling cultural form experiments like the Wired app need to be judged on how well they solve the more difficult problem of translating experience and not the more easily fixed technical issues like cut and paste.
  • ""If you think that good typography is superfluous to what makes a magazine a magazine then perhaps you don't appreciate magazines for what they are and have been""

    Vehicles for content?

  • This is the sort of wank that makes me loathe discussions about design with designers.
    Typography is *NOT* essential.
    Content is essential.
    Typography makes the content easier or harder to read. It is presentation. It is not essential. It is important. It is good to have. It makes the experience better. Sometimes, it even makes the experience of reading wonderful.
    It is, however, never 'essential'.

    If you are blowing out a single issue of a magazine to 500MB just for some goddamn fonts, you are doing it wrong.
  • I'm not a designer. I simply understand and sympathize with the principles of design. I understand that information and communication are so much more complex than the limiting IT designation "content" recognizes. What I loathe and fear are that the subtleties of communication will be lost and the complexity of information will be simplified if and when the geeks start making magazines. I say that as a so-called "tech" person. So while there are many things to critique in Wired's effort, I think we make an unfortunate error when we obsess over technical matters that will be solved by this time next year.
  • phreakhead
    I think what everyone's missing here is that the author is saying Wired could have made EXACTLY the same app: perfect designs, fonts, interactivity, everything, but in a standard-compliant, multi-platform language instead of designing a proprietary solution from scratch.

    What Wired has done here is actually very ironic. They are a magazine based on CURRENT TECHNOLOGY. For them to avoid using the current technology and instead develop some hack using techniques from 10 years ago is completely ridiculous. They should feature the latest gadgets in their content AS WELL as their application backend. It just shows that they are not as up-to-date as their pretty fonts and graphs make you believe. Wired is stuck in the print era talking about the digital era, without actually embracing the progress they're proselytizing!
  • Actually he's not really saying that at all. What he is saying is that Wired's team should have made design concessions (which he and many others consider slight) in order to execute more efficiently from a technical perspective (which he and many others consider more important).

    What I'm trying to point out is that those design concessions, while possibly insignificant from a tech perspective, are in fact quite significant from a graphic design "magazine" perspective. So much so that a legitimate argument could be made that if the Wired team had made those concessions they would have been putting out something other than a digital magazine.

    You, me, and Mr. Gilkison may think that whatever that other release might have been would be better than what Wired actually delivered, but that's not really the point of this particular experiment. The point is that Wired is trying to translate what it does - magazines - into this new medium. In order for them to be successful at that they need to stay true to the form and actually put out a digital magazine and not a web site.
  • phreakhead
    By concessions do you mean compromises? I'm pretty sure he's saying NO design concessions would have had to be made right here: "The problem with these XML + images architectures is that they are essentially reinventing HTML with no added benefit... Why the heck didn’t they use HTML5? We stepped through each “page” of the Wired application, looked at each interactive piece – but failed to find anything that ruled out the use of HTML and JavaScript" - meaning that Wired could have implemented all the exact same designs and features in a smarter way. How would Wired "have been putting out something other than a digital magazine" if the app looked and acted the exact same way? They'd still be staying "true to the form" and putting out "a digital magazine and not a web site."

    Just because it's built on HTML5 doesn't mean it has to look like a website. You can make ANY type of interface possible in HTML5. What the author is saying is that HTML5+CSS+JS has been more than 10 years in the making and is perfectly suited for this kind of thing. In fact, it was so good it naturally replaced most other forms of GUIs, including desktop applications and even the horrid "interactive CD-ROM" interfaces that this Wired app is emulating.

    The designers wouldn't know the difference; the consumer wouldn't know the difference (besides faster access times, accessible text/links/etc., and being able to use it even if they didn't have an iPad); the only one who would know the difference is the middleman programmer. And maybe if that programmer had studied up on the latest web development standards instead of living in a cave for the past ten years he could have made something that was better for everyone!
  • I tend to agree with you... or at least want to agree with you. And in the purest sense you are probably right - though the typographic controls in HTML5 are somewhat less precise than the InDesign files the designers used to lay this out. Mr. Gilkision himself says as much in response to me below:

    "What I'm saying is that good enough is good enough. The PopSci+ magazine uses html/text. And it looks fantastic. What I'm also saying is that the tradeoffs for perfection, when good enough will suffice, aren't worth that kind of price."

    That's a legitimate point, but not one the Adobe/Wired team agreed with. They decided that they needed to nail the front end and that "good enough" would not suffice. They decided that the tradeoff for perfection was in fact worth the price. There is no wrong or right in that - there is only the people at Wired putting the emphasis on the area they felt made the most sense for their business in it's current form. Are they happy that the download comes in at 500MB? Probably not. Are they happy that they were able to get a product out and establish a repeatable workflow that didn't require a massive investment in new talent and a fundamental re-organization of their outfit? Probably.

    Ultimately the tools will advance and the output will start to gain the types of efficiencies that we all want and discussions like this will most certainly give the engineers at Adobe and the designers at Wired (as well as the rest of us transitioning magazine orgs from then to now) some food for thought. However, if we continue to bash Adobe/Wired as being stuck in the past cave men that don't understand the web and possibly never will we really only inhibit any progress that might be made.
  • "That's a legitimate point, but not one the Adobe/Wired team agreed with. They decided that they needed to nail the front end and that "good enough" would not suffice. They decided that the tradeoff for perfection was in fact worth the price. "

    What?

    Actually what they did is they went with an underperforming, dumb-ass technology compromise, totally unsuitable for both the platform and the consumer, so they can get it out the door quickly.
  • phreakhead
    Oh wait, ADOBE made this app for Wired? No wonder they didn't use HTML5! If they had, they would have admitted that HTML5 is better than their products like Flash! Instead, they had to re-write their OWN markup language just to do it, because Steve Jobs knows Flash sucks too! (trust me, I say this as a long-time Flash programmer. I KNOW how bad and buggy it is)

    Now I totally understand... sounds just like Adobe to go against the grain and dismiss perfectly good web standards because it hurts their business model (not to mention the shoddy, inefficient programming, complete ignorance of accessibility standards, and short-sighted engineering design that is classic Adobe style.)

    Unfortunately, "any progress that might be made" won't be shared among the wider web community, since Adobe is keeping a tight lid on their source code and API. So yes, I WILL continue to bash Adobe and Wired for not embracing the open standards that are what the web NEEDS to survive. We can't ALL afford Adobe products to make our websites/apps!
  • If you were a long-time Flash programmer then you would be cursing Macromedia and not Adobe. Of the WYSIWYG HTML editors to ever be on the market the only company to ever have a decent one has been Adobe, and that one was dreadful. Macromedia's is the one you are probably thinking of, and it was even worse.

    Adobe was also the company that kept SVG alive for many years, you know, the vector part of HTML5...

    If you know Flash, don't assume you know Adobe.
  • JohnDoey
    Typography is just not as important as you think it is. And iPad's HTML5 has great typography. Making something like this in a 500MB C app only for iPad instead of 50MB HTML5 app that runs everywhere is not a technical question, it's a design question. Design is how stuff works, not how it looks. You don't even choose fonts because of how they look but rather how they work for the reader.
  • Exactly my point... this app is designed to work like a magazine and folks (myself included to some extent) seem to want it to work like an application.
  • FinalForm
    Typography has quite a significant UX responsibility in the sense that arrangement of information, hierarchy etc. is a pretty fundamental part of design (print and web). So it's not merely presentation.

    In any case, the typography in Wired is pretty poor. It's the sort of decorative magazine fluff that's decades out of date. The iPad edition only compounds the problem because it starts making some awful decisions on fundamental stuff like measure and leading. It just looks like what it is, i.e. something that's started life as a print design and then been frogmarched onto the screen with changes made when it becomes apparent that a certain element doesn't work. It's totally reactive and lacking in thought.

    I actually think it's really interesting because it shows how atrophied print design has become. People really don't interrogate the format or mode of delivery in the way that web design has learnt to.
  • Yeah the problem is you are wrong here again. I went to college at the Minneapolis College of Art & Design - for graphic design. I worked with P. Scott Makela. My first professional job was print production and pre-press. I've designed typefaces (in college). I know typography - in a very professional sense.

    What I'm saying is that good enough is good enough. The PopSci+ magazine uses html/text. And it looks fantastic. What I'm also saying is that the tradeoffs for perfection, when good enough will suffice, aren't worth that kind of price.

    And you should be a little more forthcoming that you work for a magazine publisher.
  • You may be right... for some people that trade off won't be worth it. Different strokes for different folks. Take that PoSci+ thing... It didn't do anything for me. It felt contrived, too conscious of itself as something new. It wasn't a magazine. The Wired app on the other hand was the first one of these digital magazines that actually came close to giving me that magazine vibe. Sure it ain't perfect and it may be a mess under the hood, but it's got a kind of warmth and readability that I find satisfying. The only thing that is certain is that all of these "apps" have a long way to go before posts like these start to fade away.

    Also - I didn't say you don't know typography - but rather I feel you are underestimating how essential typography is to the magazine form. You may be Jan Tschichold for all I know, but your post short changes precision layout as a primary component of what a magazine communicates. Personally I give the Wired iPad team a lot of props for the simple fact that they prioritized traditional magazine qualities, went passed "good enough" and did what they needed to do to create something that really does feel like a magazine... for some of us at least.

    As for my professional status - you have found me out. However, you really only need to read some of the things I've written in the past to know that I'm not an industry shill. I have no problem calling shit out when I feel it's needed, and I respect the hell out of your point of view here (actually agree with a lot of what you say). Still, I think you're just a little too worried about the one part of this mess that is sure to be sorted out: technical efficiency. Whether or not readers will respond to a digital magazine the with the same affection as they do to ink on paper - that is anybody's guess. This app goes a long way to begin to find that answer.
  • Rutherfoo
    Its technological nonsense like this that makes me furiously masturbate into the nearest Better Homes And Gardens magazine I can get my slimy hands on. I can't wait to jack off all over the ipad.
  • Dahamma
    500MB!? Does anyone else find it ironic that you can download an entire TV show from iTunes that takes up less space?
  • Well, when you consider that there is almost a TV show's worth of video in the app it doesn't seem ironic at all.
  • ORLY?
    Really now?

    The app is 500MB. The author found that 397MB of that is static images. Not video.
  • high quality, zoomable, images take space too. count the pixels... for video take the size of the frame and multiply by the frame rate time the duration in seconds. now take the size of the images used for the magazine (height by width for each image) and add that all up.

    The author of this article wisely points out that you should be able to subtract from that any area that has text or solid colors. Similar to the approach used in PDF (another Adobe product).
  • So math isn't my strong suit... kudos to you sir. No Fat Apps.
  • Mark
    I thought the exact same thing when that sports illustrated app was showed off in late 09 -- why not just use HTML?
  • dicklacara
    The SI concept is great! I would like to see a couple of things added:

    1) The ability to choose fonts
    2) The ability to resize and reflow text within the width of the display-- make the page longer, not both wider and longer (don't introduce horizontal scrolling to accommodate larger text)
    3) The ability to subtly change text and text background color to be easier on the eyes
    4) The ability to search text, both within the article and within the issue
    5) The ability to rate articles, images (and other components) to provide feed back to the publisher
  • engers
    Sports Illustrated did use HTML http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7uu35xTttQ
  • troygilbert
    It most certainly could be better if built natively in HTML5 (or a variation allowing for custom fonts). But this approach is much faster to production, as it leverages the print masters used for the paper magazine. No need to rebuild layout, etc.

    It's definitely sub-optimal for browsing on a mobile device, and is not sustainable (for the reasons you mentioned), but it was the best engineering decision for the highest quality output given the timeframes (and Apple's blocking of Flash).
  • HTML5 allows custom fonts already. Always did.
  • JohnDoey
    HTML5 has custom fonts.
  • troygilbert
    There's a lot more to the fidelity of the magazine's presentation than
    just the availability of the same font. Even if there wasn't,
    embedding fonts is not free, they must be specifically licensed for
    that purpose and not all fonts are.
  • troygilbert
    Supports custom fonts, sure, but are those fonts available for licensing for distribution on the web? Maybe, maybe not. And from what I understand font-face has some issues on current builds of MobileSafari (to be fixed in either the current 4.0 beta or the 4.0 final).
  • Exactly
  • MN
    Sport Illustrated magazine done in HTML5 shown at Google I/O 2010 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3j7mM_JBNw
    Done by http://www.thewonderfactory.com
  • EO
    I'd buy an iPad if the content was like that!!
  • JohnDoey
    The content is like that. It's pure HTML5 on iPad. The Web looks like that on iPad.
  • That was a one off done over an extended period of time by a dedicated digital design/production house.

    To churn that out every week, or even every month, is a daunting task. Could it be done? Sure. Will it? Not very realistic.
  • trafnar
    Isn't the problem with using HTML the authoring tools? Are you suggesting the digital version of Wired should be more website-like with page templates, rather than unique designs?

    I am an HTML/CSS developer, I could build all of Wired's page layouts using those technologies, but I would probably charge 3-5x what a print designer charges to do it using indesign. Isn't this the concern?

    I'm interested in discussing this further with the author, how can I contact directly?
  • JohnDoey
    The app was designed in InDesign, then built in Xcode in Objective-C. The author is suggesting that HTML5 replace Objective-C, not InDesign.

    HTML5 is HTML. There are hundreds of authoring tools. Many more than Flash or Objective-C.
  • authoring, yes... design, not so much (dreamweaver?!?). InDesign export to SVG, CSS3, HTML is what needs to happen. I see no reason Adobe could not do it either.
  • bingsucks
    Heres the deal. Web pages actually suck for magazine type content.
    For example, go to your favorite magazine's .com, and try to just browse around for pleasure - likely its a horrible looking barely organized clusterfuck of hyperlinked crap in a minefield of infuriating "bing"-rollover-popups. I absolutely hate it. (FUCK Microsoft and their BING rollover-popups ARRRRRGHHHH that shit pisses me off to no end.)

    I would much rather have a stack of the last years 12 issues of Car And Driver to leaf through than suffer their web page. Except I dont want to walk around with 12 magazines. Having them on an iPad type device, in magazine format, that is, just freaking images of pages that I can leaf through, would be a HUGE step up from their current web page, and that of most magazine's web pages I visit.

    The only "interactivity" that I want is a table of contents where I can jump to that page number.

    This type of content is where the rule "less is more" really is true. Forget the bling, I just want the articles/reviews.
  • JohnDoey
    We're not talking about the IE6/Flash Web you're referring to. We're talking about HTML5 running in WebKit on mobile tablets. Entirely different. Ten years more advanced.
  • you speak of HTML5 like it is magic pixie dust. It is STILL HTML! Seriously, it really is. HyperText Markup Language... content producers are still going to jam as many ads on the page as they can, they are still going to try and drive as many page refreshes as possible to get more impressions, it does not change with a revision number.

    Until there is a shift in thinking that digital content is just as deserving of high quality presentation as print then you could just as well be talking about HTML23. Even with CSS3 it is not trivial to get layouts as complex as a print centric tool (i.e. InDesign) will provide. Perhaps instead of scorn for Adobe over Macromedia's legacy we should recognize that they are the one company that stands a chance of making a really great tool for digital layout; they know SVG, they know WYSIWYG HTML4.... they COULD pull it off.
  • ORLY?
    > The only "interactivity" that I want is a table of contents where I can jump to that page number.

    And HTML has provided that for as long as it's existed.

    That your favorite magazines have shit websites does not mean that HTML 5 is an inappropriate tool for producing magazine-like content.
  • damien
    So I downloaded the Wired.com homepage using "Save as..." "Web Page complete", and the result is 219K of HTML and 538K of other files, including 121K of other HTML, JS, 44K of CSS, 42K of GIFs and PNGs, 252K of JPGs and 78K of JS (mostly tracking stuff). Total 757K.

    Then I took screenshots of the Wired.com homepage and composited them to get the entire page in one image. I blanked out those images that were represented by JPEGs and saved the resulting image as a 24-bit PNG file. The image of the home page (with photos blanked out) was 460K, and the total of all the JPEG photos was 252K. Total, 712K.

    So, the Opera browser uses a similar technique, rendering the page on the server and transmitting an image of the page plus some other stuff for interactivity.

    I dont know, Byte for byte, the two techniques seem comparable, plus you get to do pixel perfect layout with whatever fonts you like.

    If you got clever and had a compression system that could span across multiple pages, you would would get even greater byte-efficiency. There was also a compression system optimised for text - JBIG I think it was called, and using such principles would also increase efficiency.

    It is indeed a graphics designers wet-dream.
  • JohnDoey
    If there is a typo you have to recreate the whole thing.

    Most Web pages include real time elements.

    You can't search your version or machine translate your version.

    You can't animate styles in your version.

    WebKit and HTML5 is the designer's dream. You have standardized markup, CSS transitions, fonts, vectors, audio video, very advanced interactivity.

    The Web is about living documents, not frozen print. Text and images are 1% of the story.
  • gareth1090
    text and images are the content and surely content makes up more that 1% of the story.

    content is king, you are a numpty.
  • damien
    FYI - The text a human can read upon landing on the homepage and without doing anything else - the text making up the visible headings, headlines and article summaries, but not including hidden tabs of information or legal disclaimers: 860 words comprising 5000 characters or so.

  • Most of the JS and probably some of the HTML, you'd be able to reuse on all of the other pages...
    That's the thing that doing your layout in images effectively destroys: reusable parts
  • damien
    The compression systems I outlined effectively search for re-usable parts and then re-use them. Probably a lot smarter and more effectively than humans do.

    Most of the magazine type sites have their graphics artists doing page design in photoshop before they "throw it over the wall" to their html guys who then cut apart the photoshop image into a page layout.
  • JohnDoey
    You're proving the author's point, which is that this Wired app is the reinvasion of print designers not getting interactive design. Throwing your print designs over to some HTML guys only gets you so far and bores the hell out of your audience.
  • Why not HTML 5? Because of fonts. Wired Magazine is well known in the design community for its attention to layout and typography. Their print edition is consistently praised for their design and art direction. And while HTML 5 does support font embedding, the implementation on the iPad with MobileSafari does not. Wired uses several custom typefaces which would be impossible to replace with the iPad's font selection.
  • That's not true though. You can load custom fonts on the iPad and iPhone 4.0.
  • Not on the ipad. @font-face fails (falls back to Times New Roman) and if you use a JavaScript fallback like Cufon, it typically triggers an unresponsive script (of which the ipad does not notify you).
  • Sorry, not the case. @font-face is supported on the iPad and iPhone for SVG fonts.
    http://blog.typekit.com/2010/04/05/experimenting-with-web-fonts-on-the-ipad/
  • Actually, no I'm not wrong:

    Instead, using @font-face on the iPad requires fonts to be converted to the SVG format.

    That is "indirect support".
  • We are talking about writing a customized application that embeds WebKit, not building a site for use in Mobile Safari.

    In the case of embedding WebKit into a CocoaTouch application, you can, indeed, use OpenType fonts. The code above demonstrates that.
  • No actually he's right. I'm building a site right now that uses custom fonts and I was able to get them to work on the iPad and iPhone. FontSquirrel now includes SVG fonts when you generate an @font-face kit, specifically for that purpose. FontKit supports it and so does WebFont-Fonts.
  • Shame that SVG's text support never really evolved beyond graphical layout of individual characters. Wordwrap is a killer for reusable layout. I love SVG, but I can not recommend it to my clients as a total layout solution atm. There are hacky workarounds, but for now it is down to pregenerating huge chunks of text instead of feeding it in dynamically :/
  • We are talking about writing a customized application that embeds WebKit, not building a site for use in Mobile Safari.

    In the case of embedding WebKit into a CocoaTouch application, you can, indeed, use OpenType fonts. The code above demonstrates that.
  • jill santon
  • "I really don't understand this, but I'm gonna write a 40 paragraph column on it anyways" <-- Sums up the first paragraph.
  • A Distinguished Gentleman
    *sigh*
    So you're an Apple fanboy, then?

    That's absolutely nothing like the article. The author (quite validly) expressed incredulity and then went on to explain in detail. It's a good article and your comment is a poor troll at best.
  • How does his comment make him an Apple Fanboy? What an idiotic statement.. I think your own prejudices are showing.
  • Mr.D
    Hello ,
    From Reddit also. They could have easily used a Flex/Flash built e-reader. It wouldn't have weighed in at 500MB. What's more , they could have used the publishing PDF that they send to the printer to make the physical magazine. Since they had Adobe on the dole ,they could have even had text searchable PDFs. Long story short , they reinvented the square wheel.
  • JohnDoey
    There is no Flex/Flash on mobiles.
  • Jim
    Your analysis is spot on. I purchased and downloaded this behemoth to confirm my suspicions, and was proven correct . . . the sense of '90s deja vu is eerie. There is no reason to "read" the issue in this format rather than going to the Wired website.
  • rbrumble
    Hello from Reddit. This article is one of the more intelligent discussions of the issue I'm come upon to date. My take is the various industries that could get their content to consumers using a tablet are going to have to figure out a way to make use of the platform in a more efficient, yet engrossing way than we've seen yet. Let's see what the next 6 months brings as far as content goes; if nothing mind-blowing has arrived by then, we'll see iPads start to gather dust like infomercial exercise equipment.
  • JohnDoey
    Whether magazines exploit tablets or not has no bearing on iPad's continued success. It does 200,000 other things and sells very well even now when there are no magazines.
  • Daniel
    Even funnier with html5 and webkit you can have pixel perfect layouts with custom fonts.
  • Joe
    the custom fonts are not supported by mobilesafari
  • It's one thing to be able to use a font within a layout and quite another to have a full range of typographic control over that font. So while the iPad and mobile safari may in fact be able to display a wide range of typefaces it is still a very long way from giving type minded designers the kind of control that a tool like InDesign gives them.
  • ORLY?
    This is the same kind of thinking that leads technically inept users to paste screenshots into Word documents.
  • Yeah, but I remember hearing similar lines coming from designers back during the first dotcom boom when I was working at a large internet agency.

    The reality is the reader isn't going to notice the leading is slightly not perfect, or the kerning is a little out of wack. Instead, the designer/publisher/editor is taxing the user by increasing the size of the magazine which costs the user storage. Additionally, they (Wired) are potentially putting themselves out of reach of some consumers because the size of an issue isn't allowed to be downloaded by 3G (Apple/AT&T put a size restriction on 3G downloads).

    Plus, it's just absurd. A designer's kerning desires are hardly worth a 1.5MB page.

    Finally, the iPad can render PDF's you know, it's something like 4 CGPDF*() calls. So even if they didn't want to go the HTML5 route, they can still do PDF's with some optimized rendering in the viewer application where pages are pre-rendered in memory to bitmaps and then business as normal.

    I mean c'mon it's freaking Adobe! Did they totally space PDF's?
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