Archive for January 9th, 2007

In a recent article on A List Apart, Marc van den Dobbelsteen showed a technique for creating dynamic layouts for specific screen sizes.  This would allow us to create pages which could be displayed on a multitude of devices, including older computers and PDAs.

Unfortunately, this is one of those cases of "Just because we can do it, doesn’t mean we should."  The implication of dynamically cropping photos is a little frightening, especially since the example used in the article is for a news site.  Cropping a photo which leaves out important information is unethical journalism.

If you look at nytimes.com, you’ll see their article photos appear in many different sizes, depending on the photo.  Wider photos run across the top of the article, while more narrow photos are placed down the left side of the article.  It still affords the photojournalists many options on how to present the photos on the web, while keeping the article layout pretty standard across every article.

I fear that not thinking about each scenario and trying to make an all-in-one website offering, will lead to more than a few problems.  Making things automated and doing everything dynamically is always attractive because it reduces time and therefore cost.  However, it can often lead to carelessness and mistakes when not as much individual attention is given to everything that gets published.

With the new year came a new home.  I recently took a new position as an Online Producer with The New York Times Regional Media Group.  The job required me to re-locate to Tampa, Florida.  It seems like I moved just in time to miss the winter (I see my old home is getting some snow this week).

I’ll be doing web work for a bunch of smaller newspapers that the New York Times Company owns.  I’ll be using a content management system which I am new to called Saxotech Online (formerly Publicus).  It’s a CMS built specifically for the newspaper industry.  I don’t think I’ll be missing my work with DotNetNuke.  I’ve been told this new CMS is a lot more friendly to standards compliant code.  As of right now, I don’t know many more details.