Curried Lambda: Geoff Wozniak’s weblog Musings on just about anything

The UWO Alumni Gazette online

As a graduate of the University of Western Ontario, I receive their alumni publication. The latest copy touts that they are moving to making it an online publication. I'd much rather get an online version than a paper copy, so I opted to check out the online version.

The online publication is a disappointment, to say the least. The version I was pointed to is a Flash application that simply recreates the printed version, complete with the need to turn pages.

Here is a letter I sent to the editor summarizing my thoughts on the matter.

Looking at the online version of the Alumni Gazette as pointed to by a letter I received with my print copy, I was struck by the disappointing realization that the Alumni Gazette team has missed a web truism: online is not print.

The online version I was pointed to is two things: an Adobe Flash application and, to be blunt, an abomination of web publishing. Flash applications that display the exact printed version of a publication are not a good way to publish online content. The problems with Flash publications have been well documented, but let me reiterate a few of them for emphasis.

First, there is no way to (easily) cut and paste text from the articles. This discourages sharing. It also inhibits simple text searches using built-in web browser functionality; instead, it makes you rely on (often inferior) searches supplied within the Flash application.

Second, the display of the text almost assuredly requires you to zoom in, which means that instead of simple vertical scrolling to view more text, you're forced to navigate horizontally as well. Further to this, recreation of print means columns, which are great on paper, but awful on digital screens since, again, vertical scrolling is the norm.

Finally, Flash on any platform but Microsoft Windows is slow. Very slow.

Flash has its uses, but distributing textual content is not one of them. As tempting as it may be to recreate the look of print on the web, it has never worked — they are fundamentally different mediums (ask newspapers and magazines). I was encouraged by the fact that all the articles for the same publication are available in more web-friendly format on the Alumni Gazette's website. Enhancing that format is a wiser course of action for the future and should be examined more closely by the publication team.

Incidentally, I tried the search in the online publication and it was useless. For example, I searched for "print" and got no results, even though there is an entire article devoted to the print industry.

The sad fact here is that the university either didn't seem to do their research or feel that reproducing the printed version of something verbatim for online consumption is acceptable.