The Daily Ping

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June 25th, 2005

Split Web Pages

As many of you do, I’m sure, I read the news online. I check in with our local papers, and our not-as-local papers. The Chicago Tribune is my mainstay, and I do check in with the online edition multiple times each day.

A few weeks ago I noticed a new “continue ?” link at the bottom of an article I was reading. The Trib had gone the way of the New York Times and decided to split articles up into multiple pages. “Well, all right,” I thought, “This is a little awkward.” What’s worse is that it has become really awkward because the articles aren’t split intelligently.

I’ll give you an example. I was reading about the (delightful!) Sox victory over the Cubs yesterday. A “continue ?” link beckoned. So I clicked it. Here, in its entirety, was page two:

———-

rmorrissey@tribune.com

That’s it. Page two was the footer. What the heck?

Unfortunately this type of move is usually geared towards… ads. Yes, if you have to view two (or three!) web pages instead of one, you’ll get more “impressions” for your advertisers. Unfortunately, the Trib’s sloppy article handling only makes this more of a pain to the reader than anyone else.

Thank goodness for the printable view, which has no breaks. I think I can handle that massive page two content with page one….

Posted in Technology

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