Webpage junk

We're all familiar with the issue. Most of the time, when reading an article on a newspaper website, the information is in one column in the middle, flanked on the left with some navigational bits and on the right with some advertising pieces. We all know it and most of the time we don't look at it anymore. The web browser on the iPhone / iPod Touch however lets you zoom in on the text you want to read, thereby missing out on the junk surrounding it. This makes for a great uncluttered reading experience. So much so that when I switched back to reading news on a laptop instead of my iPod Touch, I immediately started to double tap on the column containing the article.

As a side note, some weeks ago I participated as a user in a usability test for a new website. The lady conducting the test noticed that I did not look at the information displayed at the left and right of the centre. Instead I just scrolled down to read that same information. So it would appear that my Mobile Safari webpage reading habits are already the dominant way of reading a web site.

So Web-developers, please stay in the centre and deliver us from junk,

Zaaf