Online fishing magazines
I have presented the online magazines before on our blog, but the number of Flash/PDF-based online fishing magazines seems to be steadily growing (if not exploding!), and I wanted to return to this phenomenon.
Just to soften things a bit: I love the content on many of these magazines, which are very much focused on photography and good writing. But man, do I hate the form!
Let me forewarn you: This will be very little about fly fishing and a lot about publishing on the web.
I'm simply fed up with fancy layout, grungy fonts and ragged, scratched images! Enough!
And for some reason these magazines seem to sneak their way into my mailbox with their "free" subscriptions.
Hell, you can have a totally, forever free and life-long, closing-in-on-eternal subscription for GFF right here and now. There! It's yours! And to top that, you have already had that totally and absolutely free subscription for more than 18 years!
Free subscription my bare *beep*!
That doesn't really make sense when all I get is a newsletter that tells me when a new issue is out, does it? It's just a bleedin' frickin' newsletter. Like they have existed on the internet for decades!
I'm tired of having to unsubscribe from them when I didn't subscribe in the first place. Why do you online "magazine publishers" think that I have to have your magazine stuffed down my throat?
Free subscription my bare *beep*!
I'm simply tired of online magazines made with Flash or compiled into PDF, which I have to read with some lousy online reader or download to my machine.
It might be me who's a grumpy old curmudgeon (I am. I know!), but I actually totally fail to see the reason why these magazines have to be done in Flash or PDF.
I know that it makes it possible for any graphical designer to live out a wet dream in grungy fonts, textured backgrounds and all kinds of fancy layout, but sheesh! If you want to do a magazine, make it a print one.
The web is for web content and not for print wannabe stuff.
Embrace the media on its premises for crying out loud!
If you didn't get to make magazines while such things were in vogue, get on with your life. You probably wouldn't make type writers, record reel-to-reel tapes or try to get into the market with steel fly fishing rods, would you?
We have word processors, digital recording and carbon fiber now, so that's what we use. Likewise with magazines. Some paper magazines live, most are dying. Moving the concept as is to the web is simply downright dumb.
I feel the same way about turning content into apps for all kinds of iThingamajigs. The only reason for doing an app with content (as opposed to function - camera, GPS etc. - which can make sense) is that you can get it into Apple's store, make money, and in the process make Apple even more filthy rich than they are already.
The video, the music and what else is put into to these apps and magazines can just as easily (easier, actually) be done as plain old web pages, which don't require a special piece of hardware or even special reader software, have close to no load time and will allow the user to use the navigation that he or she always uses for browsing the web and not some inventive graphical artist's idea of a user interface -- which is normally confusing, obfuscated and always non-standard, and of course different from magazine to magazine.
You literally never know when a click on a page will zoom or go on to the next page or do some third and unexpected thing. The user interface design on these magazines generally stinks! Did you guys hear of standards? Ways that 95% of the world do things?
OK, I know that years ago, graphical artists were in agony over the lack of possibilities on the web. Too few fonts, no graphical effects such as rotation, shadows or rounded corners. Limited options for embedding media and so on and so on.
But that has changed. New technology allows for much more freedom, but within the framework of web browsers and standards. For the technically minded these technologies are called web fonts, HTML5, CSS3, and most modern browsers support them. Those of you who have such browsers will see a skewed image, some rounded corners, shadows and a few grungy fonts below. Those who don't will still see something useful... or at least something... Removing the effects is a question of a single click. And you can click it back on.
So you want to do some peculiar layout?
Want odd and grungy fonts?
We have them by the hundreds!
A large selection if you want
All the above has been done with standard web features, and will work as designed in most modern browsers without plugins or downloads - and will fail gracefully (or what you'd call it) in older programs that don't support the latest features. Try removing it, and you will see normal fonts and images. Same code, same content, just without the formatting and fonts.
I have been in the web business as long as it has existed (from 1994 in case you want to know), and have been making web sites for a living and for fun for just as long (yup, the first GFF articles date back to 1994). Before that and well into the Internet-age I have made my daily outcome as a paper magazine journalist, editor and editor-in-chief for classical printed magazines - fishing and computer titles.
So when I write about these things, it's not something that I grab out of thin air. I actually feel that I can talk about paper magazines, online-ditto and web sites with a certain weight, knowledge and experience.
I just wish that the producers of these magazines would learn that Adobe inDesign is for paper productions.
Web pages are produced with Content Management Systems that output standard web HTML-code and not custom PDF-files or Flash-ditto. Web pages are low bandwidth, standards compliant, use standard navigation and act as the user expects. They can be viewed on all devices (phones, tablets, computers, TV's) and will allow bookmarks and direct links, be loved to bits by the search engines and altogether be everything that the web was intended to be. Unlike PDF's, Flash-gizmos and apps.
Embrace the media on its premises for crying out loud!
Move on guys. Get into the game! Learn something new and make me a happier man. Until then... well, I'm not reading your magazines.
Not that I think you care, but man, am I glad to get it off my heart!
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Comments
Pit. I certainly
Pit.
I certainly prefer a gun if I want to shoot a bear! But I prefer one where the barrel points forwards, where there's a trigger placed at the rear where my fingers are and one that used standard bullets that I can buy in any store that sells ammunition.
The online-magazines - to stay in gun-terms - often use special ammunition, have a trigger that is hard to find, and needs to be pressed sideways to fire and you don't know what way bullet goes until you fire the gun.
Regarding the hooks, sure steel is better than bone. But the basic shape, use and function is the exact same! I welcome the development, and I'm happy to use steel hooks. They are better than bone hooks in all ways, but have the same function.
I also welcome development in IT, but only when it makes things better. And in a world of standards, we follow standards! Navigation, links, buttons and what else pertains to web sites simply has to look and work like they do everywhere else, and there's no need to invent such things. That has already been done decades ago, and your chance of doing it better is like the snowball's chance in hell.
Last but not least there's taste. Just because PDF's, Flash or fancy graphics programs allow all kinds of funky layout and wild fonts, you don't have to do all kinds of funky layout and use all the wild fonts! In my eyes the limitations on standard web sites is actually to the benefit of many pages. It does keep designers from going haywire, which is often a good thing.
And I do exactly as you say: I ignore the mails and rarely visit the sites. Especially when the mails arrive unsolicited. I get a ton of unwanted mails and they usually go directly into my spam folder.
Martin
Hello Mr Joergensen,
Hello Mr Joergensen, I like your words and your opinion - but - Do you want a gun to shut a bear or a sharpened stone? This is the progress and every 2 or 3 years we double our knowledge in IT. You certainly like carbon steel hooks and no bonehoog - right. Its the user who decides what to use and what to send to the trash. Just dont accept such mails and uploads. if we all or the majority do the same we wont see such things any more. Same with Sugermans social network. Why do these people show their obscenities to the world. Just boycott it and soon you will see Mr Sugerman making sugarcubes.
I couldn't agree mor
I couldn't agree more Martin! I hate xxxxin' flash! I have it shut off and refuse to view it. Jobs was right! Apple too rich though... come on they are way overdue because well, they are right. I also own nothing with Microsoft or windows in it. Cant stand that crap, it makes me ill looking at it.