You’re reading Signal vs. Noise, a publication about the web by 37signals since 1999.

Really? I think that popup is kind of obnoxious and I configured adblock to make it go away. What in the world is the “next article” in a news website anyway? It could be something I already read earlier in the day, or something that I don’t care about, or anything at all.

I had been ignoring that pop up, thinking that it was an ad!

Nice touch? This is annoying as hell. The only thing more annoying that the NYT has done (besides extremely obtrusive flash ads) is when they made selecting text pop up a search box.

I think it’s a “nice” touch in that it isn’t too offensive (subjective), much like many of these ad campaigns.

I can see how it can be annoying, especially if you’re the type to scroll up and down in an article multiple times. Come on, NYT . Set it so it appears once!

I think pop outs have a great place in usability but thanks to spammers, our perception of it is fairly tainted.

And I hope jQuery will fix the perception. It adds class and desirability to an otherwise vulgar intrusion.

Conversely, in an ad-free environment it has a great place. Like I wouldn’t ignore a pop out in any 37 signals product.

It is a pretty neat way of encouraging people to move on to read other articles…

The problem is that it’s yet another way they encourage people to move on to read other articles amongst: inline links, sidebar menu of most emailed/blogged/viewed articles, mini-side bar of related stories, related searches and past coverage, and a whole bottom row of images and links that already exist.

It is smart enough to only pop up when you are on page 2/2 of an article though. I hate multipage articles.

I hate that thing. I select articles I’m interested in on the front page or in my rss reader. This is a spammy distraction while I’m reading that has yet to interest me in reading another article.

You only mentioned one of the most critical parts of this feature implicitly: the suggested “next article” is from the same category as the article you’re currently reading.

So if you’re reading a business article, the NYT slide-out suggests the next business article available.

I myself found this feature very intriguing when I stumbled upon it last week. As I recall, there’s an ‘x’ in the upper right corner that you can click to close the dialog. This way anyone who doesn’t want this feature (which from the above comments seem to be a good bunch of people) just have to disable it once.

Sure it is a bit distracting, but it only distracts me when it’s relevant (after reading the article) and suggested related content (from the same category as the current article).

I’ll definitely give NYT a thumbs up for at least trying something new.

I have mixed feelings about it.

It’s incredibly effective. (And as a UI helper, I would like to see someone take it a step further—maybe when you get to the bottom of an article, a whole footer of related content would slide up from the bottom of the window.)

But… because it’s so effective at getting your attention, in a way it makes any other secondary content and data invisible.

It’s a terrible user interface, not only because it pops up at all, but because they are making assumptions that this is how I want to read their “newspaper.” It’s a web site, not a newspaper, morons, and I’m not going to read the next article just because that is how you decided to order it. The web is not linear. I pick the articles I want to read. I pop them into multiple tabs and close each as I finish them. They have found a solution to something that is simply not a problem, and alienated their readers by pompously assuming that’s how they want to read their otherwise fine reporting. If I can quickly craft a technical solution to intrusive garbage like this then I do.

This UI feature has been on the NYT for a few weeks now. :P

nice article…thanks

Another really neat one I just discovered was double click a word and a little ? shows up for you to look up the definition, on their site. Nice and unobtrusive, but right at the time of need. To make it better would be not to use a pop-open window and just do a fly-over effect with the definition so the reader doesn’t get distracted from the flow of the article.

Have to agree with the detractors. I had assumed that was a pop-up ad, and did not even notice it was a link to the “next article”—whatever that means (as others have pointed out).

Personally, I like it.

Why do they (NYT) think that I’m interested in going to the next article (I assume it’s an entirely unrelated article)? That’s not how I read the web… I’m not sure there is even a problem to begin with… More like someone at the NYT is trying to justify his/her job, either that or they’re really bored…

Not feeling it. Annoying.

When I noticed the NYT “slide in” I thought it was an awesome way to suggest the next stories, something a lot of newspapers wrestle with.

It’s not exactly subtle, but it doesn’t bother me. It’s out of the way enough and it doesn’t make a big deal about being there. Just the fact that it knows I’m “near” the end of the article is pretty clever.

And because NYT put thought into how to use that fancy feature properly, I trust it. Thumbs up.

I think this is poorly implemented. It focuses my attention away from the article and I have to find where I left off to finish reading. Also, the chance that one article suggestion will be relevant to me is slim. It’s unnecessary and simply annoying.

You detractors must feel that you HAVE to comment on everything. This is a neat little feature. I want to know how they did it. Does anyone know?

I like it. Shows only when you are at the end of the page. Also, rather than listing it below the article, it is served to you in a noticeable. I think most of the angst against it is because it may not be serving relevant content. May be they should show the entire bottom section with 2 or 3 suggested articles, that are served to you based on your reading habits.

I think that the popup is just an admission that they have too much stuff going on in their template, and users are confused at how to navigate when they finish reading an article.