Google Wants To Ease News Browsing With Fast Flip

CWmike writes "Google is developing a product called Fast Flip that aims to make it simpler and faster to browse through news articles on the Web, a process the company says is cumbersome and discourages people from reading more online. Fast Flip, which lets readers glance at pages and browse through them quickly without having to wait for multiple page elements to load, was expected to go live late Monday at the Google Labs Web site. The idea is to try to replicate online the ease with which people flip through the pages of print magazines and newspapers in the offline world. This could motivate people to read more online, which Google argues will help publishers attract more readers and increase their revenue. However, when users click on a Fast Flip link, they will be taken to the corresponding publisher's Web site, where the Google technology will not be on hand to display the page more quickly."

fastflip with w3m

[martin-boundary]

I use w3m for fastflipping. It's a text browser, so it doesn't load hundreds of kb worth of images and advertisements for each page, while still showing the text in a form that's close to the graphical layout. Also, it never loads javascript include files, which tend to slow down page flipping a lot, and never crashes due to embedded flash objects.

Basically, it lets you flip pages on the web as fast as is physically possible and... Oops, look at the time, gotta go!

Re:Making the act of reading more interesting?

[Draykwing]

I think you accidentally a word.

Re:Fast flip?

[Dhalka226]

Use gnash and multiple tabs [. . . f]ast flip is firmly aimed at people with browsers that suck. Google would do better to encourage people to leave the Windows world.

Hmm? The only browser of any consequence in the "Windows world" that doesn't have tabs is IE6, and even that's found mostly in corporate environments these days. IE7, IE8, Firefox, Opera, Chrome... they all have tabs.

Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.

Ah. Now I get the point of your post. And why it takes an insightful mod to get your posts scored back up to zero.

Re:Fast flip?

[Slashdot Suxxors]

People are lazy and want it done for them

No kidding. Mind telling me what TFA actually says?