I have no idea if that will carry over to the mobile site, but hopefully so.

The old CMS has been a bear, but I always appreciated that at least the Times outputted curly quotes and em dashes… that’s more than can be said currently for CNN, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Salon, or most news sites. Even the otherwise well-designed New York Magazine and Slate are inconsistent.

But it is tough—with most of these sites, you’re dealing with a main CMS, a blog CMS, and then you’re pulling in and displaying content from 3rd party feeds. Not an easy thing to do with an aging CMS—especially one that has to hook into the system used for the paper. (As for that, all I will say is that Microsoft Word is involved…)

Anyway – look for incremental typographical improvements in the coming months.

If you know how, but your CMS is wrecking things, maybe it’s time for a new CMS.

Man you should come down to the company I work for and shout that into their faces.

So far the only thing I’ve found that comes close is the “Paste From Word” function in TinyMCE – except of course it doesn’t do the “fancy” typography.

I’ve no problem with Word as a text editor – it’s used by people that write much better at that than me – and hence paid to do so. Those same people — the writers, editors and proof-readers — are very comfortable with Word — not so with code.

I’m just very confused as to why there’s still need for a typesetter in this digital-mix. Perhaps we should start an agency to get jobs for all those folk who lucked out back in the Eighties.

A couple of iPhones cost less than WordPress? But WordPress is free. Where do I get these iPhones that are cheaper than free?

The New York Times is an investor in WordPress.

At the risk of getting some heavy flames, I honestly think that Jeffrey should spend some time thinking about the serious usability issues with this blog/web page.

It’s full of useless, ugly garbage comments in the form of back-links.

Right. I turned on the Kramer extension to WordPress to see what kind of commentary I was getting on third-party sites. Some of the third-party stuff one discovers is pretty neat. And a lot of it’s junk. It’s too early to say for sure that Kramer should be switched off again.

In a redesign of the site, if I can find a way to pre-tag Kramer content, I might be able to separate it from the flow of “real” comments. Sequestered in its own little spot, and styled to call less attention to itself, it might work just fine. Before I make a design decision like that, though, I need to see what’s out there. Thus, I need to keep the Kramer plug-in switched on for a while longer.

Thanks for your indulgence.

Z: I knew that header image looked familiar. Ha!

I know most people won’t use it because it requires the extra step (not to mention altering the configuration of your rich text editor), but hey, it’s out there.

It’s full of useless, ugly garbage comments in the form of back-links. I’ll provide a sample:

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[...] Dear New York Times Mobile UX Zeitgeist (beta) Fish tacos FTW nom nom nom Maybe that?s why they call them Kodak moments A Tweet Too Far ALA 259: Career and Content Flowers in your hair CSS Menu Writer debuts A List Apart saved from the deep Content precedes design [...]
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Yes, that’s probably good for popularity, business, SEO, etc. But how good is it for readers? After all, Zeldman.com, like A list Apart ARE businesses, like any other business. And Zeldman’s readers, directly or indirectly put the food on his table. So, I’d prefer that while the NYT tries to fix the glitches that Zeldman so rightfully points out, he (Zeldman) takes a hard look at his own messy living room…

I often consult on new Mac purchases, and invariably the first thing the client says they need is “Word”. When pressed about what they need it for, always it is ultra-basic needs, things that any halfway decent app like “textedit” for mac or similar handles flawlessly. Like composing a letter to Grandma, or even writing college papers.