Improving the Reading Experience
July 23, 2019 | 2 minute readAfter months of preparation, Java Magazine is moving to a new, responsive web format.
In many domains that serve a large audience, there is the view that “if no one is complaining, it is because you’re irrelevant.” In programming, this view is echoed in C++ inventor Bjarne Stroustrup’s oft-quoted maxim, “There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses.” I’m not a partisan of such a dismissive view. Complaints should not be taken as validation nor dismissed as irrelevant. Rather, they are useful conduits to improvement. You will note that almost all my emails and editorials as well as the back page of this magazine solicit feedback, including criticisms, because my team and I read this feedback and actively use it to improve the magazine.
By far the most common critique we receive concerns the difficulty of reading the articles in the present hosted-PDF format. The text is hard to read (especially on mobile devices) and the flipping of pages back and forth to study code is quite annoying. Although we’ve improved the reading experience over the years (look at one of our issues from several years ago to see how much has changed), we’ve not been able to create an entirely new reading experience—until now! After much preparation, we’re announcing that Java Magazine will be published in responsive HTML hosted on a website. The design will make it far easier to read both text and code on any device and to scroll through an article rather than click through page after page.
The new format will also enable us to post content more frequently and link to it more easily—helping you find articles in searches and on social media. We will continue the subscription model by sending you notifications whenever an issue’s worth of content has been posted and by providing benefits available only to subscribers. I will give you more details once the rollout is complete.
We hope you’ll enjoy this new platform when it debuts this summer and, as always, I hope you’ll send me suggestions and critiques if you see ways to improve the experience. Until then!
Also in This Issue
Getting Started with Kubernetes
GraalVM: Native Images in Containers
Containerizing Apps with jlink
New switch Expressions in Java 12
Java Card 3.1 Unveiled
Quiz Yourself
Andrew Binstock
Andrew Binstock (@platypusguy) is the lead developer on the Jacobin JVM project—a JVM written entirely in Go. He was formerly the editor in chief of Java Magazine, and before that he was the editor of Dr. Dobb’s Journal. Earlier, he cofounded the company behind the open source iText PDF library. He lives in Northern California with his wife, and when he’s not coding, he studies piano.