Still just barely usable – Houston Chronicle Review

Update 4/1/19: All the below still stands. It’ll honor system font size, but if you want something else you’re out of luck. Truly awful. I’m still paying, but only because I want to support local news. I scan through as fast as I can to find the local stuff - and it’s not always in the right place or labels as such - and move on to far better news apps, with far better news, organization, and control. Update 2/9/19: Today’s lead story in the app: “Etiquette Offers No Hard Rules About Newlywed’s Last Name.” At this point I’m paying because I believe in supporting local news, but I blast through my HouChron experience as fast as I can because it’s just awful. Original review below. With the new version 3.x, the Chronicle is beginning to join the 2010s for digital newspaper design. Unfortunately, they’ve overshot a bit due to some unfortunate industry trends and a few poor choices. The good: I much prefer the layout of the section pages, and the typeface is nice and readable...mostly. The images and the slideshow presentation is much better. And that’s it. The bad: Readability: There’s no way to adjust the size of the type. This is present in every other newspaper app. How did this get overlooked? There needs to be a way to adjust text size within the app, or use the system preference which allows for accessibility. While you’re at it, break some new ground and let me adjust the size of the margins. The lines in the stories are too wide, which hurts readability. There’s a reason print newspapers have columns that are only 5-6 words wide. Perhaps the news people could wander over to the tech people and let them know. Links to websites are displayed in yellow. Yellow? If you use true tone and darken the white point a bit, what little contrast there is between the white background and the yellow text disappears. Seriously, people. Links are blue. Every time. Don’t get cute with the color scheme. I know yellow is part of the Chronicle's color palette, and I don’t care. This is a web trend that needs to go away. There’s no dark mode. This isn’t in every news app, but I love it when it is. Again, blue links when you do this! Navigation: Navigation is a strong effort, and fails. The section headers are just wrong. The app opens to “Houston News,” which in any other app is “Front Page” or “News.” This section isn’t Houston news, it’s got stories from across the country and world because it’s the front page. Later on, we run across “US News” which is in theory national news. There’s no “local” section. Why is there “Texas Politics,” but no “National Politics?” Why is national politics in there? And let’s not forget “Texas Sports Nation,” which is national sports - not just Texas. I see what you’re trying to do here, but again: stop trying to be cute. It’s “Sports.” It’d be great to be able to reorder those sections. Just saying. It’s, you know, digital. If you’re reading a story and want to go back to the headlines to find your next story, the only way to do so is to hit the tiny text that matches the section title in the upper left corner. If you used system search to get to the app, you’ve got a better-than-average chance of hitting the “Search” text, which will take you out of the app. Alternatively, if you hit just a bit low, nothing happens. To bury the lede, why can’t we swipe from the left side of the page to go back to the headlines like every other news app? That action in the current version of the app takes me to the previous story. I don't want to read every story - I just want to see the headlines and choose my own. Finally, there’s too much white space on the pages. Again, this is a web trend where white space is king at the expense of showing content that could be useful. I really liked the old app's list of stories within the section on the left. This allows narrower story columns and built in navigation...maybe. This gets in the way of swiping from the left... Content: Holy cow, people. There are opinion pieces in the sports section today. Local stories show up in the national news. Some stories show up in three or more sections - think new restaurant opening downtown. That’s in “Houston News,” “Business,” “Flavor,” “Entertainment,” and maybe “Real Estate.” Worse, once it’s read there’s no way to tell you’ve read it in the next section. And since stories hang around for days, and occasionally change headlines, you’ll get to click on it again and again! Figure out what the story is. Put it in one section - the correct one! Look. This update is a step in the right direction, which is why I went from one to two stars. But it’s so difficult to use and read that I find myself skimming through it as fast as possible so I can use the far better apps from WP and NYT. I wholeheartedly support local news. I will continue to do so. But dang. Almost all of these problems are - from my perspective - caused by web and app developers run amok with no news people checking in.
Review by Fellow Flyer on Houston Chronicle.