I've been sort of fond of the set up that the ACS journals have been using to show the titles and graphical abstracts of journals, and I suppose it's good that they are continually trying to improve it. However making it into a cascade of tiles that are smaller than in current use, that then blow up to boxes that are larger, seems like an odd solution. I may not like it, but that could be due to the fact that I like the status quo, in this case.
New features notwithstanding, what's the point of using the Konami code to roll out the beta? Using a "secret code" and publishing it widely? It's like a lame attempt to get geek cred with a crowd split between the so dated and lost they won't get the reference, and the crowd that is so tech savvy they will immediately dismiss it as a poor attempt at looking "cool". I doubt the narrow cross section between those two factions represents a significant enough demographic to warrant this particular stunt. It seems to me a second, mirrored, page, or a simple on/off button would have done the trick.
I haven't tested it, but it wouldn't surprise me if the wonderful new grid view takes a reasonable amount of front side resources, thus putting the kung-fu grip (in the bad way) on smaller institution's older computers.
Update:
This fellow is claiming to be the one who is behind the JACS beta Konami code.
2 comments:
Don't really have a comment about grid view, but I did notice on the JACS beta page that you can download the chemdraw files for the schemes in JACS papers. Is that to help lazy grad students copy things directly out of papers for use in their own presentations? I guess those figures aren't copyrighted?
This is only a guess, but I expect that they are copyrighted, and ACS is releasing them for limited use. Much like it's ok to photocopy/download articles.
At least this way when grad students replicate errors, they are actually original author errors, and not 'telephone game' errors.
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