My hunch: we'll all get used to them quickly enough.
Dave Nelson
I find anything added to the article text to be a distraction. Colored dots, numbers, "see fig 1", etc. I do not like any of them.
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I have never had a problem figuring out which pictures show what.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
Until they were called to my attention, I didn't realize they were new. Frankly, they make it much easier when reading to link the text to the picture and the picture to the text.
I notice that different colors were used in different articles - red, blue, black. Interestingly, the article Pacific Northwest Empire mixed red on the pictures with blue on the track diagram, while Rod Stewart's article used blue for both.
Of the the different colors, I like the blue the best. Black tends to blend in with the black text and the red tends to be a little jarring.
Paul
I'll chime in with the opposite view as Jim. I didn't feel they were a distraction at all while reading the article on the cement plant build. In fact, it seemed easier to look at the picture, and see what the numbered dot referenced. Even when the term "fig.1" or "fig.2" was used, you still went back and forth from text, and to the illustration. I think it makes it easier.
Mike.
My You Tube
In his editorial for June, Neil asked for comments on the use of the colored dots to reference figures. So here goes. My issue with using the colored dots in the middle of a sentence is they are visually jarring. Basically like hitting a hard stop in the middle of a train of thought. They work well if you want to scan the photo or drawing and link back to the text quickly, but don't work so well when reading the text for content and meaning by disrupting the flow.
Interestingly, the excess use of fonts and visually appealing style in PowerPoint presentations was one of the indictments in the Columbia accident investigation because while they looked good, they acutally obscured meaning.
Just my two dings of the bell.
jim