Welcome to the new and vastly improved PassageMaker.com. We have taken to heart many of the kind, constructive criticism we’ve collected from readers over the years–including a fair bit of our own–and assembled a website that addresses those concerns and more.
“Your type is too small!” you said.
“I shouldn’t have to scroll a quarter-mile to view ten images in a gallery!” you politely hollered.
“Your site is useless on my iPad and iPhone!” decried you.
These are but a few of the fixes we have undertaken to provide an improved and outstanding – we hope – PassageMaker.com experience for our loyal readers. For those of you that happen upon us for the first time via internet searches or from friends who share links to our stories and videos, you’ll never know the pain of others before you.
From the magazine’s upstart beginnings, PassageMaker was a rare breed, never shying away from printing longform stories (Parlatore’s epic 10-pager on coffee, anyone?), from technical know-how to taking on the high seas. After all, who else would print an 8,000-word essay from Nigel Calder on the difficulties of trusting modern-day charts? Or a combined 10,000-word, three-part journey around the world, with a photo drop illuminating every nook and cranny from New Zealand to Maine, and a bonus sidebar on international feline travel rules?
But in order to make reading these stories enjoyable – and not corneal masochism – big changes were required.
The primary one? Larger type.
Much larger type.
Every story features a unique layout and type that is legible, so much so that you might be able to leave your Rite-Aid cheaters on the nightstand. For the tablet maniacs among you, or for those who are crazy enough to read longform on your cell phone, the site is now mobile-friendly. I should qualify that – it is friendly to mobile devices, but you take on Mt. Calder at your own risk.
The site performance is faster, the layout is less cluttered, and the words are bigger. Did I mention that the type is bigger? Our photo galleries, which once threatened to make mouse-scrolling an Olympic sport, are cleaner, bigger, faster-loading–and best of all–self-contained. Just click on a bonus gallery embedded in the story–usually the stuff we couldn’t fit in the confines of print–and arrow through the photos.
All these changes without a downside, you ask? Full disclosure: Brian, Megan, and I are working feverishly to restore many of the old articles to the site, but we are making progress and content is not lacking.
One bit of cooperation we will need from you, though, is something that we’ve always needed from you, for everything we do: Feedback. Starting today, we’ll begin collecting a new list of grievances. Hopefully this one won’t be as long.
Safe adventures,
Jonathan Cooper
Editor-in-Chief
