An online news magazine is essentially the online edition of a weekly magazine, both as a stand-alone published magazine or as an online edition of an in-store published periodical. Online news magazines are the more recent development and have become extremely popular with web surfers. Many people use their home computers to surf the web and read the various online news sources. Most of the online news magazines are free to download, though some do charge a fee for some content. Online newspapers are becoming increasingly popular as well and have a great amount of competition from online magazines.
One of the most noticeable differences between an online newspaper website is the layout. Online newspapers are designed to be easy to read on a computer screen. While some websites have been redesigned and condensed to better fit on a desktop, others have had their layout continue to evolve even further. There is now no need to scroll horizontally through a long article like there is when reading a printed paper. A simple vertical flip navigation allows the reader to quickly see the current section of the article without having to scroll down in order to see other sections.
Another feature that online newspapers have added to their online newspaper style layouts is the multi-column layout. With a traditional print magazine, a typical article could have four separate panels of text. With a traditional newspaper style website, however, articles could only be viewed in a single column. This made it difficult for several people to read at the same time.
With the introduction of the multi-Column layout, all of the content for a given article can be viewed in multiple columns. Many news websites have implemented the use of blogs in order to keep the information fresh and current. The navigation menus that are used to access the various blogs will often take the form of a drop down menu which will allow the reader to easily access the particular blog being sought out.
Some online news websites have also included the navigation menu for a photo gallery. Online magazines and newspapers have included the use of blogs in their daily online publications. The inclusion of this type of layout is advantageous in that it allows more than one person to read a single article at a time. This allows more than one form of interaction with a single article.