Mobile news app Flipboard has become extremely popular with smartphone and tablet users over the last few months. The easy-to-use online “news magazine” announced on Tuesday that it has finally made it to the Web with a new website that can be accessed from any browser.
Flipboard offers a news magazine experience
Flipboard earned its popularity largely because it laid out content like a magazine. Swiping the page on your tablet or smartphone gives you a page-turning animation, so you “flip” through new stories and topics.
You won’t have page flipping on the Web version of Flipboard, but the new website makes the content extremely accessible for mouse and keyboard setups. Image-heavy sources such as National Geographic are provided as images that take up the width of the page, with captions and headlines above and below the image content. One key feature is a parallax effect that makes transitioning through large images a smoother experience as you scroll down a page. The websites also uses a variety of layouts for stories so you don’t get bored.
Improved social media experience
Flipboard also allows you to browse social networks, and CNET raves that “its often a better experience than going to the dedicated sites.” Furthermore, Flipboard lets you connect your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram accounts so you can see posts, tweets and images along with stories from your regular news sources.
Best of all, you see the tweet and an associated image on the same screen, so you can reply to a tweet, favorite or retweet straight from the app. You can also see posts from your friends on Facebook including images.
A new feature added in a recent update was the ability to create your own magazines. You come up with a title and a description (optional), and then decide if you want to make your magazine public so people can follow you/see your stories.
You can also browse stories and then add them to your magazine. Readers have already created more than 15 million magazines on Flipboard to date, focusing on every topic under the sun and then some.
