[Janice D. Soderling]

The Centrifugal Eye has gone on line bringing new quality work by (among others) Eratospherians Paul Stevens, Toni Clark and John Milbury-Steen.

Check it out

http://issuu.com/centrifugaleye/docs/tce-may09-quantum

[Janet Kenny]

Janice,
I'd love to check it out but the site is torture to operate.
Janet

[David Landrum]

Congratulations to all. Loved Toni's poem. Like Janet, I hate that particular format and hope they go back to their old one.

dwl

[Tim Love]

I'd love to check it out but the site is torture to operate.

My browser (Mozilla/Firefox on Linux) doesn't let me see the page. It says

Content Encoding Error
 
The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because it uses 
an invalid or unsupported form of compression.
    *  Please contact the web site owners to inform 
       them of this problem.

[Janice D. Soderling]

I will alert the editor to this thread. I am sure feedback is appreciated.

[Janice D. Soderling]

Here are relevant bits from an email received from Eve at TCE

I'm sorry that some of your members are unhappy with the virtual format and/or the Issuu site. Their comments are, however, in the minority at this time.

I don't know what the trouble is for the Linux viewer(s) ... that's the first I've heard of it and has nothing to do with me or TCE.

Some people are uncomfortable with virtual site technologies, and the first reaction can be, "it's a nightmare! It's a puzzle! I'm overwhelmed." Most who have calmed down and spent a little time exploring typically figure it out and discover it's far easier than they thought it was in the first place.

Because there is a little bit of a learning curve required, and because I'd like to help those who don't like to figure things out for themselves, I've written up guidelines for learning how to get around in the viewer.

If you haven't already, you might consider posting the link to them for your members.

Here it is, folks /Janice
http://www.centrifugaleye.com/

There are a tremendous amount of ways to enjoy the issuu format. One simply needs to be patient enough to discover what they are. Easy ways: Print. Download. 3 visual presentation options. A variety of search and references options. Magnification options.

And here's a simple fact which might be sad for some to hear, but there's no going back to the old website version of TCE (although there will be improvements to the experience over time.)

(...) with the virtual technology, I will be able to save many older works indefinitely, even make them available later in anthology form.

It does pain me that some readers can't or don't want to use the virtual viewer, and I do empathize with their discomfort. (...) The majority of TCE readers report glowingly about their reading experiences with the new format platform.

If you want to quote me on any of this, you may.

[Michael Cantor]

The site is an Art Director's wet dream, which appears dedicated to demonstrating how clever the editor is, as opposed to presenting poetry in a clear, accessible format. My interest is poetry, clearly presented, readily accessible, and (on line) combined with good graphics. The site doesn't do any of that. From what I can see of the graphics they're a total mess, and I think the editor has her head on backwards if she thinks that anybody but dedicated computer graphics freaks will be turned on by this.

Apologies for the outburst, but I have a thing about poetry magazines where the poetry plays second or third fiddle to the Art Director. A good on-line poetry joiurnal should be intuitive, easy to navigate, and easy to read - and the poetry should dominate. I don't see any of that here.