Just found this: http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ I think it passes on all points.
http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com Unsure is it better, should check on more devices/systems/browsers.
Anti-Web-Design Manifesto (2013)
81–87 of 87 posts
Re: Anti-Web-Design Manifesto (2013)
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
>You changed your point then. No, I did not and - if you don't mind - I would suggest you spend some more time reading and analysing, instead of skim-reading and assuming my argument matches one of the predefined "boxes" you have. See below: >If you meant to say that "it has nothing to do with web design" then you should have said that Well, I did. How explicit do I have to be? I said: "then it's a matter of incompet…
As if competence in web design had anything to do with it. There's a subtle difference there. Rage harder though dude, it's Friday! Someone who bitterly states that "you know nothing about design" is obviously a web designer who is personally insulted by this article, who is obviously defending "web design competence". You've been arguing that "web design competence" is key here since you said that " A designer eithe…
> You've been arguing that "web design competence" is key here since you said that " A designer either designing for his or her own tastes or trying to find some best-of-all-worlds design will ultimately fail to satisfy the vast majority of visitors to the sit".
I did not. That came from the "manifesto"; I quoted it to counterpoint. I know it's Friday, but - come on - a little more attention. :)
Re: Anti-Web-Design Manifesto (2013)
#83This reminded me of Dogma 95, a similar manifesto for film directors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogme_95
It's not practical, but something uniquely valuable can be grown from the constraints.
Re: Anti-Web-Design Manifesto (2013)
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it really that bad? Most of the web is about reading content , and this is where all points on the page shine. I agree with basically everything on that page. In fact, we built fully-fledged browser extensions to override website's choices in fonts, colors and whatnot (point 1). We build extensions to kill js by default (point 2). We increasingly disable plugins by default (point 3). We have extensions to block ad…
Yes. There is a difference between optimizing the design of the parts of the web which are for reading text, or filtering the web as it is to your liking through plugins or whatnot, and forbidding the web from ever being about anything more than simply reading text. Because of course, most people don't have a problem with the web as it is, except maybe for a few details like intrusive advertising which could be done…
I think you're conflating too many things in your argument. I'm not against evolution, and there's plenty of good uses for most of the recent browser developments in the last decade.
Heck, I love what you can do in interactive python notebooks, and there's plenty of very successful pages that use modern technologies at their finest.
But it's a very small minority. So small, in fact, that a "whitelist-based" approach, such as disabling webfonts everywhere but selected sites, has a net-positive effect: it also works on the websites that choose good fonts, because those websites are ironically also the websites that gracefully degrade and/or use html semantically. Similarly for other features.
Many websites, to put it simply, are simply "badly styled" (I don't like to use "designed", because designed would imply some tuning based on a real usage pattern).
I also don't think that users that think that way are in minority: it cannot be that "reader" extensions (which do - in essence - exactly what has been described in the manifesto!) got bundled into browsers as a selling point. If there was no need, they wouldn't be bundled at all. Clearly, there are some non-insignificant amount of people that see this as a plus.
Re: Anti-Web-Design Manifesto (2013)
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. There is a difference between optimizing the design of the parts of the web which are for reading text, or filtering the web as it is to your liking through plugins or whatnot, and forbidding the web from ever being about anything more than simply reading text. Because of course, most people don't have a problem with the web as it is, except maybe for a few details like intrusive advertising which could be done…
I think you're conflating too many things in your argument. I'm not against evolution, and there's plenty of good uses for most of the recent browser developments in the last decade. Heck, I love what you can do in interactive python notebooks, and there's plenty of very successful pages that use modern technologies at their finest. But it's a very small minority. So small, in fact, that a "whitelist-based" approach,…
Fair enough - it's impossible to argue that the backlash isn't due to a real phenomenon. Although, browsers also ship with developer tools so I don't know how widely used the reader mode is, or whether it's targeted at a general audience or the tech audience. Most of the (admittedly anecdotal) complaints I see on social media sites have to do more with changing the UI around and messing with people's expectations than with poor fonts or loading times, or javascript.
Re: Anti-Web-Design Manifesto (2013)
#86First, I agree strongly with Brandon on virtually all of this, with one minor clarification.
My read is that his "no foo" requirements don't disallow sites from using CSS, javascript, plugins, etc, but require that core functionality be available without these. At the very least the ability to read the page.
I'm leaning strongly to sites focusing on a small number of basic design templates and allowing strong user deference in how those are styled: article, homepage, gallery, slideshow, catalog page. That may be a vain hope, but most sites operate with a small set of basic templates, and tools such as LaTeX have achieved tremendous mileage from a small set of standard document types. Yes, they tend to look similar. ThatsThePoint.jpg.
As a strong counterexample, take another current HN story, "On doing things other people can't", a Blogspot post:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10136955 http://pathsensitive.blogspot.com/2015/08/sources-of-power.h...
Unless I specifically enable JS for pathsensitive.blogspot.com, www.blogger.com, and www.blogblog.com, the article displays as a blank page.
Even with these enabled, the page is awkward to read -- a pop-out menue overlays the top of the scrollbar, the fonts are too small, the line length too long, and an annoying persistent header overlays the top 25% of the page (including browser elements: titlebar, tabs, navigation, and menus). I literally transcribed raw text to Markdown to read the entry
Of major blogging sites, Blogspot's among the worst for default themes, and its "dynamic" themes are especially bad.
I'm among those who've been ranting about the horrible state of the Web for basic reading for some time:
https://redd.it/256lxu https://redd.it/29eqrk
So, if I may offer some interpretations of Brandon's suggestions:
Completely override-able CSS: Not "don't use CSS", but "use a standard, minimal page structure which allows elements to be readily identified and styled, and don't go fucking overboard with styling.
Compare, Mark Pilgrim's Dive Into HTML5, which 1) has a really nice default stylesheet, and a really fucking minimal page structure:
http://diveintohtml5.info/index.html view-source:http://diveintohtml5.info/index.html
The entity nesting depth is mostly one (there's not even tags), rarely more than two.
Contrast that with pages in which every single element is explicitly styled inline and absolutely positioned. I've got a "bruteforce.css" which strips most such nonsense. As Brandon notes, excessive div nesting is almost always a sign of such breakage.
No client-side scripts: Again, to simply read the site. See the Blogspot example above.
Plugins: As before. Better: look through old sites featuring A/V content and note the instances of RealPlayer requirements. I'm not sure that plugin's even available any more, I certainly wouldn't want to rely on it. Sites which provided WAV files, or better, MP3 or OGG downloads, still work. Sites reliant on proprietary plugins, not so much. Flash and client-side Java are rapidly heading here, similarly Silverlight (specific to Microsoft MSIE).
Advertising: Many or most of the problems online are a direct consequence of advertising: bloated pages, cross-site scripting, security vulnerabilities, and crap content. I see a fundamental need to change the funding model, though no clear path to doing so.
No frames, multi-columns or other visual clutter: On this I agree. I've restyled many sites to push sidebars, asides, floats, etc, either above or below the main content. I'll occasionally encounter such sites unstyled and ... it's usually a shock.
Examples:
Stock/multicolumn: http://i.imgur.com/80zmE3i.png http://i.imgur.com/M2OiyOU.png
Modified/single column: http://i.imgur.com/nBdCZoY.png http://i.imgur.com/sNoOdZp.png
No non-standard fonts: The problems I have here are, variously:
1. WebFonts which simply do not render. Medium.com on my (ancient) Android mobile device is completely blank, as is Wired.com. This is annoying.
2. Fucking with font-weight, letter-spacing, and/or text-shadow. You do not want to do this for body text EVER. My instant response on seeing such a page is to simply sigh. Usually I'll move on.
Pagination: This is an absolute. There's no need to break up content any shorter than a book chapter (though improved content navigation for longer works is a weakness of HTML).
Account requirements/registration: Data. Are. Liability. Any time you request user data, you should ask yourself, "can we not do this?" You cannot lose what you do not have. You will lose what you do have, though when, where, to whom, and how far after the fact you realise it are all open questions.
What's really sad is how old most of these guidelines are.
Jacob Nielsen compiled his original list of 10 mistakes in Web design in 1996. Modulo a few technology nomenclature changes, they all still apply:
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/original-top-ten-mistakes-in...
1. Using Frames (now: iFrames)
2. Gratuitous Use of Bleeding-Edge Technology
3. Scrolling Text, Marquees, and Constantly Running Animations (carousels, autoplay video)
4. Complex URLs
5. Orphan Pages
6. Long Scrolling Pages (for landing pages. For articles, not so much)
7. Lack of Navigation Support (also: mystery-meat navigation, see "hamburger").
8. Non-Standard Link Colors (now: nonstandard any colours. Fad now is fucking with ::selection colours).
9. Outdated Information
10. Overly Long Download Times
Nielsen's returned to that topic many times, see:
"Ten Good Deeds in Web Design":
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-good-deeds-in-web-design...
"'Top Ten Mistakes' Revisited Three Years Later" http://www.nngroup.com/articles/top-ten-mistakes-revisited-t...
"113 Design Guidelines for Homepage Usability" (October 31, 2001) http://www.useit.com/articles/113-design-guidelines-homepage...
"The Ten Most Violated Homepage Design Guidelines" (November 10, 2003) http://www.nngroup.com/articles/most-violated-homepage-guide...
Note especially: 2. Use a liquid layout that lets users adjust the homepage size. Yes, responsive design. In two thousand fucking three.
Re: Anti-Web-Design Manifesto (2013)
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
As if competence in web design had anything to do with it. There's a subtle difference there. Rage harder though dude, it's Friday! Someone who bitterly states that "you know nothing about design" is obviously a web designer who is personally insulted by this article, who is obviously defending "web design competence". You've been arguing that "web design competence" is key here since you said that " A designer eithe…
> You've been arguing that "web design competence" is key here since you said that " A designer either designing for his or her own tastes or trying to find some best-of-all-worlds design will ultimately fail to satisfy the vast majority of visitors to the sit". I did not. That came from the "manifesto"; I quoted it to counterpoint. I know it's Friday, but - come on - a little more attention. :)
Wow, I pasted the wrong sentence. But you're still obviously lying or completely missing my point. And who are you trying to convince here? People can easily read what you wrote, there really wasn't much there.
My point is that it has nothing to do with incompetence, web-design or other. People do bad things for money.
You, OTOH clearly are addressing competence and web-design competence when you said "If a designer (or whoever decides) chooses to have custom fonts, client-side scripting or custom style sheets, it's because he weighted the downsides of said choice and still opted for it. If he did not, or he is not aware of the downsides, then it's a matter of incompetence, not web design."
It's OK to be completely wrong and off-point, but honestly - don't turn around and try to lie about it because someone called you out and you're embarrassed.
(Maybe the reason you're depressed at 30, the prime of your life, is that you're a high-strung prick who tends to take a simple misunderstanding and turn it into a shit-storm. C'est la vie. You put out crap and it comes right back to you ;)