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Some news from LWN

lwn.net

11–20 of 152 posts

Re: Some news from LWN

#11
post #2

One thing that comes to my mind is that perhaps refreshing their website look-and-feel would get them some new readers...

Be honest: if you had not written this comment, would you have subscribed in six months if they started looking like Medium 2.0?

The complaints in this thread are mostly things like spacing and broken layouts, not fancy web X.0 fads. Hacker News is stylistically simple, but they still pay attention to making the content readable without strain.

Re: Some news from LWN

#12
post #9
post #4

I've never been a subscriber of this page and I don't think I am their real target audience. But I'm a professional programmer and I have been using Linux for around 15 years. I must say that this website comes across as very unprofessional due to the total lack of any design elements which would make it more easy to consume the content (spacing, choice of font). Also it seems like they don't use CSS to enhance the s…

> this website comes across as very unprofessional due to the total lack of any design elements Really? I've always viewed plain HTML sites in the complete opposite way. They tend to have really good, well thought-out content. There's no filler or clickbait with them.

Compare LWN and Hacker News. Both are very simple, but the comment section of Hacker News has an emphasis on content, and metadata is showed in a very simple and toned down way. ("7 minutes ago" vs TIMESTAMP).

On LWN there is unnecessary and redundant metadata accentuated!

Everything on HN is clearly thought out, and almost nothing on LWN is.

Re: Some news from LWN

#13

I stopped subscribing. The thing is, the Glory Days when kernel development was a scary, exciting wild west are lone gone. By necessity, the Linux kernel is now a part of the tech firmament and development is necessarily not as sexy as it used to be. So it's gonna be tough to get people to pay to read about it.

To be fair, LWN is more than just about Linux kernel development. I find it a useful aggregator of information of note from the F/OSS world.

For example, as of right now, most of the articles on the front page aren't about kernel development: distro security updates, LibreOffice, Firefox, GnuPG, ...

Re: Some news from LWN

#14
post #9
post #4

I've never been a subscriber of this page and I don't think I am their real target audience. But I'm a professional programmer and I have been using Linux for around 15 years. I must say that this website comes across as very unprofessional due to the total lack of any design elements which would make it more easy to consume the content (spacing, choice of font). Also it seems like they don't use CSS to enhance the s…

> this website comes across as very unprofessional due to the total lack of any design elements Really? I've always viewed plain HTML sites in the complete opposite way. They tend to have really good, well thought-out content. There's no filler or clickbait with them.

Disagree, even Hacker News has some attempts to have a better design while keeping the HTML site look.

Re: Some news from LWN

#16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be honest: if you had not written this comment, would you have subscribed in six months if they started looking like Medium 2.0?

The complaints in this thread are mostly things like spacing and broken layouts, not fancy web X.0 fads. Hacker News is stylistically simple, but they still pay attention to making the content readable without strain.

> Hacker News is stylistically simple, but they still pay attention to making the content readable without strain.

really? The font size is smaller here than on LWN, and the width of the text is smaller on LWN than on HN.

Comment metadata is slightly better on HN, but largely because on LWN you can put a comment title and here you can't.

Re: Some news from LWN

#17
post #9
post #4

I've never been a subscriber of this page and I don't think I am their real target audience. But I'm a professional programmer and I have been using Linux for around 15 years. I must say that this website comes across as very unprofessional due to the total lack of any design elements which would make it more easy to consume the content (spacing, choice of font). Also it seems like they don't use CSS to enhance the s…

> this website comes across as very unprofessional due to the total lack of any design elements Really? I've always viewed plain HTML sites in the complete opposite way. They tend to have really good, well thought-out content. There's no filler or clickbait with them.

I think this (humorous) site is relevant, here: http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/

Excessive CSS is, well, excessive. That said, a tiny pinch of CSS goes a long way towards making a page readable and aesthetic.

Re: Some news from LWN

#18
post #7
post #4

I've never been a subscriber of this page and I don't think I am their real target audience. But I'm a professional programmer and I have been using Linux for around 15 years. I must say that this website comes across as very unprofessional due to the total lack of any design elements which would make it more easy to consume the content (spacing, choice of font). Also it seems like they don't use CSS to enhance the s…

For the person downvoting me: Let's look at the article's comments. It is so hard to actually follow the conversation between the users. The article's title is repeated multiple times and has a red background. Underneath each comment's title is a full-height line with a font stating the UTC timestamp, and in the next line we can finally read the actual comment. I can't be the first person to criticise those issues, a…

Hacker News is a partially about deep, "real" tech (i.e. the old school Slashdot crowd)... and more largely about "tech fashion", entrepreneurial topics, and mildly interesting articles from The Atlantic in 2009.

I didn't downvote your post... but I relate to the frustration that when we DO get content in the former category, the top comment is always a critique of website layout or font kerning or something else that tries to pull it into the second category.

Can you just... not?

Re: Some news from LWN

#19
post #4

I've never been a subscriber of this page and I don't think I am their real target audience. But I'm a professional programmer and I have been using Linux for around 15 years. I must say that this website comes across as very unprofessional due to the total lack of any design elements which would make it more easy to consume the content (spacing, choice of font). Also it seems like they don't use CSS to enhance the s…

> Also it seems like they don't use CSS to enhance the site's UX at all.

For me that's a feature, not a bug. I'm interested about the content itself, not about with what color or what font that content is presented as.

Re: Some news from LWN

#20
post #9
post #4

I've never been a subscriber of this page and I don't think I am their real target audience. But I'm a professional programmer and I have been using Linux for around 15 years. I must say that this website comes across as very unprofessional due to the total lack of any design elements which would make it more easy to consume the content (spacing, choice of font). Also it seems like they don't use CSS to enhance the s…

> this website comes across as very unprofessional due to the total lack of any design elements Really? I've always viewed plain HTML sites in the complete opposite way. They tend to have really good, well thought-out content. There's no filler or clickbait with them.

I suspect the "traditional" readers of LWN hold similar views and would resist anything less functional than the current site, regardless of its flashiness.
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