111–120 of 152 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And many of the actual kernel devs, and other important and notable FOSS coders, as regulars in the comments. "LWN: A site you want to read the comments on."
That may have been true once, but imho these days LWN is as likely to have uninformed or trollish comments as anywhere else...you don't need to pay to comment
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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). Say what? On the contrary, I think that it's splendidly simple to read LWN, because there's no distraction. It's a good, clean site; it respects the styling I instruct my browser to apply to it; it displays just fine in links, l…
You don't really have to make it look "current" to make it better. I think a good example is antirez blog: http://antirez.com/latest/0 It's clean, very simple and renders fine in everything, even mobile. No distracting content, proper font and font spacing.
This would probably fail a basic Universal Accessibility test based on that alone.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 tha…
The point of an in-depth site like LWN is to communicate information to the readers. If the article and table layout make the information confusing and hard to access, that's not "fashion".
It most certainly is.
You acknowledge in your parent comment that you are not the target audience for this site. I assure you that the sort of crowd that's into Linux kernel development by and large prefers web design that other audiences would find archaic.
Conversely, were LWN to have switched to Bootstrap five years ago, or some Medium-like look today, or whatever the next transient fad will be five years from now... their audience would by and large viscerally hate it.
Designer types indulge too much in the fantasy of OBJECTIVE standards for "organized", "hard to access", etc. It's all subjective. Hence, fashion. For people who enjoy working on green-screen terminal applications, switching to a web app version is like giving their workflow a lobotomy. For people who prefer mobile-first minimalist web apps, the reverse is true.
LWN, and it's related subculture, happens to not be your scene. That's okay. But it's perfectly fine to just, well, not comment. Because it is so painfully lame how whenever a deep technical topic comes up on HN, half of the comment section deals with website aesthetics. Hey guys, if some topics just aren't for you, then it's... just... not... for... you... and... that's... okay.
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…
> 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 And you're commenting this on Hacker News. A site built up on tables, inline style-definitions, and where it for half a decade refused to add a simple... ...HTML header which made it usable on a mobile. I'm not saying it's not a factor, but clearly this s…
I have never thought much about the design of the site and that's a good thing. It succeeds in delivering information quickly and efficiently, which I imagine is the most important thing for LVN's readers. I would consider almost any new UX feature a regression if there is even a small chance it breaks my browser or slows down page loads.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't really have to make it look "current" to make it better. I think a good example is antirez blog: http://antirez.com/latest/0 It's clean, very simple and renders fine in everything, even mobile. No distracting content, proper font and font spacing.
And has terrible contrast on the main page content's text making it hard to read if you have poor eyesight, poor light conditions or a poor monitor. This would probably fail a basic Universal Accessibility test based on that alone.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point of an in-depth site like LWN is to communicate information to the readers. If the article and table layout make the information confusing and hard to access, that's not "fashion".
> that's not "fashion" It most certainly is. You acknowledge in your parent comment that you are not the target audience for this site. I assure you that the sort of crowd that's into Linux kernel development by and large prefers web design that other audiences would find archaic. Conversely, were LWN to have switched to Bootstrap five years ago, or some Medium-like look today, or whatever the next transient fad will…
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.
I don't think kernel development is any less scary now than it used to be. It's just as scary, people just don't care to know the gory details anymore. Such systems-level knowledge is seen as much less valuable now in the age of javascript frameworks that don't last longer than a month and silver bullets that everyone talks about but few are actually using for "production" scenarios worthy of that name. It just mirro…
There is no "Subscribe" link anywhere in the text of this article or on the web page that hosts it ( http://lwn.net/Articles/696017/ ). I was able to find the link from the front page, but it's kind of hidden -- https://lwn.net/subscribe/Info which says "Get started! The first step is to log into LWN. If you do not yet have an account, please create one now; otherwise, please log in to continue:". Which seems like a…
Over the years of occasionally reading LWN articles I've never noticed, or at least internalized, that LWN is subscription supported. Not saying they should introduce annoying "subscribe now!" modals, but they definitely could sell it a little harder.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a reader of a website, I usually primarily care about what the page looks like when it's rendered, as opposed to how clean the HTML is. Granted, the current trend to make everything feel like a shitty JavaScript application would be taking it too far, but lwn.net is definitely not a pleasure to read. Yes, it displays "just fine" in links, lynx, elinks, etc., if your definition of "just fine" is Fefe's Blog.
> Yes, it displays "just fine" in links, lynx, elinks, etc., if your definition of "just fine" is Fefe's Blog. Hey, fefe has some pretty nice stylesheets for his blog https://blog.fefe.de/?css=darkgreen.css https://blog.fefe.de/?css=cold_blue.css https://blog.fefe.de/?css=ascii.css https://blog.fefe.de/?css=topaz.css https://blog.fefe.de/?css=janvsfefe.css https://blog.fefe.de/?css=lesefefe.css https://blog.fefe.de/?…
This is how it looks if you visit the site without a CSS cookie.
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…