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Design of This Website (2021)

gwern.net

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Re: Design of This Website (2021)

#31

Post by creatonez »

tut-urut-utut wrote: post #22

It's terrible. When browsing this website, one needs to be careful not to move the mouse over anything that will trigger a popup and cover the page they are trying to read. It's quite easy to accidentally get to 3 layers of pupups. Popups are antipattern, at least when they appear automatic, without user interaction.

For people who move the mouse a lot or just don't like popup footnotes, Gwern's website has thought of you aswell. If a popup shows up, click the button at the top right of the popup, and select the option to permanently disable popups.

Re: Design of This Website (2021)

#32

Post by WA »

wetpaws wrote: post #23

I fund gwern unreadable, despite their focus on typography. Maybe it's just my b rain not working very well with serif fonts.

It's not just you. I avoid this website, too. I don't want to read a book in my browser. There's too much going on visually, and all in the same color. Three types of links, footnotes, icons, artistic first letters, ... for me, it's way too much.

Re: Design of This Website (2021)

#33

Post by bmitc »

eCa wrote: post #30
bmitc wrote: post #29

I wouldn't necessarily call this a minimalist design. I do like Tufte-style websites with sidenotes, but these don't show on mobile for this site, despite my tablet having a large screen. > Gwern.net used Baskerville, but system Baskerville fonts don’t have small caps. Can someone explain to me what is meant by this? I don't understand what not having small caps means. I use Baskerville in my LaTeX documents with Mic…

Small caps are what they sound like, uppercase characters the size of lowercase characters. Kind of. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_caps

Hmm, interesting. Thank you. Is that true that "system Baskerville fonts" don't have them? I never encountered this in my LaTeX documents, but I suppose it's possible my LaTeX distribution is shipping its own Baskerville-like font. I'd need to look into that. I am trying to come up to speed about font sourcing (right word?) on the web. It's also somewhat unfortunate, because as far as my research can tell, I am unable to configure MathJax to use a custom math font.

Re: Design of This Website (2021)

#34

Post by hypertele-Xii »

For a site that lists its #1 principle as minimalism, it sure has a lot going on at all times.

Multiple menus all over the screen, many different kinds of links with distinct underline and icon suffix, popups within popups that reinvent OS window functionality, historiated initials, graphical horizontal divider with hidden links, a recommended articles carousel, and a very (visually) busy comments section.

Minimal it ain't.

If you want to see a professional minimal design, check out mine:

https://hypertele.fi/ec997be8c5933e87

Re: Design of This Website (2021)

#35

Post by Jaruzel »

Yet again, this is a website that has clearly only been tested on a hiDPI screen.

At 100% scaling on Windows, the serif font used doesn't kern or render properly; crossbars in letters such as 't' and 'f' are overweight compared to other strokes, and makes the font look uneven.

Designers all seem to think we use 4k screens at 200% scaling, for that ultra smooth look, when in reality, that's far from the case[1].

Edit: Example of what I'm seeing: http://www.jaruzel.com/files/fonts.png

---

[1] https://gs.statcounter.com/screen-resolution-stats/desktop/w...

Re: Design of This Website (2021)

#36

Post by gouggoug »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #34

For a site that lists its #1 principle as minimalism, it sure has a lot going on at all times. Multiple menus all over the screen, many different kinds of links with distinct underline and icon suffix, popups within popups that reinvent OS window functionality, historiated initials, graphical horizontal divider with hidden links, a recommended articles carousel, and a very (visually) busy comments section. Minimal it…

Although I’d agree with the fact that gwern does have a more going on, I definitely don’t think your site is any more minimalistic, I’d ever argue it is far far from it. My first reaction was « THAT’s minimalistic ?? »

Re: Design of This Website (2021)

#37

Post by creata »

In my experience, all of those features really slowed down my reading: the superscripts, the underlines on all the links, the serifs, and the visually heavy popups that appear immediately after hovering; contrast with Wikipedia's popups, which feel much lighter.

Thankfully, the site has a built-in reader mode to make most of this go away, but it also removes the good features, like sidenotes, and I have to wonder: if the reader mode is for reading, what's the "regular" mode for?

Also, typo: "epxnesive".

Re: Design of This Website (2021)

#39

Post by nicbou »

tut-urut-utut wrote: post #22

It's terrible. When browsing this website, one needs to be careful not to move the mouse over anything that will trigger a popup and cover the page they are trying to read. It's quite easy to accidentally get to 3 layers of pupups. Popups are antipattern, at least when they appear automatic, without user interaction.

This is a problem I never managed to solve elegantly. Now the glossary on my website works on click. It’s a lot less annoying.

Re: Design of This Website (2021)

#40

Post by chandureddyvari »

wetpaws wrote: post #23

I fund gwern unreadable, despite their focus on typography. Maybe it's just my b rain not working very well with serif fonts.

Same here. I switch to Firefox Readermode to read it. May be my brain is trained to comprehend better if the reading experience is consistent.
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