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Design of This Website (2021)

gwern.net

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Re: Design of This Website (2021)

#121

Post by mrob »

leephillips wrote: post #114
mrob wrote: post #104

The design is bad because it uses full justification, which hurts readability by making all the lines the same length, which weakens the visual cues for vertical position, and makes the spacing between words inconsistent. But I don't really care, because the site works correctly with Firefox's Reader View, which is better than any custom design because it always looks the same.

> hurts readability by making all the lines the same length Do you regard all books as poorly desgined?

Yes (at least all the professionally published ones I've seen). This is a major reason why I prefer ebooks.

Re: Design of This Website (2021)

#122

Post by extra88 »

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…

>an HTML-only page that renders content semantically

It would have been more semantic to use for emphasized text instead of .

Placeholders on form fields are not labels. The comment submit button has tabindex="-1", preventing keyboard users from submitting a comment.

Re: Design of This Website (2021)

#123

Post by leephillips »

The content is and has always been interesting, so one can forgive the design, which I feel is poor and irrational in some ways.

Poor because the line width is too long and the proportions are unattractive. Complex information that loads on hover can work offline, as in the sioyek PDF reader, when it’s fast, but is a terrible experience over the network. All that apparatus littering the text is distracting, but the ideas behind it are interesting.

Irrational because of such things as the fixed elements for site settings that only appear on the first page and fade out as you scroll down. If they're only intended to appear at the top, why give them fixed positioning?

Re: Design of This Website (2021)

#124

Post by extra88 »

enriquto wrote: post #119
extra88 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flags for currency mostly work because nations choose their flag and choose their currency. Flags for languages doesn't work because it's common for the same language to be popular in different countries and for multiple languages to be popular within a single country. ISO language abbreviations would be a better alternative than the flags but I don't think anything is needed at all; anyone who knows German will reco…

> Flags for currency mostly work Do you think so? Which flag would you use for euros? Obviously not the european union flag, since there are many countries inside the EU with a different currency (like Sweden or Poland) and even countries outside the EU whose currency is the euro (Montenegro, Kosovo, Andorra, ...).

Yeah, you're right. I did think EU membership was more aligned with use of the Euro (I only knew about the UK using the Pound but they're out). It's still true that each country chooses its currency but it would be just as weird to pick one country in the EU to represent Euros as picking one country to represent a language.

Re: Design of This Website (2021)

#125

Post by extra88 »

leephillips wrote: post #114
mrob wrote: post #104

The design is bad because it uses full justification, which hurts readability by making all the lines the same length, which weakens the visual cues for vertical position, and makes the spacing between words inconsistent. But I don't really care, because the site works correctly with Firefox's Reader View, which is better than any custom design because it always looks the same.

> hurts readability by making all the lines the same length Do you regard all books as poorly desgined?

Most books left-justify text.

Re: Design of This Website (2021)

#126

Post by deepsun »

Dynamic screen resizing has a few bugs. E.g. I dragged right screen border around and at one point (almost minimal width) saw that logo becomes gigantic and takes pretty much all the screen space.

Element:

Re: Design of This Website (2021)

#127

Post by unmole »

iamacyborg wrote: post #110
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…

> professional minimal design I can hear a million professional designers spinning in their graves at your claim.

Looking at the regressive nonsense that professional designers seem to push, I have no trouble believing that is in fact professional design.

Re: Design of This Website (2021)

#128

Post by chanc3e »

creata wrote: post #96
chanc3e wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yourself and Gwern both need to learn how typography works before you declare yourselves arbiters of digital design. On the plus side, your site is friendly in reader view. • Never justify text in digital • Never right align long form in digital • Both need to learn balance between type size and line height

From the article, it looks like Gwern, at least, thought quite a lot about text justification --- see the "Abandoned" section --- so the "learn how typography works" comment seems a bit unfair.

Agreed. I should have said ‘understand’.

My point being that applying rules learnt from hundreds of years of literary culture and printing do not 1:1 translate into digital.

Justified copy is as much about saving paper as it is about any formality/legibility. It really has no place in long form digital space where space is infinite.

Type designers like consistent and even rhythm between the ink and page. Rivers of white and large gaps between words give the ick.

Re: Design of This Website (2021)

#129

Post by Taywee »

sdevonoes wrote: post #116
epolanski wrote: post #90

I like the design, but semantics and accessibility aren't great. We have lists implemented like divs, navs like divs, lack of appropriate attributes, aria labels and few other things. That's not great considering there's basically only static content without interaction. Articles speaks about optimizing for performance but will still attempt to load 150kb of analytics library and doesn't handle fallback fonts and fon…

> We have lists implemented like divs, navs like divs, lack of appropriate attributes, aria labels and few other things. Since I don't use accessibility tools: how big of a deal is this for people who do? I try to keep my personal website lightweight, but I think I also use `div` for almost everything.

Theoretically, screen readers handle the "semantic web" better than anything else. Divs are used for layout and presentation, and don't convey much useful information about structure most of the time, so div-heavy sites can be really hard for blind people even if they look great, clean, minimal, and simple for the sighted.

I say "theoretically" because I'm not blind and have never used a screen reader, and I'm not extremely experienced in the area.

Re: Design of This Website (2021)

#130

Post by leephillips »

extra88 wrote: post #125
leephillips wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> hurts readability by making all the lines the same length Do you regard all books as poorly desgined?

Most books left-justify text.

Huh? I have about a thousand books in my house. Only a handful have left-justified text.

Gutenberg’s Bible was set fully justified in the 15th century, and that has been the overwhelmingly predominate practice in printed books from then to now.

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