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Design of This Website (2021)

gwern.net

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Re: Design of This Website (2021)

#161

Post by mariusor »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #151
epolanski wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For this particular website the impact isn't tragic, you can navigate, but you cannot navigate efficiently nor you can figure out well what and where you're navigating to. In short, it's usable but not perfect, the sidebar should be a nav rather than a div to convey it's where major and meaningful navigation is found. It's not easy to figure out without the visual feedback that those links are different than the othe…

> the sidebar should be a nav rather than a div to convey it's where major and meaningful navigation is found I think you are mixing two issues here, what's good for the end user and what's good for the developer and maintenance of the site. Both matter of course greatly but I think this article was about optimizing the user-experience. From the users' point of view does it matter if a section is a 'nav' or a 'div' w…

> From the users' point of view does it matter if a section is a 'nav' or a 'div' which has CSS-class 'nav' assigned to it?

Yes.

There are people that use devices that rely on these accessibility options to differentiate nuances in the content that might otherwise be obvious when rendered in a standard browser: text only browsers, screen readers to name just a couple.

Re: Design of This Website (2021)

#162

Post by chefandy »

tomcam wrote: post #20
chefandy wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Web archiving goes pretty deep, actually. I have no idea what this site uses but the open source tools maintained by the Webrecorder project are rad.

Thanks for that reference. I didn’t know about it until you posted. Note to downvoters: that was a sincere comment.

... downvotes? Weird.

There's other cool web archiving stuff out there too that's just the one I know about.

Re: Design of This Website (2021)

#163

Post by galaxyLogic »

rossitter wrote: post #149
hypertele-Xii wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish HN had a fixed topbar so I wouldn't need to scroll to the top so often.

Home button on a keyboard, tap the top of the screen on iOS, and I believe Android implements something similar. I agree with the other commenter here. If a text-only article follows the tenets of some version of 'minimalist' design, I should be able to read it comfortably on my phone. Straight to reader mode for me. I tried it on my desktop, where it was better. But I still wouldn't call it 'minimalist.' Again, it's…

Home-button is a good trick to know about but I wish there was an easy way to jump between the top and the location I came from to get back. It seems back-button does not do that on my browser at least.

Since browser's don't do it there could be a side-ribbon that had a TOP-button and then a BACK-button. I think that would be useful on sites like HN.

Re: Design of This Website (2021)

#164

Post by galaxyLogic »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #106
mdoms wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right align is absolutely horrible and in no way improves readability. The fact that your website is literally the only one I've seen in multiple years using that style should have been a clue.

To every new, better way there is always someone doing it alone first.

Right but someone doing something different alone doesn't typically mean it is a better way. For every new better way there are an infinite number of new worse ways

Re: Design of This Website (2021)

#165

Post by galaxyLogic »

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

What are they good for? The site mentions "automatic smallcaps typesetting". Why is that a good thing?

I can see they might be good sometimes but lots of them makes the page look busy.

And would you say that using lots of them is "minimalistic design"?

Re: Design of This Website (2021)

#166

Post by duckmysick »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #106
mdoms wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right align is absolutely horrible and in no way improves readability. The fact that your website is literally the only one I've seen in multiple years using that style should have been a clue.

To every new, better way there is always someone doing it alone first.

Yes, you're right.

Consider this: you're up against millennia of development in writing and typography. People have tried a lot of different ways of organizing and presenting text. And I mean a lot. Different symbols, different fonts, different page layouts, different text orientations. There was even a long line of symbols spiraling on a disk, getting denser as it approaches the center. There's a good chance somebody tried different ways of aligning long text in a paragraph. And we settled on one. Maybe there was even a good reason for it. It's consistent across cultures too. Justified and centered text aside, left-to-right languages are flushed to the left; right-to-left languages are flushed to the right.

Is it objectively the best way? I don't know.

Writing, fundamentally, is used to communicate your thoughts - to yourself or to others. Publishing your writing on the web (and sharing it here) implies you want others to read it. In order to reach your readers, you want to make it easy for them to parse this text. Over the years, people developed a set of patterns that make text more readable. Some are fundamental. Some are nice to have. Some are so universal they are expected - and noted when they are missing.

Re: Design of This Website (2021)

#167

Post by galaxyLogic »

cousin_it wrote: post #78

I like the minimalism of Gwern's site, but the text formatting doesn't feel especially readable. Dan Luu's site has a similar problem https://danluu.com/nothing-works/ by the time I get to the end of a line, it's hard to find the beginning of the next one. Also maybe a matter of taste, but it feels to me like serif fonts are good for books but not so great on the web. The most readable text formatting I've seen on th…

An easy way to increase readability would be to use multiple columns. That's how newspapers do it. The web is of course a little different but long lines are a problem.

Note on mobile the width is typically only as wide as the screen, which is good. But mobile is really not good for reading in general.

Re: Design of This Website (2021)

#168

Post by galaxyLogic »

exodust wrote: post #72
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.

> serif fonts Can't understand why websites choose serif fonts. I find long passages of text a chore to read when the font is serif. They're less readable than sans-serif, as the little feet on every letter adds up to unnecessary visual clutter. And when rendered as white text on a black page, with compacted line spacing, the contrasty serif fonts won't be inviting to the reader.

I agree the white text is a bad choice. Why? Because it is "aggressive" it is "in your face". It screams because of its high contrast. It distracts you from the content you are supposed to be reading. It makes you think you are in a black-room looking at some negatives. Perhaps some secret content.

When you read you should be able to forget that you are reading, your mind just "drops in to the story". That happens with books with black text on white background. You read but you are unaware that you are reading. Your mind just consumes the content.

Maybe part of it is convention since we are used to books and newspapers and magazines not having white text on black background. But I think there's more to it. Black background is like paint, whereas white background is lack of paint. There is no background there is only the text. There is only the content. Therefore you can more easily forget about everything else and focus on the content, on the message.

Re: Design of This Website (2021)

#169

Post by xigoi »

enriquto wrote: post #73
ManuelKiessling wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very good point, and I've thought about this a lot. Still not sure what the best solution is... there is also a "flag-mashup" of the Austrian, Swiss, and German flag, but that's looking weird, too. Maybe a combination: a small icon with the three flags in one row, and underneath, the text "German post".

> a small icon with the three flags this does not address the main problem that flags do not correspond to languages. German is spoken in more than "the three" countries, and in these countries there are more languages than German. Thus, using flags is insensitive and alienating to German speakers from other countries (e.g., Belgium), and non-German speakers from these three countries (e.g., Lugano). And this is just…

How is using the German flag different from calling the language “German” (or Deutsch)?

Re: Design of This Website (2021)

#170

Post by [deleted] »

kretaceous wrote: post #61

I love this site. The content, minimalism and focus on performance, the honest over-engineering, everything. But I can't read much of it as is. • My reason is not the font, which I like, but the 'density' (not information density). The line height is too less for me. • There are a lot of hyperlinks and they look like the factorial notation instead of an underline and are of the same color as normal text. • Sidenotes…

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