Live data from Hacker News

The Death of Personality (2017)

tdarb.org

31–40 of 70 posts

Re: The Death of Personality (2017)

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a newspaper layout designer in a previous life. The only complaint I have about HN is the line length on large-ish screens. In my newspaper days we stuck to around 60 characters as an optimal line length for readability. I've seen up to 80, but even that seems to be pushing it. Once you stretch out the lines so much it's hard to track back and forth from the end of one line to the beginning of the next line. I'…

I'm reading the parent, top-level comment on a Macbook Air with a 13 inch screen and the first line is a whopping 194 characters long. ...resize your browser window? The text is as wide as you want it to be. On the other hand, I absolutely hate it when I want wider or narrower lines, and resizing the window either causes useless whitespace or a scrollbar to appear.

...no?

I have lots of tabs open, and every other site I use chooses a legible width.

You think I'm going to resize my browser window narrower every time I switch to HN, and resize it wider every time I switch to a different tab?

Sites are designed. Legibility is part of design. Appropriate characters per line is part of legibility. Full stop.

Re: The Death of Personality (2017)

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm reading the parent, top-level comment on a Macbook Air with a 13 inch screen and the first line is a whopping 194 characters long. ...resize your browser window? The text is as wide as you want it to be. On the other hand, I absolutely hate it when I want wider or narrower lines, and resizing the window either causes useless whitespace or a scrollbar to appear.

...no? I have lots of tabs open, and every other site I use chooses a legible width. You think I'm going to resize my browser window narrower every time I switch to HN, and resize it wider every time I switch to a different tab? Sites are designed. Legibility is part of design. Appropriate characters per line is part of legibility. Full stop.

Sounds like you need Stylus, or some other browser extension that allows for custom CSS rules.

Not disagreeing with your premise BTW.

Re: The Death of Personality (2017)

#34

To be honest, maybe i'm in the minority, but I don't want my tech/UI/designed stuff to have 'personality'. I want it to fade into the background as if it isn't there so i can get on and live my life. I want it to be simple, to get out of my way and do what it is supposed to do. I feel like the world and particularly tech products are overwhelmingly noisy. I yearn for everything to be more simple. Less notifications,…

You seem to be talking about something completely unrelated. A design personality does not get in your way.

Re: The Death of Personality (2017)

#35

To be honest, maybe i'm in the minority, but I don't want my tech/UI/designed stuff to have 'personality'. I want it to fade into the background as if it isn't there so i can get on and live my life. I want it to be simple, to get out of my way and do what it is supposed to do. I feel like the world and particularly tech products are overwhelmingly noisy. I yearn for everything to be more simple. Less notifications,…

First thing i do, when i get a OS, is take a iron broom to the various Programmer Egos in the room. It has to go, the notifications, the ballons, the updates and other busy work simulators. GUI goes grey, the various empty real estate modes are turned off.

Then i try to protect the environment i created from the damage the original creators can do. Take a snapshot, kick the VMs Network driver if needs be. If something has annoying sound adds, i rather rip the sounddriver out of my phone then let it play loud - even in the background. Nobody is taking my attention hostage, i learned programming to turn my devices into servants of myself. Any coup by others will be meet with brutal punishment, and if it annoys me enough, that punishment will be available to others as a crack.

On my ideal workstation, your GUI designers starve and your bloat programmers hunger.

Re: The Death of Personality (2017)

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm reading the parent, top-level comment on a Macbook Air with a 13 inch screen and the first line is a whopping 194 characters long. ...resize your browser window? The text is as wide as you want it to be. On the other hand, I absolutely hate it when I want wider or narrower lines, and resizing the window either causes useless whitespace or a scrollbar to appear.

...no? I have lots of tabs open, and every other site I use chooses a legible width. You think I'm going to resize my browser window narrower every time I switch to HN, and resize it wider every time I switch to a different tab? Sites are designed. Legibility is part of design. Appropriate characters per line is part of legibility. Full stop.

You think I'm going to resize my browser window narrower every time I switch to HN, and resize it wider every time I switch to a different tab?

Or you could just put it in a separate window of the desired width; maybe then you'd even have enough space on your huge monitor to see several sites all at once!

As I wrote the post above, I had about a dozen different windows open, all of varying sizes. Monitors have gotten much bigger, yet the users seem to have gotten worse at making good use of that space.

Re: The Death of Personality (2017)

#39
UIs have trended toward flat minimalist utilitarianism while everything under the hood has trended toward bloated web UIs built on 20mb of JavaScript or apps larded up with spyware and gratuitous telemetry.

Simpler UI, gratuitous complexity beneath.

Re: The Death of Personality (2017)

#40

that is funny, just the other day i was thinking about how i wished twitter, in particular, felt more 'fun', and started making a stylesheet to try and make it feel more 2006-ish or something lol https://i.jollo.org/xoYwhYpb.png

Would unironically use twitter if it looked like that, ngl. looking rad! :)

[deleted]
Post reply on HN