[deleted]
Responsive Text
31–40 of 63 posts
Re: Responsive Text
#32After thinking about it for a moment, my response is this: if the same idea can be delivered in fewer (words|paragraphs), then show the reduced form. Tighter writing is clearer, and thus easier to read. If you can trim, you should be doing it anyway; leaving the extra amounts to cruft in most cases.
While I think that is one response to this, you seem to be diminishing the importance that extra cruft has upon the effective message conveyed. Simpler is more economic, but it also eliminates those ephemeral things communicated implicitly. A TLDR is certainly an adequate substitute for those not interested enough, but an abbreviation can never capture the full expressive thought contained in a larger, well written text.
Effective visual communication, whether it be anything from body of text to an icon, is not necessarily contingent upon its complexity.
Re: Responsive Text
#33This reminds moe of Joe Davis' Telescopic Text: http://www.telescopictext.com/ . Assuming you see this on a desktop computer, it's exactly the opposite of Frankie's responsive text: instead of gradually reducing the amount of information, it gradually increases it.
That's really clever. I would like to read news articles written like this: you just click on the parts you want elaborate on.
Not only would it be more convenient for you, to focus on bits of the story you're actually interested in, the newspaper could collect analytics on what parts of the story you're interested in, and suggest further articles, and highly-targeted ads, based on that.
Imagine you see an article about Christopher Hitchens accusing Henry Kissinger of war crimes, and Kissinger is wearing a smart suit, and you dive in to find out more about his couturier. The click-through rates on high-end clothing ads would be vastly more.
Though, to take the opposite tack: would this encourage newspapers to turn into something like mesothelioma blogspam? Writing about something, only because the ads associated with it are profitable, instead of because it's a Fact Worth Knowing?
Re: Responsive Text
#34This only makes sense to me in a progressive loading situation. That is, you load the summaries first, then load additional detail later in the rendering timeline. Fine; I'd get that.
But I don't like the idea of not getting the full story every time. Why not think a couple years out and assume everyone's connection is fast enough to handle text - LOTS of text - even over a mobile connection. It's text. Like one-or-two-bytes-per-character stuff.
I suppose it's also interesting as a navigational scheme. To show summaries automatically and expand on some user action, a la clear (http://www.realmacsoftware.com/clear/).
Re: Responsive Text
#35After thinking about it for a moment, my response is this: if the same idea can be delivered in fewer (words|paragraphs), then show the reduced form. Tighter writing is clearer, and thus easier to read. If you can trim, you should be doing it anyway; leaving the extra amounts to cruft in most cases.
While I think that is one response to this, you seem to be diminishing the importance that extra cruft has upon the effective message conveyed. Simpler is more economic, but it also eliminates those ephemeral things communicated implicitly. A TLDR is certainly an adequate substitute for those not interested enough, but an abbreviation can never capture the full expressive thought contained in a larger, well written t…
This is why including a summary prefacing long-form writing is such a good idea in general.
Re: Responsive Text
#36A good implementation I've seen of something like this is a responsive version of data tables. Essentially, the data in the table is prioritized, and shown or hidden based on the available real-estate, along with the ability to override the defaults. Demo available here: http://filamentgroup.com/examples/rwd-table-patterns/
I think this is a much better use-case for this kind of idea. I especially like that even if I shrink down my browser, I can still re-show the content that got hidden using the dropdown at top-right.
Maybe people's concerns about not seeing the full content could be alleviated by a similar solution for re-showing the text that got hidden in the OP's example?
Re: Responsive Text
#37Hiding text elements on simple, informational sites can work. On mobile devices, the performance hit of loading additional elements is compounded because of the slower connection.
The general rule of thumb is if you have a complicated application, consider building a mobile optimized (*not responsive) site or a native application (even better if you have time & money). If you have a simple informational site, I think hiding elements can work though you have to question if you needed the extra copy in the first place.
Re: Responsive Text
#38I love the idea, but I suspect that most people writing the sorts of content that could benefit from this wouldn't take the time to break down their work in a way that would take advantage of the layout.
I agree, but I think this format could work well in certain situations where it can be done automatically, like for comments with karma. You could vary the threshold for hidden comments, so mobile users see less but overall higher quality comments (with a link to show hidden ones), and desktop users see all by default.
Are you talking about (a) completely hiding low-karma posts, or (b) "minimizing" the text of those low-karma posts in a way similar to how the example works?
If it's (a), that's basically what sites like Slashdot and Reddit already do for desktop users.
If it's (b), the obvious question is how you algorithmically filter text to only include the pertinent information (the given example is almost certainly hard-coded), which doesn't sound like a simple question to answer.
Re: Responsive Text
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I think that is one response to this, you seem to be diminishing the importance that extra cruft has upon the effective message conveyed. Simpler is more economic, but it also eliminates those ephemeral things communicated implicitly. A TLDR is certainly an adequate substitute for those not interested enough, but an abbreviation can never capture the full expressive thought contained in a larger, well written t…
This is why including a summary prefacing long-form writing is such a good idea in general.
I suppose, depending upon your aim.
(And by long-form, I assume you are talking about an article or something rather than a book.) If you aren't concerned with people actually reading your text then yes, thats probably a good idea. But prefacing in this manner generally tends to disuade meaningful consumption, "why read in 4 pages what was summed up in 4 sentences", a reader might think. I think prefacing could arguably contribute to effective communication, but it stifles engagement significantly.
Just my 2 cents...
Re: Responsive Text
#40The author is a clever and talented guy, but this is terrible idea. I sincerely thank the author for expanding the way I think about content and presentation.