Sure, that page is just text. But I found it via hackernews. If hackernews looked like that, I wouldn't visit it every day.
That site is more responsive than hacker news!
This is a web page
101–110 of 445 posts
Re: This is a web page
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your site looks great. I especially like your logo.
The logo is nice, but the aliased angled lines really kill it for me. I think a vector (or better anti-aliased) logo would really make a positive difference in the feel of the site.
The antialiasing on the logo was awful, and I've uploaded a new version. I think a vector version would be great. I am already serving up an @2x version which looks great.
Re: This is a web page
#103It's the anti qz.com.
Why is there so much hate for Quartz on here? It may be hard to read on a mobile device, but if you focus on just the articles it is very distraction free and easy to read. Nit-picking is fine, but overly criticizing is stupid when qz.com is miles ahead of almost every other publishing outlet online. Would you rather see more sites like qz.com that focus on content and navigation or more sites like traditional newspa…
Would you rather see more sites like qz.com that focus on content and navigation
I would expect something that's focused on the content would eliminate the top/side bars, and show me the actual content. Annoyingly, NoScript (which often makes newspapers' web sites quite tolerable) doesn't appear to remove qz.com's clutter.
Re: This is a web page
#104"At it's heart, web design should be about words." No. The web is not just a place for text / words, that is not its heart and soul, and therefore neither is that the case for web design. It really never has been. I see no great argument in favor of words being the core over any other form of expression. Today's bandwidth more than allows for beautiful video, animation, high quality graphics and photos, etc. Or low k…
On the other hand, yesterday there was a discussion on HN of Steve Jobs remark that his legacy won't survive long, because technology quickly becomes obsolete: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5906202 Words have much better chance of survival than other elements of web design. What was considered a decent design 10+ years ago, is today often laughable.
This opens a question on what exactly elements of web design are of course. Some would claim content isn't an element of design, others would claim the opposite.
I would just remark that photos and video have the same survival aspect to them that text does. Particularly as our present and future is clearly one stored digitally. It's all bytes.
I would also point out for fun, that duration of survival doesn't inherently equate to greater value or beauty. There are some ugly and boring things that last a very long time (rocks vs flowers; I think I can say that people tend to think certain flowers (roses) are inherently more beautiful than your average gray rock).
Re: This is a web page
#105I agree, but... ...the author made the choice to display the text at 600px wide with a font size of 18px. There's plenty of markup (design) to point out key ideas on the page. Would this writing have the same impact if the font was at 12px, with smaller spacing between paragraphs, or maybe with a page width of 1280px? I don't think so.
> Would this writing have the same impact if the font was at 12px, with smaller spacing between paragraphs, or maybe with a page width of 1280px?
Yes. Of course. Books don't need precise pixel rules to be readable.
Re: This is a web page
#106"At it's heart, web design should be about words." No. The web is not just a place for text / words, that is not its heart and soul, and therefore neither is that the case for web design. It really never has been. I see no great argument in favor of words being the core over any other form of expression. Today's bandwidth more than allows for beautiful video, animation, high quality graphics and photos, etc. Or low k…
It's unfortunate that the article doesn't try to actually make the case for the primacy of linguistic communication, and I'm not going to take the time to do it here either. I'll just say that while I agree with you that a diversity of media is better than just one medium, I spent my childhood, before the Web was built, reading books instead of watching TV on purpose, not by accident. Books without pictures. And it's not an accident that I'm answering you in text instead of using my webcam.
I have occasionally seen beautiful video on the web. I have much more frequently seen video whose author had deluded himself into thinking it was beautiful.
http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-tol/2013-June/00... talks some about the relative usefulness of different kinds of digital media.
Re: This is a web page
#107This was a bit of an obsession of mine ever since I saw Coding Horror a few years ago. I had seen a lot of extremely minimalist designs, but they were all doing things to accomplish that minimalism. As a developer though, you have a nagging feeling in the back of your brain saying "that's a lie, it's not simple, it's very complicated, it just looks simple." Coding Horror is complex, but it was plain enough for me to…
Your site looks great. I especially like your logo.
Thank you! I spent years without any kind of visual identification, but one day this summer I was playing around in photoshop and came up with that. It works quite well with a number of letter combinations and colors. If anyone reading this has trouble with personal designs, playing in an image editor whenever you have a stray thought will produce many terrible designs not worth saving, but pays off in the end.
Re: This is a web page
#108"At it's heart, web design should be about words." No. The web is not just a place for text / words, that is not its heart and soul, and therefore neither is that the case for web design. It really never has been. I see no great argument in favor of words being the core over any other form of expression. Today's bandwidth more than allows for beautiful video, animation, high quality graphics and photos, etc. Or low k…
I think his point is that it's a communication system that facilitates communication amongst everyone . And everyone can communicate in words, typed out[0]. And not everyone can produce or effectively communicate using beautiful video, high quality graphics and, I guess, responsive design. [1] It's interesting to wonder what the next-common "wide area" communication mode is -- photos are widely shared, but is there a…
Everyone can communicate in words? That isn't true, unfortunately. I don't see why you even said that, only to negate it at the bottom.
More people can digest a photo than can read a specific language, by a radical margin.
Re: This is a web page
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
The logo is nice, but the aliased angled lines really kill it for me. I think a vector (or better anti-aliased) logo would really make a positive difference in the feel of the site.
it looks as if the colour is just a background-color attribute in CSS, which changes on mouseover. If so, it should be white->transparent anti-aliased in the RK image, which is looks like it's trying to be. Vector, e.g. drawn with Canvas, would be better (e.g. with a fallback to a single colour png.)
It was trying to be, and failing. I am currently serving up a ( antialiasing fixed ) png, and @2x png for hdpi displays. Do you think a canvas logo would provide any additional benefit above these two?
Re: This is a web page
#110"At it's heart, web design should be about words." No. The web is not just a place for text / words, that is not its heart and soul, and therefore neither is that the case for web design. It really never has been. I see no great argument in favor of words being the core over any other form of expression. Today's bandwidth more than allows for beautiful video, animation, high quality graphics and photos, etc. Or low k…
I think the authors point is that good content is more important than form and not that graphics and media should be forbidden. It just happens that HN is an excellent example for that - people come here for the content and not for fancy design, graphics and media.
A friend of mine has a special weakness for Venice (Italy) because it is one of the few place without any billboards, i.e. graphics everywhere.
It is not black and white but good food for thought.