Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World

newramblerreview.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 24 posts

Re: Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World

#5

Post by wskinner »

justin66 wrote: post #4
kutkloon7 wrote: post #2

I normally really dislike comments that are not about the content, but, god, why is the font so HUGE?

There might be something device specific going on there. On a large phone it's total toontown, way too big.

Nope, it's way too large on my 15 inch mbp as well.

Re: Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World

#6

Post by benjaminjackman »

kutkloon7 wrote: post #2

I normally really dislike comments that are not about the content, but, god, why is the font so HUGE?

When a webpage is an article, I don't understand why the normal behavior is that each website get's to (seemingly randomly) decide how its readers will interact with its text. It would be preferable if each user got to define a standard viewing mode for articles right in their browser. Something similar to the rendering settings for reader mode on iOS or on the Kindle or Readability. And then browsers firmly enforced rendering pages to the readers preference, not to the content creators.

As it stands the publishers hold all the cards and rarely does it end up being something positive.

Often instead it's something negative like the jumbo fonts on this or for a few examples:

* Font some eye straining light greyish color or too tiny

* Margins too narrow, or too wide

* Scroll-jacking.

* Triple click to highlight line turned into other function

* Excessive animated flashy ads

* `You might also like` links embedded throughout

* Register/Pay-wall

* Tracking

... (this lists goes on much longer but you get the point)

So why does the writer decide how the reader gets to read? It's not expected that the reader dictate to the writer what text editor they use and how they write. There should be a more rational demarcation in this relationship. All of us are readers more than we are writers. Yet this situation persists.

(And note I am only talking about articles, not forums, or webapps, etc)

Re: Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World

#9

Post by duaneb »

benjaminjackman wrote: post #6
kutkloon7 wrote: post #2

I normally really dislike comments that are not about the content, but, god, why is the font so HUGE?

When a webpage is an article, I don't understand why the normal behavior is that each website get's to (seemingly randomly) decide how its readers will interact with its text. It would be preferable if each user got to define a standard viewing mode for articles right in their browser. Something similar to the rendering settings for reader mode on iOS or on the Kindle or Readability. And then browsers firmly enforced…

I really wish we could differentiate between 'article-like' (where I can strip out everything but one main block of text) and app-like (that requires full javascript and DOM apis).

That alone would "fix" 90% of the problems I see today. I don't need to see your fucking autoplay ad just to read your article. At LEAST let me pay you to get a somewhat sane, non-crippled copy of your article in an RSS feed; a single payment would offset a lifetime of no ad clicks.

Post reply on HN