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800 Years of English Handwriting

artsandculture.google.com

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Re: 800 Years of English Handwriting

#11

Post by 0xEF »

valleyer wrote: post #2

Slightly off-topic: 1. When I loaded the page, it bombarded me with a banner asking me, "Interested in sports?" (Yes, I am, but I came here to read about English handwriting. Go away.) 2. At the end, it presented me with a "badge" for finishing a whole "book"! Yeah, maybe people's attention spans would be better if they weren't bombarded with little banners at the beginning.

I did not get either banner looking at the page using Firefox focus on mobile, but this parallax scrolling experience used on this site (and many others)that today's webdevs seem hot to trot over is abysmal. I'm on an 8" tablet and still have to find the sweet spot where the text does not obfuscate the image, so my eyes are unable to quickly dart between both as I read. It's absurd that people think this is a good way to present information. Another commenter replying to you mentioned why not just ditch the JS, and for a site like this I say, right, why not? I'd much rather have the static text and image positions afforded with simple and elegant HTML and CSS tags as opposed to this finicky BS that was clearly tested on maybe one viewport and called good.

Re: 800 Years of English Handwriting

#12

Post by FearNotDaniel »

valleyer wrote: post #2

Slightly off-topic: 1. When I loaded the page, it bombarded me with a banner asking me, "Interested in sports?" (Yes, I am, but I came here to read about English handwriting. Go away.) 2. At the end, it presented me with a "badge" for finishing a whole "book"! Yeah, maybe people's attention spans would be better if they weren't bombarded with little banners at the beginning.

I'm torn on point 2... on the one hand, I'm insulted to be "rewarded" for my tenacity in managing to "read" what is basically a very short article with a lot of pictures. On the other hand, I'm working daily with people who refuse to read messages on Teams chat if they are longer than five words and respond either with an answer that proves they didn't make it past the first sentence or with the even worse "quick call?" So perhaps anything that rewards primary-school-level literacy among adults is a positive step after all.

Re: 800 Years of English Handwriting

#13

Post by chrismorgan »

Seeing the mention of Round Hand reminded me of Gilbert & Sullivan’s description in H.M.S. Pinafore of the importance of handwriting if, like Sir Joseph Porter K.C.B., you want to rise to the top of the tree:

  As office boy I made such a mark
  That they gave me the post of a junior clerk.
  I served the writs with a smile so bland,
  And I copied all the letters in a big round hand—
      I copied all the letters in a hand so free,
      That now I am the Ruler of the Queen’s Navee!

Re: 800 Years of English Handwriting

#14

Post by drivers99 »

FearNotDaniel wrote: post #12
valleyer wrote: post #2

Slightly off-topic: 1. When I loaded the page, it bombarded me with a banner asking me, "Interested in sports?" (Yes, I am, but I came here to read about English handwriting. Go away.) 2. At the end, it presented me with a "badge" for finishing a whole "book"! Yeah, maybe people's attention spans would be better if they weren't bombarded with little banners at the beginning.

I'm torn on point 2... on the one hand, I'm insulted to be "rewarded" for my tenacity in managing to "read" what is basically a very short article with a lot of pictures. On the other hand, I'm working daily with people who refuse to read messages on Teams chat if they are longer than five words and respond either with an answer that proves they didn't make it past the first sentence or with the even worse "quick cal…

Yeah I didn’t think I needed to be called names (“bookworm”) for reading a whole article on a topic I’m fascinated by. I get enough of that in real life already.

Re: 800 Years of English Handwriting

#17

Post by einpoklum »

> The handwriting in the early 1100s is known as Carolingian Miniscule. It was easy to write, very legible and ideal for writing Latin.

It was not very legible. Its legibility is weak due to aspects such as:

* Non decomposability into rectangles bounding letters

* Variation in letter forms depending on preceding and succeeding letters

* "extended serifs" or edges of letters which may vary at the author's pleasure.

* Some pen strokes being extremely thin to the point of near-invisibility (like the middle line of 'e' characters)

* non-uniform vertical height of letters (even ignoring ascenders)

* non-uniform horizontal baseline

Re: 800 Years of English Handwriting

#18

Post by casey2 »

chrismorgan wrote: post #13

Seeing the mention of Round Hand reminded me of Gilbert & Sullivan’s description in H.M.S. Pinafore of the importance of handwriting if, like Sir Joseph Porter K.C.B., you want to rise to the top of the tree: As office boy I made such a mark That they gave me the post of a junior clerk. I served the writs with a smile so bland, And I copied all the letters in a big round hand— I copied all the letters in a hand so fr…

The satire here is clear, that naval skill isn't necessary to run the navy but rather skill in some trivial and unrelated clerical task (along with political connections)

The problem comes then when people see this, don't recognize it as corruption, and waste their time learning useless skills. In a large org productivity losses from this are non trivial.

Re: 800 Years of English Handwriting

#19

Post by coldpie »

valleyer wrote: post #2

Slightly off-topic: 1. When I loaded the page, it bombarded me with a banner asking me, "Interested in sports?" (Yes, I am, but I came here to read about English handwriting. Go away.) 2. At the end, it presented me with a "badge" for finishing a whole "book"! Yeah, maybe people's attention spans would be better if they weren't bombarded with little banners at the beginning.

We really need to start considering these things in the same category as pop-up windows. Browsers need to start killing these things, just like they did pop-up windows in the 90s and early 2000s. Remember when pop-up blocking was a huge feature? Imagine if Firefox implemented that today to block all this crap.

Re: 800 Years of English Handwriting

#20

Post by kelvinjps »

coldpie wrote: post #19
valleyer wrote: post #2

Slightly off-topic: 1. When I loaded the page, it bombarded me with a banner asking me, "Interested in sports?" (Yes, I am, but I came here to read about English handwriting. Go away.) 2. At the end, it presented me with a "badge" for finishing a whole "book"! Yeah, maybe people's attention spans would be better if they weren't bombarded with little banners at the beginning.

We really need to start considering these things in the same category as pop-up windows. Browsers need to start killing these things, just like they did pop-up windows in the 90s and early 2000s. Remember when pop-up blocking was a huge feature? Imagine if Firefox implemented that today to block all this crap.

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