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How the Web Became Unreadable

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Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#111

Post by eitland »

js8 wrote: post #97
jonstokes wrote: post #55

Designers are ruining software in general. iTunes, the iOS music app, and Google Maps are just a few pieces of software that started out relatively usable (if not exactly stable in the case of iTunes), and have been iterated and stylized to the point where I routinely get enraged by them. At least Google Maps has walked back that terrible accordion thing that literally drove me crazy. I basically think design is like…

> Designers are ruining software in general. I agree with you. But what I find hilarious about it is that in the 90s, there was a meme that software engineers cannot do usability very well, and you need specialized designers. I think it all comes down to humility. Think about and respect the user. Do usability studies and follow their results, like Microsoft used to do in 90s. Don't let your notions of aesthetics ove…

Not saying this is always the case but I wonder if, in some of the cases, this is what makes it hard for designers to get accepted in open source:

the fact that many of the developers are also users and as such are pretty opinionated while the designers that come to open source might often be very eager to "set their mark" on something?

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#112

Post by logfromblammo »

tdb7893 wrote: post #9
amelius wrote: post #6

We need some strong AI to strip away the ads, and extract only the main text, then format that text using the reader's preferences. OCR 2.0, if you will. Caveat: it may kill the advertisement industry.

killing the ad industry means killing the current web unless there is another revenue stream

To me, that sounds a whole lot like, "shooting a zombie in the head will stop it from getting up again".

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#113

Post by zeveb »

digi_owl wrote: post #59
jonstokes wrote: post #55

Designers are ruining software in general. iTunes, the iOS music app, and Google Maps are just a few pieces of software that started out relatively usable (if not exactly stable in the case of iTunes), and have been iterated and stylized to the point where I routinely get enraged by them. At least Google Maps has walked back that terrible accordion thing that literally drove me crazy. I basically think design is like…

And once more i am surprised about who comments on HN. Hi Hannibal. Edit: and yeah, i have had similar thoughts about designers ruining things. My particular hobbyhorse in that regard is _nix desktop environments.

> My particular hobbyhorse in that regard is _nix desktop environments.

Oh yes, that reminds me: GNOME now pops up a message bar informing one that one has no messages every time one's mouse hits the bottom of the screen, and steals focus from the currently-running app. Why? I never used to worry about messages, I still have none, and I keep on dying while I'm playing computer games because suddenly the game no longer responds to my input.

I realised long ago that the GNOME developers neither like, nor respect, nor indeed care for their users (c.f. the fact that after a decade it still hasn't added the ability to properly configure the screensaver), but even this seems a little much.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#114

Post by zeveb »

ThomPete wrote: post #64
smrtinsert wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most designers are frankly awful at typography. I would argue most design elements on a page can be simply removed if they properly used hierarchy of text to call out important areas for example.

Sure just like you don't need insane convoluted frameworks with a billion dependencies to develop 99% of the web-apps out there yet thats what most developers end up with. This is about self-expression and it's a small price to pay (and easily fixable by just forcing your own style sheet) for getting a vibrant and diverse jungle of content and ways to express it. The rest we can deal with.

> This is about self-expression and it's a small price to pay

Is that a small price to pay for worsening the experience of anyone older than maybe 26? I can't even imagine trying to walk my elderly neighbour through installing her own stylesheet, nor trying to explain why none of her sites look right now, even if they are more legible.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#115

Post by ThomPete »

jalfresi wrote: post #88
ThomPete wrote: post #7

It’s true that many designers tend to look at text more like a texture. Instead of making it large and distinct they will make it small and light colored when it's in fact the only valuable thing on the screen. It's an unfortunate consequence of so much design today going minimal and more typographic, which makes it's hard to differentiate elements any other way than to start evening out the contrast. If everything t…

"If everything that is text was just black you would loose the hierarchy" Nonsense. Type weights exist for this, as does size, grouping, placement etc. Typography IS hierarchy.

Sure but that doesn't mean it's used as that.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#116

Post by liveoneggs »

onli wrote: post #100
ThomPete wrote: post #7

It’s true that many designers tend to look at text more like a texture. Instead of making it large and distinct they will make it small and light colored when it's in fact the only valuable thing on the screen. It's an unfortunate consequence of so much design today going minimal and more typographic, which makes it's hard to differentiate elements any other way than to start evening out the contrast. If everything t…

> Instead of making it large and distinct they will make it small and light colored when it's in fact the only valuable thing on the screen. But modern web design is the contrary. Large big webfonts, distinct ones for headlines and text as beautiful as possible. Yes, sometimes the text is then made grey and oftentimes this is just bad design, but I don't think the texture comaprision is accurate. Here for example, in…

> Large big webfonts

I think you're confusing filesize with font size. :)

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#117

Post by ThomPete »

zeveb wrote: post #114
ThomPete wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure just like you don't need insane convoluted frameworks with a billion dependencies to develop 99% of the web-apps out there yet thats what most developers end up with. This is about self-expression and it's a small price to pay (and easily fixable by just forcing your own style sheet) for getting a vibrant and diverse jungle of content and ways to express it. The rest we can deal with.

> This is about self-expression and it's a small price to pay Is that a small price to pay for worsening the experience of anyone older than maybe 26? I can't even imagine trying to walk my elderly neighbour through installing her own stylesheet, nor trying to explain why none of her sites look right now, even if they are more legible.

It's not that simple. If you don't experiment, make mistakes etc. you don't grow.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#118

Post by Bartweiss »

jasode wrote: post #39
Bartweiss wrote: post #16

Subjective though it may be, there are a lot of people who find black-on-white unpleasant to look at. I greatly prefer sites that don't use it, regardless of what they do with font and size. This could just be a case of conflicting preferences, but I don't think it has to be. Clear contrasts are achievable without insisting on #000/#FFF web design. - The most obvious improvement is simply keeping an eye on contrast.…

>Finally, we can choose colors which are not strictly grey. The HN background is a rather usable 244/244/235 - not far outside of light grey, but tan enough to provide more contrast than the pure brightness The key for HN readability is that the foreground text color is #000 -- pure black. (Pressing F12 in the web browser shows css style ".c00 {color = #000000;}" ). Like dredmorbius previously mentioned, shifting the…

Largely agreed - my second bullet was about only ever shifting one of text/background. I'm not certain that darkening backgrounds is more readable than lightening text, but it wouldn't surprise me.

And in a broader design sense, darkening backgrounds is better for the sort of dark room reading Flux helps with, so it seems obviously preferable on that level.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#119

Post by NoGravitas »

flyinghamster wrote: post #90
unicornporn wrote: post #38

I'm so surprised that all attempts at solutions for "readability" so far seems to have addressed the actual article or post content only. I don't just want to read a sane looking web, I want to browse a accessible and sane looking web. I'd like to be able to activate a browser mode that cleans up not only the content of the site, but also the structure by creating simple and accessible navigation (perhaps according t…

Reader Mode in Firefox is a pretty good start at this. It's especially nice on overly-designed news sites.

Reader mode only really handles main article or post content, though. It does a great job at it, but that's not what the parent poster was talking about.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#120

Post by majewsky »

emodendroket wrote: post #109
jonstokes wrote: post #55

Designers are ruining software in general. iTunes, the iOS music app, and Google Maps are just a few pieces of software that started out relatively usable (if not exactly stable in the case of iTunes), and have been iterated and stylized to the point where I routinely get enraged by them. At least Google Maps has walked back that terrible accordion thing that literally drove me crazy. I basically think design is like…

Hacker News is guilty of exactly this on downvoted posts.

The low contrast text? You realize that this is a feature?
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