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How the Web Became Unreadable

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Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#141

Post by mhurron »

swiley wrote: post #129
mhurron wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reddit works You know what I really hate about reddit? The inconsistency of the links. If the link is a self.subreddit link, it goes to the discussion thread, if it was a submitted link to a location outside of reddit, the link goes to that page and to see the discussion thread you have to click on the small 'comment' link. I wouldn't say reddit works any more than a 'designed to death' site, just that it hasn't be…

Where else would a self.reddit link go? Also, the comments link always goes to the same place.

But the link does not always go the the same place. I personally am always clicking on external links when I meant to go to the discussion page. I would have the main link always go to the discussion page, if there is an associated external link, have it listed under the main link. Lets see if I can get this to show what I mean (grabbed from the front page)

    What is the most 2000s thing you can think of?
    submitted 5 hours ago by enormous-radio to /r/AskReddit
    4741 comments share

    Police vehicle rams protesters at anti-U.S. rally in the Philippines  
    Link: somewhere.latimes.com  
    submitted 7 hours ago by wilson_rawls to /r/news
    561 comments share
The main target is consistent, there is a clear external link if it exists. Probably could drop the Link: part.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#142

Post by cooper12 »

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.

Also relevant is the typography concept of "color": http://practicaltypography.com/color.html.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#143

Post by js8 »

duckmysick wrote: post #140
js8 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Do usability studies and follow their results, like Microsoft used to do in 90s. Isn't Ribbon UI based on such usability studies? Yet it's something that's constantly being criticized. There must be more to it than just following the studies.

You're right. And I am one of the people criticizing ribbon, because I think menus and toolbars have different purposes that shouldn't be conflated (menu is for all possible UI actions with no possibility for user to customize, while toolbar is for most common UI actions and other interactive elements with possibility to customize). With ribbons, the possibility of customization is gone.

But to the point, I think the "more to it" is simply inertia of existing user base. Which is no small consideration apart from just usability.

Addendum: Actually, lack of customization in modern software is also very interesting topic for a discussion.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#144

Post by Declanomous »

digi_owl wrote: post #106
chrisdotcode wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The usability issues compound when that page was created with 1.2MB of JS (and another 2MB of ads), and I have to see a loading spinning wheel when it could have been easily been static content. ...And then when the page loads, I accidentally click an ad instead of a link because the ad moved over the content that I was reading to offer me 10% of joining the exclusive mailing list.

Yeah you would have thought that constantly rearranging pages would have been something that went away alongside dialup...

This is literally the reason why I use ad block. I don't mind ads, but I can't stand webpages where the ad drops in an changes the whole layout. Congrats, you win 0 revenue from me!

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#145

Post by noobiemcfoob »

treehau5 wrote: post #76
usaphp wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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" Did it ever occurs to you that they had far less functionality when these examples were created? Backend programmers kept piling functionality into these apps and at some point no matter how good a designer is it just gets overwhelmed.

> Backend programmers kept piling functionality into these apps and at some point no matter how good a designer is it just gets overwhelmed. Wow that's the first time I have heard the problem phrased this way. Usually it's the other way around -- the designers and product leads want to pile on so many features and the backend devs can't keep up, so the codebase turns into a rotten pile of shit.

I've been involved in a handful of projects that fell into a situation were UI development was much slower than backend development.

Specifically, one was primarily a visualization tool. It was trivial to add various data transformations. However, the UI to render and interact with any one of those transformations would take substantially longer.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#146

Post by Declanomous »

digi_owl wrote: post #122
zeveb wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 longe…

I have heard, basically from the horses mouth, that users are idiots. The Gnome devs apparently did some usability testing, and came away with that opinion...

So gnome devs treat their users like morons. Their users leave to use KDE, XFCE, Cinnamon, etc, and find the desktop environment satisfactory.

I think this says more about the devs than it does the desktop environment, unless the fact that GNOME used to ship with Ubuntu skewed things.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#147

Post by amelius »

ThatGeoGuy wrote: post #56
amelius wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not perfect so people don't use it? Unfortunately, I think this is the case. Look at DuckDuckGo. It works for 90% of searches, but for that last 10% you really need Google. As a result, people use Google for all their searches.

I think this is another case of poor discover-ability. If you "discover" and understand how the bang syntax works, you can easily use DDG for your 90% of searches and only dispatch to Google when you need to. (e.g. "!gi dogs"). DuckDuckGo is great, but unlike Google which has immense brand momentum and recognition, it lacks the marketing to drive users to the service.

Not sure if that's how it works. I guess users would start to use "!g" syntax on more and more of their searches (as a habit).

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#148

Post by Declanomous »

zeveb wrote: post #110
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…

> I seriously want to punch a hipster every time I have to use an app that used to work and has now been designed to death. Me too. In fact, it concerns me how angry stupid decisions make me these days. I just want to sit folks down in a chair and ask them why they hell they broke something that needed no fixing. It wasn't a problem, and now it is. I want to quote the 90s classic Billy Madison at them: > Mr. Madison,…

Because HTML isn't sexy.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#150

Post by hurbledr »

I think that a lot of it comes down to designers needing/wanting to justify their job.

If a designer or typographer does good work, it goes largely unnoticed, since navigating the page and reading the text is easy and fluid. This can lead clients to believe that the designer is not doing much at all, when in fact they are doing their job exceptionally well.

This leads to designers adding unnecessary ornamentation (often at the clients behest), just to make it seem as though they are providing more of a service.

As others have pointed out, no one is sitting in meetings reading the boiler plate text on designs, they are just looking at the overall page to see if it 'pops' or whatever. So really, it's as much the clients fault as the designers, although a good designer should be able to communicate why the flashiest, most cutting edge choices are not always the best.

Also, I'd like to recommend this book, The New Typography. It's an old book, but they do a really great job of explaining the goals of typography, and how one can be creative without sacrificing readability, etc. https://www.amazon.com/New-Typography-Weimar-Now-Criticism/d...

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