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This is a web page

justinjackson.ca

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Re: This is a web page

#191

Post by antoko »

levosmetalo wrote: post #165
antoko wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speak for yourself. I'll often read the comments briefly first before deciding if I want to read an article.

While tldr summary is certainly valuable, asking for one without even bothering to form a single sentence is the same level of spam as +1 type of .

I totally agree, I don't read the comments for an explicit summary. I read the comments to see what opinions people have of the article, on the basis of the comments I determine if the article is worth reading.

I don't do this for all articles, but it is a pretty common occurrence.

Re: This is a web page

#192

Post by eieio »

mikeg8 wrote: post #172
eieio wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a problem with it, but it was funny to me that when I viewed the source the first thing that I saw was some javascript.

So funny to me how people take the message so literally. Most people do not view the source of a webpage so a little script that doesn't affect the user experience is irrelevant to 99% of internet users. The message is about what you are presenting on the web...

I automatically checked the source after reading "There's not much code on this page at all, just simple markup for paragraphs, hierarchy, and emphasis." Just out of curiousity I guess. It's obviously not a big deal, it's just funny. It's not what I expected.

Re: This is a web page

#194

Post by BHSPitMonkey »

sageikosa wrote: post #157
adventured wrote: post #69

"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…

>>"At it's heart, web design should be about words." >No. There's some strange dissonance going on in my head reading this on a site with practically no images at all. Once images went inline, the web's focus moved from content to presentation, much to its detriment (in my humble opinion). We progressively became more at the mercy of the page designer rather than the copy editor.

I don't think posting a comment counts as "web design". Nobody said "writing comments shouldn't be about words".

Re: This is a web page

#195

Post by mwcampbell »

adventured wrote: post #69

"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…

Words delivered as electronic text are a great equalizer, for both the writer and the reader. Words impose no accessibility barriers for people with sensory disabilities. Words require minimal bandwidth. Even for readers with no significant disability or bandwidth limitation, words are great because the reader can read them in whatever way he or she sees fit (computer screen, e-ink display, printed page, text-to-speech).

Written words allow a writer to communicate without being hindered or prejudged by things beyond his or her control, such as accent, rate of speech, sound of voice, or poor acoustics. A writer can rewrite and edit his or her words to say exactly what he or she wants, far more easily than one can edit a video or audio recording.

Electronic text is more amenable to analysis and manipulation (e.g. translation) by machine than any other human communication medium.

I'm not so sure about this, but written words might favor reason over emotion, especially if one can disable presentation hints.

For these reasons and more, the Web should be primarily about written words delivered as electronic text.

Re: This is a web page

#197

Post by lmkg »

smackfu wrote: post #161

Centered text, large white borders, and larger than standard font size are all design. Minimal design, but it does feel very different if you look at it completely unstyled: http://i.imgur.com/xOWPr8E.png I feel like it subverts the message a bit that he still felt the need to style things.

It's the difference between serving a steak with just a little salt to help complement the steak-ness, vs serving a barbecue sauce dumpling held together with cow protein. It's about whether the added style exists in order to augment the central content, or whether it's trying to be the main attraction in its own right.

Re: This is a web page

#198

Post by sramsay »

vorporeal wrote: post #182
bitwize wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. I'd say that text is not only the heart and soul of the web, but also of motherfucking civilization . Animation and video are nice, and great adjuncts to text. But language is still the most common and easy way to store and share information intended to be consumed by humans, and since…

Drawings are the heart and soul of civilization. For one, they originated ~37 thousand years before the first written language. Second, understanding text requires knowing how the information it contains is encoded (what language it is written in). Drawings are far more universal.

Perhaps, but Classical Greek civilization remains startlingly intelligible to us after 2500 years. We stare up at the paintings on the caves at Lascaux having only the vaguest idea what they mean (and that's hardly the most recent example).

One might also imagine how our understanding of, say, the Italian Renaissance might be affected were every painting to disappear, and then to reconsider the same scenario with every bit of writing erased. Both would be devastating, but as a student of human culture, I'd far prefer the former.

Re: This is a web page

#199

Post by criley2 »

drcube wrote: post #185
mcovey wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just being cynical here, but books written by people from far away places have circulated for a lot longer than the internet has been around.

Not just anybody. You had to have a publisher, and it took weeks to years to get a piece published. Which means nothing got published if there wasn't a chance at a monetary return. The web is a significant improvement if you ask me.

Before Gutenberg et al, you had to have someone spend weeks or months to hand copy your book, one at a time.

To me, the web is just the next step in the improvement in the publishing of the written word. I don't see it as different than a book.

Re: This is a web page

#200

Post by wmeredith »

mapgrep wrote: post #149
adventured wrote: post #69

"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…

>The web is not just a place for text/words, that is not its heart and soul... It really never has been. I am thinking back when they named the protocol the HyperText Transport Protocol and the primary format the HyperText Markup Language, text was indeed the heart and soul of the medium. At one point, images weren't even displayed inline but via a helper app. This is why Mosaic was a big deal.

Yeah, that's all fine and dandy, but what if we measure "what the web is for" in bandwidth? What do most people use the web "for"? Netflix and YouTube, I'd wager.
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