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Ask HN: Minimalistic web design works?

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Re: Ask HN: Minimalistic web design works?

#21

Post by drblast »

For what it's worth, I love the design for the most part, but there are a couple of problems that are bad enough people might reject the whole thing as "too minimal."

The content frame in the middle has a scrollbar but no border, which is off-putting since it's not standard. It's also not the full height of the browser, which is useless; don't make me scroll more than I have to. For large pages, that the gray box is a scrollbar is not obvious.

There is no indication that clicking faculty opens a new page. I thought something went wrong the first time I clicked it.

The "association.SOMETHING" message at the top is a nice touch, but since it's right justified it moves when you click a new page. The word "association" should not move -- it's distracting.

The text in the paragraphs is too small for no reason, especially on your "home" page.

I really like how the current page's link is indented and how the links move to the right when you mouse over them. That's a nice touch and intuitive. I love the lack of color. The page is otherwise very easy to read and navigate.

Re: Ask HN: Minimalistic web design works?

#23

Post by Mz »

kingkilr wrote: post #12
fuzz579 wrote: post #11

http://www.anncoulter.com/ Despite her craziness, Ann Coulter has a fairly nice minimalist website (well, it looks minimalist). Although that quotations thing off to the side kinda ruins it, AFAIK it was recently added (I don't remember seeing it during to school year, when I last visited), so you might check the wayback machine.

Hrm not sure I agree, to my understsanding minimalism is all about making sure the main thing that draws your eyes is the content, here all of the stuff on the right is completely distracting from the content.

Click on any other page besides the home page and you might better understand his point. I also kind of went "huh???!!" on the homepage.

Re: Ask HN: Minimalistic web design works?

#24

Post by nrbafna »

tptacek wrote: post #4

Simplicity makes things harder. Pare away elements and what remains has less margin for error, and must be more effective. "Simplicity" isn't a license to put a couple of 's and a on a page and call it a day. In your case, there is neither a grid nor a measure that makes the placement of elements on the page make sense. Text is haphazard. The "contents" of each section are stuffed into an inexplicable jQuery scroller…

thanks. I am relatively new, and did a reading on the grids only yesterday. I am going to arrange the entire thing into a 960 grid system. But, I think I could be forgiven, given aa month of experience into html and jquery.

Re: Ask HN: Minimalistic web design works?

#26

Post by alexforster »

auxbuss wrote: post #22

You need to validate your code. It's currently invalid due a number of fundamental errors. A simple method is to use the HTML Validator plug-in in Firefox. It's not perfect, but a simple, effective guide.

Validate your code by testing it in the three major layout engines. Force it to degrade by disabling flash, stylesheets, javascript, etc and fix what you feel you can. Get as much content on-screen as quickly as you can, whether by using CDNs or backend caching or local storage, and know exactly what happens on your page in the first few seconds after onLoad. If you're feeling particularly generous, annotate the code for screen readers and hide jump links around your page.

But don't validate your code on the W3C validator and be done with it. If you have to run the validator at all - and I haven't in years - take the validation errors as suggestions and not as gospel.

Re: Ask HN: Minimalistic web design works?

#27

Post by tptacek »

nrbafna wrote: post #24
tptacek wrote: post #4

Simplicity makes things harder. Pare away elements and what remains has less margin for error, and must be more effective. "Simplicity" isn't a license to put a couple of 's and a on a page and call it a day. In your case, there is neither a grid nor a measure that makes the placement of elements on the page make sense. Text is haphazard. The "contents" of each section are stuffed into an inexplicable jQuery scroller…

thanks. I am relatively new, and did a reading on the grids only yesterday. I am going to arrange the entire thing into a 960 grid system. But, I think I could be forgiven, given aa month of experience into html and jquery.

Forgiven, yes. Used as a thesis about the merits of simplicity, not so much.

Re: Ask HN: Minimalistic web design works?

#30

Post by Nicolo_Borghi »

I wouldn't put together "minimalism" and "simplicity" as there is a fundamental difference between the two.

When something is minimal it's not very useful. It's basically saying "I don't want to look too complex".

On the other hand when something is simple it's because there's and underlying understanding of complexity.

You can read what Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, thinks about this (http://designthinking.ideo.com/?p=404).

The work of a designer should be therefore to understand complexity and make it simple.In order to make it simple, the designer should ultimately be the one who decides what to add and what to leave out.

I really suggest this video by Joel Spolsky during BoS 2009 http://joelonsoftware.com/items/2010/08/19.html

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