21–30 of 97 posts
Alas, constraint wins - https://siteanalytics.compete.com/medium.com/
Is it just my MacBook Air + OS X, or is the Font (ironically) on that site painful to read? Compare: https://medium.com/@willgossin/the-uncanny-valley-race-merit... To: http://practicaltypography.com/billionaires-typewriter.html [Edit: Also - no HTTPS? And No Favicon?]
I wound up reading the piece in Instapaper. To say this undermined the author's point would be an understatement...
Unrelated, maybe it's a platform-specific problem? I found his site to be quite readable. Things like line-height and line-length appear to have been chosen with care, and he takes great pains to get all the typographical details right. The use of a "◇" to indicate links is...eccentric, but whatever.
My favorite writing tool of all time is, without a question in my mind, LyX. It manages to find the perfect balance of minimal barriers to productivity, absolute power when I need it, and seriously professional grade results. It's like writing with iAWriter or similar tools, except I still have some basic structural options in the interface, and the end result generated is downright professional grade. I think the "W…
Blogging? There are a approximately a billion choices, but lately I have been playing around with Scrivener. It is a little overkill for a blog entry, but it is one of the few programs to not treat a computer as just a typewritter with more fancy font, spellcheck and better correction - instead it allows your to sorta weave your story together, piece by piece.
Is it just my MacBook Air + OS X, or is the Font (ironically) on that site painful to read? Compare: https://medium.com/@willgossin/the-uncanny-valley-race-merit... To: http://practicaltypography.com/billionaires-typewriter.html [Edit: Also - no HTTPS? And No Favicon?]
Is it just my MacBook Air + OS X, or is the Font (ironically) on that site painful to read? Compare: https://medium.com/@willgossin/the-uncanny-valley-race-merit... To: http://practicaltypography.com/billionaires-typewriter.html [Edit: Also - no HTTPS? And No Favicon?]
Not sure which you mean. I have a 3200x1800 13" display + Firefox and the practicaltypography font looks amazing. I basically had to read the whole article just because of the joy of the typography. Medium looks washed out in comparison.
PT is just very unwelcoming for me to read - both the diamonds all over the place (which reminds me of the PCL printout when you didn't have the correct font installed), and the assault on my eyes. Perhaps on a higher-resolution retina display it works out better (and perhaps Medium suffers somewhat in comparison)
My favorite writing tool of all time is, without a question in my mind, LyX. It manages to find the perfect balance of minimal barriers to productivity, absolute power when I need it, and seriously professional grade results. It's like writing with iAWriter or similar tools, except I still have some basic structural options in the interface, and the end result generated is downright professional grade. I think the "W…
LaTeX is indeed fearsomely powerful but I think it depends on what type of document you are writing. Lots of math, complicated symbols, graphs etc? LaTeX. Blogging? There are a approximately a billion choices, but lately I have been playing around with Scrivener. It is a little overkill for a blog entry, but it is one of the few programs to not treat a computer as just a typewritter with more fancy font, spellcheck a…
The bulk of my writing though has traditionally long-form (I'm not great at maintaining a single-interest blog, and social networks are better for personal musings most times), and for that I don't think I'd use anything else but LyX, especially if I were self-publishing (which I generally have been).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure which you mean. I have a 3200x1800 13" display + Firefox and the practicaltypography font looks amazing. I basically had to read the whole article just because of the joy of the typography. Medium looks washed out in comparison.
That answers my question then - on the 1440x900 13" MBAir, the black lettering from Practical Typography is jarring, and unpleasant to read for long periods of time for me, but Medium flows very well - and I read tons of material on their site. PT is just very unwelcoming for me to read - both the diamonds all over the place (which reminds me of the PCL printout when you didn't have the correct font installed), and t…
Is it just my MacBook Air + OS X, or is the Font (ironically) on that site painful to read? Compare: https://medium.com/@willgossin/the-uncanny-valley-race-merit... To: http://practicaltypography.com/billionaires-typewriter.html [Edit: Also - no HTTPS? And No Favicon?]
I can't say I agree 100% with either author. On the one hand, Wichary shows some 'gorgeous' LaserDisc snippet and lauds it as some return to the good old pre-typewriter days. I don't think that automatic drop caps, mandatory line widths, 'smart' quoting, etc help any authors express anything at all. Sure, the typewriter example is bad, but was the fake image grain necessary? Did it show how striking the keys harder slightly bolds the text? The LaserDisc example is not at all like writing with an italic pen, where you can express stylistic choice. Cramming everyone's text into some StandardPrettyPrintNFormatter [1] so your website looks pleasing to readers is pretty much the complete opposite of fostering creativity. It's a website for readers, not writers. Can I upload a scan of calligraphy? Maybe draw a title in bubbly block letters? Use a red pen? Of course not. Everything looks the same, and Butterick points out why
The goal is to create the illusion that everything on Medium belongs
to one editorial ecosystem, as if it’s the New York Times.
[1] Much like gofmt. That kind of conformity is great for coding style (can't read your crazy indentation), but it's just like how the constraints of the typewriter lead to a style of writing that eliminates stylistic differences (can't read your handwriting) so you can focus on content. Medium just adds another layer of conformity.
Is it just my MacBook Air + OS X, or is the Font (ironically) on that site painful to read? Compare: https://medium.com/@willgossin/the-uncanny-valley-race-merit... To: http://practicaltypography.com/billionaires-typewriter.html [Edit: Also - no HTTPS? And No Favicon?]