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How the Web Became Unreadable

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Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#211

Post by dragandj »

braveo wrote: post #199
digi_owl wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dunno about KDE, they seem to be following in Gnome's footsteps these days. As for XFCE and Cinnamon, they have limited options as more and more Gnome assumptions gets baked into GTK (vanishing scrollbars anyone?). Our best bet may be XLQT, but they were lacking in manpower.

I've been a happy user of i3 for years now. I preferred KDE until 4 came out. From my perspective it was horrible and I went looking for an alternative. I found a home in i3 and would never go back, even if KDE went back to the old desktop. When in Windows land I use virtuawin, but it doesn't touch i3.

Me too. Set up xmonad several years ago, and almost haven't touched it since. It just works. No annoyances, I can concentrate on my work!

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#212

Post by Silhouette »

ThomPete wrote: post #134
digi_owl wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the other end, if we don't learn form history we are stuck repeating it.

We did learn from history. Go back 15 years the web look wastely different and has actually improved quite a lot.

Go back 15 years the web look wastely different and has actually improved quite a lot.

It's certainly very different. Whether it has improved a lot is debatable.

Perhaps more relevant is that I don't think there is any doubt that the web of today is worse than the web of five years ago. The majority of the browser plugins I routinely use today exist entirely to undo some part of that damage, and that includes having a custom stylesheet set up for almost every major web site I use.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#214

Post by Retra »

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.

Why, because people complain about it? Aren't you just questioning the value of usability studies by employing vague usability anecdotes, which when collected would form a study?

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#215

Post by Retra »

js8 wrote: post #143
duckmysick wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Why can't you customize ribbons?

Anyway, I don't understand your distinction there, since every part of software can be customized however you like. Most users don't customize, and don't have any need to if the the software was properly designed for their use-case.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#216

Post by SilasX »

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…

Reddits starting to not-work -- when I hit the Back button, there's a noticeable lag for the page to re-render and then it's in the wrong place.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#217

Post by lacampbell »

majewsky wrote: post #120
emodendroket wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacker News is guilty of exactly this on downvoted posts.

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

I don't find it to be a feature. I find it infantilising. "Other users didn't like this post, so we'll make it hard to read". I think it was a terrible design decision on an otherwise very clean site.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#218

Post by lostsock »

coldtea wrote: post #67
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…

>You know what works? Craiglist, that's what works. Reddit works. Hacker News works. Political views aside (and the post doesn't concern those either), this is quite relevant: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/1407-why-the-drudge-report-is...

I have no idea where to look on that page (meaning the Drudge Report website).

Maybe once you're "used to it" it becomes easy to parse but I've just spent a minute looking at it and I'm not even entirely sure what the site is about? It's compared to mainstream news sites so is it meant to be a news site?

For example the main headline right now is "TONIGHT: HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP!" What does that even mean?

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#219

Post by eriknstr »

cooper12 wrote: post #142
jalfresi wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 .

That website is currently not loading for me.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#220

Post by monknomo »

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…

Every designer, or UI/UX person should work on a shitty CRT with a flicker and a bad green channel.

If the design doesn't work under those conditions, it doesn't work.

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