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How the Web Became Unreadable

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Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#251

Post by adrianratnapala »

coldtea wrote: post #226
lostsock wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> I have no idea where to look on that page Everywhere? It's a page full of selected news headlines. You're not supposed to look at some particular place (except the big letter, highlighted few headlines that are presented as the most important), just to check which ones you want to open. So, not totally unlike the first page of HN. > For example the main headline right now is "TONIGHT: HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP!" Wha…

> So not totally unlike the first page of HN

In fact I find the HN front page more than a little overwhelming too. Over time, I have learned the content is worth the parsing effort.

BTW: I assumed "heavyweight championship" referred to boxing, not to politics. See the problem?

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#252

Post by boundlessdreamz »

Animats wrote: post #182

Greg Lutz of GM once commented that GM's designers had fallen in love with Bang and Olufsen design from the 1980s.[1] Bang and Olufsen was (and still is) big on black-on-black design, with controls so subtle that they're barely visible. This makes for great photos, but not usable cars. He, as head of GM, had to restrain them from making inscrutable dashboards. This mindset seems to have reached the Web. For an altern…

Never heard of Olivetti before. You are right, they look great without overbearing or cluttered.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#253

Post by lucb1e »

drblast wrote: post #245

I wanted to make a simple, fast loading site to put essays on. I thought, "Surely modern browsers render html 5 with these fancy new article tags on any device in a readable format, right?" Nope. Not at all. Shockingly bad. "But at least there's a CSS way to limit paragraph width to a reasonable number of words or letters that works on any device and that degrades gracefully without resorting to Javascript, right?" N…

What's wrong with body{width:600px;} and a viewport setting of, from memory, initial scale 1 and width 600? Works for me on every device.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#254

Post by whyever »

drblast wrote: post #245

I wanted to make a simple, fast loading site to put essays on. I thought, "Surely modern browsers render html 5 with these fancy new article tags on any device in a readable format, right?" Nope. Not at all. Shockingly bad. "But at least there's a CSS way to limit paragraph width to a reasonable number of words or letters that works on any device and that degrades gracefully without resorting to Javascript, right?" N…

Latex does not render in real time.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#255

Post by flukus »

lucb1e wrote: post #253
drblast wrote: post #245

I wanted to make a simple, fast loading site to put essays on. I thought, "Surely modern browsers render html 5 with these fancy new article tags on any device in a readable format, right?" Nope. Not at all. Shockingly bad. "But at least there's a CSS way to limit paragraph width to a reasonable number of words or letters that works on any device and that degrades gracefully without resorting to Javascript, right?" N…

What's wrong with body{width:600px;} and a viewport setting of, from memory, initial scale 1 and width 600? Works for me on every device.

max-width would probably be better for mobile/small screens.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#256

Post by adrianratnapala »

duncan_bayne wrote: post #183
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…

> At least Google Maps has walked back that terrible accordion thing that literally drove me crazy. That statement literally made me slightly irritated.

No, I think when something angers us suddenly we do litterally become crazy (call it "mad" if you like). But only for a second or so.

Sane people don't pound fists on desks because of what some lights on a screen are doing.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#257

Post by adrianratnapala »

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.

15-20 years ago, GUI interfaces tended to suck, generally because you kept having to click through confirmations and do other such mouse dances. Nowadays UIs try to get out of your way more. Good.

But in those days, web-sites were actually better. HTML limited the in-your-face interactivity that spoiled the rest of the desktop.

People who wanted to put truly awful UI on the web had to use Flash. Now they don't.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#258

Post by adrianratnapala »

lemmings19 wrote: post #86
DavidWanjiru wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of pedantic, what is the difference between "high resolution screens" and "high DPI screens"? Assuming, of course, that screen and display mean the same thing.

High DPI refers to a high pixel density. High resolution refers many pixels. If I have one million pixels on a 10cm by 10cm screen, and one million pixels on a 100cm by 100cm screen, they both have the same resolution because they both have the same number of pixels. However, the 10cm screen has a much higher pixel density because the pixels are much smaller and closer together in order to fit on such a small surface…

> High resolution refers many pixels.

That's correct, but only within our narrow jargon.

In optics, when I say "resolution", I mean the smallest distance (either angular or linear) beween two points that can be distinguished by the apperatus. E.g. "The CCD resolution is 10 microns per pixel". Not how many distinct points there are ("The CCD has 1024x786 pixels").

Sometime in the computer age, "resolution" became used for the latter meaning and so DPI had to be used where "resolution" was previously meant.

But don't blame people if they still use the original meaning.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#259

Post by peterburkimsher »

acveilleux wrote: post #125

I love Safari's reader mode exactly because it gives me a larger font black text on a white background. I'm not even that old (mid thirties) but years of monitors and glasses have taken their tolls on my vision. Low contrast, small prints strain my eyes. And when encountered and reader mode isn't an option, I usually close the site/page and go elsewhere if at all possible.

Reader mode is great! Age has nothing to do with it - I'm 27 and I also use it regularly in Safari. It also works as a kind of ad blocker.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#260

Post by EdiX »

matt4077 wrote: post #166
eitland wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not saying this is always the case but I wonder if, in some of the cases, this is what makes it hard for designers to get accepted in open source: the fact that many of the developers are also users and as such are pretty opinionated while the designers that come to open source might often be very eager to "set their mark" on something?

I doubt there are many designers working on OSS who don't also use it. I' even doubt the premise that there are terrible open source UIs created by designers. The vast majority of OSS GUI apps were probably styled by programmers, and I think they proved quite well over last 20 years that they chose well when not becoming designers. The problem with design is also that it doesn't work very well in the "bazaar" style o…

GNOME employs professional designers and produces consistently the worst designs in open source: kill features left and right in the name of "simplicity" then add excessive padding to what's left all in service of achieving that "ugly but useless" state that everyone loves.
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