Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Design of This Website (2021)

gwern.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 261 posts

Re: Design of This Website (2021)

#251

Post by antiframe »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #221
carrolldunham wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it need a background image?

Because the artist requires it. Websites exist to serve content. The author of this page demanded it have a background image. Here's another page that doesn't: https://hypertele.fi/b40bfc44ff8a22df

That subtle background gradient is lovely. I like how it adds a frame to the text without distracting from it. It evokes the right vibe, I think.

That's a design element that serves the functionality well and doesn't feel superfluous at all. But the image on the colophon page I'm less excited about. It gets in the way and feels unnecessary.

Re: Design of This Website (2021)

#252

Post by hjkl0 »

ramblerman wrote: post #140
hypertele-Xii wrote: post #34

For a site that lists its #1 principle as minimalism, it sure has a lot going on at all times. Multiple menus all over the screen, many different kinds of links with distinct underline and icon suffix, popups within popups that reinvent OS window functionality, historiated initials, graphical horizontal divider with hidden links, a recommended articles carousel, and a very (visually) busy comments section. Minimal it…

This is tongue in cheek right? I mean just the colors to begin with, and then the hardly readable buttons on the right. Right aligned text, and the background that screams for your attention more than the actual content.... I mean maybe its rendering strangely on my work computer (forced to use edge), but it's pretty bad.

I also thought this was ironic.

I guess this person would also describe their involvement in this thread (aggressively dismissing every single comment) as a perfect example of minimalism?

Re: Design of This Website (2021)

#253

Post by hjkl0 »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #34

For a site that lists its #1 principle as minimalism, it sure has a lot going on at all times. Multiple menus all over the screen, many different kinds of links with distinct underline and icon suffix, popups within popups that reinvent OS window functionality, historiated initials, graphical horizontal divider with hidden links, a recommended articles carousel, and a very (visually) busy comments section. Minimal it…

Your site is not "minimalist". There is no such thing.

There's no standard for "minimalist" websites, no way to define what is or isn't minimalist.

There's no need for one either. Your visitors don't require "minimalism" per-se. There's no threshold that you can cross to achieve or reach it. Minimalism is an ideology. It's a heuristic you can use to guide your decision making.

If you find yourself comparing how minimalist you are or competing with others on minimalism, I feel like a better description for that is "maximalism".

Re: Design of This Website (2021)

#254

Post by bdlowery »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #234
bdlowery wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. The dude is a Grade-A asshole. His site is complete garbage, yet he insists that it's amazing. I've never seen someone so confidently wrong in every single reply to criticism ever.

Says the guy whose site has a slowly fading in full-screen banner with "Hello! I'm a web designer" By the way, your link "My Work" under "What I want" is a 404. I don't think you should be criticising anyone xD

Oh, I didn't realize that. When I move it to my own server that shouldn't be an issue. The peprojects.dev domain is for student work. Thanks for the tip!

Re: Design of This Website (2021)

#255

Post by tomcam »

voussoir wrote: post #227
tomcam wrote: post #2

It’s a truly distinct and amazingly designed website that I’m often not smart enough to understand. It’s a unique property on the Net, and that’s saying a lot these days. One thing I would like to understand more is the archive system (used to reduce the problem of dead links). Is there some kind of automated process to create local copies of the linked webpages, or is it done by hand using some thing like wget or cu…

There are plenty of rabbit holes to get into when it comes to web archiving, but for blog authors that just want to preserve a page referenced by their text, using a tool like SingleFile is a great first step. https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFile

Def a good start, thanks.

Re: Design of This Website (2021)

#256

Post by watersb »

gwern wrote: post #197
watersb wrote: post #75

Love the comments. Blows my mind how diverse the reactions are. I read most HN on a 9 year old iPad. It's savage, raw compute would be fast enough, but limited RAM and pinned to a very old version of Mobile Safari. I generally keep JavaScript disabled, otherwise hangs are all too common. If I can't at least read the basic idea of a web article at these settings, I move on. Perhaps it's arrogant of me, but I'm exasper…

> `gwern.net` does not suffer from absolute madness, but the use of custom font means that the site is a blank page for thousands of milliseconds, and this old iPad has trouble scrolling the page of text even after the font is rendered. I use the standard `display: swap;` settings on fonts, so you shouldn't be seeing blank pages at all, your Safari browser should be showing the text immediately (and then, possibly, r…

Wow, thanks for responding about this!

----

`font-display:swap` is great

Font-display on CSS-Tricks: https://css-tricks.com/almanac/properties/f/font-display/

MDN: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@font-face/...

Can I Use: https://caniuse.com/css-font-rendering-controls

Last iOS for my iPad 4: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_version_history#11.1

^^^^ October 31, 2017

----

I don't expect things to work well in these circumstances.

Completely out of scope.

I do wonder, though, what the wide world out there -- the non-computer-programmers -- might take away from all this.

A web browser is the USB-C of software.

It plugs into everything, and most people have no mental model of why things fail the way they do.

Thanks very much for gwern.net, an inspiration for non-blogging me.

Re: Design of This Website (2021)

#257

Post by gwern »

watersb wrote: post #256
gwern wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> `gwern.net` does not suffer from absolute madness, but the use of custom font means that the site is a blank page for thousands of milliseconds, and this old iPad has trouble scrolling the page of text even after the font is rendered. I use the standard `display: swap;` settings on fonts, so you shouldn't be seeing blank pages at all, your Safari browser should be showing the text immediately (and then, possibly, r…

Wow, thanks for responding about this! ---- `font-display:swap` is great Font-display on CSS-Tricks: https://css-tricks.com/almanac/properties/f/font-display/ MDN: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@font-face/... Can I Use: https://caniuse.com/css-font-rendering-controls Last iOS for my iPad 4: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_version_history#11.1 ^^^^ October 31, 2017 ---- I don't expect things to…

They just put up with it. "They'll never tell you it's broken": https://pointersgonewild.com/2019/11/02/they-might-never-tel... In this case, I think most people replace their iPads before they are old enough to attend middle school, so the problem wouldn't arise.

Re: Design of This Website (2021)

#258

Post by samizdat311 »

martin_a wrote: post #99
hypertele-Xii wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's explained on the linked page, under 'typography': > When your eyes read to the end of a line of text, they have to jump to the beginning of the next one. Left-justified text causes all lines to start at the same vertical, making your eyes sometimes miss the jump and begin reading a wrong line. This is why you're sometimes reading the same line twice by accident. By right-justifying instead, the left edge of the…

That is some solid bullshit and is exactly the opposite of everything known in design theory and studies alike. Left-aligning text actually helps by providing a fixed start, so your eyes/brain know that they have to start left and a little bit lower. With your way it's exactly the opposite. Will save further details, doesn't look like it's worth the time.

Thank you. Reading their original comment & looking at the site: I assumed it was a troll? Seems like they're deliberately doing the opposite of what makes for good UX / reader experience.

* Tiny non-standard font size.

* Their rationale for right text alignment is the exact inverse of why left-aligned text is widely regarded to increase readability. (Also they don't seem to understand what justification means in paragraph formatting).

* Navigation bar falls in the exact area (right edge) where most users' eye gaze rarely falls. (Top left, top right, mid left are the areas where eye-tracking studies show left-to-right language users fixate).

* Weird Geocities-style pinned background with distracting colours.

* Inconsistent use of capitalisation on headers / pages. etc. etc.

Re: Design of This Website (2021)

#259

Post by Self-Perfection »

gwern wrote: post #201
pSYoniK wrote: post #132

It feels quite busy after claiming minimalism. Also, not a huge fan to see Disquss being used and a bunch of JS just to serve static content. Seems like most of the things us humans do - a cacophony of contradictions. Like the simple color scheme though, so points for that.

Yeah, I dislike the Disqus comments a lot. At least they let you disable the ads these days (it's hidden in the site config). But I don't want to deal with spam or write my own commenting system, and there's network effects. The Disqus is a concession towards practicality.

Have you considered switching to Commento [1] instead of Disqus? It is way more lightweight than Disqus, has spam filter and allows importing from Disqus.

[1] https://commento.io/

Re: Design of This Website (2021)

#260

Post by gwern »

Self-Perfection wrote: post #259
gwern wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I dislike the Disqus comments a lot. At least they let you disable the ads these days (it's hidden in the site config). But I don't want to deal with spam or write my own commenting system, and there's network effects. The Disqus is a concession towards practicality.

Have you considered switching to Commento [1] instead of Disqus? It is way more lightweight than Disqus, has spam filter and allows importing from Disqus. [1] https://commento.io/

$100/year is nontrivial. I'm not sure I even get $100's worth of comments per year, given that 99% of comments are elsewhere (like here).
Post reply on HN