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How the Web Became Unreadable

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Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#301

Post by BjoernKW »

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…

It's not "designers" ruining software, it's wrong or misaligned incentives and goals. Most software isn't designed with (only) the user in mind or even just with respecting the user at all. With many free software products it's a commonly accepted view that you're not the customer but the product. In case of music apps licence restrictions are involved as well. It's probably not entirely wrong to say that apps like iTunes are in part designed to meet the requirements of lawyers, which in most cases won't align with those of the users.

Moreover, developers are ruining software as well, just in different ways. Many developers focus on getting the internal design (design patterns, architecture, database design, whatever) of a software product right but tend to neglect the external, user-facing design because "UI is just a minor detail" real engineers can't be bothered with. Just have a look at applications like SoapUI or pgAdmin. They do a great job in terms of functionality but it's obvious that good usability wasn't exactly one of their requirements.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#302

Post by thirdsun »

protomyth wrote: post #223
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…

I listen to less music in my car because iTunes is such a pain in the butt to listen to your own music on the device. Audible has an acceptable interface so I listen to more audio books. I'm starting to think the people working on iTunes hate music. Never mind replacing the rating I spent years setting with a friggin like button.

Although I think it's trivial to disable Apple Music's service in the app, thereby putting the focus on local content, you should try Ecoute, an alternative iOS music player that shows your music in an easy to understand grid, uses your existing library and is consistent with the play state of the default app so that you can use both apps interchangeably.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#303

Post by anotheryou »

adrianratnapala wrote: post #248
state wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a designer, I agree completely. The problem is: interaction design really is a discipline in its absolute infancy. It's not graphic design. It's not engineering. It's not architecture. Pretty much anyone can just pick it up and start doing it. And the people who decide to ship shitty designs you're complaining about are more concerned with 'pageviews' or 'installs' (and in turn, their bonus) than actual usability.…

Everything you say might be right, but there is something extra to jonstokes' comment: ametures and nerds often produce more functional sites than real designers. The mechanism here is that whatever esthetic and psychological principles are in play, an interface must also present the needed info and functionality. Craigslist and HN do that in a more-or-less bullshit free way. UX designers can get caught up in other c…

Another thing are Photoshop designs that where never tested interactively.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#304

Post by robert_tweed »

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.

Or even better, {max-width: 35em;}

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#305

Post by anotheryou »

tracker1 wrote: post #291
freelancezombie wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Designer here, how can we solve this? I'd love to have my work peer reviewed because design is so subjective and I feel like I'm probably making elementary mistakes despite learning for years.

Serious suggestion... Open up a text editor, and lay out your functionality in 80 columns wide, and 25 lines high... This is how it was in the really old days with text interfaces... everything comes up fast, you can create boxes to isolate information, but literally can only fit so much text on the screen... Now, take this, and turn it into a relatively scaling gui... for mobile, go 40x50. There is something to be s…

One big problem I see is, that power users need something quite different than first time users. You can make some compromise by tucking away advanced features without removing them, but in general it's still an issue.

First time users are probably what you focus on, the rest just has to be a tad better than the competitors. First time users need to be convinced by pretty design and a super simple linear workflow that solves just one problem.

Power users couldn't care less about design (SAP is still alive). They love it feature packed and want to access as many options as possible with few clicks. The extremes are icons without labels, color coded shortcuts on every keyboard key¹ or command line interfaces.

¹Avid-Keyboard for Video editing: http://www.drted.com/IMG_1225.JPG color coding in general is mostly ugly, but helpful.

edit: but in the end there is just a lot of bad design, that at best makes things pretty, but often not more useful.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#306

Post by the_other »

combatentropy wrote: post #165
kps wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most bad design decisions are considered ‘features’ by those responsible.

Downvoted posts are meant to be harder and harder to read.

This invites a kind of trolling. Imagine a bunch of people down-vote a comment quickly (justified or not), making it hard to read. Later readers who may have different opinions are discouraged from expressing them (up-voting) because the comment has become so hard to read it may not get read.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#307

Post by the_other »

Declanomous wrote: post #148
zeveb wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I seriously want to punch a hipster every time I have to use an app that used to work and has now been designed to death. Me too. In fact, it concerns me how angry stupid decisions make me these days. I just want to sit folks down in a chair and ask them why they hell they broke something that needed no fixing. It wasn't a problem, and now it is. I want to quote the 90s classic Billy Madison at them: > Mr. Madison,…

Because HTML isn't sexy.

It freakin' is!! Well crafted, semantically rich markup can be a beauty to behold. It's a shame webapps have obscured the craft behind an opaque veil of nested `` tags.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#308

Post by the_other »

ThomPete wrote: post #115
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.

Sure but that doesn't mean it's used as that.

To echo your point, the screen shots from the original article bare this out. The new App Engine interface does express information hierarchy through type, but it does so badly. The side menu uses all three of spacing, text size and colour to indicate hierarchy, to the point where the lower-level items are nearly illegible. Skimming it, I got the feeling the designer was saying "You don't need this", rather than "You won't need this often" or "Y is a specialisation of X" (which was probably the intent).

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#309

Post by eriknstr »

cooper12 wrote: post #230
eriknstr wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That website is currently not loading for me.

Ah it seems to redirect HN users to [0]. Sorry, it worked in my search so I didn't know about that. You can just search for "color typography" and read an alternate link or try clicking into that one from Google/the address bar mode since it seems to rely on reading the referrer. On a sidenote, the whole book is great so if you do read it and find it useful, I would pay for it. [0]: http://practicaltypography.com/gra…

When I wrote the comment it wasn't even redirecting -- it was plain not loading at all. It's loading now, albeit with the redirect you mentioned. Guy's got a point in a way and he's free to do as he wishes with his own content of course but still I don't like those kinds of redirects, since I am not planing on reading the whole book anyway, just the particular page you linked. Also, if he wanted me to pay for the book, he should provide me with an ePub copy of the book. If I don't get a copy then it is absolutely certain I'm not paying for it. I don't read books on my monitor, I read them on my eReader, and only in DRM-free ePub. Author of the page is never going to see this comment but I felt like expressing this anyway.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#310

Post by imtringued »

lostsock wrote: post #218
coldtea wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

It's just a bunch of links. Click on anything that catches your eye. Think of it as a hand curated static hackernews.
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