If not for Safari's Reader feature I wouldn't be able to read a lot of pages. This post is spot on.
How the Web Became Unreadable
41–50 of 354 posts
Re: How the Web Became Unreadable
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's that so? My experience says otherwise. For example, hn will stay, and so will the linked blog. They don't show ads.
HN is a meta-site. Without ads, there will be dramatically less content to link to.
How so? Without ads, the same money will be looking for ways to be spent.
The overall efficiency will go up as we'd save the overhead for ads, be less manipulated, can trust the information better ("is this an ad?") and a few shitty business practices will go away.
Re: How the Web Became Unreadable
#43"between ambient light and backlight leakage, by the time a color makes it to a screen, not even plain black (#000) is pure; instead it has become a grayer shade." This is changing. The best phone displays display "pure" black. If you open a black image on the screen, you cannot tell if the screen is on or off, even in pitch darkness. I love pure blacks in my apps and Web pages, contrary to the author.
The point is not everybody has a phone with an advanced amoled or similar deep, pure black display. It may be changing, but the majority of the people still has to look at a mediocre screen at best.
I love amoled displays, but I realize I'm a bit privileged.
Re: How the Web Became Unreadable
#44I'd like to see some evidence that today's sites are less readable than those that went before us. Otherwise, it just looks like nostalgia for the 'good old days'. Well I remember the 90s when we there were plenty of unreadable sites, ugly monstrosities with unreadable typography and garish colour schemes. Meanwhile, much of the web is now dominated by sites like Facebook, Google, BBC, etc - all of which are extremel…
As another commenter pointed out Apply/Google seem to set design trends, as evidence of this take a look at OmniFocus (a professionally built Mac App). It loves to use grey text on white. I used to use this program extensively, but found my eyes grew tired while using the app.
Note, I raised this with the Omni team and their response was to add theming support. Sigh, so now I can customize a better contrast. What about all those other folks that simply don't know why their eyes get tired after using these beautiful displays.
Re: How the Web Became Unreadable
#45Part of the problem is that a lot of companies use web developer agencies that deliver 'PDF' static pages of 'design' that is full of lorem-ipsum text in light grey.
This 'design' process is not about how it works, it is purely about how it looks. To designers that means not having to worry about what happens when links are clicked and not having to worry about people who look at the design on anything other than a high end Mac (with its non-standard gamma). Certainly do not take interest in the product, hence the rigid adherence to 'lorem ipsum'. In this world text is just shapes on a page, not something that needs to be right.
A design process should be about getting it to work with a focus on content, then, after that, the kids that only know Photoshop (and not a bit of HTML or SVG or CSS) can be called on to provide a little bit of their artwork. Tragically though the process is far too often wrong, with these static PDF images casting in stone what the website will look like, even if the content is illegible.
Far too many people in design are 'poseurs' rather than true creatives. Consequently they can lack true confidence and merely imitate, hence, if Apple are doing spider-grey text in nano-font sizes on a grey background then that just gets appropriated.
There is no user testing in this far too common dev process, it is just whether the guy paying the bills likes the PDF files, then some developers have to deliver this vision without questioning it.
Re: How the Web Became Unreadable
#46I'd like to see some evidence that today's sites are less readable than those that went before us. Otherwise, it just looks like nostalgia for the 'good old days'. Well I remember the 90s when we there were plenty of unreadable sites, ugly monstrosities with unreadable typography and garish colour schemes. Meanwhile, much of the web is now dominated by sites like Facebook, Google, BBC, etc - all of which are extremel…
> Meanwhile, much of the web is now dominated by sites like Facebook, Google, BBC, etc - all of which are extremely readable. The author actually calls out Google and Apple specifically, for breaking their own contrast suggestions His example: https://kevinmarks.github.io/appenginebefore.png https://kevinmarks.github.io/appengineafter.png
I actually find the 'after' example an improvement for legibility - something about the spacing I think is the improvement; I don't find the colour a noticeable disadvantage at all.
Re: How the Web Became Unreadable
#47I regurarly copy paste URLs into Pocket to be able to read the content, not even for storing it long term. Pocket became the ultimate readability vendor for me over the last year, for those reasons the author listed in his post and for some other reasons (like advertising for example) too.
Re: How the Web Became Unreadable
#48I think it's a broader problem - too much css fluff, far too much javascript; even the simplest webpages now seem to feel the need to be miniature apps in their own right, instead of just serving the damned content already. I often websurf using an old 1st gen iPad and it's a massively frustrating experience just how many sites nowadays just crash the damned browser.
How does that apply to typography?
Re: How the Web Became Unreadable
#49I have worried about this a lot, but basically now try to get inspiration and take example from webs that I consider highly readable. I also developed a set of internal rules; for instance, my maximum "black" is #333 (#333333) and my minimum "white" is #eee (#EEEEEE). Anything going further than these to the middle should have a real reason and not just because it's prettier . Edit: #333 over a #eee (worst-case scena…
Don't worry about it. You seem to be doing it right. The author just used #333333 as an example because people tend to just think "I can't use pure black" rather than still being conscious of their contrast. You seem to give thought towards it and pick shades that still retain readable contrast.
Re: How the Web Became Unreadable
#50To make matters worse (i.e. take away even more contrast) users might be using f.lux, twilight or similar which will move the threshold of illegibility nearer. (and there are valid reasons to use these, indeed I have them on phone and desktop).
> users might be using f.lux, twilight or similar which
> will move the threshold of illegibility nearer.
I'd say it's an improvement, if anything.