Adobe & HTML • Hacker News Board

Re: Adobe & HTML

#41

Post by DanBC » Mon, Apr 23, 2012, 10:10 AM UTC

whatusername wrote: post #39

DanBC wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to easily create stunning experience I know that I've lost this battle and that I'm in a minority, but to me "stunning experience" comes from the content, and not the presentation.

Really? I'm really really struggling to find any human experience that is not improved by the "presentation". Can you name a single one that is wholly about the content and derives no value from the 'presentation'? (For any of the 5 senses?). To my mind there is basic quadrant setup: * Low Content and Low Presentation == Worthless Junk * Low Content and High Presentation == Useless Fluff, Polished Turds * High Conten…

Books. Books don't need sound and video and special effects and gradients and rounded corners and 8 different fonts and mouse-over effects and transitions and etc. You get one font for 40,000 words. You get justification, and paragraphs, and if you're lucky a nice font.

An online example would be "Readbility" - that turns weirdly presented text into a very simple presentation.

I accept that it's a carefully chosen well designed presentation, but the simplicity is key to allowing access to the information.

See also all the various HN redesigns. HN is presentationally fairly simple. Almost all the redesigns add more stuff, but decrease usability, and distract from the actual content.

> That's "Presentation" that clearly adds value to the content.

I'm not saying presentation is pointless. But, if we're doing either / or, would you rather have bug free code with no indentation or buggy code with lovely formatting?

Re: Adobe & HTML

#42

Post by 5h » Mon, Apr 23, 2012, 10:13 AM UTC

RossM wrote: post #3

On the Tools and Services page, this piqued my interest: > Code > We think there’s a need for a different type of code editor – we’re working on something and will have more to share soon.

have you looked at muse (http://www.adobe.com/products/muse.html) and the sort of sites that come out the other end (http://juliegratz.com/)

I hope that's not what they have in mind, quite why they are showing off a website who's homepage doesn't have a single bit of text (view-source:http://juliegratz.com/) other than a copyright assertion I have no idea

Re: Adobe & HTML

#43

Post by Joeboy » Mon, Apr 23, 2012, 10:25 AM UTC

whatusername wrote: post #39

DanBC wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to easily create stunning experience I know that I've lost this battle and that I'm in a minority, but to me "stunning experience" comes from the content, and not the presentation.

Really? I'm really really struggling to find any human experience that is not improved by the "presentation". Can you name a single one that is wholly about the content and derives no value from the 'presentation'? (For any of the 5 senses?). To my mind there is basic quadrant setup: * Low Content and Low Presentation == Worthless Junk * Low Content and High Presentation == Useless Fluff, Polished Turds * High Conten…

I don't disagree with that hierarchy, but if you're talking about the visual presentation of text-based content on the internet it seems to me you have to actively put effort in to get from #4 to #3.

Re: Adobe & HTML

#44

Post by thirdsun » Mon, Apr 23, 2012, 10:51 AM UTC

I hope this will be relevant for Adobe's Digital Magazine Distribution Suite - I'm really tired of waiting for new New Yorker issues to download on my ancient 1 MBit connection (rural area in germany). There's no need to provide text as a bunch of huge images resulting in several 100 MBytes in size.

Re: Adobe & HTML

#45

Post by diminish » Mon, Apr 23, 2012, 11:09 AM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #33

dcurtis wrote: post #16

If you're not a designer, it might be hard to see, but the importance of this work is impossible to overstate. In 10 years, we'll look back on today and think about how barbaric and stupid it was that we didn't have re-flowable text in multi-box CSS layouts or absolute control of typefaces on the web. I have come upon the edge of what CSS is capable of multiple times, especially when building http://dustincurtis.com…

> In 10 years, we'll look back on today and think about how barbaric and stupid it was that we didn't have re-flowable text in multi-box CSS layouts or absolute control of typefaces on the web. I believe that's the purpose of this W3C Candidate Recommendation: http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-multicol/ I agree that it seems silly that we still don't have columns in html, especially considering how wide monitors have gotten.…

CSS column flow will help a lot. However I hope print-minded-fixed designers will not end up flooding the net with rigid fixed-width designs mainly accessibility, edit ability, customisability is important in the word of flexible contents. papers or older forms of fixed rigid tech mediums have so many drawbacks, which ended up being a long exploitation area for designer hacks. in short I am for css-reflowing columns but i am against paper.

Re: Adobe & HTML

#46

Post by hieronymusN » Mon, Apr 23, 2012, 11:10 AM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #41

whatusername wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? I'm really really struggling to find any human experience that is not improved by the "presentation". Can you name a single one that is wholly about the content and derives no value from the 'presentation'? (For any of the 5 senses?). To my mind there is basic quadrant setup: * Low Content and Low Presentation == Worthless Junk * Low Content and High Presentation == Useless Fluff, Polished Turds * High Conten…

Books. Books don't need sound and video and special effects and gradients and rounded corners and 8 different fonts and mouse-over effects and transitions and etc. You get one font for 40,000 words. You get justification, and paragraphs, and if you're lucky a nice font. An online example would be "Readbility" - that turns weirdly presented text into a very simple presentation. I accept that it's a carefully chosen we…

Books are designed. Lots of consideration is put into the typography, layout, rhythm and form of printed books, and those design choices stretch back over a hundred years. There is much more at play than "justification, and paragraphs, and if you're lucky a nice font."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Tschichold

http://www.amazon.com/Systems-Graphic-Systeme-Visuele-Gestal...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Typographic_St...

Re: Adobe & HTML

#47

Post by willyt » Mon, Apr 23, 2012, 11:14 AM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #41

whatusername wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? I'm really really struggling to find any human experience that is not improved by the "presentation". Can you name a single one that is wholly about the content and derives no value from the 'presentation'? (For any of the 5 senses?). To my mind there is basic quadrant setup: * Low Content and Low Presentation == Worthless Junk * Low Content and High Presentation == Useless Fluff, Polished Turds * High Conten…

Books. Books don't need sound and video and special effects and gradients and rounded corners and 8 different fonts and mouse-over effects and transitions and etc. You get one font for 40,000 words. You get justification, and paragraphs, and if you're lucky a nice font. An online example would be "Readbility" - that turns weirdly presented text into a very simple presentation. I accept that it's a carefully chosen we…

Yes but just giving examples of shit design doesn't make all design shit. Read Eric Gill on typography or look at an Edward Tufte book and you will understand how much design has gone into books over the ages. One of the ways you can tell when a design is really high quality is when you don't notice it.

Re: Adobe & HTML

#48

Post by hej » Mon, Apr 23, 2012, 11:17 AM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #41

whatusername wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? I'm really really struggling to find any human experience that is not improved by the "presentation". Can you name a single one that is wholly about the content and derives no value from the 'presentation'? (For any of the 5 senses?). To my mind there is basic quadrant setup: * Low Content and Low Presentation == Worthless Junk * Low Content and High Presentation == Useless Fluff, Polished Turds * High Conten…

Books. Books don't need sound and video and special effects and gradients and rounded corners and 8 different fonts and mouse-over effects and transitions and etc. You get one font for 40,000 words. You get justification, and paragraphs, and if you're lucky a nice font. An online example would be "Readbility" - that turns weirdly presented text into a very simple presentation. I accept that it's a carefully chosen we…

You seem to have seriously misunderstood what great presentation is and you are selling books way short. Good presentation is only about rounded corners if those rounded corners are actually an improvement. If they distract they are bad presentation.

There are good and bad ways to present text in books and this is not some subtle improvement, this is noticeable. Typesetting books is seriously hard and there are tons of pitfalls, even if all you need are paragraphs and chapter headings. To make this short, here are all things books can do and the web cannot (yet or in most browsers) do: Complete control over the font. A lot of microtypography. Complete control over justification. Easily creating and maintaining a rhythm.

I'm sure there are a lot more. (Those points are also the reason why typography in ebooks still sucks for the most part, some of that is caused by the ineptness of those who create those books.)

Anyone who has ever had the book of someone with no design background in their hands will be able to testify that there is a huge difference between books done by a professional typesetter and an amateur (if that amateur isn't self-taught and doesn't otherwise care about design).

Re: Adobe & HTML

#49

Post by DanBC » Mon, Apr 23, 2012, 11:41 AM UTC

hej wrote: post #48

DanBC wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Books. Books don't need sound and video and special effects and gradients and rounded corners and 8 different fonts and mouse-over effects and transitions and etc. You get one font for 40,000 words. You get justification, and paragraphs, and if you're lucky a nice font. An online example would be "Readbility" - that turns weirdly presented text into a very simple presentation. I accept that it's a carefully chosen we…

You seem to have seriously misunderstood what great presentation is and you are selling books way short. Good presentation is only about rounded corners if those rounded corners are actually an improvement. If they distract they are bad presentation. There are good and bad ways to present text in books and this is not some subtle improvement, this is noticeable. Typesetting books is seriously hard and there are tons…

> Anyone who has ever had the book of someone with no design background in their hands will be able to testify that there is a huge difference between books done by a professional typesetter and an amateur (if that amateur isn't self-taught and doesn't otherwise care about design).

I've read books double spaced with monospaced fonts on shitty LCD monitors - I was able to ignore the terrible presentation because the content was amazing. I've read books where there was a lot of attention paid to design. The paper was nice, the font was carefully chosen, the drop caps were just right, the chapter bullets were spot on, and the cover art was exquisite. The content was awful. The great design did not make me think I'd spent the money well. The great design did not make me rate the book higher on Amazon.

I never recommend a book because of the nice typeface, or the lack of rivers. I only ever recommend a book because of the plotting or characters or writing.

I have not said (but some people seem to think I have) that design is a pointless waste of time. I have said that given the choice between great content or great presentation that I'd much rather have great content.

These are all visual examples. I want to try and avoid analogy (because I usually pick poor choices) but the same is sometimes true for sound. Some early Beatles[1] records are, technically, decidedly sub-optimal compared to today's technology. But that's okay, because they're still amazing. Some awful dull band recorded with 128 track and a bunch of processing and a great engineer is still going to be bad and bland because, well, just because.

[1] I say Beatles but better examples would be all the music on Trojan records, which are pretty lo-fi. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3AbgBOcYHg&feature=fvwre...)

Re: Adobe & HTML

#50

Post by primigenus » Mon, Apr 23, 2012, 11:57 AM UTC

idan wrote: post #35

EmilStenstrom wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two big "design movements" on the web, and dustin represents one end of the spectrum. His side argues that great design makes things better, and that we all should put more time into design. The other side says "design is not needed", and that each user can manage their design settings themselves. These are the people that pushed for RSS and Responsive design, and that see design as more of an optional addo…

This is a terrible representation of the issue. In the end, designing for the web is designing for a lack of control. I can't control your screen geometry, display technology, browser compliance, fonts, and more. There is no fixed canvas like I had in print. This isn't a limitation, this is simply the medium. Designing for this medium means that you must take your canonical ideal and figure out how it would be transf…

I read this, thought "gee, this guy gets it", then clicked on your profile and saw "developer/designer hybrid unicorn".

From my experience, it's mainly such hybrids that have this perspective on designing for the web. It makes it hard to work with people who don't see it the same way - either designers like Dustin or developers who don't fully appreciate the value of design.