While we're on this topic may I also point out that some CSS settings on some sites (e.g. transform: translateZ(0)) causes Chrome to switch to grayscale anti-aliasing [1] which also drives me and my eyes absolutely nuts. Anyone know why no one seems to care or want to fix it? Even the article linked to here has this problem!
How the Web Became Unreadable
61–70 of 354 posts
Re: How the Web Became Unreadable
#62There is a reason for this. I happen to have an almost brand-new LCD screen here with LED backlight and high resolution, and a low-resultion over-a-decade-old LCD screen. And guess what? A website that looks totally fine on the old one is so blindingly bright on the new one that it hurts. It literally hurts to look at. This can be useful, as it provides a higher dynamic range, which can be used to recreate the blindi…
> Why can’t we specify colors independent of the monitors actual contrast ratio, too?
We do that already by default. Your displays are probably not calibrated and poorly configured. Sadly, manufacturers rarely bother to provide decent ICC profiles.
Re: How the Web Became Unreadable
#63Designers 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…
The usability issues compound when that page was created with 1.2MB of JS (and another 2MB of ads), and I have to see a loading spinning wheel when it could have been easily been static content.
...And then when the page loads, I accidentally click an ad instead of a link because the ad moved over the content that I was reading to offer me 10% of joining the exclusive mailing list.
Re: How the Web Became Unreadable
#64It’s true that many designers tend to look at text more like a texture. Instead of making it large and distinct they will make it small and light colored when it's in fact the only valuable thing on the screen. It's an unfortunate consequence of so much design today going minimal and more typographic, which makes it's hard to differentiate elements any other way than to start evening out the contrast. If everything t…
Most designers are frankly awful at typography. I would argue most design elements on a page can be simply removed if they properly used hierarchy of text to call out important areas for example.
Sure just like you don't need insane convoluted frameworks with a billion dependencies to develop 99% of the web-apps out there yet thats what most developers end up with.
This is about self-expression and it's a small price to pay (and easily fixable by just forcing your own style sheet) for getting a vibrant and diverse jungle of content and ways to express it. The rest we can deal with.
Re: How the Web Became Unreadable
#65The example from Apple's own documentation (asking people to use a minimum 7:1 ratio rendered at 5.5:1 on their own web site) is a wonderful gotcha! :)
Edit: and I found the bold option for my iPad. Yay!
Re: How the Web Became Unreadable
#66Designers 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…
Changing for the sake of change as the primary reason usually never works well with an established user base. Other examples are the Nike+ web and mobile interface, Blizzard's Battle.net 2.0 (labelled by the community as 0.2), the hotmail email client portal, and the Windows 8 UI in it's entirety.
Re: How the Web Became Unreadable
#67Designers 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…
>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...
Re: How the Web Became Unreadable
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm assuming that by retina screen you simply mean high resolution? Because Retina display is just the apple term for a high resolution screen.
Its actually their term for high DPI displays. If you want to be pedantic, at least be correct.
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.
Re: How the Web Became Unreadable
#69Designers 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…
Is it the stylization, or is it feature-overload and overall "bloat" of software and web apps?
Or, is it the overload of 3rd party scripts meant to harvest your information and sell it off to affiliate marketers?
Or is it some of all of the above?
I think some of the newer age design techniques, such as responsive design, are very elegant compared to any slight performance costs of some of CSS3's new features.
As another example, iTunes was really soul-killing at its introduction of Apple music, making most of its tabs functioning related to Apple music. You can tell the Value decision was to make Apple Music take more precedence over management of one's own music. From a "stylistic" or aesthetic standpoint, the Desktop iTunes hasn't changed in its overall "design" from iTunes 3 to iTunes 11 (bit of an opinion here). Now, more recent versions did add more icons which makes the UX more miserable, but my take is iTunes/iOS music app was killed off by its feature overload. :ED: clarification on final
.
Re: How the Web Became Unreadable
#70This same discussion from January 2009: https://www.sitepoint.com/community/t/why-are-so-many-sites-...