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Plain Text Sports

plaintextsports.com

81–90 of 113 posts

Re: Plain Text Sports

#81

This does look really nice, and the author should be proud, however I wanted to make a general comment (which isn't a critism of this website). If you aim is to help people who want pure text-based interfaces (the blind in particular), this is much worse than a proper HTML page, which they can easily explore by headers. Well-formed HTML is actually one of the most accessible formats, and drawing boxes with CSS (rathe…

Why not also include an audio file generated from the text of the page with TTS.

I believe vision-impaired users would greatly prefer their own TTS, in part because many can listen at 5-10x speed since they're so used to hearing that particular voice.

Re: Plain Text Sports

#82
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A default zoom setting that is global to the browser does not in any way fix the problem of different websites using different font sizes.

It does if you have a huge screen or feel that all sites' fonts are too small, right? Anyway, every browser I use also persists zoom settings chosen for each site.

On mobile devices as well? Genuinely asking. I keep a battery of custom CSS files for every site I visit just to keep the text settings in sync across OSes, browsers and devices. HN's CSS for example is...quaint I guess but incredibly antiquated.

Re: Plain Text Sports

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To clarify: Are you indicating that, as a user dependent on screen readers, that this site is difficult to use for you? Do other users who depend on screen readers have an experience they’re willing to share about visiting this site?

This is something that frustrates me: it's actually really hard to design for screenreaders because it's hard to actually check the results in a free/volunteer context. So you often just have to just hope you're being "semantic" enough. And I did try to use Orca but I just could not get it to work, the TTS service was sulkily disinclined to accept any requests.

Nowadays it's really easy to check on mac + windows, as the built in stuff is "good enough", particularly if you use the OSes default browser (Safari and edge respectively).

I realise that doesn't help Linux/BSD users.

Re: Plain Text Sports

#84
post #53
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't he just want... a plain-text interface? Why are we assigning motives to creations where none is stated? ASCII art loads fast and the miniscule stylesheet and script barely slows anything down. Plenty of people who aren't disabled like minimalist interfaces, because minimalist interfaces tend to stay relatively static. Plus, in this case, the main utility seems to be that there's a single place you can check…

This isn't "plain text." It's still laid out via HTML (and CSS). HTML tables somehow get a bad rap, but they are perfect for tabular data, which most of this data displayed on this particular site is. A proper "plain text" interface in HTML would be the data wrapped in a PRE tag, right? To be clear, regardless of the HTML layout, I do like this site, because I can quickly and easily check NHL scores and standings wit…

> HTML tables somehow get a bad rap, but they are perfect for tabular data, which most of this data displayed on this particular site is.

For me, not supporting some kind of sorting natively makes them not perfect. It's really important for me when reading tabular data to have that option.

Re: Plain Text Sports

#85

This does look really nice, and the author should be proud, however I wanted to make a general comment (which isn't a critism of this website). If you aim is to help people who want pure text-based interfaces (the blind in particular), this is much worse than a proper HTML page, which they can easily explore by headers. Well-formed HTML is actually one of the most accessible formats, and drawing boxes with CSS (rathe…

Why not also include an audio file generated from the text of the page with TTS.

There is no need to include it, since that's the point of screen readers and all other client-side assistive software.

The problem is that in this page's case all of the decorative text like borders will be "read out" as well.

Re: Plain Text Sports

#86

Hey, HN! Creator here! I started building Plain Text Sports last year when I was watching an NFL playoff game in rural southwest Wisconsin. We had poor TV reception -- the image was going in-and-out -- and the local radio station was mostly static. I tried to check ESPN, but the loading bar was as frozen as the ground outside. I then had the idea for a website designed for the pure sports fan: no ads, no images, just…

Very cool, thanks for making this! I'm curious if you have any plans to monetize the site, or at least cover your costs? I know the live sports data feeds are not that cheap!

Re: Plain Text Sports

#87

Hey, HN! Creator here! I started building Plain Text Sports last year when I was watching an NFL playoff game in rural southwest Wisconsin. We had poor TV reception -- the image was going in-and-out -- and the local radio station was mostly static. I tried to check ESPN, but the loading bar was as frozen as the ground outside. I then had the idea for a website designed for the pure sports fan: no ads, no images, just…

Great work on the website. I really like the minimalist style. Will definitely use it once you have the Premier League on there.

I’ve actually considered building a similar type of site for a while but wasn’t sure how to get the real-time sports score updates.

Do you have to pay for that data?

Re: Plain Text Sports

#88

I did a `curl https://plaintextsports.com/mls/standings ` and, to my surprise, got an HTML response back (rather than just plaintext data). Seems like this isn't actually plaintext (as in the mimetype `text/plain`), but is instead just "minimalist-aesthetic sports" (with the caveat that for some reason there's CSS styling to make the font unreadably small at 2560x1440, which was what led me to try `curl` in the first…

Yep, seems we're all unclear on what the actual intent is here since it seems to fail most of the use cases that "plain text" brings to mind.

Re: Plain Text Sports

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does if you have a huge screen or feel that all sites' fonts are too small, right? Anyway, every browser I use also persists zoom settings chosen for each site.

On mobile devices as well? Genuinely asking. I keep a battery of custom CSS files for every site I visit just to keep the text settings in sync across OSes, browsers and devices. HN's CSS for example is...quaint I guess but incredibly antiquated.

Here are my settings on Safari iOS, which get added as you change font sizes across sites: https://i.imgur.com/w2lJev4.png. You can see that I clearly agree with you regarding HN :)

Re: Plain Text Sports

#90
I remember back in the earliest days of mobile "internet" (when WAP had a more innocent meaning) there were sites/services like this you could access from a Nokia phone. Due for a comeback?
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