How the Web Became Unreadable • Hacker News Board

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#91

Post by puddintane » Wed, Oct 19, 2016, 4:12 PM UTC

speeder wrote: post #87

I am using in a still under construction pc a CRT screen. Two things became obvious: 1. CRT contrast is amazing, specially black levels. DOOM 4 is utterly gorgeous. 2. Yet CRT is now mostly unusable because questionable design decisions, I keep stumbling in new games and websites that presume you have a 4k monitor (seriously, I saw some games where the UI on my screen ended with letters unreadable without a loupe...)…

CRT is also not as good for your eyes and therefore isn't as suitable as LCD [1].

[1] http://superuser.com/a/389678

Some may argue as well that you can obtain better contrast in LCD but I'm no expert in that matter - I have just learned why CRTs are bad due to working as a programmer.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#92

Post by sosuke » Wed, Oct 19, 2016, 4:13 PM UTC

sliverstorm wrote: post #19

dingo_bat wrote: post #15

Earlier 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.

Less fluff content perhaps but I remember lots of people wrote great content before ad networks were easy to include on a site. I write content, I'm biased I like my own stuff, but I don't expect revenue and I know plenty of other people would continue to blog without revenue from ads.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#93

Post by nicwolff » Wed, Oct 19, 2016, 4:16 PM UTC

Nice article, but ironically the black text is rendered with opacity=.8

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#94

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Oct 19, 2016, 4:17 PM UTC

DavidWanjiru wrote: post #68

sthatipamala wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#95

Post by mercurysmessage » Wed, Oct 19, 2016, 4:19 PM UTC

sthatipamala wrote: post #32

mercurysmessage wrote: post #27

Earlier 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.

Right, my mistake.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#96

Post by puddintane » Wed, Oct 19, 2016, 4:20 PM UTC

While the article touches on some great points I think there can actually be a balance when displaying certain types of information.

Like in reporting interfaces it's easier to highlight the data that you know the user is going to be looking at consistently - it helps with moving through the document as well as keeping your place. Sometimes information isn't required but if the user were wanting to go back and verify that information or use it to calculate something else they could do so easily (generally in my designs whenever I make something with less contrast I will also add an action for on focus/hover the item fades back in if the user may require that data more but still not as much as the main bits and pieces).

Places that this doesn't work great are articles and journals, big paragraphs of text (such as comments).

Balance, and the right use can make this technique useful in web page design but the author is very correct in that the vast majority doesn't understand the proper use and balance.

For we are not artists nor editor-in-chiefs so to say.

edit Should note that the reporting interfaces he is displaying do not do this well at all.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#97

Post by js8 » Wed, Oct 19, 2016, 4:30 PM UTC

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…

> Designers are ruining software in general.

I agree with you. But what I find hilarious about it is that in the 90s, there was a meme that software engineers cannot do usability very well, and you need specialized designers.

I think it all comes down to humility. Think about and respect the user. Do usability studies and follow their results, like Microsoft used to do in 90s. Don't let your notions of aesthetics overrule the needs or wishes of the users, and especially wish for things not to change.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#98

Post by zokier » Wed, Oct 19, 2016, 4:32 PM UTC

throwawayReply wrote: post #18

amelius wrote: post #6

We need some strong AI to strip away the ads, and extract only the main text, then format that text using the reader's preferences. OCR 2.0, if you will. Caveat: it may kill the advertisement industry.

That doesn't require strong AI, firefox reader view achieves that without strong AI. It even preserves article images nicely.

See also: Readability, a project first discussed on HN some 8 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=501970

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#99

Post by falcolas » Wed, Oct 19, 2016, 4:33 PM UTC

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…

Oddly enough, Reddit becomes much more usable with RES and keyboard navigation. It's primarily a consumption site, which makes the ability to expand images inline and navigate with the keyboard very valuable. The vanilla experience where you're constantly linking off to other heavy-weight sites and frequently reloading the reddit page when you come back (a trend I wish modern web browsers would burn) is rather negative.

With that in mind, it seems that simple text and links is perhaps not the optimal experience for every web site.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#100

Post by onli » Wed, Oct 19, 2016, 4:33 PM UTC

ThomPete wrote: post #7

It’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…

> 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.

But modern web design is the contrary. Large big webfonts, distinct ones for headlines and text as beautiful as possible. Yes, sometimes the text is then made grey and oftentimes this is just bad design, but I don't think the texture comaprision is accurate.

Here for example, in the appengine dashboard screenshots, the grey text in the menu is used to create hierarchy. I would also argue that the greying of the text has another function here: By making most of the menu labels less visible, you can focus the attention to the parts of the page that are the most prominent. Not sure hat worked very well sincethat does nto seem to be used here, but it sure has another effect than the prior design where almostevery element was screaming for attention.