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58 bytes of CSS to look great nearly everywhere

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Re: 58 bytes of CSS to look great nearly everywhere

#91

Post by stevebmark »

isaacremuant wrote: post #85
stevebmark wrote: post #76

Not explicitly mentioned here, but worth bringing up: Text width should always be constrained to a maximum width to optimize for human reading. Every book ever printed has text with set within the same range for a reason. Full width text guarantees most users will have a poor reading experience.

I don't like that. I can adjust the full text width by adjusting my window but if have a big wide screen and you limit it, then I'm wasting a lot of what I can see. Give me customization, not "alleged optimization" that turns out not to be so

Don't confuse constraining an entire website's width for constraining the text reading width. You can gracefully have maximum reading width text columns with other content to the left and right of it to maximize real estate.

Also, don't ask users to resize their browsers to accomodate for a site's poor UX. That's called "blaming the user."

Re: 58 bytes of CSS to look great nearly everywhere

#94

Post by coldtea »

breck wrote: post #88

Love things like this. This is why I can't stop reading HN. I disagree about the font-size. I say go very small (pack more info on a screen). Very easy for people to make it bigger. People have known this for hundreds of years (old newspapers pack in the text, older readers can wear spectacles or use magnifying glass).

>I disagree about the font-size. I say go very small (pack more info on a screen)

Why, is it a contest who can cram the more? People can always scroll, and they know how to do that better than they know how to increase the text (not to mention most read on mobile phones, were even fewer know how to change the text size)

>old newspapers pack in the text, older readers can wear spectacles or use magnifying glass

Seems like the worst argument one could chose in favor of this idea...

Re: 58 bytes of CSS to look great nearly everywhere

#95

Post by simonw »

breck wrote: post #88

Love things like this. This is why I can't stop reading HN. I disagree about the font-size. I say go very small (pack more info on a screen). Very easy for people to make it bigger. People have known this for hundreds of years (old newspapers pack in the text, older readers can wear spectacles or use magnifying glass).

"Very easy for people to make it bigger"

I wonder if that's true for the average (non-nerd) user on a smartphone though. They can likely pinch-and-zoom, but that's a terribly way of reading text since you constantly have to pan back and forth. Have they definitely found the text size adjustment buttons?

Re: 58 bytes of CSS to look great nearly everywhere

#96

Post by shadowofneptune »

breck wrote: post #88

Love things like this. This is why I can't stop reading HN. I disagree about the font-size. I say go very small (pack more info on a screen). Very easy for people to make it bigger. People have known this for hundreds of years (old newspapers pack in the text, older readers can wear spectacles or use magnifying glass).

I've moved towards a larger size with the knowledge that I'll have trouble reading small text in 20 years. With the state of modern medicine, most people reading this will be old for a long time.

Re: 58 bytes of CSS to look great nearly everywhere

#98

Post by TheWoodsy »

It seems like I'm permanently in some sort of dystopian nightmare 'unpopular opinion' group where wasting two thirds of my monitors useful space is the right way about doing things.

I have monitors either side of my primary in portrait mode specifically for looking at a bunch of code/text and it still wastes at least half of the useful display area.

https://i.imgur.com/Qk7fM35.png

If I wanted this, I'd press the reader button in Firefox or squish my browser window. Why? Shakes fist at sky

Re: 58 bytes of CSS to look great nearly everywhere

#99

Post by xcambar »

swid wrote: post #83
stevebmark wrote: post #76

Not explicitly mentioned here, but worth bringing up: Text width should always be constrained to a maximum width to optimize for human reading. Every book ever printed has text with set within the same range for a reason. Full width text guarantees most users will have a poor reading experience.

I almost agree, but there’s a difference between number of characters and width, and also graphics and tables are a different beast. Personally, I think websites should fill up the available space, increasing font size if it makes sense, perhaps using resizing images. So, no - text should not be constrained to a maximum width. If width were a problem, billboards wouldn’t be a thing.

Have you ever seen a long text on a billboard?

I guess not.

Re: 58 bytes of CSS to look great nearly everywhere

#100

Post by enriquto »

This is useless bloat.

Default browser styles are perfectly alright.

When they aren't, this is mainly a self-inflicted problem by your browser (that can set whatever default it wants), and by yourself (who can easily override the default browser style with either a personal css file or just by CTRL+scrolling to change your text size). Text size, window width, margins, should never be a responsibility of the website.

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