Breaking the Web - justinjackson.ca

https://justinjackson.ca

I like Justin's writing. I like his elegantly-designed, simple blog theme or look.

I like his use of the Google monospace font Roboto Mono.

But when viewing his site on a phone, he employs too much spacing in the margins. I don't understand why this is done. It creates an extremely narrow column of text. It looks odd.

In my opinion, his text could stretch a little closer to the sides, and the reading experience would be improved or at least not hampered. It would look better from an aesthetic standpoint.

He can get away with using a narrow column of text on the phone because he also uses a font size that is too small. The text is still readable, but I don't understand the thinking by many publishers to shrink the font size for small screens. I think that someone started this idea years ago, and most designers and publishers continue the practice.

It's great that these people have perfect eyesight, but they should test their sites on phones, even large phones, with users who are "older" and/or with users who need to wear glasses or contacts.

Justin's site could be improved on the phone by using wider text lines and a larger font size.

But what's really obnoxious and destructive is the fact that he prevents users from double-tapping the screen or zooming to increase the font size. This practice creates a reader-hostile web.

The large margin spacing and the small font size on the phone could be overcome by allowing users to zoom into the page.

I assumed that I could zoom to fill the screen, which would increase the font size. But nope. he prohibits what should be a basic user functionality. he interferes with MY web browsing experience. he's not alone in doing this, unfortunately.
- 3 mins ago - # - reply

JR: #web #design #moronism
- 3 mins ago - # - reply

JR: too may people design irritatingly.
- 3 mins ago - # - reply

JR: in the meta tag, this is all good except for the "maximum-scale" setting, which prevents pinching and zooming. for shame. ----- : name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, maximum-scale=1
- 4 secs ago - # - reply

JR: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Mobile/Viewport_meta_tag
- 0 secs ago - # - reply