7 min

[Manifesto for Lightweight Web Pages](/manifesto-for-lightweight-web-pages.html)
* [Design By Writing](/design-by-writing.html)
* [Create a Comfortable Reading Experience](/create-a-comfortable-reading-experience.html)
* [Battle Web Page Bloat](/battle-web-page-bloat.html)

additional links to add and excerpt - August 2016:

<http://tantek.com/2016/229/t1/fail-slow-internet-ad-driven-js-react-angular>
[Do you make grilled cheese with a flamethrower? So why are you using javascript to render a page of text?](https://mobile.twitter.com/Pinboard/status/740790430644772865)
<https://www.theguardian.com/info/2013/aug/12/1>
<https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/11/modern-static-website-generators-next-big-thing>
* "We all know this data: 57% of online visitors will abandon a page if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load. And on mobile, where there’s no multi-tasking and little else to do, waiting for a website to load is so frustrating that more than 4% of people report that they’ve physically thrown their phone while using a slow mobile website!"

Links discovered in October 2016:

HN top comment:

> I basically think design is like a cancer on the web anymore. You know what works? Craiglist, that's what works. Reddit works. Hacker News works. The old, pre-design-goober Google Apps interface worked. I seriously want to punch a hipster every time I have to use an app that used to work and has now been designed to death.

another hn comment:

> 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.

hn comment:

>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.

hn comment:

>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.

hn comment about what is probably a common reason for many bad web ui/ux issues:

> Changing for the sake of change as the primary reason usually never works well with an established user base.

great comment:

> 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.

hn comment:

> The latest web design trends feel like they are trying to make things "readable" for people who don't actually want to read. At the expense of people who want to read. I am so happy when I see a simple page with text and pictures I can scroll through without things reloading or things jumping around.

hah. good hn comment:

> Heh, I love how so many tech and design things are "manifestos" or "rebellions"

like my manifesto here.

http://contrastrebellion.com - "Because sometimes we only think about aesthetics. Clearly, aesthetics are important but aren't the ultimate goal of design. And often poor readability doesn't get noticed during the design process, as we are not like our users. We don't read the texts as a visitor does."

> When making the contrast of the text lower and lower... designers need to think of elderly users with bad vision, low quality monitors, bad lighting and glare, reading on tiny screens.

> W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines set the minimum contrast between text and its background so that it can be read by people with moderately low vision (which is quite common).

> Another experiment confirms that reading time is lower when there's high contrast between the text and the background. What's more, contrast sensitivity declines with age

back to the hn thread ...

sounds like i wrote this comment, but i didn't. so glad to see that i'm not alone.

> I think it's a broader problem - too much css fluff, far too much javascript; even the simplest webpages now seem to feel the need to be miniature apps in their own right, instead of just serving the damned content already. I often websurf using an old 1st gen iPad and it's a massively frustrating experience just how many sites nowadays just crash the damned browser.

hn comment:

> I started using noscript years ago for just that reason.

i disable firefox by default or selectively by using NoScript in firefox, and in october 2016, i began using the "Quick Javascript Switcher" extension in the chrome browser.

hn commenter's thoughts:

> I have worried about this a lot, but basically now try to get inspiration and take example from webs that I consider highly readable. I also developed a set of internal rules; for instance, my maximum "black" is #333 (#333333) and my minimum "white" is #eee (#EEEEEE). Anything going further than these to the middle should have a real reason and not just because it's prettier. Edit: #333 over a #eee (worst-case scenario with my guideliness) gives a 10.9:1 ratio, while #333 over #fff gives a 12.6:1 ratio, both totally acceptable. So I am not sure how the author concludes that #333 is not good enough and we should use #000; Why should the people who is doing it right and pleasant change it because few others are using ridiculous colors as in the examples? It's like saying you shouldn't eat any sugar at all because many people is fat when you are perfectly healthy.

hn comment:

> I regurarly copy paste URLs into Pocket to be able to read the content, not even for storing it long term. Pocket became the ultimate readability vendor for me over the last year, for those reasons the author listed in his post and for some other reasons (like advertising for example) too.

it's possible that designers at media orgs dislike the bloated web pages served by their system, but the designers and developers may be forced or encouraged to inject pounds of cruft because of the business model or because of the dreaded "stakeholders".

https://www.sitepoint.com/community/t/why-are-so-many-sites-using-gray-text/4667

> Can somebody please explain why so many sites are making their text harder to read? A lot of sites are using gray-on-white or gray-on-gray text -- including this one! Is there some backroom deal with eyedrop vendors? Why are designers doing this?

response:

> Black text on white background is generally considered to be too high a contrast and hard on the eyes. A very dark grey on white is easier to read.

from the backchannel marks article:

> To arbitrarily throw away contrast based on a fashion that “looks good on my perfect screen in my perfectly lit office” is abdicating designers’ responsibilities to the very people for whom they are designing.

> My plea to designers and software engineers: Ignore the fads and go back to the typographic principles of print — keep your type black, and vary weight and font instead of grayness. You’ll be making things better for people who read on smaller, dimmer screens, even if their eyes aren’t aging like mine. It may not be trendy, but it’s time to consider who is being left out by the web’s aesthetic.

---

oct 23, 2016:

> How a design trend to reduce the contrast between text and its background, driven by Apple's and Google's guidelines, is making text harder to read online

https://backchannel.com/how-the-web-became-unreadable-a781ddc711b6?gi=8f7b17850777#.r3lqzaeqq
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12743628

From JR's : articles
1306 words - 9528 chars - 7 min read
created on Oct 27, 2016 at 12:37:49 pm
updated on Oct 27, 2016 at 01:53:52 pm - #
source - versions

Links oct 27, 2016