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Speaking of design critique, are young people able to read articles with hilarious animated gifs in them? Because I literally cannot; a pity because the first

Speaking of design critique, are young people able to read articles with hilarious animated gifs in them? Because I literally cannot; a pity because the first section seemed promising.

bcook 11y ago
"literally"?
- dasil003 11y ago
  Yes! I am not one who misuses "literally", nor am I one who chooses to be a pedant over every choice of words in order to willfully miss the point of any discussion. I literally could not read the article because my eye kept being dragged back to the gifs.
  - Outdoorsman 11y ago
    Agreed...the gifs were ill-chosen and distracting...added nothing...not a good fit for the thrust of the article...
  - bcook 11y ago
    Heh, sorry. I was trying poke fun at your post by doing what you did, regarding the article; focus on the wrong thing and disregard the the entire article/post because of a small, arguably unwise choice (gifs/misusing "literally"). The article is actually quite good.
    - dasil003 11y ago
      That's pretty meta, if anyone else got that I congratulate you. But to be honest, I did hesitate before posting because it was off-topic. However this is HN, not the author's comments section, so I feel it's my prerogative to comment on any aspect of the article not just the content.
      - bcook 11y ago
        I was hesitant as well. Thankfully, HN is usually quick to downvote crap posts like mine. Lesson learned. Honestly though, I do get kinda tired of looking in the comments to see so much conversation about off-topic things like the color-scheme or background images of the linked site. "Off-topic" is subjective, of course.
metafunctor 11y ago
Yes, the constant movement in the middle of text I'm trying to read is a huge distraction. It should only play once, or maybe when I mouse over it. Does Chrome have an extension to control looping gifs? Back in the day, I was able to configure my browser that looping gifs would play only once. I'd love something like that.
- bildung 11y ago
  > Does Chrome have an extension to control looping gifs? Have a look at Gif Jam: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gif-jam-animation-stopper/bclnijbemellankmoaafepibbboobalb https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gif-jam-animation-...
dvorwak 11y ago
Focusing on the words seems to work for me.
ldesegur 11y ago
I just scrolled the window to hide the images. But I agree, it's a bad idea.
dredmorbius 11y ago
This article optimised for lynx.
nwjtkjn 11y ago
I didn't mind them, but I definitely scrolled until they were off screen when starting to read the text below.
mercer 11y ago
For articles that I find unpleasant to read (for reasons other than the content itself), I either use Readability through the GleeBox extension, where I can just pull up the 'console' and use the '!read' command, or I use Instapaper. I can strongly recommend the latter, as it also provides basic bookmarking, organising, highlighting and 'social' features. But for the basics a Readability bookmarklet (or something similar) should be enough. It's still annoying though (although strangely animated gifs don't bother me)!
elcapitan 11y ago
Because of all the animation and parallax scrolling madness I got used to just scan new articles and immediately post them to instapaper or pocket for actual reading.
afro88 11y ago
More and more I'm getting in the habit of hitting the "Reader View" button in Safari. It removes all ads, gifs, "related content" etc. and gives me the pure content: the article in an easy to read font.
- mintplant 11y ago
  Firefox also has a built-in Reader View but it leaves the graphics in, in case they are referred to by and necessary to understand the text.
- dredmorbius 11y ago
  Firefox (esp. Android), but yes, it's the very, very, very rare website whose native design is preferable to the "Reader Mode" alternative. Among the reasons I suspect Web design is a dead end. But as noted, this doesn't disable GIFs.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
maaarghk 11y ago
I went into the inspector and added the css rule: img[src*=gif] { display: none; } I'm a young people and the answer is no. Maybe if it's buzzfeed and the article is comprised solely of it. But in that case the gifs would have at least relevant content in them, unlike these. I see it a lot in articles coming from people who work at Facebook and Google, maybe it's something to do with all that "fun" malarkey that they're allowed, whatever it is.
- dredmorbius 11y ago
  I've employed Stylish to add a number of default rules. Setting the visibility / opacity of gifs to 0 by default, but enabling them on hover, with a transition delay, works pretty well. For animations which are in fact useful, I can see them. For those which aren't, I can avoid them. Finding appropriate transition delays (usually ~0.3s for on hover, 3-6 seconds to revert) is a matter of personal taste.
  - Nadya 11y ago
    I combine that with Greasemonkey on a per-site basis. The following script, slightly modified per-site, can make it so the page only displays the content area. No navigation, no side-bar ads, nothing but the content. Combined with Stylish to style and center the content, remove images, make the typography easier to read, and fix contrast issues/href colors. I use it for practically all news/media sites to make my reading experiences more enjoyable. It's like my own personal "Readable" or whatever the Safari add-on / that-one-site is called. :) document.body.innerHTML=document.getElementById('content').innerHTML;

Speaking of design critique, are young people able to read articles with hilarious animated gifs in them? Because I literally cannot; a pity because the first section seemed promising.

bcook 11y ago

"literally"?

dasil003 11y ago
Yes! I am not one who misuses "literally", nor am I one who chooses to be a pedant over every choice of words in order to willfully miss the point of any discussion. I literally could not read the article because my eye kept being dragged back to the gifs.
- Outdoorsman 11y ago
  Agreed...the gifs were ill-chosen and distracting...added nothing...not a good fit for the thrust of the article...
- bcook 11y ago
  Heh, sorry. I was trying poke fun at your post by doing what you did, regarding the article; focus on the wrong thing and disregard the the entire article/post because of a small, arguably unwise choice (gifs/misusing "literally"). The article is actually quite good.
  - dasil003 11y ago
    That's pretty meta, if anyone else got that I congratulate you. But to be honest, I did hesitate before posting because it was off-topic. However this is HN, not the author's comments section, so I feel it's my prerogative to comment on any aspect of the article not just the content.
    - bcook 11y ago
      I was hesitant as well. Thankfully, HN is usually quick to downvote crap posts like mine. Lesson learned. Honestly though, I do get kinda tired of looking in the comments to see so much conversation about off-topic things like the color-scheme or background images of the linked site. "Off-topic" is subjective, of course.

metafunctor 11y ago

Yes, the constant movement in the middle of text I'm trying to read is a huge distraction. It should only play once, or maybe when I mouse over it. Does Chrome have an extension to control looping gifs? Back in the day, I was able to configure my browser that looping gifs would play only once. I'd love something like that.

bildung 11y ago
> Does Chrome have an extension to control looping gifs? Have a look at Gif Jam: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gif-jam-animation-stopper/bclnijbemellankmoaafepibbboobalb https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gif-jam-animation-...

dvorwak 11y ago

Focusing on the words seems to work for me.

ldesegur 11y ago

I just scrolled the window to hide the images. But I agree, it's a bad idea.

dredmorbius 11y ago

This article optimised for lynx.

nwjtkjn 11y ago

I didn't mind them, but I definitely scrolled until they were off screen when starting to read the text below.

mercer 11y ago

For articles that I find unpleasant to read (for reasons other than the content itself), I either use Readability through the GleeBox extension, where I can just pull up the 'console' and use the '!read' command, or I use Instapaper. I can strongly recommend the latter, as it also provides basic bookmarking, organising, highlighting and 'social' features. But for the basics a Readability bookmarklet (or something similar) should be enough. It's still annoying though (although strangely animated gifs don't bother me)!

elcapitan 11y ago

Because of all the animation and parallax scrolling madness I got used to just scan new articles and immediately post them to instapaper or pocket for actual reading.

afro88 11y ago

More and more I'm getting in the habit of hitting the "Reader View" button in Safari. It removes all ads, gifs, "related content" etc. and gives me the pure content: the article in an easy to read font.

mintplant 11y ago
Firefox also has a built-in Reader View but it leaves the graphics in, in case they are referred to by and necessary to understand the text.
dredmorbius 11y ago
Firefox (esp. Android), but yes, it's the very, very, very rare website whose native design is preferable to the "Reader Mode" alternative. Among the reasons I suspect Web design is a dead end. But as noted, this doesn't disable GIFs.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

maaarghk 11y ago

I went into the inspector and added the css rule: img[src*=gif] { display: none; } I'm a young people and the answer is no. Maybe if it's buzzfeed and the article is comprised solely of it. But in that case the gifs would have at least relevant content in them, unlike these. I see it a lot in articles coming from people who work at Facebook and Google, maybe it's something to do with all that "fun" malarkey that they're allowed, whatever it is.

dredmorbius 11y ago
I've employed Stylish to add a number of default rules. Setting the visibility / opacity of gifs to 0 by default, but enabling them on hover, with a transition delay, works pretty well. For animations which are in fact useful, I can see them. For those which aren't, I can avoid them. Finding appropriate transition delays (usually ~0.3s for on hover, 3-6 seconds to revert) is a matter of personal taste.
- Nadya 11y ago
  I combine that with Greasemonkey on a per-site basis. The following script, slightly modified per-site, can make it so the page only displays the content area. No navigation, no side-bar ads, nothing but the content. Combined with Stylish to style and center the content, remove images, make the typography easier to read, and fix contrast issues/href colors. I use it for practically all news/media sites to make my reading experiences more enjoyable. It's like my own personal "Readable" or whatever the Safari add-on / that-one-site is called. :) document.body.innerHTML=document.getElementById('content').innerHTML;