7 ms·

I wanted to read your article, but the design of your blog really sucks. I can hardly read the text, it's quite small. Monospace fonts are great for programming

by jbob2000 10y ago

I wanted to read your article, but the design of your blog really sucks. I can hardly read the text, it's quite small. Monospace fonts are great for programming, bad for reading. Animated gifs every 5 lines is really annoying. Sorry!

grepthisab 10y ago
I hate to be negative, but am doing so in hopes that the author will improve. I had the same experience. With the animated gifs every paragraph, it gives the feel of being one of those Buzzfeed articles where one has to click through to eleven different pages to see the whole list. Really couldn't read any of it due to the distraction and style choices.
- catenthusiast 10y ago
  Buzzfeed doesn’t use slideshows. All the content is on one page.
Arcsech 10y ago
Not that it absolves the owner of the site, but Readability mode is built just for sites like this. Still doesn't help the gifs though.
- tmaly 10y ago
  Sorry to ask, but what is readability mode and how do I use it. I googled, but due to SEO I get a ton of results.
  - quest88 10y ago
    It's a Firefox feature. That feature alone made me switch to FF for browsing.
    - notduncansmith 10y ago
      Also in Safari, it's the little 3-line icon in the URL bar.
  - freehunter 10y ago
    Many browsers have a "reading" mode or extension that strips CSS and pictures. Safari Reader is built in, Firefox and Chrome have an extension called Readability that you can install.
    - toomanybeersies 10y ago
      It's built into firefox as far as I know, it's on the right hand end of the uri bar for me.
      - freehunter 10y ago
        Holy cow I've used Firefox since it was called Mozilla browser and was owned by Netscape and I've never seen that a reader mode was built in. I'm an idiot.
        Larrikin 10y ago
        It's one of the best things about the browser on mobile phones. I never have an issue with weird JavaScript pop ups or sites that are not movie friendly.
        tmaly 10y ago
        don't feel so bad, I am in the same boat. I remember loading up Netscape to my 486 with a 3.5 floppy
  - tqkxzugoaupvwqr 10y ago
    Readability is a browser feature that extracts the text of a website and displays it in a pre-defined, easy to read way. Safari calls this feature “Reader”[1]. [1] https://support.apple.com/kb/PH21467?locale=en_US https://support.apple.com/kb/PH21467?locale=en_US
- enraged_camel 10y ago
  I found the gifs really obnoxious. Yes we get it, it's an article about Mechanical Turk and the guy from Scrubs is named Turk. Wow! No need to repeat the same "joke" EIGHT times.
manarth 10y ago
I ended up using dev-tools to delete all the gifs. I can live with play-once-then-stop, but the continual repeated movement was distracting.
- lordchair 10y ago
  document.querySelectorAll('img').forEach((im) => { im.style.display = 'none'; })
  - fudgy73 10y ago
    + document.body.style.backgroundColor = 'white'; = can read now
- ulucs 10y ago
  Just press ESC and the gifs will stop EDIT: Seems like I'm years behind https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=825486 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=825486 It's stop() now.
- ehnto 10y ago
  I write bookmarklets for things like this. Someone already posted some code below. They have the benefit of being quick to write, bespoke to my needs and low overhead.
brilliantcode 10y ago
Do you use the cover of a book to judge it's contents? Design wasn't that bad (at least it's not red background with blue texts). OP don't get discouraged by one off comments like this on HN. They rarely add any real value and most of the time just personal preferences. Your content was very informative and valuable.
- davidw 10y ago
  I'm willing to forgive a lot, but that site is atrocious. I could care less about 'well designed' - I'm fine with black and white with boring fonts - but gifs bouncing around all over the place combined with a difficult color scheme is too much.
- pavel_lishin 10y ago
  > Do you use the cover of a book to judge it's contents? This is more like judging a book by its poor type-setting.
partisan 10y ago
I feel like the information in the article is incredibly useful, but like you, I found the gifs distracting to the point of absurdity. I've never seen this show, but is it good enough such that you would have it strewn all over your good information? The font choice and color definitely didn't help. I guess it is the whole signal to noise question in action.
gricardo99 10y ago
I came here to say the same thing. I had to stop reading, the gifs were WAY too much.
cyberferret 10y ago
I have to concur with a lot of the others on here. I thought the content was interesting, and I really wanted to read it all and learn from it, but the colours, font sizes, and oh - those awful animated gifs just resulted in me reeling back and closing the browser window.
gressquel 10y ago
I am on IPad with 10% battery and the last thing I want is 10 looping childish gifs running for 15 minutes while reading
roystonvassey 10y ago
Why the GIFS?!?!!?! Couldn't read for more than a minute. And I am a Scrubs fan.
taberiand 10y ago
Very first thing I did was block the gifs with the ad blocker, they are insufferable.

grepthisab 10y ago

I hate to be negative, but am doing so in hopes that the author will improve. I had the same experience. With the animated gifs every paragraph, it gives the feel of being one of those Buzzfeed articles where one has to click through to eleven different pages to see the whole list. Really couldn't read any of it due to the distraction and style choices.

catenthusiast 10y ago
Buzzfeed doesn’t use slideshows. All the content is on one page.

Arcsech 10y ago

Not that it absolves the owner of the site, but Readability mode is built just for sites like this. Still doesn't help the gifs though.

tmaly 10y ago
Sorry to ask, but what is readability mode and how do I use it. I googled, but due to SEO I get a ton of results.
- quest88 10y ago
  It's a Firefox feature. That feature alone made me switch to FF for browsing.
  - notduncansmith 10y ago
    Also in Safari, it's the little 3-line icon in the URL bar.
- freehunter 10y ago
  Many browsers have a "reading" mode or extension that strips CSS and pictures. Safari Reader is built in, Firefox and Chrome have an extension called Readability that you can install.
  - toomanybeersies 10y ago
    It's built into firefox as far as I know, it's on the right hand end of the uri bar for me.
    - freehunter 10y ago
      Holy cow I've used Firefox since it was called Mozilla browser and was owned by Netscape and I've never seen that a reader mode was built in. I'm an idiot.
      - Larrikin 10y ago
        It's one of the best things about the browser on mobile phones. I never have an issue with weird JavaScript pop ups or sites that are not movie friendly.
      - tmaly 10y ago
        don't feel so bad, I am in the same boat. I remember loading up Netscape to my 486 with a 3.5 floppy
- tqkxzugoaupvwqr 10y ago
  Readability is a browser feature that extracts the text of a website and displays it in a pre-defined, easy to read way. Safari calls this feature “Reader”[1]. [1] https://support.apple.com/kb/PH21467?locale=en_US https://support.apple.com/kb/PH21467?locale=en_US
enraged_camel 10y ago
I found the gifs really obnoxious. Yes we get it, it's an article about Mechanical Turk and the guy from Scrubs is named Turk. Wow! No need to repeat the same "joke" EIGHT times.

manarth 10y ago

I ended up using dev-tools to delete all the gifs. I can live with play-once-then-stop, but the continual repeated movement was distracting.

lordchair 10y ago
document.querySelectorAll('img').forEach((im) => { im.style.display = 'none'; })
- fudgy73 10y ago
  + document.body.style.backgroundColor = 'white'; = can read now
ulucs 10y ago
Just press ESC and the gifs will stop EDIT: Seems like I'm years behind https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=825486 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=825486 It's stop() now.
ehnto 10y ago
I write bookmarklets for things like this. Someone already posted some code below. They have the benefit of being quick to write, bespoke to my needs and low overhead.

brilliantcode 10y ago

Do you use the cover of a book to judge it's contents? Design wasn't that bad (at least it's not red background with blue texts). OP don't get discouraged by one off comments like this on HN. They rarely add any real value and most of the time just personal preferences. Your content was very informative and valuable.

davidw 10y ago
I'm willing to forgive a lot, but that site is atrocious. I could care less about 'well designed' - I'm fine with black and white with boring fonts - but gifs bouncing around all over the place combined with a difficult color scheme is too much.
pavel_lishin 10y ago
> Do you use the cover of a book to judge it's contents? This is more like judging a book by its poor type-setting.

partisan 10y ago

I feel like the information in the article is incredibly useful, but like you, I found the gifs distracting to the point of absurdity. I've never seen this show, but is it good enough such that you would have it strewn all over your good information? The font choice and color definitely didn't help. I guess it is the whole signal to noise question in action.

gricardo99 10y ago

I came here to say the same thing. I had to stop reading, the gifs were WAY too much.

cyberferret 10y ago

I have to concur with a lot of the others on here. I thought the content was interesting, and I really wanted to read it all and learn from it, but the colours, font sizes, and oh - those awful animated gifs just resulted in me reeling back and closing the browser window.

gressquel 10y ago

I am on IPad with 10% battery and the last thing I want is 10 looping childish gifs running for 15 minutes while reading

roystonvassey 10y ago

Why the GIFS?!?!!?! Couldn't read for more than a minute. And I am a Scrubs fan.

taberiand 10y ago

Very first thing I did was block the gifs with the ad blocker, they are insufferable.