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But for most human beings: the icing is the cake. We hurt ourselves by thinking that "content is king" outside our own beautiful wonderful nerdy circles.

exergy 9y ago
Yeah but in certain circles, those non-icing-heavy websites might actually signal greater authenticity. I LOVE college professor websites that are full of great technical info, but look like they've not been designed at all.
- meric 9y ago
  Depends on the circle you're making the website for I guess.
  - kagamine 9y ago
    The recent HN thread about reddit working on a redesign would be relevant in relation to that statement. What circle are reddit users? The site is a link aggregator with comments which many users will argue works well and has been successful because of its apparent lack of styling. Yet many other users complain that it isn't 'pretty' enough. But the point of the site, the links and comments are there either way. One thing many designers and programmers alike struggle with are who their circle/users are and what they want. The problem, if it is a problem, with bootstrap is that it makes everything look the same. It's both smart and lazy from a web-dev's pov.
    - spondyl 9y ago
      Recently I opened a subreddit for a little known Korean mobile developer, just as a fan, and I was surprised that you get zero control over the HTML. At first I was a bit annoyed and confused but then I actually liked it, the more I had to get creative with CSS because although you can reinterpret a subreddit in 1000 different ways, they all "feel" the same. I mean, I basically just gave an elevator pitch for CSS but I suppose my point is that Reddit works well as it is. You might have to do a bit of thinking outside the box but some nice designs are possible. If you need anything more than that, chances are your design is a bit too over the top and should be simplified.
      - heeen 9y ago
        You get a tiny amount of control over the html with :before and :after content and removing elements with display:none and going crazy with complex selectors and absolute positioning
flukus 9y ago
After 2 decades browsers are finally evolving to add the icing themselves: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-reader-view-clutter-free-web-pages https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-reader-view-clu...
- kagamine 9y ago
  Safari had this feature a few years back but appear to have removed it sometime about 3 years ago. It was great, but also removed all ads from the page, so it probably wasn't popular with online news sites.
  - matthewmacleod 9y ago
    This feature has been in Safari and Firefox for ages, and is still there. It’s awesome.
  - hultner 9y ago
    I use it regularly in Safari. I also have an HN-app on my iOS-devices giving me a similar "reader view" and removing fluff from the websites. I find it really pleasing when just reading articles (I've often caught myself going into devtools to remove navigation bars, sidebars, etc from websites when reading longer articles since they distract me).
- treerock 9y ago
  To my mind, Reader View removes most of the 'icing'.
- cJ0th 9y ago
  ctrl + alt + r, btw ;)
olavk 9y ago
Or we disagree on the meaning of "content". If we talk about typical literature, sure we can agree the text is the content and typography and layout is presentation. But what about a game? Or visual art? What is the "icing" and what is the "cake"?

exergy 9y ago

Yeah but in certain circles, those non-icing-heavy websites might actually signal greater authenticity. I LOVE college professor websites that are full of great technical info, but look like they've not been designed at all.

meric 9y ago
Depends on the circle you're making the website for I guess.
- kagamine 9y ago
  The recent HN thread about reddit working on a redesign would be relevant in relation to that statement. What circle are reddit users? The site is a link aggregator with comments which many users will argue works well and has been successful because of its apparent lack of styling. Yet many other users complain that it isn't 'pretty' enough. But the point of the site, the links and comments are there either way. One thing many designers and programmers alike struggle with are who their circle/users are and what they want. The problem, if it is a problem, with bootstrap is that it makes everything look the same. It's both smart and lazy from a web-dev's pov.
  - spondyl 9y ago
    Recently I opened a subreddit for a little known Korean mobile developer, just as a fan, and I was surprised that you get zero control over the HTML. At first I was a bit annoyed and confused but then I actually liked it, the more I had to get creative with CSS because although you can reinterpret a subreddit in 1000 different ways, they all "feel" the same. I mean, I basically just gave an elevator pitch for CSS but I suppose my point is that Reddit works well as it is. You might have to do a bit of thinking outside the box but some nice designs are possible. If you need anything more than that, chances are your design is a bit too over the top and should be simplified.
    - heeen 9y ago
      You get a tiny amount of control over the html with :before and :after content and removing elements with display:none and going crazy with complex selectors and absolute positioning

flukus 9y ago

After 2 decades browsers are finally evolving to add the icing themselves: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-reader-view-clutter-free-web-pages https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-reader-view-clu...

kagamine 9y ago
Safari had this feature a few years back but appear to have removed it sometime about 3 years ago. It was great, but also removed all ads from the page, so it probably wasn't popular with online news sites.
- matthewmacleod 9y ago
  This feature has been in Safari and Firefox for ages, and is still there. It’s awesome.
- hultner 9y ago
  I use it regularly in Safari. I also have an HN-app on my iOS-devices giving me a similar "reader view" and removing fluff from the websites. I find it really pleasing when just reading articles (I've often caught myself going into devtools to remove navigation bars, sidebars, etc from websites when reading longer articles since they distract me).
treerock 9y ago
To my mind, Reader View removes most of the 'icing'.
cJ0th 9y ago
ctrl + alt + r, btw ;)

olavk 9y ago

Or we disagree on the meaning of "content". If we talk about typical literature, sure we can agree the text is the content and typography and layout is presentation. But what about a game? Or visual art? What is the "icing" and what is the "cake"?