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Completely unrelated to the contents: Please, publishers, I beg you: walk away from medium. It's terrible for us, your readers. Set up a static blog, with a do
by pmlnr 8y ago
Completely unrelated to the contents:
Please, publishers, I beg you: walk away from medium.
It's terrible for us, your readers.
Set up a static blog, with a domain, go WordPress, Grav, Typo3, anything, but without stupidly large sticky header/footer and without heavy javascript.
EDIT:
apparently 121KB javascript is not heavy. I still believe it's an overkill for 30KB content.
- captainbland 8y agoI think people are going to Medium because they say it pays from subscribed users. Not an easy thing to do with a static blog.
- pmlnr 8y ago> they say it pays from subscribed users What's the actual money flow from that, less, or more, than 1cent/reader? Does it actually worth it?
- truthwhisperer 8y agoAgree good point.
- Theizestooke 8y agoWho said that? Because I doubt there's any money in it, more likely they're doing it for "more exposure".
- coldtea 8y ago>I think people are going to Medium because they say it pays from subscribed users. That doesn't concern non-monetized posts/blogs like the above.
- captainbland 8y agoI'm pretty sure even a publicly accessible post can be monetised if subscribed users are 'clapping' on it. Feel free to correct me if I've misunderstood.
- dcd0101 8y agoI get the impression that Medium is pretty low effort, brings in readers, and is fairly popular (mindshare is a thing). I considered it before doing github sites (now does ssl easily), which I’d recommend except that managing a simple blog with git isn’t for everyone.
- ghaff 8y agoI don't post often to Medium. (Though I don't post heavily to my own site these days either.) What Medium's good for is that I sometime need to provide links to articles for various newsletters and so forth. In the general population, Medium seems to be seen (however erroneously) as a more "serious" platform than a personal blog. In any case, the people I'm providing the links to seem to prefer I use it for those purposes. For deeper, general purpose pieces, I also just cross-post to Medium from my own blog as that seems to drive some incremental traffic.
- coldtea 8y agoWhat exactly makes it terrible "for us, their readers"? Aside from their bs paywall (which is not a case with HN submissions, those are specific siloed posts) I like Medium -- and surely more than the accessional Blogger relic or badly done personal blogs.
- kome 8y ago> What exactly makes it terrible "for us, their readers"? cpu melting javascripts
- the_mitsuhiko 8y agoDoes not seem to happen here.
- coldtea 8y agoDoesn't happen to me, so?
- spinningarrow 8y ago> What exactly makes it terrible "for us, their readers"? Adding to GPs list ("stupidly large sticky header/footer and without cpu melting javascripts"): also the modal box saying "Pardon the interruption" every time I go to a medium based blog.
- endorphone 8y agoThis is quite the diversion on the submission, and I apologize, but to add to your point Medium seems to be getting worse over time. Which of course it is -- as always it started as a minimalist tool "about the content". Then the whole "how do we monetize this" thing happened. Now there are fixed headers, footers, various interrupting popups, and the real question should be "what's next"? Clearly they won't stop at this. Hiri at least used a custom domain. It's incredible how many authors just hang off the medium domain, committing the sharecropping mistake that has happened so many times before.
- tjoff 8y ago
- looperhacks 8y agoI barely see the problem. Sure, the header and footer aren't perfect, but stupidly large? I also don't feel any "cpu melting javascripts" and my PC is barely usable when I compile anything. For me, Medium provides a very readable experience that is much better than the average static blog. And I don't have to fear a malware ridden page like an old Wordpress installation.
- drivers99 8y agoRegarding the size of the header, in Safari on an iPhone 6, in landscape mode, the header is taking 25% of the screen real estate, and "open in app" is hovering over the text at the bottom. On the other hand, reader view, which removes all that, works well on the page.
- pmlnr 8y agoThis is how the article looks like on 1280x800: https://i.imgur.com/L07L4ce.png https://i.imgur.com/L07L4ce.png Sticky header/footer, cookie consent covering the menu, not a single line of the content visible. You consider this design good? I might be wrong with this specific site on the JS - it only loaded 121KB Javascript. The actual HTML of the entry is 30. WordPress nowadays upgrades itself to minor version - security patches - without touching it, and they release security patches for ancient versions as well. I'm aware there are unpatched sites out there, but they are either ancient - 5+ years - and untouched since, or deliberately crippled. Average static blog has a very decent default theme. But hey, different people, different opinions.
- hiccuphippo 8y agoHaving the blog post outside Medium doesn't guarantee them all looking better. On the other side, it is easier to fix one site using custom CSS than it is to fix a bunch. An on the other other side Firefox's reading mode makes this whole discussion irrelevant.
- pmlnr 8y ago> An on the other other side Firefox's reading mode makes this whole discussion irrelevant. It really doesn't. It doesn't fix it for non-firefox and non-power users.
- scns 8y agoHave a look at "make medium readable again", a plugin for firefox and chrome. Source is on github, could not paste the link because i am on mobile.
- scns 8y agoFor the scripts i'd recommend uMatrix
- Drdrdrq 8y agoThis. I never encountered any problem with Medium posts. EDIT: ...and you can use reader mode in FF to get rid of the header.
- ekianjo 8y agoWhy do users have to do something to fix something that needs to be fixed by publishers?
- megaman22 8y agoFortunately, you can use user stylesheets to fix some of this crap. Holding your breath waiting for somebody else, particularly publishers, to fix it for you is a good recipe for asphyxiation.
- ekianjo 8y agoYou could start by not reading anything on Medium. That works, too. Imagine if you start having extensions for every third site out there. It's a never ending problem.
- s73v3r_ 8y agoMost users don't see this as something that needs to be "fixed". They're fine with it. This is only for those that don't like the stylistic choices made.
- 8y ago
- coderdude 8y agoThe top comment on HN is about low grade webshit complaints. Why is no one taking this place seriously anymore? It's beyond comprehension. My CPU is melting while I wrap my mind around this.
- olalonde 8y agoWhy is it that I only ever hear those complaints on HN and never elsewhere... Are you all still using Pentium 3 PCs and 56k modems?
- pavlov 8y agoMaybe it’s the same reason why you hear professional designers complain when they see Comic Sans used for body text, but laypersons rarely will mention it. A pro will notice things about implementation that interfere with the content, while the layperson often can’t articulate it even if they sense it’s not quite right.
- SamUK96 8y agoParent comment is why I tell everyone to read Pragmatic Programmer, especially the "broken-window theory" section. For those unaware, an empty house can go untouched for decades in NYC, but once it develops a broken window, it is ransacked and squatted within hours. Small failures invite large failures. "Javascript bloat isn't too bad, just another 10KB" turns into (VERY quickly) slow + terrible code that is trash. Small amounts of apathy about code invites other developers to sink to lower (more sh*tty) standards until there is nothing good left. I'm not saying we should all code in assembly and c and make sure our arrays are memory aligned and pointers efficiently used, etc. etc., but we should also not just stop caring about code quality for "productivity" sake.
- bunderbunder 8y agoA lot of people don't even realize that better is possible. I've had plenty of friends and acquaintances observe that browsing the web on my computer is very zippy compared to doing it on theirs, and ask what I do. I hate to then have to explain to them that it's because of a fairly hard-won set of JavaScript-blocking rules and suchlike. I especially hate it because the best alternative I can suggest to someone who doesn't understand tech well enough to manage such a thing is to just keep on trying to keep up with whatever fancy kit Web developers are working with these days. Which invariably means sending ever more money to Comcast. And regularly giving money to Best Buy to replace a computer that isn't really broken; it just can't keep up with the latest fashions among ad networks and reactjs developers.
- gadders 8y agoDanr4 wrote a javascript bookmarklet that gets rid those stupid fixed elements [1]. He posted it on here before. It certainly makes those sites more bearable. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16616682 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16616682
- pmlnr 8y agoFor power users, this is an option, but the truth is: this supposed to be and should be fixed on the publisher side.
- gadders 8y agoAgreed. It's a workaround, not a fix.
- CM30 8y agoInteresting solution, but the number of sites using fixed menus (or ones that fix once you've scrolled a certain amount) may make it risky to use for your average user. And quite a few sites with fixed menus are also probably the ones the user will most likely want to use this script on due to the annoying fixed ads and nagbars...
- makmanalp 8y agoI also loved that era of blogs, but unless the distribution problem is solved, we're probably never going back. Self-hosted personal blogs end up mostly being ghost towns these days unless you get somewhat famous. Medium on the other hand gets your foot in the door and draws your niche crowd and conversations for you with much less effort.
- amelius 8y ago> but unless the distribution problem is solved Not sure what you mean. The distribution problem is solved by the internet. Discoverability (probably what you meant) is solved redundantly by Medium, since it is already solved by Google, and by social news websites such as HN and Reddit, etc. Medium = YouTube for textual content. The only way we "need" it is if we want a feed of algorithmically chosen content based on previous/popular preferences, but that obviously comes with a bunch of problems of its own.
- ryandrake 8y agoUnfortunate that the Internet community (writers and readers) are sacrificing so much to the false god of “discoverability.” For a few glorious years, self-hosted decentralized blogs, services and games were a thing. Now everyone is off re-implementing everything that sucked about centralized broadcast media.
- s73v3r_ 8y agoBecause they recognized that there was some value in the centralization, namely that it makes it far easier for users to find content. Putting your own blog out there into the ether is far, far, far more difficult to drive users to it. And then, if you want to have comments, now you have to invest time and effort into moderation and anti-spam, whereas here Medium takes care of most of that.
- endless1234 8y ago>Medium = YouTube for textual content. The only way we "need" it is if we want a feed of algorithmically chosen content based on previous/popular preference Are you saying this is a bad thing in and of itself? Ok, sometimes I binge on videos needlessly, but to say the distribution/discoverability is already solved by the internet and Google is probably not how most people see it. Being recommended new content to consume based on previous preferences is a huge plus imo.
- threatofrain 8y agoI don't think 121 kb is a lot, as people nowadays demand rich media content, and even a lookup on the native Yelp app can be thus expensive.
- pmlnr 8y ago121KB Javascript. I wasn't counting the images - the actual, rich media -, or the content itself. Once, it's fine, but this is a singe page with 121KB. Forget the in-browser cache myth: it may have been true the jquery got included directly from a cdn, but in the era of compiled JS apps, it's long gone, meaning it's 121KB JS for every medium page you visit. It climbs quickly, especially on capped smartphone data plans.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- foepys 8y agoEven if the site is using a "popular" CDN, which does it use? Google? JSDeliver? Cloudflare? Unpkg? Which specific library and which of its versions? There are too many CDNs and library versions to carry the advantage of caching across different sites.
- jarboot 8y agoI simply don't like it because it's blocked by the Chinese firewall. There's never any problems with self-hosted personal blogs in this regard. But beyond that I don't think it's an unreasonable publishing medium. It's convenient for authors and scales to most platforms.
- mikewhy 8y agoI don't mind the size of the JS payload, the headers, any of that. What I can't believe is how poor the experience is reading comments.
- dheera 8y ago> 121KB javascript is not heavy Part of the problem is that HTML and CSS alone are horribly outdated in terms of being able to provide a modern-looking UI outside the box. Want a slider? Unfortunately the gods at W3C/Google/etc. don't believe in a <input type="slider"> tag. Want a toggle switch? No <input type="toggle">. Want a tabbed interface? No <tabs><tab></tab></tabs> infrastructure. Want a login button that doesn't look like it came out of an 80's discotheque? You're probably going to need Angular, Polymer, MDL or one of those frameworks, and then jQuery to deal with the framework itself. You're already looking at 70-80kb for most of this stuff alone. Want your website to be mobile-friendly? Swipe gestures? Pull to refresh? Add another 30-40kb. Commenting? 20kb. Commenting with "reactive design" just to make your users feel like their comments went through before they actually went through? 50kb. Want to gather basic statistics about your users? Add another 10kb of analytics code.
- pmlnr 8y agoWhat are you talking about? This is a static, column-like entry. Why would a static content need pull-to-refresh? Or comments? Or a slider? Mobile-friendly is perfectly fine with CSS resolution rules. Or with sticking to the basics and letting content flow within boundaries. Basic analytics can be done on server side, or, by sending a single request with resolution, etc. as POST or GET params, or even by parsing web server logs. It won't give you that much, but it will give you basics for certain. (See awstats and webalizer from the old days.) Don't overcomplicate things, none of what you're talking about is needed for an article.
- PuffinBlue 8y ago> Part of the problem is that HTML and CSS alone are horribly outdated in terms of being able to provide a modern-looking UI outside the box. I took such a sharp intake of breath in readiness to fire back a flappy-jowled response that I almost sucked my computer screen onto my face. However, some of your following points are valid and it would be nice if things were a little simpler without resorting to lots of JS.
- pjmlp 8y agoYou want a slider? In pure standard HTML/CSS? There are a few available as Web Components.
- nothis 8y agoI hate the way Medium articles load images. They always stop loading with these ugly, blurry placeholder images everywhere. I bet the JavaScript bloat even undoes the savings in loading time.
- chias 8y agoFWIW, Firefox's "Reader" mode is an absolute godsend for Medium articles. Works great on mobile too. (not disagreeing with your statement at all, just pointing out something that may increase your QoL in the interim if you haven't yet given it a try)
- draw_down 8y agoGood god, calm down.
- gsich 8y ago30KB for content? I count around 8000 characters.