39 ms·

Posted on Medium with a massive pointless image at the top and page loaded asynchronously using JS.

judge2020 8y ago
Blog content seems to load with Javascript disabled in Chrome, with the only thing missing being the Clap, bookmark, share icons that follow the side of the article and the account menu drop down.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
romanovcode 8y ago
The whole post is a preface to an ad. What did you expect.
- pc86 8y ago
  s/"The whole"/"Every Medium"/g
pjc50 8y ago
I didn't know Medium did "white label" blogs on non-medium.com domains, but that's what this is. The irony is that people go to medium because it's kind of .. expected somehow? And looks more authoritative?
- lmm 8y ago
  People use Medium because it's the easiest way to write some plain text and have what you wrote look decent in the browser. That's all it comes down to.
  - Kalium 8y ago
    Really? I always figured that plain text looked pretty damn awesome in a browser. Example: https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ I'm honestly curious how Medium is an improvement over that. Are you referring to the technical challenges of hosting content, perhaps?
    - judge2020 8y ago
      Pretty much. Writing markdown with jekyll is too technical or not WYSIWYG enough for most people who don't want to touch a command line, and running your own ghost/wp/etc blog is too much for the average person to do without using ghost.org or another pay-per-month hosting service.
    - lmm 8y ago
      > Really? I always figured that plain text looked pretty damn awesome in a browser. Example: https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ That's not plain text, it's HTML. It's a total fiddle to write by hand (lots of angle brackets), and as you say you then have to find somewhere to host it. But it also doesn't look as good as Medium. If browser makers were willing to be progressive and act as user agents, like they were originally intended to, then the two would look very similar. Unfortunately web browser text sizes haven't kept up with increasing screen density and so we have point-size inflation instead; the complete lack of margin also makes for a struggle when reading (though I do think Medium has gone too far in the other direction lately). Medium's link styling is less obtrusive; conversely code blocks on motherfuckingwebsite-style sites aren't visible enough. Image sizing on motherfuckingwebsite-like sites is also all wrong (they're sized to pixels rather than to anything meaningful). A lot of sites look worse than motherfuckingwebsite, but Medium is an improvement IMO.
      - Kalium 8y ago
        I've always found Medium to only become readable once I use Firefox's reader mode. The interstitial, the aggravating headers and often footers, the utterly useless sidebar icons. Their styling is unobtrusive, but the result is something that leaves me thinking a designer needs to be shot for working far too hard to justify their pay.
  - dexterdog 8y ago
    It's also a great way to discourage discussion because navigating the comment section of medium is an exercise in futility.
- siruncledrew 8y ago
  You could use a custom domain with Medium to get the UI with your blog
  - judge2020 8y ago
    Except sadly not anymore, even if you pay: https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003053487-Custom-Domains-service-deprecation https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003053487-Custo...
    - slig 8y ago
      I say it's great. Hopefully more people concerned with owning their content will move to a static blog generator or even WordPress.
kennydude 8y ago
Also code snippets which are images :|
caymanjim 8y ago
For some reason, font sizes have shot through the roof in the past few years. Medium is one of the biggest offenders. You get maybe 2-3 paragraphs per page now, when entire articles would fit on a single screen page with normal-sized fonts.
- beat 8y ago
  I'm in favor of this. My eyes aren't particularly bad, but I have to use reading glasses in order to read most computer text, and some can get really difficult. Larger fonts are better even for my bad-like-most-other-people-my-age eyes. The tiny text I would have found fine 20 years ago is painful now.
  - craftyguy 8y ago
    There's an easy fix for folks like yourself: most (all?) modern browsers support setting a minimum font size. Jack that up way into the double digits, and stop justifying ridiculously large font sizes for everyone.
    - beat 8y ago
      Sure. Explain that to my mother.
      - craftyguy 8y ago
        Most operating systems have accessibility options to help with that. Consider helping your mother to use those, they exist for a reason. Punishing everyone just because a few folks need help is not the answer.
        beat 8y ago
        It's not punishing. It's inconveniencing at best. But flip the logic. Your inaccessible site, due to tiny unreadable fonts, is punishing everyone whose eyes aren't as good as yours, which is a lot of people.
rayiner 8y ago
Ironically, a great illustration of why pictures are trash for explaining concepts outside of specific scenarios. What exactly is the picture trying to convey? How much time and how many bits did the picture take compared to the text? Thankfully, my eyesight works. But I’m sick and tired of designers pretending I’m illiterate and replacing text labels with inscruitable icons and graphics. Hey, remember when you could change your preferences by going to “File -> Preferences?” Instead of hunting around the interface looking for an unlabeled gear icon or hamburger icon or whatever some designer thinks conveys the same concept?
- lucasmullens 8y ago
  I think the heavy use of icons instead of text is more to deal with small screen sizes. Where would "File -> Preferences" go on a mobile device?
- Nasrudith 8y ago
  My guess is being utterly lazy with localization. They don't want to have some sort of font rendering or anything like that with fixed dimensions or having and then it got cargo-culted from there. Personally I find searchable text far more useful as Ctrl + F "Setting" highlights everything so much quicker especially on large pages. I also loathe the unnecessary javascript everywhere.
vanderZwan 8y ago
When attempting to open the website I was greeted with: uMatrix has prevented the following page from loading: https://blog.logrocket.com/the-easiest-way-to-keep-your-web-apps-accessible-c2b57506cc2a I never blacklisted the website on uMatrix[0] myself so I checked the list of hosts files I'm using. It's apparently part of Peter Lowe’s Ad and Tracking Server List[1] [0] Obligatory "How do you know someone uses uMatrix? They'll tell you"-joke. I know, I know... mea culpa [1] https://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/ https://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/, https://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/serverlist.php?hostformat=hosts&showintro=1&mimetype=plaintext https://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/serverlist.php?hostformat=hos...
- sml156 8y ago
  I usually read HN comments before reading the article, I read your comment and checked the other tab - Ha same thing for me I did a quick Google search on them, It's kinda ironic >LogRocket helps you understand problems affecting your users, so that you can get back to building great software.
  - anarchy8 8y ago
    How is that ironic? It sounds like the problem was self-inflicted.
- pgl 8y ago
  I added logrocket.com to the list after reading about how Roku uses it to track information about user networks, etc: * https://www.reddit.com/r/YouShouldKnow/comments/97an7p/ysk_roku_hardware_is_collecting_and_sharing/ https://www.reddit.com/r/YouShouldKnow/comments/97an7p/ysk_r... They also describe their service: > LogRocket lets you replay what users do on your site ie, they track everything you do when you visit a site using their service. I've updated the entry to just block this instead: logs.logrocket.com If you update your filter lists, you should be able to get to https://blog.logrocket.com/ https://blog.logrocket.com/.

judge2020 8y ago

Blog content seems to load with Javascript disabled in Chrome, with the only thing missing being the Clap, bookmark, share icons that follow the side of the article and the account menu drop down.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

romanovcode 8y ago

The whole post is a preface to an ad. What did you expect.

pc86 8y ago
s/"The whole"/"Every Medium"/g

pjc50 8y ago

I didn't know Medium did "white label" blogs on non-medium.com domains, but that's what this is. The irony is that people go to medium because it's kind of .. expected somehow? And looks more authoritative?

lmm 8y ago
People use Medium because it's the easiest way to write some plain text and have what you wrote look decent in the browser. That's all it comes down to.
- Kalium 8y ago
  Really? I always figured that plain text looked pretty damn awesome in a browser. Example: https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ I'm honestly curious how Medium is an improvement over that. Are you referring to the technical challenges of hosting content, perhaps?
  - judge2020 8y ago
    Pretty much. Writing markdown with jekyll is too technical or not WYSIWYG enough for most people who don't want to touch a command line, and running your own ghost/wp/etc blog is too much for the average person to do without using ghost.org or another pay-per-month hosting service.
  - lmm 8y ago
    > Really? I always figured that plain text looked pretty damn awesome in a browser. Example: https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ That's not plain text, it's HTML. It's a total fiddle to write by hand (lots of angle brackets), and as you say you then have to find somewhere to host it. But it also doesn't look as good as Medium. If browser makers were willing to be progressive and act as user agents, like they were originally intended to, then the two would look very similar. Unfortunately web browser text sizes haven't kept up with increasing screen density and so we have point-size inflation instead; the complete lack of margin also makes for a struggle when reading (though I do think Medium has gone too far in the other direction lately). Medium's link styling is less obtrusive; conversely code blocks on motherfuckingwebsite-style sites aren't visible enough. Image sizing on motherfuckingwebsite-like sites is also all wrong (they're sized to pixels rather than to anything meaningful). A lot of sites look worse than motherfuckingwebsite, but Medium is an improvement IMO.
    - Kalium 8y ago
      I've always found Medium to only become readable once I use Firefox's reader mode. The interstitial, the aggravating headers and often footers, the utterly useless sidebar icons. Their styling is unobtrusive, but the result is something that leaves me thinking a designer needs to be shot for working far too hard to justify their pay.
- dexterdog 8y ago
  It's also a great way to discourage discussion because navigating the comment section of medium is an exercise in futility.
siruncledrew 8y ago
You could use a custom domain with Medium to get the UI with your blog
- judge2020 8y ago
  Except sadly not anymore, even if you pay: https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003053487-Custom-Domains-service-deprecation https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003053487-Custo...
  - slig 8y ago
    I say it's great. Hopefully more people concerned with owning their content will move to a static blog generator or even WordPress.

kennydude 8y ago

Also code snippets which are images :|

caymanjim 8y ago

For some reason, font sizes have shot through the roof in the past few years. Medium is one of the biggest offenders. You get maybe 2-3 paragraphs per page now, when entire articles would fit on a single screen page with normal-sized fonts.

beat 8y ago
I'm in favor of this. My eyes aren't particularly bad, but I have to use reading glasses in order to read most computer text, and some can get really difficult. Larger fonts are better even for my bad-like-most-other-people-my-age eyes. The tiny text I would have found fine 20 years ago is painful now.
- craftyguy 8y ago
  There's an easy fix for folks like yourself: most (all?) modern browsers support setting a minimum font size. Jack that up way into the double digits, and stop justifying ridiculously large font sizes for everyone.
  - beat 8y ago
    Sure. Explain that to my mother.
    - craftyguy 8y ago
      Most operating systems have accessibility options to help with that. Consider helping your mother to use those, they exist for a reason. Punishing everyone just because a few folks need help is not the answer.
      - beat 8y ago
        It's not punishing. It's inconveniencing at best. But flip the logic. Your inaccessible site, due to tiny unreadable fonts, is punishing everyone whose eyes aren't as good as yours, which is a lot of people.

rayiner 8y ago

Ironically, a great illustration of why pictures are trash for explaining concepts outside of specific scenarios. What exactly is the picture trying to convey? How much time and how many bits did the picture take compared to the text? Thankfully, my eyesight works. But I’m sick and tired of designers pretending I’m illiterate and replacing text labels with inscruitable icons and graphics. Hey, remember when you could change your preferences by going to “File -> Preferences?” Instead of hunting around the interface looking for an unlabeled gear icon or hamburger icon or whatever some designer thinks conveys the same concept?

lucasmullens 8y ago
I think the heavy use of icons instead of text is more to deal with small screen sizes. Where would "File -> Preferences" go on a mobile device?
Nasrudith 8y ago
My guess is being utterly lazy with localization. They don't want to have some sort of font rendering or anything like that with fixed dimensions or having and then it got cargo-culted from there. Personally I find searchable text far more useful as Ctrl + F "Setting" highlights everything so much quicker especially on large pages. I also loathe the unnecessary javascript everywhere.

vanderZwan 8y ago

When attempting to open the website I was greeted with: uMatrix has prevented the following page from loading: https://blog.logrocket.com/the-easiest-way-to-keep-your-web-apps-accessible-c2b57506cc2a I never blacklisted the website on uMatrix[0] myself so I checked the list of hosts files I'm using. It's apparently part of Peter Lowe’s Ad and Tracking Server List[1] [0] Obligatory "How do you know someone uses uMatrix? They'll tell you"-joke. I know, I know... mea culpa [1] https://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/ https://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/, https://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/serverlist.php?hostformat=hosts&showintro=1&mimetype=plaintext https://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/serverlist.php?hostformat=hos...

sml156 8y ago
I usually read HN comments before reading the article, I read your comment and checked the other tab - Ha same thing for me I did a quick Google search on them, It's kinda ironic >LogRocket helps you understand problems affecting your users, so that you can get back to building great software.
- anarchy8 8y ago
  How is that ironic? It sounds like the problem was self-inflicted.
pgl 8y ago
I added logrocket.com to the list after reading about how Roku uses it to track information about user networks, etc: * https://www.reddit.com/r/YouShouldKnow/comments/97an7p/ysk_roku_hardware_is_collecting_and_sharing/ https://www.reddit.com/r/YouShouldKnow/comments/97an7p/ysk_r... They also describe their service: > LogRocket lets you replay what users do on your site ie, they track everything you do when you visit a site using their service. I've updated the entry to just block this instead: logs.logrocket.com If you update your filter lists, you should be able to get to https://blog.logrocket.com/ https://blog.logrocket.com/.