3 ms·

Thanks for your candor. I grant you it's not very prettified. For someone with my personality (sounds like not for yours, that's OK), that could be a good thi

by lcall 8y ago

Thanks for your candor. I grant you it's not very prettified. For someone with my personality (sounds like not for yours, that's OK), that could be a good thing: I like text, lightweight and skimmable (though I know elegance and pictures are more popular and pleasing). I try to make it so someone can read a page, and click parts of interest for more details, something like an outline, to make it navigable & useful to different interests, even with large amounts of information eventually contained there. Also, it is generated from my OM organizer software, so each page is not designed separately. And I have to prioritize limited time & energy carefully. Having said that, specific suggestions are very welcome. It also has an email address for feedback (in the small footer). :) Edit: would a sans-serif font, and/or larger, help?

FR10 8y ago
Check these websites [1][2][3][4] (in order) that makes fun of the design in modern websites, which I consider much "aggressive hostile" with cookies and trackers than your site [1] https://motherfuckingwebsite.com https://motherfuckingwebsite.com [2] http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com [3] https://evenbettermotherfucking.website https://evenbettermotherfucking.website [4] https://thebestmotherfucking.website https://thebestmotherfucking.website
Invictus0 8y ago
I am no UX designer, so take anything I say with a grain of salt. I would suggest increasing the text size, increasing the spacing between lines, and maybe organizing things a little better. Clicking down a rabbit hole of links with no sense for where I am in your organizational scheme or when I'll actually arrive at the content I'm looking for feels very disconcerting. The actual content is a monospaced font text file which extends across my entire monitor because I'm browsing in full screen, which makes for an extremely bad reading experience. Lots of hate for Medium on HN but notice how text on Medium has a font that is easy on the eyes and the width of the reading window is not very wide; I would try and mimic that experience.
- lcall 8y ago
  Thanks. As time permits I will plan to look at what you've said. I'd like to balance that with my desire for an "outline" so I can have large amounts of easily-navigable info without creating huge pages. I see what you mean about the text file: I just haven't evolved it into a web page yet, so I can shorten the lines easily enough, but not sure how to integrate it best into my organizer software beyond that. One idea is that, I can export content with the software into single-page (text) outlines of selected subsets of the content, showing the outline structure with indentation (just using white-space for indentation, like org-mode, only farther in, currently 6 space characters per level) or 1.1, 1.1.1, 2.1.3 -style numbering with some indentation, down to N levels at a time. Perhaps sometime I could automate linking pages to/from such text outlines (they are 80-columns by default), when I generate the site. At selected places, or through out. Hmm. If I drop off here for a while or you want to continue conversation later, feel to email per the bottom of each page. Thanks again for the suggestions. Edit: Another way to put the problem is this: I have enough content, with much more probably to come, that I want to make it useful while avoiding the whole "TL/DR" syncrome for someone who would only want to read some. And let them easily choose which "some", while skimming or skipping others, thus my thinking in terms of outline-like structure. I hope that makes sense.
  - graeme 8y ago
    You could massively improve the outline simply by making the hierarchy visible. You can nest lists under lists. Right now it's unclear how many layers one has to go through to reach an actual article.
    - lcall 8y ago
      I have to think about what you are saying. We are coming to the info with different expectations. I'm not immediately sure how to make the hierarchy more visible with this data. The source data has no single entrypoint except arbitrarily chosen, and can be (or seem, practically) infinite in all directions, with arbitrary relationships at any point -- maybe something like a very large wiki with a different internal structure (more at http//:onemodel.org ). A structure could maybe be chosen for presentation purposes though. But the "article" you refer to was made as an exception and is not the way information in my ~"knowledge base" is typically structured. Each page I see as not a document but as an entity with properties and also a set of references to whatever else relates. More about my outline comments elsewhere in this discussion, where I can export chunks of it as individual outline documents, to some # of levels from any point, but conceptually it does not lend itself to paragraphs or documents, as much as ideas and relations. I'm not explaining it as well as I'd like -- again, there is more at that web site about the intentions of my software that this comes from. It's like a big mind map (with future plans to hang more data and code, on all the nodes.) Or maybe each page could be seen as a paragraph, broken into bullets which each can link to details on that thing, if someone is interested. Or it is a set of topic sentences, with contents underneath each sentence or link being the full paragraph, for the interested -- like where I wrote in this discussion about enabling skimming. I don't want to stifle discussion, if you have questions or more suggestions that can in some way account for the above, or improve on it... Thanks.
oftenwrong 8y ago
When sites are heavily styled, it makes it annoying to go from site to site. On one site, text is big and navigation is at the top. On the next site, the text is smaller and lower-contrast, and navigation is on the left. On the next site there is a sticky navigation bar that follows me down the page. The result is constant adaptation. It is like (hand)writing a book, but after each page you have to reach into a big bin of pens and find a new one. Each one requires a slightly different grip, a slightly different pressure, a slightly different lift, etc. I go so far as to read most sites with the provided CSS blocked (via uMatrix) just to achieve a relatively uniform experience. Your lightly-styled, simple page design is basically my ideal.
- lcall 8y ago
  Good to know; thanks.

by lcall 8y ago

FR10 8y ago

Check these websites [1][2][3][4] (in order) that makes fun of the design in modern websites, which I consider much "aggressive hostile" with cookies and trackers than your site [1] https://motherfuckingwebsite.com https://motherfuckingwebsite.com [2] http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com [3] https://evenbettermotherfucking.website https://evenbettermotherfucking.website [4] https://thebestmotherfucking.website https://thebestmotherfucking.website

Invictus0 8y ago

I am no UX designer, so take anything I say with a grain of salt. I would suggest increasing the text size, increasing the spacing between lines, and maybe organizing things a little better. Clicking down a rabbit hole of links with no sense for where I am in your organizational scheme or when I'll actually arrive at the content I'm looking for feels very disconcerting. The actual content is a monospaced font text file which extends across my entire monitor because I'm browsing in full screen, which makes for an extremely bad reading experience. Lots of hate for Medium on HN but notice how text on Medium has a font that is easy on the eyes and the width of the reading window is not very wide; I would try and mimic that experience.

lcall 8y ago
Thanks. As time permits I will plan to look at what you've said. I'd like to balance that with my desire for an "outline" so I can have large amounts of easily-navigable info without creating huge pages. I see what you mean about the text file: I just haven't evolved it into a web page yet, so I can shorten the lines easily enough, but not sure how to integrate it best into my organizer software beyond that. One idea is that, I can export content with the software into single-page (text) outlines of selected subsets of the content, showing the outline structure with indentation (just using white-space for indentation, like org-mode, only farther in, currently 6 space characters per level) or 1.1, 1.1.1, 2.1.3 -style numbering with some indentation, down to N levels at a time. Perhaps sometime I could automate linking pages to/from such text outlines (they are 80-columns by default), when I generate the site. At selected places, or through out. Hmm. If I drop off here for a while or you want to continue conversation later, feel to email per the bottom of each page. Thanks again for the suggestions. Edit: Another way to put the problem is this: I have enough content, with much more probably to come, that I want to make it useful while avoiding the whole "TL/DR" syncrome for someone who would only want to read some. And let them easily choose which "some", while skimming or skipping others, thus my thinking in terms of outline-like structure. I hope that makes sense.
- graeme 8y ago
  You could massively improve the outline simply by making the hierarchy visible. You can nest lists under lists. Right now it's unclear how many layers one has to go through to reach an actual article.
  - lcall 8y ago
    I have to think about what you are saying. We are coming to the info with different expectations. I'm not immediately sure how to make the hierarchy more visible with this data. The source data has no single entrypoint except arbitrarily chosen, and can be (or seem, practically) infinite in all directions, with arbitrary relationships at any point -- maybe something like a very large wiki with a different internal structure (more at http//:onemodel.org ). A structure could maybe be chosen for presentation purposes though. But the "article" you refer to was made as an exception and is not the way information in my ~"knowledge base" is typically structured. Each page I see as not a document but as an entity with properties and also a set of references to whatever else relates. More about my outline comments elsewhere in this discussion, where I can export chunks of it as individual outline documents, to some # of levels from any point, but conceptually it does not lend itself to paragraphs or documents, as much as ideas and relations. I'm not explaining it as well as I'd like -- again, there is more at that web site about the intentions of my software that this comes from. It's like a big mind map (with future plans to hang more data and code, on all the nodes.) Or maybe each page could be seen as a paragraph, broken into bullets which each can link to details on that thing, if someone is interested. Or it is a set of topic sentences, with contents underneath each sentence or link being the full paragraph, for the interested -- like where I wrote in this discussion about enabling skimming. I don't want to stifle discussion, if you have questions or more suggestions that can in some way account for the above, or improve on it... Thanks.

oftenwrong 8y ago

When sites are heavily styled, it makes it annoying to go from site to site. On one site, text is big and navigation is at the top. On the next site, the text is smaller and lower-contrast, and navigation is on the left. On the next site there is a sticky navigation bar that follows me down the page. The result is constant adaptation. It is like (hand)writing a book, but after each page you have to reach into a big bin of pens and find a new one. Each one requires a slightly different grip, a slightly different pressure, a slightly different lift, etc. I go so far as to read most sites with the provided CSS blocked (via uMatrix) just to achieve a relatively uniform experience. Your lightly-styled, simple page design is basically my ideal.

lcall 8y ago
Good to know; thanks.