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I appreciate the no-bs lightweight website sentiment as much as anyone, but I think there's also something to be said about drastically improving readability wi
by lazyload 6y ago
I appreciate the no-bs lightweight website sentiment as much as anyone, but I think there's also something to be said about drastically improving readability with some line-height and font styling.
- jamil7 6y agoI think I'd second this, adding some basic improvements to the typesetting would help a lot and wouldn't cost anything WRT performance.
- HermanMartinus 6y agoI'm thinking of adding a few small ways the user can adjust it. Maybe a dropdown of classless css frameworks to choose from would be good
- qznc 6y agoBut then there can be a smaller solution and this one is not the minimal one anymore.
- Reedx 6y agoComing soon, the http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/ equivalent.
- chadlavi 6y agoIt's so hard to take a site with serif fonts seriously. It would be worth the 8th css declaration if the author added `font-family: sans-serif;`.
- chrismorgan 6y agoI find that a curious attitude; I rather appreciate when I come across a site that uses a serif font. Sans-serifs are so terribly overused.
- mark-r 6y agoSans serifs are overused because they look better on low resolution screens. If you haven't had to use a low resolution screen in a while then you are one of the privileged few.
- chrismorgan 6y agoAt small sizes, like 8–13px, sans-serifs look better than serifs. And user interfaces and websites used to be that size. But for 16px and up, which is what websites of today use, serifs are perfectly fine even on 1× displays (though sure, they’ll look better still on higher-DPI displays, but so will sans-serifs). I should clarify that it depends on the font. Sans-serifs tend to have fairly even stroke width, but serifs tend to have more variable stroke width, and if the thin is too thin, you get a terrible font. That’s a common shortcoming of serif fonts, and Garamond demonstrates that, being quite unsuitable for screen use below 20px, maybe even 24px. Others like Georgia don’t suffer that weakness.
- mark-r 6y agoAre you sure that "websites of today" use 16px or larger universally? HN appears to use 9pt Verdana, which I believe is equivalent to 12px on my Windows system if my math is correct. Georgia is a terribly underrated font. I'm sure it's heavily hinted to look good at small sizes, but even at large sizes it has an elegance that is lacking in e.g. Times Roman.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- chrismorgan 6y agoHN is not a website of today. It’s a website of 2007. Its visual style has not changed at all since then.
- mark-r 6y ago
- saagarjha 6y agoNot everything should be sans serif.
- salmo 6y agoI don't have data to back it up, but I've understood from typography gurus that sans-serif fonts are great for signs, short blurbs, etc. But for long (multi-paragraph) reads serif fonts reduce eye fatigue. I think blogs typically fit in that category.
- discreditable 6y agoThen a https://bestmotherfucking.website https://bestmotherfucking.website
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- MattGaiser 6y agoJust change the font to something other than Garamond like Verdana. It is a nice font for paper, but not on websites.
- djsumdog 6y agoYea, I hate seeing this front on blogs. It's so difficult to read.
- HermanMartinus 6y agoNoted :)
- chrismorgan 6y agoGeorgia is a decent serif that will typically be available. Or just `font-family: serif` which will most commonly be Times New Roman or similar, but will be whatever we prefer for those few of us that set the default fonts.
- falcolas 6y agoGeorgia is a fantastic serif font; it's actually the recommended default font for when you're formatting an ebook.
- notriddle 6y agoIt's why I used Georgia as the preferred font for https://shouldiblockads.com/ https://shouldiblockads.com/ (mixed with a sans-serif "default UI font" stack).
- chadlavi 6y agoOr better yet, `font-family: sans-serif;`
- ver_ture 6y agoScreens have high enough resolution for serifs nowadays, there's no need to strain the eyes with sans serif anymore online.
- ubac 6y agoI really recommend https://write.as/ https://write.as/ for those looking for minimalism with a bit more styling
- q3k 6y agoFWIW I personally much prefer Bear's style over Write.as. Both from an aesthetic and readability point of view. At least for the landing page. Everything fits on one screen, the font size is much more bearable, there's no unnecessary columnization or links to other parts of the site.
- ubac 6y agooh interesting! Yeah I actually hadn't been to their landing page in a long time, totally agree with your there (and feel like it doesn't do their actual blog product justice - to my tastes at least their blogs are perfect, low-key but elegant and very readable).
- packetlost 6y agowrite.as does support custom CSS and JS, so you can, in theory, make look however you want. It isn't quite as light as Bear is, but it's no Medium either.
- basch 6y agoThere's really nothing more minimal than https://telegra.ph https://telegra.ph It just gets out of the way.
- MattGaiser 6y agoQuite a bit of JS there.
- ver_ture 6y agoIt has consecutive urls, relinquishes your drop of privacy. .../140 -> test test test .../141 -> My personal depression diary entry no.3 ...
- 6y ago
- franciscop 6y agoThere is style, it's just so small that it's embedded in the <style> tags instead of an external asset.
- abnry 6y agoYes, styling is a must for me. If I ever were to blog, I'd also require images and latex rendering. But that's about it.
- nvr219 6y agoAs long as it's compatible with browser "Reader modes" I don't care because that's the first thing I tap when I'm reading a blog post anyway.
- HermanMartinus 6y agoI'm definitely going to add the latex classless CSS pack as an optional.