3 ms·

Not sure what this article is arguing. Sometimes you want to make a slow website that doesn't fit well on a phone screen? Leaving aside the fact that you can

Not sure what this article is arguing. Sometimes you want to make a slow website that doesn't fit well on a phone screen? Leaving aside the fact that you can of course do that, and that if I'm using a search engine on my phone I probably (usually?) don't want to look at your slow site that I have to horizontally scroll... > Modern web design principles are very rarely directed at regular people looking to make a website on something they are interested in. Instead, the focus is on creating websites that perform well: > Don't use too many colours. Write short, catchy headlines. Don't let content be too long. Optimise for SEO. Produce video content, attention span is decreasing. Have a an obvious call to action. Push your newsletter. Keep important information above the fold. Don't make users think. Follow conventions. All that's true to some extent if you're making a product on the web and you have a few seconds to hook a customer before they move on. If you're making a website for enthusiasts in some niche, though, content is your draw and you can worry less about some of these things.

reaperducer 6y ago
Sometimes you want to make a slow website that doesn't fit well on a phone screen? Sometimes you should have the choice of making a slow web site that doesn't fit on the phone screen. A large corporation shouldn't dictate how you present your information. Sometimes you want to put a document on the web without having to pay someone to run on Google's treadmill of changing standards and policies for the rest of your life. I'll take a crappy-looking web site with good content over an SEO-pumped disaster that provided no information. Craigslist, eBay, and dozens of others didn't get to be huge because of their good looks.
- claudeganon 6y ago
  I think we’re at the point with the internet where modern design is inversely proportional to good content. I find more stuff on half-forgotten .edu sites, old.reddit threads, and weird forums than anything “responsive” nowadays. Most of the nice looking sites are just regurgitating stuff from the older, rougher ones anyway.
- modeless 6y ago
  Sometimes you can choose to make a website whose sole purpose isn't to attract Google Search traffic, and that's OK! Not every website has to rank in Google Search to be useful.
  - user_0x 6y ago
    but that isn't really true. google gets ~80% of the searches on the web. that means that if someone who isn't conforming to google's frankly arbitrary ranking system is being censored, to use strong language.
    - kllrnohj 6y ago
      > but that isn't really true. google gets ~80% of the searches on the web. Not every destination started as a web search. Case in point, the list of links on this very site that we're all commenting on. This discussion didn't start with a google search. Google was never involed at all. Not everything on the web goes through google search. Nearly all searches go through Google, but there's a hell of a lot more to the web than searches. As also evidenced by some of the largest & most visited sites driving a ton of non-search traffic - like reddit. And facebook. And twitter. And etc...
    - dhimes 6y ago
      google's frankly arbitrary ranking system Oh, it's anything but arbitrary. It's totally strategic, which is why people pushing back against them being able to dictate web policies is exactly the right thing to do. I now see people link these "amp" web links, where the domain you are linking to isn't the domain you are trying to reach. That's one step away from somebody seeing paypal.ampstuff.com and thinking it's ok and then getting ripped off. No.
  - marcosdumay 6y ago
    How does one do that when browsers have the search and address bars merged? You content yourself with the users that type https:// https:// before your site name and never make a typo?
themodelplumber 6y ago
The author seems to argue: - Small size is not always better, especially when the wait may be worth it for the audience - Minimalistic design is not always necessary, and in fact it's a good idea to take some risks in the other direction, if it could result in a desired outcome - Google doesn't have an intrinsic right to dictate best practices. In fact, the idea of a single set of best practices runs counter to the spirit of the web, in which a website can be a creative or cultural experience which transcends convention. - In addition, on that last item: The web _can be_ more than what it is now. So monolithic standards could easily get in the way. - Google is going to hold an event and tell visitors how to conduct "modern web development." The author is not comfortable with Google's singular focus on Google's preferred standard and mode of web development being The Only Way, so they are going to attend and push back. It's a good post. Even the headline by itself resonates in a lot of different ways, especially if you've spent a lot of time on the receiving end of Google's dev messaging. Speaking more broadly, quite often the blanket design advice given to web enthusiasts and subjective-values-driven creatives comes from the economic side of the web. It starts from "don't annoy your users" and draws a (suspiciously) straight line from there directly to "Largest Contentful Paint". This represents a potentially huge, complicating energy drain for a project that may have a lot of other important design parameters to start with. In another way, it changes the question. The web wasn't designed as a way to get your customers really specific information as quickly as possible. There's so much more to it than that. A lot of HN users are researchers from the economics-first side of things though, not artists, so this may be a bit hard to understand. It's like hearing yet another friend tell you they've signed on for a liberal arts degree. Such researcher-consumers (who incidentally write some amazing online reviews, but that's another story) are also well known for getting frustrated at the slightest delay or sales pitch. Art on the web can end up, therefore, being perceived as a broken web experience, a bad sales pitch for an ephemeral and vapid product, as opposed to something which inspires or changes viewpoints. "I can't even find the site map!" The web doesn't even have to be users-first--quite often what's best is a series of standards and compromises that alternately put creators and users first at different points.
thawaway1837 6y ago
They’re arguing that the whole idea behind the web is that different people can try different things with different priorities and constraints. The priorities shouldn’t be dictated by a single company. I don’t fault Google for what they are doing (besides the AMP stuff). The problem the author is talking about is largely because google is the de facto way pretty much the entire world finds new stuff. If website discovery was driven by blofs and the like wns people then added the stuff they liked to their RSS readers then the authors issue would be resolved. Unfortunately that world doesn’t exist anymore and Google’s preferences end up dictating what all websites prioritize.

reaperducer 6y ago

Sometimes you want to make a slow website that doesn't fit well on a phone screen? Sometimes you should have the choice of making a slow web site that doesn't fit on the phone screen. A large corporation shouldn't dictate how you present your information. Sometimes you want to put a document on the web without having to pay someone to run on Google's treadmill of changing standards and policies for the rest of your life. I'll take a crappy-looking web site with good content over an SEO-pumped disaster that provided no information. Craigslist, eBay, and dozens of others didn't get to be huge because of their good looks.

claudeganon 6y ago
I think we’re at the point with the internet where modern design is inversely proportional to good content. I find more stuff on half-forgotten .edu sites, old.reddit threads, and weird forums than anything “responsive” nowadays. Most of the nice looking sites are just regurgitating stuff from the older, rougher ones anyway.
modeless 6y ago
Sometimes you can choose to make a website whose sole purpose isn't to attract Google Search traffic, and that's OK! Not every website has to rank in Google Search to be useful.
- user_0x 6y ago
  but that isn't really true. google gets ~80% of the searches on the web. that means that if someone who isn't conforming to google's frankly arbitrary ranking system is being censored, to use strong language.
  - kllrnohj 6y ago
    > but that isn't really true. google gets ~80% of the searches on the web. Not every destination started as a web search. Case in point, the list of links on this very site that we're all commenting on. This discussion didn't start with a google search. Google was never involed at all. Not everything on the web goes through google search. Nearly all searches go through Google, but there's a hell of a lot more to the web than searches. As also evidenced by some of the largest & most visited sites driving a ton of non-search traffic - like reddit. And facebook. And twitter. And etc...
  - dhimes 6y ago
    google's frankly arbitrary ranking system Oh, it's anything but arbitrary. It's totally strategic, which is why people pushing back against them being able to dictate web policies is exactly the right thing to do. I now see people link these "amp" web links, where the domain you are linking to isn't the domain you are trying to reach. That's one step away from somebody seeing paypal.ampstuff.com and thinking it's ok and then getting ripped off. No.
- marcosdumay 6y ago
  How does one do that when browsers have the search and address bars merged? You content yourself with the users that type https:// https:// before your site name and never make a typo?

themodelplumber 6y ago

The author seems to argue: - Small size is not always better, especially when the wait may be worth it for the audience - Minimalistic design is not always necessary, and in fact it's a good idea to take some risks in the other direction, if it could result in a desired outcome - Google doesn't have an intrinsic right to dictate best practices. In fact, the idea of a single set of best practices runs counter to the spirit of the web, in which a website can be a creative or cultural experience which transcends convention. - In addition, on that last item: The web _can be_ more than what it is now. So monolithic standards could easily get in the way. - Google is going to hold an event and tell visitors how to conduct "modern web development." The author is not comfortable with Google's singular focus on Google's preferred standard and mode of web development being The Only Way, so they are going to attend and push back. It's a good post. Even the headline by itself resonates in a lot of different ways, especially if you've spent a lot of time on the receiving end of Google's dev messaging. Speaking more broadly, quite often the blanket design advice given to web enthusiasts and subjective-values-driven creatives comes from the economic side of the web. It starts from "don't annoy your users" and draws a (suspiciously) straight line from there directly to "Largest Contentful Paint". This represents a potentially huge, complicating energy drain for a project that may have a lot of other important design parameters to start with. In another way, it changes the question. The web wasn't designed as a way to get your customers really specific information as quickly as possible. There's so much more to it than that. A lot of HN users are researchers from the economics-first side of things though, not artists, so this may be a bit hard to understand. It's like hearing yet another friend tell you they've signed on for a liberal arts degree. Such researcher-consumers (who incidentally write some amazing online reviews, but that's another story) are also well known for getting frustrated at the slightest delay or sales pitch. Art on the web can end up, therefore, being perceived as a broken web experience, a bad sales pitch for an ephemeral and vapid product, as opposed to something which inspires or changes viewpoints. "I can't even find the site map!" The web doesn't even have to be users-first--quite often what's best is a series of standards and compromises that alternately put creators and users first at different points.

thawaway1837 6y ago

They’re arguing that the whole idea behind the web is that different people can try different things with different priorities and constraints. The priorities shouldn’t be dictated by a single company. I don’t fault Google for what they are doing (besides the AMP stuff). The problem the author is talking about is largely because google is the de facto way pretty much the entire world finds new stuff. If website discovery was driven by blofs and the like wns people then added the stuff they liked to their RSS readers then the authors issue would be resolved. Unfortunately that world doesn’t exist anymore and Google’s preferences end up dictating what all websites prioritize.