5 ms·

Just in case someone here is not aware of Wikiwand: https://www.wikiwand.com/ https://www.wikiwand.com/ I use it for 2 years now and it works just right.

by m0ck 6y ago

monkeypizza 6y ago
Details on this: This is a restyled version of wikipedia content that looks a lot better. They have a browser extension that redirects you to the wikiwand version of the same page, which is the same content with much nicer formatting. It really looks quite a bit better. Caveats: you have to trust a non-wikipedia site to keep their copy up to date, not to info-mine you, and if you quickly send someone a link, they may not realize they're still sort of on wikipedia. For comparison: - https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Hacker_News https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Hacker_News - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_News https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_News
- est31 6y ago
  On the second link, it fits all onto my screen. On the first link, I have to scroll. Why is this better? Sure it looks "nice" but if I want to look at nice things there are other websites. I want wikipedia to be useful, not look nice.
systemvoltage 6y ago
I disagree, this is worse in every way. Too much white space. Literally every website today needs to reduce the padding and margins by 80% and they could present the same data in dense, single page without scrolling. Also large fonts need to die. I love HN because I can see so much in one shot, can always increase fonts with Ctrl +
- psychometry 6y ago
  You can't really exceed a a certain number of characters per line without sacrificing readability and you can't restrict the line length without padding the container, so I'm not really sure what you think the goal of typography should be. It's certainly not to reduce scrolling; there is no "fold" on the web.
  - systemvoltage 6y ago
    I like Wall Street Journal and their typography, https://wsj.com https://wsj.com and how they write their articles. Not sure if it directly applies to Wikipedia, but I agree with your general point about typography - 80-120 character width seems ideal, any longer and it is tiring. Perhaps we should go with columnar layout. I don't think it helps by adding a bunch of whitespace... ultimately, you're reducing the amount of information shown on a single page which could just be columnized.
- davidivadavid 6y ago
  Yes, because reading walls of text is such a great experience. You "can always" remove all the styling and get what you want.
- cxr 6y ago
  > Also large fonts need to die It's possible that you're browsing on some configuration that makes Wikiwand display "large fonts" (mobile device? even then I haven't been able to reproduce), but Wikiwand isn't using large fonts. In fact, articles' font-size is set to 100% of the UA's preferred font-size, and then they use use a third-party font ("Lora") which actually makes text smaller than your typical serif font rendered at the same size. > I love HN because I can see so much in one shot, can always increase fonts with Ctrl + By the same token, you can always use Ctrl+- then for sites that use a "large font"[1], right? Note that HN is actually screwing things up and using a "small" font. From news.css: "font-size: 9pt"(!). IMO, pulling shenanigans like that is actually pretty disrespectful to visitors. It's why I have to permanently browse HN at 133% zoom + force the rules for mobile devices to kick in. It's only at that point where text is displayed at my UA's correct size. 1. (Wikiwand excluded, for the reasons above)
  - def_true_false 6y ago
    1. UA config doesn't even enter into this. No one the new design is supposed to help doesn't know how to configure their UA or even what it is. 2. Consider these 3 images: https://postimg.cc/gallery/X78M9ms https://postimg.cc/gallery/X78M9ms 2 of them have normal sized text and 1 has a text that looks good on the designer's macbook. As it happens, the latter is borderline unusable -- an article not longer than a handful of tweets doesn't even fit on one page. P.S. Until today, I genuinely thought that wikiwand was some kind of ad farm, from seeing it pop up in google search.
    - cxr 6y ago
      > 2 of them have normal sized text and 1 has [...] No, one of them (Wikiwand) has "normal sized text", and the other two have objectively shrunken text. This is not a matter of opinion; this is fact. Both HN and Wikipedia, like I mentioned before, are overriding the text size in their stylesheets to force the main body text to display at a size smaller than the UA preferred size. Wikiwand is using the correct font scaling. If you have a problem with the size of the text on the Wikiwand page, it's because your UA is configured to show text at a size that you have a problem with. It's up to you to deal with that. For an example of what properly-sized text looks like, have a look at http://cr.yp.to http://cr.yp.to or http://danluu.com http://danluu.com. These sites are not sending any "designer" styles to your browser (aside from the 8 lines of CSS for the latter, which don't affect the text size). Besides that, your criticism of Wikiwand's design is dominated by details about its layout and not its text size. But I didn't say Wikiwand was the best layout in the world; it's not, and I don't even use it. But it's still not worse than Wikipedia's overly-designed Vector skin.
- maple3142 6y ago
  I always found that reading a wall of English texts are painful when the font is small, and there are no enough spacing between them.
colinmhayes 6y ago
Wikiwand has been great for me, but the table formatting is atrocious. Really like that the side bar is a table of contents.

Just in case someone here is not aware of Wikiwand: https://www.wikiwand.com/ https://www.wikiwand.com/ I use it for 2 years now and it works just right.

by m0ck 6y ago

Just in case someone here is not aware of Wikiwand: https://www.wikiwand.com/ https://www.wikiwand.com/ I use it for 2 years now and it works just right.

monkeypizza 6y ago

Details on this: This is a restyled version of wikipedia content that looks a lot better. They have a browser extension that redirects you to the wikiwand version of the same page, which is the same content with much nicer formatting. It really looks quite a bit better. Caveats: you have to trust a non-wikipedia site to keep their copy up to date, not to info-mine you, and if you quickly send someone a link, they may not realize they're still sort of on wikipedia. For comparison: - https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Hacker_News https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Hacker_News - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_News https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_News

est31 6y ago
On the second link, it fits all onto my screen. On the first link, I have to scroll. Why is this better? Sure it looks "nice" but if I want to look at nice things there are other websites. I want wikipedia to be useful, not look nice.

systemvoltage 6y ago

I disagree, this is worse in every way. Too much white space. Literally every website today needs to reduce the padding and margins by 80% and they could present the same data in dense, single page without scrolling. Also large fonts need to die. I love HN because I can see so much in one shot, can always increase fonts with Ctrl +

psychometry 6y ago
You can't really exceed a a certain number of characters per line without sacrificing readability and you can't restrict the line length without padding the container, so I'm not really sure what you think the goal of typography should be. It's certainly not to reduce scrolling; there is no "fold" on the web.
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  I like Wall Street Journal and their typography, https://wsj.com https://wsj.com and how they write their articles. Not sure if it directly applies to Wikipedia, but I agree with your general point about typography - 80-120 character width seems ideal, any longer and it is tiring. Perhaps we should go with columnar layout. I don't think it helps by adding a bunch of whitespace... ultimately, you're reducing the amount of information shown on a single page which could just be columnized.
davidivadavid 6y ago
Yes, because reading walls of text is such a great experience. You "can always" remove all the styling and get what you want.
cxr 6y ago
> Also large fonts need to die It's possible that you're browsing on some configuration that makes Wikiwand display "large fonts" (mobile device? even then I haven't been able to reproduce), but Wikiwand isn't using large fonts. In fact, articles' font-size is set to 100% of the UA's preferred font-size, and then they use use a third-party font ("Lora") which actually makes text smaller than your typical serif font rendered at the same size. > I love HN because I can see so much in one shot, can always increase fonts with Ctrl + By the same token, you can always use Ctrl+- then for sites that use a "large font"[1], right? Note that HN is actually screwing things up and using a "small" font. From news.css: "font-size: 9pt"(!). IMO, pulling shenanigans like that is actually pretty disrespectful to visitors. It's why I have to permanently browse HN at 133% zoom + force the rules for mobile devices to kick in. It's only at that point where text is displayed at my UA's correct size. 1. (Wikiwand excluded, for the reasons above)
- def_true_false 6y ago
  1. UA config doesn't even enter into this. No one the new design is supposed to help doesn't know how to configure their UA or even what it is. 2. Consider these 3 images: https://postimg.cc/gallery/X78M9ms https://postimg.cc/gallery/X78M9ms 2 of them have normal sized text and 1 has a text that looks good on the designer's macbook. As it happens, the latter is borderline unusable -- an article not longer than a handful of tweets doesn't even fit on one page. P.S. Until today, I genuinely thought that wikiwand was some kind of ad farm, from seeing it pop up in google search.
  - cxr 6y ago
    > 2 of them have normal sized text and 1 has [...] No, one of them (Wikiwand) has "normal sized text", and the other two have objectively shrunken text. This is not a matter of opinion; this is fact. Both HN and Wikipedia, like I mentioned before, are overriding the text size in their stylesheets to force the main body text to display at a size smaller than the UA preferred size. Wikiwand is using the correct font scaling. If you have a problem with the size of the text on the Wikiwand page, it's because your UA is configured to show text at a size that you have a problem with. It's up to you to deal with that. For an example of what properly-sized text looks like, have a look at http://cr.yp.to http://cr.yp.to or http://danluu.com http://danluu.com. These sites are not sending any "designer" styles to your browser (aside from the 8 lines of CSS for the latter, which don't affect the text size). Besides that, your criticism of Wikiwand's design is dominated by details about its layout and not its text size. But I didn't say Wikiwand was the best layout in the world; it's not, and I don't even use it. But it's still not worse than Wikipedia's overly-designed Vector skin.
maple3142 6y ago
I always found that reading a wall of English texts are painful when the font is small, and there are no enough spacing between them.

colinmhayes 6y ago

Wikiwand has been great for me, but the table formatting is atrocious. Really like that the side bar is a table of contents.