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Design should not be trendy. It is not fashion. I hope we don't bloat up wikipedia pages with too much whitespace. Getting of borders, "minimal" looks bother m

Design should not be trendy. It is not fashion. I hope we don't bloat up wikipedia pages with too much whitespace. Getting of borders, "minimal" looks bother me so much because they're sacrificing layout for aesthetics. There is a reason why borders exist. It is a line segment that separates logically laid out content into groups. I want Wikipedia to stay the same even if it is not ideal. There is a lot of legacy and "learned" behavior. We need to add the familiarization factor to any UI changes. The amount of changes should at the minimum exceed the accrued familiarization of the UI...the longer the design remains the same, the higher this factor. It is crazy to think that we should not make a change if it is for the better, but there are a lot of people ... millions that use this less-than-ideal UI. There is something to be said about that. Typographically, Wikipedia pages have too wide of a column width. This is a common problem not just with webpages, but with magazines and newspapers. There is a reason why the dimension of a book (such as a novel) is smaller than a magazine and that has to do with how wide of a column is comfortable for reading. We need to look at how magazines and newspapers solve this problem. They use columns. Larger fonts is not the answer nor is excessive whitespace because you're not solving the layout issue. It is just magnification. If newspapers didn't exist and if web designers today were tasked to design a physical newspaper, it would be bloody 80 pages long and full of massive margins and fonts with no understanding about density of presentation. The web needs to be treated like physical media (yes, I said that, fight me). It is a rectangular 2D space that presents text - no difference to my retina whether it is a magazine, newspaper or LCD monitor in terms of spatial representation (not talking about contrast/backlit aspects). This was different a while ago, but today, the pixel density is great and we can almost treat monitors like paper (again, not talking about backlit issues). Web designers today won't be able to design a physical telephone book. It would be called "Too overwhelming" for the user and it would be insanely big in 17 volumes.

andrepd 6y ago
With regards to line width, I don't understand 100% what you're saying. You agree that it is a problem, not because of aesthetics but because of readability. But then how do you propose to solve it? The only solutions are either increase font size (messing up things since now font size is tied to monitor width), or pad the sides with whitespace (what they're doing).
- bonoboTP 6y ago
  Or do columns like a newspaper, but it's unusual on the web.
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  Increasing font size is magnification of the entire column, so you sacrifice the vertical space along with it. Line height can't go lower after a specific point - Arial for example, with font size of 12 points needs to have enough line-height of 16 points. Again, increasing the font size is not the solution. The second point about padding the sides with whitespace causes waste of screen real-estate for no reason other than to give comfortable width to read. This is what NYtimes articles do: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/21/business/goldman-sachs-font.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/21/business/goldman-sachs-fo... So left and right sides are unnecessarily wasted. The solution I am proposing is to use multiple columns. At desktop size, you get 3 columns. At tablet size, 2. On the phones, its single column. There might be better solutions to this but I can't think of any. Columns are how Magazines do their layout of text. It is also part of the international style in graphics design. Counter point: Magazines had to use columns to conserve space and page count. Each page adds cost. In digital media, we don't have such limits. The only down side is the user has to scroll a lot. But we have devised a scroll wheel and most users have this tool.
  - mywittyname 6y ago
    > At desktop size, you get 3 columns. At tablet size, 2. On the phones, its single column. There might be better solutions to this but I can't think of any. This is makes it hard to handle flowing content. Do you add artificial pages to break up the content or does scrolling cascade up each of the columns? Then there's the issue of typesetting being an NP hard problem. Even Word needs a lot of hand-holding when using multi-column layouts because it often produces poor results. I don't necessarily mind the excessive whitespace when I'm reading, because I prefer to not have to move my head and eyes too while reading. But having a lot of content on the page at once, like you're proposing, is really beneficial in technical situations, where I need to move between different pieces of information, like taking notes.
  - 6y ago
userbinator 6y ago
I don't understand why people complain about line length when that really means you should just resize the window to your preference. On the other hand, pages that stay in a narrow column in the middle when I widen the window really infuriate me, because I explicitly asked for wider columns and am not getting it.
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  I thought about resizing the window, but then most websites slap you with a hamburger menu and neuter the interface. The web is such a shit place in terms of design. This is probably why I like reading books and magazines in print. At least the lay out is done by a professional who doesn't have a title "UX/UI" designer and doesn't have a Behance/Dribble portfolio. These people are professionals and they conduct themselves as such.
- oblio 6y ago
  > I don't understand why people complain about line length when that really means you should just resize the window to your preference. Different people have different workflows. Many people I know only have 1 browser window open, always maximized, with a ton of tabs open in it. They definitely won't go about resizing the window for no good reason. I don't think any mainstream website relies on the user resizing the browser window for, what I think are, good reasons.
- vvanpo 6y ago
  Who does that? I think most people browse the web with many tabs open at once, and switch between them constantly. I don't think it should be on the user to resize their browser viewport every time they switch tabs to maintain a comfortable measure. That's the website's responsibility.
  - est31 6y ago
    On Windows you can do it with a single keybinding. Windows key + left or right arrow.
  - userbinator 6y ago
grumple 6y ago
> I hope we don't bloat up wikipedia pages with too much whitespace. Getting of borders, "minimal" looks bother me so much because they're sacrificing layout for aesthetics. There is a reason why borders exist. It is a line segment that separates logically laid out content into groups. Wikipedia is difficult to read due to the small font and large column width. Even with the updated versions (I checked French and Hebrew since I can read them) - the column width is in the acceptable range, but the font is too small to be comfortable on a 4k screen. 14px font is a thing of the past. I see Medium, with their thinner columns and 21px font as much more readable.
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  Use Ctrl(Cmd) and + sign to zoom.
  - grumple 6y ago
    I'm aware, thanks, I'm a developer. That makes the column width wider as well. What you want is a thin column and a large font size, and you can't expect regular users to zoom in.
    - systemvoltage 6y ago
      Ah, so the problem is that the designer used rem or a mix of em/rem units. I personally use Pixels in everything that way the entire thing zooms and all relationships are proportional.
      - grumple 6y ago
        My takeaway from your comment and my experience is that CSS is a mess of a technology. Oh well.
    - TuringTest 6y ago
      Regular users won't have a 4k display, or they would have detected the problem in testing. If you have unusual requirements such as a very high ppi display, you can set a minimum font size in your client browser, just as the web was intended to be used since the beginning. The original idea of the web as a publishing medium was that visualization could be determined by the needs and preferences of the final user, and thankfully the technology still allows for it.

andrepd 6y ago

With regards to line width, I don't understand 100% what you're saying. You agree that it is a problem, not because of aesthetics but because of readability. But then how do you propose to solve it? The only solutions are either increase font size (messing up things since now font size is tied to monitor width), or pad the sides with whitespace (what they're doing).

bonoboTP 6y ago
Or do columns like a newspaper, but it's unusual on the web.
systemvoltage 6y ago
Increasing font size is magnification of the entire column, so you sacrifice the vertical space along with it. Line height can't go lower after a specific point - Arial for example, with font size of 12 points needs to have enough line-height of 16 points. Again, increasing the font size is not the solution. The second point about padding the sides with whitespace causes waste of screen real-estate for no reason other than to give comfortable width to read. This is what NYtimes articles do: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/21/business/goldman-sachs-font.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/21/business/goldman-sachs-fo... So left and right sides are unnecessarily wasted. The solution I am proposing is to use multiple columns. At desktop size, you get 3 columns. At tablet size, 2. On the phones, its single column. There might be better solutions to this but I can't think of any. Columns are how Magazines do their layout of text. It is also part of the international style in graphics design. Counter point: Magazines had to use columns to conserve space and page count. Each page adds cost. In digital media, we don't have such limits. The only down side is the user has to scroll a lot. But we have devised a scroll wheel and most users have this tool.
- mywittyname 6y ago
  > At desktop size, you get 3 columns. At tablet size, 2. On the phones, its single column. There might be better solutions to this but I can't think of any. This is makes it hard to handle flowing content. Do you add artificial pages to break up the content or does scrolling cascade up each of the columns? Then there's the issue of typesetting being an NP hard problem. Even Word needs a lot of hand-holding when using multi-column layouts because it often produces poor results. I don't necessarily mind the excessive whitespace when I'm reading, because I prefer to not have to move my head and eyes too while reading. But having a lot of content on the page at once, like you're proposing, is really beneficial in technical situations, where I need to move between different pieces of information, like taking notes.
- 6y ago

userbinator 6y ago

I don't understand why people complain about line length when that really means you should just resize the window to your preference. On the other hand, pages that stay in a narrow column in the middle when I widen the window really infuriate me, because I explicitly asked for wider columns and am not getting it.

systemvoltage 6y ago
I thought about resizing the window, but then most websites slap you with a hamburger menu and neuter the interface. The web is such a shit place in terms of design. This is probably why I like reading books and magazines in print. At least the lay out is done by a professional who doesn't have a title "UX/UI" designer and doesn't have a Behance/Dribble portfolio. These people are professionals and they conduct themselves as such.
oblio 6y ago
> I don't understand why people complain about line length when that really means you should just resize the window to your preference. Different people have different workflows. Many people I know only have 1 browser window open, always maximized, with a ton of tabs open in it. They definitely won't go about resizing the window for no good reason. I don't think any mainstream website relies on the user resizing the browser window for, what I think are, good reasons.
vvanpo 6y ago
Who does that? I think most people browse the web with many tabs open at once, and switch between them constantly. I don't think it should be on the user to resize their browser viewport every time they switch tabs to maintain a comfortable measure. That's the website's responsibility.
- est31 6y ago
  On Windows you can do it with a single keybinding. Windows key + left or right arrow.
- userbinator 6y ago

grumple 6y ago

> I hope we don't bloat up wikipedia pages with too much whitespace. Getting of borders, "minimal" looks bother me so much because they're sacrificing layout for aesthetics. There is a reason why borders exist. It is a line segment that separates logically laid out content into groups. Wikipedia is difficult to read due to the small font and large column width. Even with the updated versions (I checked French and Hebrew since I can read them) - the column width is in the acceptable range, but the font is too small to be comfortable on a 4k screen. 14px font is a thing of the past. I see Medium, with their thinner columns and 21px font as much more readable.

systemvoltage 6y ago
Use Ctrl(Cmd) and + sign to zoom.
- grumple 6y ago
  I'm aware, thanks, I'm a developer. That makes the column width wider as well. What you want is a thin column and a large font size, and you can't expect regular users to zoom in.
  - systemvoltage 6y ago
    Ah, so the problem is that the designer used rem or a mix of em/rem units. I personally use Pixels in everything that way the entire thing zooms and all relationships are proportional.
    - grumple 6y ago
      My takeaway from your comment and my experience is that CSS is a mess of a technology. Oh well.
  - TuringTest 6y ago
    Regular users won't have a 4k display, or they would have detected the problem in testing. If you have unusual requirements such as a very high ppi display, you can set a minimum font size in your client browser, just as the web was intended to be used since the beginning. The original idea of the web as a publishing medium was that visualization could be determined by the needs and preferences of the final user, and thankfully the technology still allows for it.