5 ms·

12 Months, 850 Languages, 63 Fonts, No Waiting Or: Thank God for Google Noto

69 points by phblinn 5y ago

corentin88 5y ago
This site is amongst the worst to navigate on mobile, whilst the design is quite unique.
- notatoad 5y ago
  https://outline.com/WrPPDK https://outline.com/WrPPDK but a new layout doesn't make this much easier to read. the writing style mirrors the site layout - it's more for the author's amusement than the benefit of the reader.
- netr0ute 5y ago
  I couldn't stand reading past the first paragraph because it's that bad.
- phblinn 5y ago
  Just fixed that. It now accommodates cell width.
  - netr0ute 5y ago
    It's somehow even worse now as the text takes up a third of the screen width and there's so much UI that doesn't tell you what it does.
  - TheRealPomax 5y ago
    Unfortunately even on desktop, this is far from a nice experience... https://i.imgur.com/9oPlfkU.png https://i.imgur.com/9oPlfkU.png Just put the content on the page, with each section left to size itself based on however-much content is in it, instead of giving each section its own scrollbar at least?
  - HatchedLake721 5y ago
    Looking at your source code, any reason you're doing hand-rolled css, layouts, scrollable divs with main content, inline css? I remember doing this 15 years ago. Today this is a problem that was solved dozens of times, from Bootstrap, to Zurb and Tailwind - with productivity, accessibility and variety of devices and screen-sizes in mind. Your website is unpleasant to use and scroll. It feels you're reinventing the wheel just for the sake of it?
    - netr0ute 5y ago
      I make my website hand-made too, but because I found those tools to take too long to set up exactly how I want or they're too bulky.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - andrewzah 5y ago
      I write my own css for my statically generated website (andrewzah.com). The problem with bootstrap etc is exactly that they’re aimed at being generic. They’re not specific enough to do what I want quite how I want it… and there’s the burden of learning them. It’s a lot easier to start with a good, semantic html structure and come up with exactly the CSS that one needs, rather than continually fight a system aimed at no one in particular. Not to mention the bloat of unnecessary CSS/JS that you don’t actually need.
- TapamN 5y ago
  It's bad on desktop, too. If I hit page down, it scrolls the size of the frame, and not my screen. The frame is taller than my screen, so page down scrolls more than a screen full. I would have to use arrow keys or the mouse wheel to read it. I tried scaling the page down so that the frame fits on screen, but page down still scrolls too far, somehow?
  - phblinn 5y ago
    Weird. Naturally it works beautifully on mine with two different browsers, though I'm not in the habit of using the page-down key. I'll have to investigate that one further, I guess.
    - Santosh83 5y ago
      Works as it should for me too, on desktop Firefox here. Site design and fonts are quite nice. People on HN often lament the death of the "old web", but when we do get a site handwritten and with a personality, they turn around and say it is not usable. The strength of humans is our flexibility. We're not computer programs that throw an exception the moment their api is violated and an unexpected input happens.
- Clewza313 5y ago
  The ligatures (ﬆ etc) are also quite distracting.
  - aarchi 5y ago
    I like these discretionary ligatures. They give a text character.
spoonjim 5y ago
I can’t read anything on the web with those idiotic ligatures or other typographic affectations.
- robin_reala 5y ago
  Easily fixed by adding to your user style sheet something like: :root { font-variant-alternates: normal !important; }
aetherspawn 5y ago
Dealing with this many languages is difficult. I recently worked on a project where many of the languages were not supported by Windows, so the locale information wasn't easily selectable as resource files in ASP.NET. If translating content to 1000+ languages interests you, the JWs have released, at times, some articles explaining how they achieve simultaneous publishing in 1034 languages using a piece of software from Oxford called MEPS [ https://www.jw.org/en/choose-language https://www.jw.org/en/choose-language ].
- MisterSandman 5y ago
  Since you didn't link the article: https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/101984287 https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/101984287 This is honestly amazing, never did I think that the most translated website would be for something like JWs.
  - samspenc 5y ago
    This is fascinating, but I was intrigued by why in the world they were using IBM mainframes to do their translation into multiple languages. And then I realized that the article was published in 1984 (!) so it appears that MEPS / IPS dates back to that time and is almost 40 years old now. Is MEPS still in use? I'm assuming it has been superseded by newer technologies, Unicode, etc?
    - tcltk 5y ago
      JW and Swe here with xp volunteering on projects internally! While not being directly involved with meps development ( there is so many different depts and service to volunteer and help out), I know that the MEPS has always been an umbrella for the multi lingual publishing tools. At its origin it was a revolutionary system that helped layout, compositing and preprint workflows and scaled to a Hundred something langs an provided features we take for granted today (typesetting and automatic layouting in 120+ Lang’s well before it was cool) Nowadays it’s highly probable that the meps also encompasses web publishing workflows (now in 1000+ Langs), pdf, Braille and print, using whatever industry standard appropriate and filling the gaps where commercial products fall short ( its a quite unique set of challenge that would stress test any CMS and publishing software) Finally I have lots of friends working as volunteers in the content translation itself and I’m even more amazed by the quality of training, quality assurance process and attention to detail. For instance small teams of translators are geographically located where the target language are spoken idiomatically (even for small communities) to ensure smooth and practical translations. Just imagine having to coordinate hundreds of distributed teams in every single country and region of the world, all volunteers, and maintaining high quality translation while most of translators are locals with only goodwill and no formal training in translation ( sometimes even dictionaries does not exist ) And of course, no corporate backing, and strictly every single member is a volunteer !
sp332 5y ago
This is great! And I like the site design, to. It works on mobile as long as I remember to keep my thumb away from the edge so I don't just scroll the outer page. But you don't mention the connection to Google Noto. I had to look it up. It's a font (family) that has extremely wide coverage of glyphs for different languages.
- hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
  > It works on mobile as long as I remember to keep my thumb away from the edge so I don't just scroll the outer page. I usually don't like to comment on page issues, but since yours is the top comment, just wanted to put down my objection, lest I see in horror someone else copy this design. If you have a "dual scroll bar" problem, just stop right there, your site is broken. I didn't even bother reading the whole thing because I thought scrolling was highjacked and I couldn't tell how long the article was. I despised everything about this design.
  - phblinn 5y ago
    There was a technical glitch involving the URL I gave, which caused much of the format misery, and by the time I noticed, it was too late for me edit the post to change that. So I got to sit all day Saturday as the complaints rolled in, helpless. Live and learn!
BossingAround 5y ago
The font is indeed very distracting to me. Some fonts (and font features) are really meant for print rather than for screen consumption. Disabling the font makes it a nicer reading experience. There is something similarly strange about the writing style of the article. I feel like I'm supposed to sit down, breathe out, make a cup of tea, and delve into this "intriguing, hand-crafted story." In reality, I'd guess most people will attempt to read this story on their phone while on the toilet. Love the effort in writing the book though. Not sure why exactly the author focused on months in particular while there are so many things they could have added (such as name of the days, counting systems, and everything else necessary that would make it possible for someone to implement a clock by using full words from that language).
- bjoli 5y ago
  I usually disable all website-specified fonts. It makes the web more tolerable. I have never come across any web fonts that made my experience any better.
uxcolumbo 5y ago
Serif fonts are difficult to read at small sizes. And then the site uses two fixed divs set to overflow hidden, which causes the site to have three scrollbars, one window scrollbar and one for each of the divs. I think the site design hasn't been updated in a long while. Those things could be easily fixed without having to do a complete redesign.

69 points by phblinn 5y ago

corentin88 5y ago

This site is amongst the worst to navigate on mobile, whilst the design is quite unique.

notatoad 5y ago
https://outline.com/WrPPDK https://outline.com/WrPPDK but a new layout doesn't make this much easier to read. the writing style mirrors the site layout - it's more for the author's amusement than the benefit of the reader.
netr0ute 5y ago
I couldn't stand reading past the first paragraph because it's that bad.
phblinn 5y ago
Just fixed that. It now accommodates cell width.
- netr0ute 5y ago
  It's somehow even worse now as the text takes up a third of the screen width and there's so much UI that doesn't tell you what it does.
- TheRealPomax 5y ago
  Unfortunately even on desktop, this is far from a nice experience... https://i.imgur.com/9oPlfkU.png https://i.imgur.com/9oPlfkU.png Just put the content on the page, with each section left to size itself based on however-much content is in it, instead of giving each section its own scrollbar at least?
- HatchedLake721 5y ago
  Looking at your source code, any reason you're doing hand-rolled css, layouts, scrollable divs with main content, inline css? I remember doing this 15 years ago. Today this is a problem that was solved dozens of times, from Bootstrap, to Zurb and Tailwind - with productivity, accessibility and variety of devices and screen-sizes in mind. Your website is unpleasant to use and scroll. It feels you're reinventing the wheel just for the sake of it?
  - netr0ute 5y ago
    I make my website hand-made too, but because I found those tools to take too long to set up exactly how I want or they're too bulky.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - andrewzah 5y ago
    I write my own css for my statically generated website (andrewzah.com). The problem with bootstrap etc is exactly that they’re aimed at being generic. They’re not specific enough to do what I want quite how I want it… and there’s the burden of learning them. It’s a lot easier to start with a good, semantic html structure and come up with exactly the CSS that one needs, rather than continually fight a system aimed at no one in particular. Not to mention the bloat of unnecessary CSS/JS that you don’t actually need.
TapamN 5y ago
It's bad on desktop, too. If I hit page down, it scrolls the size of the frame, and not my screen. The frame is taller than my screen, so page down scrolls more than a screen full. I would have to use arrow keys or the mouse wheel to read it. I tried scaling the page down so that the frame fits on screen, but page down still scrolls too far, somehow?
- phblinn 5y ago
  Weird. Naturally it works beautifully on mine with two different browsers, though I'm not in the habit of using the page-down key. I'll have to investigate that one further, I guess.
  - Santosh83 5y ago
    Works as it should for me too, on desktop Firefox here. Site design and fonts are quite nice. People on HN often lament the death of the "old web", but when we do get a site handwritten and with a personality, they turn around and say it is not usable. The strength of humans is our flexibility. We're not computer programs that throw an exception the moment their api is violated and an unexpected input happens.
Clewza313 5y ago
The ligatures (ﬆ etc) are also quite distracting.
- aarchi 5y ago
  I like these discretionary ligatures. They give a text character.

spoonjim 5y ago

I can’t read anything on the web with those idiotic ligatures or other typographic affectations.

robin_reala 5y ago
Easily fixed by adding to your user style sheet something like: :root { font-variant-alternates: normal !important; }

aetherspawn 5y ago

Dealing with this many languages is difficult. I recently worked on a project where many of the languages were not supported by Windows, so the locale information wasn't easily selectable as resource files in ASP.NET. If translating content to 1000+ languages interests you, the JWs have released, at times, some articles explaining how they achieve simultaneous publishing in 1034 languages using a piece of software from Oxford called MEPS [ https://www.jw.org/en/choose-language https://www.jw.org/en/choose-language ].

MisterSandman 5y ago
Since you didn't link the article: https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/101984287 https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/101984287 This is honestly amazing, never did I think that the most translated website would be for something like JWs.
- samspenc 5y ago
  This is fascinating, but I was intrigued by why in the world they were using IBM mainframes to do their translation into multiple languages. And then I realized that the article was published in 1984 (!) so it appears that MEPS / IPS dates back to that time and is almost 40 years old now. Is MEPS still in use? I'm assuming it has been superseded by newer technologies, Unicode, etc?
  - tcltk 5y ago
    JW and Swe here with xp volunteering on projects internally! While not being directly involved with meps development ( there is so many different depts and service to volunteer and help out), I know that the MEPS has always been an umbrella for the multi lingual publishing tools. At its origin it was a revolutionary system that helped layout, compositing and preprint workflows and scaled to a Hundred something langs an provided features we take for granted today (typesetting and automatic layouting in 120+ Lang’s well before it was cool) Nowadays it’s highly probable that the meps also encompasses web publishing workflows (now in 1000+ Langs), pdf, Braille and print, using whatever industry standard appropriate and filling the gaps where commercial products fall short ( its a quite unique set of challenge that would stress test any CMS and publishing software) Finally I have lots of friends working as volunteers in the content translation itself and I’m even more amazed by the quality of training, quality assurance process and attention to detail. For instance small teams of translators are geographically located where the target language are spoken idiomatically (even for small communities) to ensure smooth and practical translations. Just imagine having to coordinate hundreds of distributed teams in every single country and region of the world, all volunteers, and maintaining high quality translation while most of translators are locals with only goodwill and no formal training in translation ( sometimes even dictionaries does not exist ) And of course, no corporate backing, and strictly every single member is a volunteer !

sp332 5y ago

This is great! And I like the site design, to. It works on mobile as long as I remember to keep my thumb away from the edge so I don't just scroll the outer page. But you don't mention the connection to Google Noto. I had to look it up. It's a font (family) that has extremely wide coverage of glyphs for different languages.

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
> It works on mobile as long as I remember to keep my thumb away from the edge so I don't just scroll the outer page. I usually don't like to comment on page issues, but since yours is the top comment, just wanted to put down my objection, lest I see in horror someone else copy this design. If you have a "dual scroll bar" problem, just stop right there, your site is broken. I didn't even bother reading the whole thing because I thought scrolling was highjacked and I couldn't tell how long the article was. I despised everything about this design.
- phblinn 5y ago
  There was a technical glitch involving the URL I gave, which caused much of the format misery, and by the time I noticed, it was too late for me edit the post to change that. So I got to sit all day Saturday as the complaints rolled in, helpless. Live and learn!

BossingAround 5y ago

The font is indeed very distracting to me. Some fonts (and font features) are really meant for print rather than for screen consumption. Disabling the font makes it a nicer reading experience. There is something similarly strange about the writing style of the article. I feel like I'm supposed to sit down, breathe out, make a cup of tea, and delve into this "intriguing, hand-crafted story." In reality, I'd guess most people will attempt to read this story on their phone while on the toilet. Love the effort in writing the book though. Not sure why exactly the author focused on months in particular while there are so many things they could have added (such as name of the days, counting systems, and everything else necessary that would make it possible for someone to implement a clock by using full words from that language).

bjoli 5y ago
I usually disable all website-specified fonts. It makes the web more tolerable. I have never come across any web fonts that made my experience any better.

uxcolumbo 5y ago

Serif fonts are difficult to read at small sizes. And then the site uses two fixed divs set to overflow hidden, which causes the site to have three scrollbars, one window scrollbar and one for each of the divs. I think the site design hasn't been updated in a long while. Those things could be easily fixed without having to do a complete redesign.