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Realization: A web without brackets is the better web – folding all brackets
- nateb2022 4y agoI don't recall the last time I read something with excessive use of brackets/parentheses. This seems like a solution in search of a problem.
- devidw 4y agoBrowser extension to collapse all brackets on any website. Everything becomes so clean and readable. Beautiful.
- pmontra 4y agoOr replace brackets with commas (nobody would usually notice the difference.) I started doing it in my own writing (or I just drop the text inside the brackets.)
- devidw 4y agoIn those cases with valuable and informative content in brackets, I would love to see more authors integrating the content into the sentence directly or adding a new sentence.
- bluesnowmonkey 4y agoWhat is bracket folding? What kind of brackets is this even talking about? Read the whole page, tried to interact with the “Try it here” section, still have no clue whatsoever what this is supposed to be.
- devidw 4y ago> What is bracket folding? What kind of brackets is this even talking about? The concept of collapsing any text between brackets "(" and ")". Like code folding in IDEs but for the web, mainly for reading long articles blown up by tons of brackets. Wikipedia is a good example. > tried to interact with the “Try it here” section Make sure to enable the checkbox on the right side of the demo saying "Collapse brackets", toggling it will turn every pair of brackets into an interactive element, collapsed by default, expandable as needed.
- DanAtC 4y agoI don't see a checkbox
- bananarchist 4y agoOn mobile, perhaps? I’m guessing the website is not accessible.
- devidw 4y agoThe current implementation of the idea is a Chrome extension. I can imagine non-chromium based browsers to show things up a little broken.
- marssaxman 4y agoCurious: in which branch of English dialect are parentheses called "brackets"? This is a clever little hack which I do not want at all, but I admire the author's creativity in coming up with it.
- devidw 4y ago> Curious: in which branch of English dialect are parentheses called "brackets"? Quoting Wikipedia: > In most English-speaking countries, an unqualified word "bracket" refers to the parenthesis (round bracket); in the United States, the square bracket. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracket https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracket --- Thanks sharing your thoughts. What makes the technique useless for your reading/browsing experience?
- marssaxman 4y agoThank you for the reference! > What makes the technique useless for your reading/browsing experience? It is entirely a matter of personal preference; I tend to read very quickly, and long complex sentences laden with parentheticals are more enjoyable than obstacular.
- wilg 4y agoAs an American, I'm constantly confused by this when watching UK television. I would call the [ a "bracket", and only if I had to clarify would I say "square bracket" to distinguish it from a curly brace { (which is sometimes called a curly bracket) and I don't think most Americans would even consider a ( a type of bracket at all. If I had to come up with a rationale, I would say that physical brackets are almost always more square than round, and a bracket graphic in the sense of a sports bracket is also usually square, so brackets are square!
- devidw 4y agoThanks a lot, clarifying this from the US perspective. Will consider coming up with a less misleading naming.
- marginalia_nu 4y agoSeems a bit like StretchText. In general parentheses in text should arguably be avoided in text. They almost always make the text harder to read. You can generally re-arrange the text to be clearer, sometimes by simply removing the parenthesis, in others by moving the aside to its own paragraph.
- devidw 4y agoThanks noting StretchTex. Never heard about it before. Indeed, it shares the same motivation: Allowing users to decide what and in which detail they want to read at. I would love to see your conclusion about the usage of parentheses respected by authors more often, it makes content so much more accessible and would make a solution like this obsolete.
- wilg 4y agoInteresting idea. I definitely wouldn't use it. I don't trust that parenthesized information is generally omittable, and I don't want to do lots of clicking.
- deafpolygon 4y agoThe better solution is to write better sites.
- devidw 4y agoI agree, but most times we are not the author of the text we read and therefore have no control over the usage of parentheses by the author. I think the only way to opt-out is to alter appearances and interactivity on our side with something like a browser extension.
- amadeuspagel 4y agoWe already have footnotes for information that is not intended be shown by default.
- devidw 4y agoTrue. I've to commit that I'm not a big fan of the classic approach of footnotes at the bottom of the page. It doesn't feel like a very nice fit in the context of a digital reading experience. Forcing the user to leave the current reading position to get the additional information at the bottom of the page, and struggling to find back into the text. But I guess this only applies to the classic implementation of footnotes at the bottom of the page. I assume there are better implementations with a more digital character available.
- gnomewrecker 4y agoI would consider localizing for en-US visitors as many will have no idea what you mean by “brackets”. I would also suggest that you actually make the landing page “work”, whatever that means for your tool, with no extension — on mobile I could not make it do anything at all. Good luck!
- devidw 4y agoAppreciate your notes