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I'm always amused by HackerNews being presented as this awful, unreadable, low-contrast atrocity, when it is the most user-friendly, easiest-to-read, most seaml
by NikolaNovak 3y ago
I'm always amused by HackerNews being presented as this awful, unreadable, low-contrast atrocity, when it is the most user-friendly, easiest-to-read, most seamlessly customizable thing I access on literally any given day.
That being said, yes; awful low-contrast sites exist. But it's not, hah, black and white. There's certainly such a thing as too high of a contrast - depending on the person, monitor, and background light.
- JJMcJ 3y agoHN has the better choice. If you don't want stark look of black on white, change the background color, not the font color. Not quite sure what the point of some comments being in lower contrast.
- least 3y agoThe comments in lower contrast are ones that have been downvoted. The more it is downvoted the less and less visible it becomes. It's clever but it makes the site less accessible. But other elements, including submission text like in an Ask HN thread are also too low contrast.
- Kwpolska 3y agoThe default font size on HN is unreadable, and has issues with contrast, especially with downvoted or text posts.
- ben_w 3y ago> especially with downvoted or text posts. I think making them unreadable is the point?
- rcme 3y agoI agree for downvoted posts, but why do text submissions need to be unreadable?
- detaro 3y agoI think it originally was meant to discourage those too (they also get a ranking penalty afaik), since HN should primarily be a link site. It's a bit off though, since it e.g. also applies to the "officially selected" Launch HN: posts.
- lozenge 3y agoThe point of accessibility is that people experience things differently. For the designer it might be "a bit inconvenient to read", and for somebody else it might be "literally impossible to read".
- Kwpolska 3y agoWhy would text posts be made unreadable? As for downvoted posts, eh, it would be better to collapse them by default or something instead of showing them but making them unreadable.
- kevin_thibedeau 3y agoThat's what happens with flagged posts. The point of graying posts is to leave a chance for redemption when snowflakes brigade those who post worthwhile comments that don't align with the groupthink. Enable flagged posts and you'll also find some that never deserved to be eliminated so vouch for them.
- Paul-Craft 3y agoFlagged posts are completely removed now. They just say "[Flagged]." E.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35852495 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35852495
- Kwpolska 3y agoYou need to enable showdead in your profile.
- Paul-Craft 3y agoAhhh. Thanks! Being able to "vouch" for a post that's been flagged is a cool feature.
- fafzv 3y ago[dead]
- arp242 3y ago> The default font size on HN is unreadable Arguably the best feature of the web is that any content can be zoomed in and out as much as one pleases without problems. It does break on some websites, but as someone who zooms in most content I find it's relatively rare. If you make text large you will have people complaining the text is too large. If you make text small you will have people complaining the text is too small. You you make text somewhere in-between you will have people complaining from both ends. So as long as you ensure it can be zoomed it doesn't really matter.
- lmm 3y agoIt's 9pt text, if that's unreadable the issue is with your user agent. I know a lot of browsers behave poorly on larger displays, but having each website guess how big a typical monitor is and use a treadmill of increasing font sizes is not an answer; you should demand better behaviour from your browser.
- makeitdouble 3y agoWasn't this the whole purpose of introducing em to replace points ?
- lmm 3y agoWhy not just do the right thing with points? That way you'd also do the right thing with the billions of existing pages that will never be updated.
- makeitdouble 3y agoMy understanding is that there is no "right" thing. There will be cases where you want font sizes to be absolute and not vary depending on the system. For instance if it's text that comes with specific graphics of fixed size, or there are strong layout concerns bound to it. In other cases you'll want relative sizing and adjust to the user's system preferences as much as possible. That's a decision that has to be made site by site, element by element, which is why em are a recommandation, and couldn't blanket replace absolute units.
- marssaxman 3y ago> The default font size on HN is unreadable There's something ironic about the fact that I am reading your statement, then.
- cratermoon 3y agoThe fonts on HN are a bit small. I have my browser set for HN to get a 125% magnification. The comment text is a nice #000000, but the rest of the text is #828282, which is insufficiently contrasty. Lighthouse flags this, as well as some other accessibility issues. I notice that on mobile the front page will sometimes have tiny text and if I reload then it will be larger. I'm not sure why the non-deterministic behavior there. The line length of about 144 is uncomfortably long. It should be about half that. Line height of 1.5 would improve readability as well.
- FpUser 3y agoI do not think people in general need maximum contrast. What they need is near optimal contrast and there are objective recommendations on how to achieved it. What we often have instead is barely readable light gray text in the name of "clean" design. Well it is not clean, it is moronic. If creators disrespects potential readers that much they might as well present blank screen and be done with it.
- crazygringo 3y agoNormal comment text on HN is fine, but the title and description text on a post page is absolutely awful low-contrast. It's medium gray on light gray. It's #828282 against #F6F6EF, a contrast ratio of 3.54:1 which is a fail. WCAG 2.0 level AA requires at least 4.5:1 for normal text. This isn't subjective or aesthetics, it's an objective measurement. It's genuinely uncomfortable to read when it's a long "Tell HN" or similar. > There's certainly such a thing as too high of a contrast Not really, as long as you can adjust your screen brightness. That's what screen brightness is for. You can always decrease contrast that's too high, but you can't increase it much if it starts too low.
- 542458 3y ago> This isn't subjective or aesthetics, it's an objective measurement. I’m going to push back against this slightly (I’m not disagreeing that the HN contrast is bad, but I am challenging the WCAG ratios). It’s objective, but it’s not a good measurement. WCAG computes contrast in sRGB, which is not perceptually uniform. As such there are cases where WCAG will give better scores to worse contrast. For example, the WCAG math prefers black text on a medium blue background to white text on a medium blue background, which is the exact inverse to what most people feel is most legible. https://github.com/w3c/wcag/issues/695 https://github.com/w3c/wcag/issues/695 It’s the biggest thing I wish would be changed in the WCAG.
- TylerE 3y agoAren’t 99% of users going to be on some random sRGB display, though? How many of us have wide gamut displays that are actually properly calibrated? Looking at the examples from your link is illustrative… several of their 4.5:1 passes are basically unreadable. What I suspect needs to happen is an additional penalty if the background isn’t what would be considered a typical paper color (white, ivory, tan, etc. blues, purples and oranges are right out. )
- zinekeller 3y agoIt's not that it's wrong to focus on sRGB but the computation itself does not use linear gamma (which is not excusable - incorrectly assuming that 2.2 gamma is how people perceive light results on overemphasis on brighter spots)
- UncleMeat 3y agoHackernews has tiny up and down arrows and minimal contrast on downvoted comments. A pain to use on mobile.
- hiccuphippo 3y agoThe size and spacing of the links and buttons could be bigger on mobile though.
- zagrebian 3y agoTry reading HN on an entry-level laptop with a crappy LCD display outdoors on a sunny day.
- ilyt 3y agoThat's more statement due to how terrible other sites are; for example's HN utterly fucking idiotic idea of making any "Show HN" posts text body light gray
- jamiek88 3y agoHa! Until reading this I thought those were downvoted or flagged posts that were grey on grey!
- justinclift 3y agoAre they definitely not? I've been thinking the same thing.
- zubairshaik 3y agoIt's both. It happens for both downvoted comments [0] and any text posts, regardless of voting score. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
- justinclift 3y agoThat only seems to mention the downvoted comments?
- jamiek88 3y agoYeah I was talking about the posts too not the comments but yeah it seems the showHN posts are grey on grey normally not just downvoted!
- vasco 3y agoHN's page styling is simple and stable enough that if someone comes here often and has any sort of visual or readibility complaints they can just fix their own issues by modifying the CSS in my opinion.
- Paul-Craft 3y ago"The user can fix it themselves" is not an excuse for making something broken on purpose.
- vasco 3y agoI didn't say so - I said it's easy for the user to fix in case people haven't. Practicality > theory. Obviously the website fixing it is the best option.
- makeitdouble 3y agoTBF that excuse isn't that bad when it comes to HN's audience.