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The default font size on HN is unreadable, and has issues with contrast, especially with downvoted or text posts.
by Kwpolska 3y ago
The 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.