6 ms·

I'm a little perplexed as to why professors and other academic staff have routinely hard to read websites. Yes I'm aware I can bump up the font size, but especi

I'm a little perplexed as to why professors and other academic staff have routinely hard to read websites. Yes I'm aware I can bump up the font size, but especially on mobile that gets annoying. It's one thing if they don't have a stylesheet what so ever, it's a fully another thing to intentionally make things hard to read: font-family: arial,verdana,sans-serif; font-size: small; From an article that expressly advocates not making things hard to read: "Avoid excessive parenthesized remarks as they make the text hard to read;"

taopai 3y ago
> Avoid excessive parenthesized remarks as they make the text hard to read chuckles nervously in Lisp
- stirfish 3y ago
  *chuckles nervouthly* Maybe it's the nesting that's the problem? Like, refactor it out into its own function/paragraph?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
coliveira 3y ago
Because they have better things to do than tinkering with the latest HTML technology.
- skilled 3y ago
  font-size: 1.2rem; that is considered the latest HTML technology?
  - DistractionRect 3y ago
    A lot of sites haven't kept up with best practices. Even HN doesn't (I'm on mobile so I can't double check, but last I did HN uses "pt").
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
layer8 3y ago
"Internet Explorer is a popular web browser. The current version number is 5.0." might explain it.
- 8organicbits 3y ago
  Hmm. IE 5.0 and IE 5.5 were released in 1999, so perhaps the first version was written then. I also see a citation from 2015, which is a strong signal this was edited in or after 2015. Font size looks fine to me on Firefox/Android.
  - layer8 3y ago
    The first version on the Internet Archive is from 2001, where the design made sense more or less, and it hasn’t changed much since then. https://web.archive.org/web/20011225094629/https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs/etc/writing-bugs.html https://web.archive.org/web/20011225094629/https://www.cs.co...
- cratermoon 3y ago
  Yes and the doctype is "<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN">", and there's inline style at "<body bgcolor=white>". Even though the footer says "last updated 2021" and there are links dated 2015, I suspect the page is otherwise unchanged from its initial late-90s/early 2000s design.
Solvency 3y ago
You're saying this on a website that I need to manually zoom in to 200% in order to remotely read the text.
- Someone1234 3y ago
  HN uses a font size of 14px, that's only slightly smaller than most browser's baseline of 16px (Vs. 12px for small). By any chance are you reading it on a 4K display? In my opinion, HN and most websites, shouldn't be setting a baseline font size at all (least of all in pixels). Medium/default should be the baseline then large/larger etc should be used as-needed.
  - siriusfeynman 3y ago
    it's smaller than most other websites and for me on a 1080p display top level comments don't wrap until ~200 characters at the default zoom level which makes it even worse edit: also for me the font size is set to 12, not 14
- Solvency 3y ago
  - Too small on a 13" MacBook Pro (2019) - Too small on a 15" MBP (2019) - Too small on a 32" 4K BenQ desktop monitor on Windows. Verdict: too small.
mrbabbage 3y ago
the font size isn't ideal, but I find the line width to be a far larger problem. a traditional book will have around 70 characters per line [1]. by contrast, on my screen (13" M1 macbook air at default screen resolution and browser zoom), suggestion 5 has 231 (!!) characters on its first line. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_length https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_length
bjornasm 3y ago
I have grown to like it. I found it really perplexing like you but now I view it as they just want to present their information in the rawest, most simple way possible. I was been inspired by it when I made my personal website, however I added some responsiveness etc to increase the usability a bit.
eviks 3y ago
Those who don't know...
rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y ago
It's because they spend most of their days reading PDFs, so they make websites look like PDFs on their screens then publish it.

taopai 3y ago

> Avoid excessive parenthesized remarks as they make the text hard to read chuckles nervously in Lisp

stirfish 3y ago
*chuckles nervouthly* Maybe it's the nesting that's the problem? Like, refactor it out into its own function/paragraph?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

coliveira 3y ago

Because they have better things to do than tinkering with the latest HTML technology.

skilled 3y ago
font-size: 1.2rem; that is considered the latest HTML technology?
- DistractionRect 3y ago
  A lot of sites haven't kept up with best practices. Even HN doesn't (I'm on mobile so I can't double check, but last I did HN uses "pt").
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

layer8 3y ago

"Internet Explorer is a popular web browser. The current version number is 5.0." might explain it.

8organicbits 3y ago
Hmm. IE 5.0 and IE 5.5 were released in 1999, so perhaps the first version was written then. I also see a citation from 2015, which is a strong signal this was edited in or after 2015. Font size looks fine to me on Firefox/Android.
- layer8 3y ago
  The first version on the Internet Archive is from 2001, where the design made sense more or less, and it hasn’t changed much since then. https://web.archive.org/web/20011225094629/https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs/etc/writing-bugs.html https://web.archive.org/web/20011225094629/https://www.cs.co...
cratermoon 3y ago
Yes and the doctype is "<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN">", and there's inline style at "<body bgcolor=white>". Even though the footer says "last updated 2021" and there are links dated 2015, I suspect the page is otherwise unchanged from its initial late-90s/early 2000s design.

Solvency 3y ago

You're saying this on a website that I need to manually zoom in to 200% in order to remotely read the text.

Someone1234 3y ago
HN uses a font size of 14px, that's only slightly smaller than most browser's baseline of 16px (Vs. 12px for small). By any chance are you reading it on a 4K display? In my opinion, HN and most websites, shouldn't be setting a baseline font size at all (least of all in pixels). Medium/default should be the baseline then large/larger etc should be used as-needed.
- siriusfeynman 3y ago
  it's smaller than most other websites and for me on a 1080p display top level comments don't wrap until ~200 characters at the default zoom level which makes it even worse edit: also for me the font size is set to 12, not 14
Solvency 3y ago
- Too small on a 13" MacBook Pro (2019) - Too small on a 15" MBP (2019) - Too small on a 32" 4K BenQ desktop monitor on Windows. Verdict: too small.

mrbabbage 3y ago

the font size isn't ideal, but I find the line width to be a far larger problem. a traditional book will have around 70 characters per line [1]. by contrast, on my screen (13" M1 macbook air at default screen resolution and browser zoom), suggestion 5 has 231 (!!) characters on its first line. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_length https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_length

bjornasm 3y ago

I have grown to like it. I found it really perplexing like you but now I view it as they just want to present their information in the rawest, most simple way possible. I was been inspired by it when I made my personal website, however I added some responsiveness etc to increase the usability a bit.

eviks 3y ago

Those who don't know...

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y ago

It's because they spend most of their days reading PDFs, so they make websites look like PDFs on their screens then publish it.