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Due to the long line length, I had to shrink my browser window in order to read this submission comfortably. I dunno guys, I kind of like CSS.
by Wowfunhappy 3y ago
Due to the long line length, I had to shrink my browser window in order to read this submission comfortably.
I dunno guys, I kind of like CSS.
- ptx 3y agoOn the other hand, if all sites were like this, we would just keep our browser windows at a smaller size and it would work fine.
- enumjorge 3y agoWe could also all go back to 800x600 monitors. That way, no one would have to be subjected to writing the 10 lines of css to make text heavy sites more readable ;)
- Gordonjcp 3y agoNo, because then you'd have a short line of text that takes up a huge amount of space. Your lines of text on the screen should never be much wider than your hand at arm's length, ever, for any reason. Not even if it's an example of a one-liner in bash - wrap that line to make it easier to read. Don't believe me? Angrily click <reply> on this post to tell me what an idiot I am, start to type your reply, and then hold your hand up palm out at arm's length to the screen so it covers up the text box you're typing in. How big is it? Told you so, didn't I? And it looks *perfect*.
- Wowfunhappy 3y ago> Not even if it's an example of a one-liner in bash - wrap that line to make it easier to read. This is the one case (that I can think of right now) where I don't agree. As part of a larger script, sure, wrap the line so it's not way longer than all the other lines. But a single shell command in isolation is always easier to read as a single line, if sufficient horizontal space is available.
- Gordonjcp 3y agoYeah, but how many times do you see a one-liner that's in a nice little boxout, but there's a scrollbar and you need to slide it backwards and forwards to read the whole thing?
- jprete 3y agoWhen writing outside of a terminal, I wrap single-line shell commands with backslashes and space indentation. The breaks are at logical clauses, as if writing a conventional programming language. I find this much more readable than the alternatives. Often my terminal will also get it this way, from a copy-paste. This also usually helps in documentation.
- Gordonjcp 3y agoIf I have to do it twice I stick it in a proper script, with some comments, so I remember what it all does next time I go to do it. I do this particularly for stuff like complex ffmpeg filter chains where I need to do a lot of stuff to a video file. By simply running the bash script, at some later date I can get it to remind me what it does, and suitably mangle the video file. Then, later on, often weeks later, I use command history to scroll back through everything I've typed until I find something that looks vaguely like what I originally typed, or I don't find it and figure it all out from scratch again, having totally forgotten about the bash script I wrote. I suspect this workflow is surprisingly common.
- wruza 3y agoever, for any reason I have a stylebot rule for stackoverflow that makes the default container 150% wider so I can read teh codes without h-scroll. Also, I don’t always use HN on desktop. But when I do, that textbox is too narrow for almost every code-related post. And too short in general. Thankfully there is a sizer handle.
- rascul 3y ago> Your lines of text on the screen should never be much wider than your hand at arm's length, ever, for any reason. No thanks. Ridiculously short lines are harder to read. Edit: I also resize the reply text box because it's almost too small to be usable.
- Wowfunhappy 3y agoDecades of research show that long line lengths cause people to read more slowly, although it is of course possible that you process text differently than most. "Ridiculously" short is another matter, but by my count, "significantly wider than your hand at arm's length" means well above 20 words per line.
- GoblinSlayer 3y agoResearch also shows that light color theme works better.
- amno 3y ago> we would just keep our browser windows at a smaller size I wouldn't keep a browser at all, I would just read them in Emacs all the time or from the command line. I would also be able to use my preferred visual theme with the entire web, and not have to look at some really nasty web designs from time to time, albeit I do agree that as a game dev (long time ago) I do like when I see pretty graphic design. However, I am not sure how my bank will do and all the other web services in just plain text. Perhaps it is possible, perhaps not?
- master-lincoln 3y agoWhat browser are you using? Mine (Firefox on Android)wrapped the long lines nicely.
- codetrotter 3y agoDesktop browser. Big monitor with high resolution and big window = long lines
- lucideer 3y agoPresumably they're on desktop: long lines don't tend to be an issue on portrait screens.
- master-lincoln 3y agoAh, never mind. I understood it the wrong way around. So you have a big resolution and want shorter lines. Maybe use reader mode which applies some css. I still like this for content centric websites. My favorite blog also works like this for years
- Fred34 3y agoI think the trick is to avoid the hr tag and to center the pages. I run a no css website https://www.pilledtexts.com/ https://www.pilledtexts.com/ and just have the readable content in .txt files where I can add a max width.
- bbrks 3y agoWhat's with the encoding on that website? It's virtually unreadable in my browser. e.g. From https://www.pilledtexts.com/files/nick-land/february.txt https://www.pilledtexts.com/files/nick-land/february.txt > “This can’t go on,†he said. “It’s too blatantly wrong. It’s insolence.â€
- thejohnconway 3y agoWhich is pretty bad on mobile, because the lines wrap before the hard line endings, making a long-line/short-line repeating cadence which I find really difficult to read.
- Fred34 3y ago
- Pannoniae 3y agoWhat do you mean? It perfectly adapts to any browser width; if you want to resize it, just resize the browser window. It's perfectly readable on both a 4k screen and a small phone. What more do you want? :D
- addisonl 3y agoTo not have to resize my window for each website I visit?
- Pannoniae 3y agoThe alternative is the "accessible" mush which is common nowadays - no matter how big your screen is, the content is compressed together into a small strip in the middle of the screen, almost like a phone. No thanks, I'll take fullwidth content anytime over that....
- codetrotter 3y agoNo one will ever need more than 800x600 pixels resolution
- hot_gril 3y agoUnironically, somewhere between 1080 and 2K scaling is probably all anyone will ever need since humans can't focus on more real estate than that. The higher-res monitors all scale the UI to that.
- wouldbecouldbe 3y ago:) I think it's sarcasm.
- sdiq 3y agoSimilarly, I can no longer browse HN on a Firefox browser on Android. I am not really sure what exact settings changed. This started a few weeks ago.
- web3-is-a-scam 3y agoreader mode ftw