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I actually like Hacker News' condensed retro web look. It has a very lightweight bare metal feel to it. I am not really a fan of designs that have "foofy" margi
by Klinky 15y ago
I actually like Hacker News' condensed retro web look. It has a very lightweight bare metal feel to it. I am not really a fan of designs that have "foofy" margins which make the noise to signal ratio higher.
- tzaman 15y ago"foofy" margins actually have a purpose - to improve legibility. Something that HN is in desparate need of.
- telent 15y agoIf I set my browser window to a reasonable width I can have legibility without foofy margins and I can use the rest of my 1280 pixels for something else. Window systems - they rock
- scott_s 15y agoI'm surprised you think that margins decrease the signal-to-noise ratio. I find generous margins make text easier to read - which is why print magazines and newspapers will split text into columns even when the entirety of a page is taken up by one story.
- javert 15y agoAren't columns actually used because it's easier to read shorter lines of text than long ones?
- scott_s 15y agoThat was what I just said, yes.
- javert 15y agoYou seemed to be suggesting that it had something to do with margins, which is actually a different issue than column width. In a newspaper, you can have a lot of columns with small margins, for example. You also seemed to be suggesting that it had something to do with separating different stories on the same page.
- scott_s 15y agoWhen you have one column of text, as in the frontpage of HN, large margins implies a narrow column of text. My point about separate stories is that it is independent of them. Magazines and newspapers layout their stories in columns. I was anticipating someone saying "Yes, but they also show multiple stories on one page." But magazines and newspapers still use narrow columns of text even when they have a single story on the page.
- javert 15y agoThanks for the clarification.