3 ms·
That’s actually arguably the source of the problem in a lot of these examples. In some of them, the bad alignment would look good if the text next to it contain
by jrmg 3y ago
That’s actually arguably the source of the problem in a lot of these examples. In some of them, the bad alignment would look good if the text next to it contained more descenders.
This could be compensated for, of course. For e.g. a single checkbox and text, move the text a bit lower if there are no descenders in it. But that doesn’t work if the text is user input, or if there are multiple text boxes in a list: it’s noticeable (and unpleasant) if the baselines of the text are in different places next to their individual checkboxes if - even if they’d all individually look best in that alignment viewed alone.
And if the text is editable, it’s even worse. No-one wants their text to be jumping up and down while editing to maintain optical alignment.
The problem gets even worse if you have mixed language support, and the text might be in languages with ‘tall’ characters (Thai, Arabic, sometimes Vietnamese - and a long list of others) or a different idea of ‘line height’.
Compromises must be made, unfortunately.
Of course, that doesn’t excuse a lot of the examples here, which are of specific designs - but it does mean that a lot more ‘design’ time is required, especially if there are multiple localisations, than feels at-all intuitive to anyone who has not done this.
- BlueFalconHD 3y agoText based layouts should come back. Search "TextOS" on twitter for examples. If someone finds it, post a link below (responding on a Kindle Paperwhite, twitter won't run)
- avandekleut 3y agoI had no idea hacker news was available on kindle paperwhite. I have one with the 3G networking and experimental browser. Is that what youre using?
- echoangle 3y agoThere’s a browser on any normal Kindle, I think. At least clicking links on my unmodified kindle opens the websites.
- bee_rider 3y ago> And if the text is editable, it’s even worse. No-one wants their text to be jumping up and down while editing to maintain optical alignment. I actually kinda want to see this just once. I think it would be terrible but I’m not convinced enough to write it off entirely.
- zeteo 3y agoAgreed about Vietnamese, which brings up another issue: diacritics. A word or phrase that is heavy on uppercase with diacritics ("BÁNH CUỐN") will look quite different in the vertical plane from one with a lot of descenders ("eggnog"). Even for developers who don't worry about Vietnamese, it is quite common in North America to require support for Spanish and/or French, which can also feature a lot of words with diacritics: "¿Ándale, vamos?"