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This is such a difficult to read site. I can’t quite put my finger on it… maybe it’s the vertical spacing that requires a ton of scrolling and lets you see only

by abtinf 1y ago

This is such a difficult to read site. I can’t quite put my finger on it… maybe it’s the vertical spacing that requires a ton of scrolling and lets you see only limited context. The word highlighting doesn’t help. I suspect it’s intentionally designed to be unpleasant to encourage book sales.

latexr 1y ago
> I suspect it’s intentionally designed to be unpleasant to encourage book sales. If you’re reading a book preview and have an awful time of it, why would that encourage you to buy the book? You’re more likely to close the site and move away.
- prashantsengar 1y ago
  It is also a lot of work (and intuitive) to publish all the content on a website and then intentionally make it unpleasant to read just to encourage book sales.
  - ssl-3 1y ago
    When the presentation of the website has the appearance of being deliberately terrible, then I (for one) am lead to presume that the corresponding book will be just as disdainful.
zahlman 1y ago
I actually quite appreciate the use of hypertext.
- DrewADesign 1y ago
  Sure, but you could also have a more useful visual design while maintaining that. The problem with the site, on mobile at least, is the lack of visual hierarchy through spacing, text weight, and implied lines because you might only see one or two red chapter titles on screen at any given time. I get that they were trying to stick with a visual motif and the red text does make the chapter titles stick out— it would work great in print or maybe on a big monitor when you could see it all at once. But if you have to scroll through it, I found it pretty irritating to have no way to visually orient yourself.
OisinMoran 1y ago
Yeah the typography is pretty poor. When everything is bold, nothing is. Poor visual hierarchy and as you noted the vertical spacing is bad too. It also doesn't fully fit in horizontally on mobile.
AnEro 1y ago
>I suspect it’s intentionally designed to be unpleasant to encourage book sales. Probably a mix of a style choice that didn't hit, and how pages were split up so it isn't as convenient as reading the book.
stronglikedan 1y ago
> I suspect it’s intentionally designed to be unpleasant to encourage book sales. If it works, they'd be dumb not to. (For the record, I don't think it works, and I don't think that was their intent.)
crazygringo 1y ago
Agreed. Having such a tiny amount of text per page is an antipattern -- scrolling is more ergonomic than finding and clicking a link to go to the next page. And the columns are painfully narrow which impedes readability. Overly wide body text is often a problem people recognize, but overly narrow is equally problematic. It's a very strange experience to have to scroll to read all the text, even when there's barely any text to begin with.
allenu 1y ago
It's frustrating because the content here looks like it could be good. It feels like it was thrown together quickly. If you click the "Chapter 1" it just takes you a page with just the chapter title on it. Seems like they split the book into sections and fed each section into a template and said good enough. The highlighted links are incredibly off-putting, like buying a second-hand book that someone has already highlighted. The readable text is so narrow and small, but the sections are so short that you immediately hit the massive "Buy a Book" upsell banner at the bottom, which distracts you. All of this makes it hard to focus on the text itself. I'll never understand sites that have way too many links in their articles. Am I mean to click away as I'm reading a paragraph? Do you want me to stay on the article or do you want me to be distracted and go somewhere else?

by abtinf 1y ago

latexr 1y ago

> I suspect it’s intentionally designed to be unpleasant to encourage book sales. If you’re reading a book preview and have an awful time of it, why would that encourage you to buy the book? You’re more likely to close the site and move away.

prashantsengar 1y ago
It is also a lot of work (and intuitive) to publish all the content on a website and then intentionally make it unpleasant to read just to encourage book sales.
- ssl-3 1y ago
  When the presentation of the website has the appearance of being deliberately terrible, then I (for one) am lead to presume that the corresponding book will be just as disdainful.

zahlman 1y ago

I actually quite appreciate the use of hypertext.

DrewADesign 1y ago
Sure, but you could also have a more useful visual design while maintaining that. The problem with the site, on mobile at least, is the lack of visual hierarchy through spacing, text weight, and implied lines because you might only see one or two red chapter titles on screen at any given time. I get that they were trying to stick with a visual motif and the red text does make the chapter titles stick out— it would work great in print or maybe on a big monitor when you could see it all at once. But if you have to scroll through it, I found it pretty irritating to have no way to visually orient yourself.

OisinMoran 1y ago

Yeah the typography is pretty poor. When everything is bold, nothing is. Poor visual hierarchy and as you noted the vertical spacing is bad too. It also doesn't fully fit in horizontally on mobile.

AnEro 1y ago

>I suspect it’s intentionally designed to be unpleasant to encourage book sales. Probably a mix of a style choice that didn't hit, and how pages were split up so it isn't as convenient as reading the book.

stronglikedan 1y ago

> I suspect it’s intentionally designed to be unpleasant to encourage book sales. If it works, they'd be dumb not to. (For the record, I don't think it works, and I don't think that was their intent.)

crazygringo 1y ago

Agreed. Having such a tiny amount of text per page is an antipattern -- scrolling is more ergonomic than finding and clicking a link to go to the next page. And the columns are painfully narrow which impedes readability. Overly wide body text is often a problem people recognize, but overly narrow is equally problematic. It's a very strange experience to have to scroll to read all the text, even when there's barely any text to begin with.

allenu 1y ago

It's frustrating because the content here looks like it could be good. It feels like it was thrown together quickly. If you click the "Chapter 1" it just takes you a page with just the chapter title on it. Seems like they split the book into sections and fed each section into a template and said good enough. The highlighted links are incredibly off-putting, like buying a second-hand book that someone has already highlighted. The readable text is so narrow and small, but the sections are so short that you immediately hit the massive "Buy a Book" upsell banner at the bottom, which distracts you. All of this makes it hard to focus on the text itself. I'll never understand sites that have way too many links in their articles. Am I mean to click away as I'm reading a paragraph? Do you want me to stay on the article or do you want me to be distracted and go somewhere else?