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Personally, I do not want to see a sidebar, taking up a third of the screen, on my smartphone. I find the example that he considers fine quite unusable and woul

Personally, I do not want to see a sidebar, taking up a third of the screen, on my smartphone. I find the example that he considers fine quite unusable and would not read that on a smartphone.

neilparikh11 14y ago
Wouldn't that make you think that we should revisit the sidebar to find a more effective way to navigate rather than simply telling the user that you shouldn't have any options?
- masklinn 14y ago
  > Wouldn't that make you think that we should revisit the sidebar No. The sidebar works and is effective when there's significant horizontal space, such as on a desktop screen with ample horizontal space. It just does not work when horizontal space is a premium, as is the case on smartphones (which generally barely fit a standard typographic line length at readable size in portrait)
  - lovamova 14y ago
    Sidebars don't add anything necessary to the user experience. It's just clutter. If there's enough horizontal space, I suggest using columns instead, they fit the purpose better.
    - mnicole 14y ago
      > Sidebars don't add anything necessary to the user experience. It's just clutter. This is a really weird argument; sidebars are preferable to a lot of other patterns depending on the site and doesn't at all mean the content is less important than anything else on the page.
      - lovamova 14y ago
        Apple hardly use any sidebars (web/iOS/OS X). Even in the new iTunes they removed the sidebars. I can go on with the examples.
        mnicole 14y ago
        Can't tell if you're trolling at this point or if we're both misunderstanding each other. http://store.apple.com/us http://store.apple.com/us, the iTunes store and the App Store all rely heavily on sidebar navigation. Vertical content containers save space in addition to giving the user an area of the page that is generally relevant to what they're on the site for (shopping carts, advanced search, related content/archives, account information) without needlessly cluttering the more important horizontal space.
        lovamova 14y ago
        Neither. It's just that different things needs different design approaches. An online store has nothing in common with a presentation site. Just like a real store needs shelves, an online store needs to group the information somehow. Sidebars aren't the only way to group information. I bet Apple will redesign its online store in the near future.
      - CamperBob2 14y ago
        This is a really weird argument No, it's pretty much on target. Sidebars need to go away.
    - anonymouz 14y ago
      As many people, I find a long text (like a blog post sometimes is) easiest to read if it is about ~80 characters wide. My laptop has a 16:9 display, and I usually have my browser in full-screen mode with tabs in a sidebar on the left. This leaves plenty of space for a website to put a sidebar and text side by side, so I don't really mind it on the desktop. Obviously, if the sidebar does not add much (like on many blogs), I wouldn't mind if it goes away entirely. edit: Columns seem to be problematic when there is no well-defined "end-of-page", as on paper.
LaGrange 14y ago
Double-tap on the text. Like the article says. It really does work, quite often way better than attempts at responsive design. And then there's the reader functionality in my phone. The issue isn't, I think, responsive design itself, it's that it's not so trivial to make it work better than device-based workarounds.
- shawnjan8 14y ago
  But why require someone to double tap on the text? On a blog like this, the primary action of the user is to read the article. It's bad user experience to require an extra unnecessary step to do the primary action.
  - LaGrange 14y ago
    Because you might have some more pressing issues to fix than that -- it's not a good experience, but, unless you did something horrible (which newspapers often do, unfortunately), it's not that bad either. It is economy of time and attention, especially as there's always a risk that your "better" version won't be good enough anyway, and people like me will use the text extraction features of the browser anyway. Edit: I don't mean to say that it's necessarily a bad idea to go responsive -- it's just that it's not a clear, universal win.
- mikeleeorg 14y ago
  Is it just me, or is double-tapping on text still not usable enough? Every time I do that, my finger inadvertently slides horizontally instead of vertically, and I need to re-center the text to continue reading. This is one of the main reasons I love readers like Instapaper.

Personally, I do not want to see a sidebar, taking up a third of the screen, on my smartphone. I find the example that he considers fine quite unusable and would not read that on a smartphone.

neilparikh11 14y ago

Wouldn't that make you think that we should revisit the sidebar to find a more effective way to navigate rather than simply telling the user that you shouldn't have any options?

masklinn 14y ago
> Wouldn't that make you think that we should revisit the sidebar No. The sidebar works and is effective when there's significant horizontal space, such as on a desktop screen with ample horizontal space. It just does not work when horizontal space is a premium, as is the case on smartphones (which generally barely fit a standard typographic line length at readable size in portrait)
- lovamova 14y ago
  Sidebars don't add anything necessary to the user experience. It's just clutter. If there's enough horizontal space, I suggest using columns instead, they fit the purpose better.
  - mnicole 14y ago
    > Sidebars don't add anything necessary to the user experience. It's just clutter. This is a really weird argument; sidebars are preferable to a lot of other patterns depending on the site and doesn't at all mean the content is less important than anything else on the page.
    - lovamova 14y ago
      Apple hardly use any sidebars (web/iOS/OS X). Even in the new iTunes they removed the sidebars. I can go on with the examples.
      - mnicole 14y ago
        Can't tell if you're trolling at this point or if we're both misunderstanding each other. http://store.apple.com/us http://store.apple.com/us, the iTunes store and the App Store all rely heavily on sidebar navigation. Vertical content containers save space in addition to giving the user an area of the page that is generally relevant to what they're on the site for (shopping carts, advanced search, related content/archives, account information) without needlessly cluttering the more important horizontal space.
        lovamova 14y ago
        Neither. It's just that different things needs different design approaches. An online store has nothing in common with a presentation site. Just like a real store needs shelves, an online store needs to group the information somehow. Sidebars aren't the only way to group information. I bet Apple will redesign its online store in the near future.
    - CamperBob2 14y ago
      This is a really weird argument No, it's pretty much on target. Sidebars need to go away.
  - anonymouz 14y ago
    As many people, I find a long text (like a blog post sometimes is) easiest to read if it is about ~80 characters wide. My laptop has a 16:9 display, and I usually have my browser in full-screen mode with tabs in a sidebar on the left. This leaves plenty of space for a website to put a sidebar and text side by side, so I don't really mind it on the desktop. Obviously, if the sidebar does not add much (like on many blogs), I wouldn't mind if it goes away entirely. edit: Columns seem to be problematic when there is no well-defined "end-of-page", as on paper.

LaGrange 14y ago

Double-tap on the text. Like the article says. It really does work, quite often way better than attempts at responsive design. And then there's the reader functionality in my phone. The issue isn't, I think, responsive design itself, it's that it's not so trivial to make it work better than device-based workarounds.

shawnjan8 14y ago
But why require someone to double tap on the text? On a blog like this, the primary action of the user is to read the article. It's bad user experience to require an extra unnecessary step to do the primary action.
- LaGrange 14y ago
  Because you might have some more pressing issues to fix than that -- it's not a good experience, but, unless you did something horrible (which newspapers often do, unfortunately), it's not that bad either. It is economy of time and attention, especially as there's always a risk that your "better" version won't be good enough anyway, and people like me will use the text extraction features of the browser anyway. Edit: I don't mean to say that it's necessarily a bad idea to go responsive -- it's just that it's not a clear, universal win.
mikeleeorg 14y ago
Is it just me, or is double-tapping on text still not usable enough? Every time I do that, my finger inadvertently slides horizontally instead of vertically, and I need to re-center the text to continue reading. This is one of the main reasons I love readers like Instapaper.