4 ms·

I love Dan's writing. I really do. But I don't understand why he doesn't have some basic styling on his blog so that it's easier to read.

9rx 2mo ago
Users being able to supply their own stylesheet is a core tenant of CSS. Go nuts and make it look however your heart desires!
- _doctor_love 2mo ago
  Supply my own stylesheet? No thank you, I'm not here to do work for free.
  - 9rx 2mo ago
    Is doing something for yourself really working for free? That's an interesting take. But I can understand why you don't want this for yourself, so enjoy the page in all its splendour as it is already!
    - _doctor_love 2mo ago
      So every person who reads Dan's blog and finds the layout too dense, they should write and maintain a stylesheet for his site? And every person globally should do this as well for any other website that doesn't have a good default reading experience?
      - dash2 2mo ago
        If most readers of danluu don’t find that, then yes!
      - lemming 2mo ago
        I mean, if it really bothers you you could fairly trivially apply picocss or whatever to it using a user stylesheet. That is so little effort that calling it working for free would be disingenuous to say the least.
        tclancy 2mo ago
        Multiple people, me being the third or fourth, are not feeling the default layout and you all read that as a signal it's working as intended?
        lemming 2mo ago
        No, just that it’s easy to change for those that don’t like it. Clearly some people do like it (including Dan, presumably).
        orojackson 2mo ago
        For people in the future who want to apply the centered viewport classless version of Pico CSS, just apply the following in Firefox's Style Editor (F12 to open DevTools, then click on Style Editor; click on the + sign to add a new style): @import url("https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@picocss/pico@2/css/pico.classless.min.css"); I honestly did not know that until I took about 5-10 minutes looking up how to apply arbitrary styles in Firefox.
        9rx 2mo ago
        Browser vendors have really dropped the ball in supporting CSS, which is no doubt how we get comments like the above. Firefox is likely the least-worst offender, but as you point out still needlessly complicated for what CSS considers to be a foundational feature.
      - 9rx 2mo ago
        CSS is explicitly designed for you to apply your own user stylesheet. That is exactly what it envisions you doing. If you don't like web technologies you might want to question what you are doing on the web. However, the web also encourages sharing, so no, theoretically once one user has created a user stylesheet they would share it with others so there would be no need for everyone to create their own, unless they had alternative tastes. Actions speak louder than words.
    - lyall 2mo ago
      > Go to restaurant > Order food > Food comes out as raw, unprepared ingredients > Complain to chef > Tells me to go cook it myself > wtf, I'm not here to do work for free > "Is doing something for yourself really working for free?"
      - 9rx 2mo ago
        A closer analogy is going to a gas station where a microwave is offered to heat up any food you purchased. If you don't want to heat up the food, cool. If you expect the food to come hot you're in the wrong place. Except in this case it's a gas station that only exists for the benefit of its owners and there isn't any food for sale. The owners have graciously said you could still use the microwave if you'd like, though.
chiply 2mo ago
I love this take because I had exactly the opposite idea. I thought the combo of remarkably simple text (not even wrapped) with incredible, full width visualizations was chef's kiss. I really like the balance there personally, but I hear you. Does your browser have Reader Mode or something like that? I don't use those tools personally, but I believe they will recast the text parts into something that renders optimally for reading (ideal font size, number of characters per line, etc....).
scared_together 2mo ago
It may be an artistic/engineering choice to demonstrate what minimizing bloat to an extreme degree looks like. https://danluu.com/web-bloat/ https://danluu.com/web-bloat/
nicebyte 2mo ago
reader mode helps.
Kuyawa 2mo ago
body { margin: 5%; } That's all it needs, responsive enough for all devices. He can keep his styleless design but margin is always needed.
freediver 2mo ago
Enabling 'reader mode' in supporting browsers usually takes care of this.
- klibertp 2mo ago
  But it eliminates JS, in this case including graphs. I prefer Ctrl+Shift+M (responsive mode) and resizing the viewport with the mouse.
keybored 2mo ago
HN’s favorite CS professor homepage webpage-style author is on top of the AIs but sticking with keeping out newfangled CSS. Nothing could tell us more about clanker inevitability.

9rx 2mo ago

Users being able to supply their own stylesheet is a core tenant of CSS. Go nuts and make it look however your heart desires!

_doctor_love 2mo ago
Supply my own stylesheet? No thank you, I'm not here to do work for free.
- 9rx 2mo ago
  Is doing something for yourself really working for free? That's an interesting take. But I can understand why you don't want this for yourself, so enjoy the page in all its splendour as it is already!
  - _doctor_love 2mo ago
    So every person who reads Dan's blog and finds the layout too dense, they should write and maintain a stylesheet for his site? And every person globally should do this as well for any other website that doesn't have a good default reading experience?
    - dash2 2mo ago
      If most readers of danluu don’t find that, then yes!
    - lemming 2mo ago
      I mean, if it really bothers you you could fairly trivially apply picocss or whatever to it using a user stylesheet. That is so little effort that calling it working for free would be disingenuous to say the least.
      - tclancy 2mo ago
        Multiple people, me being the third or fourth, are not feeling the default layout and you all read that as a signal it's working as intended?
        lemming 2mo ago
        No, just that it’s easy to change for those that don’t like it. Clearly some people do like it (including Dan, presumably).
      - orojackson 2mo ago
        For people in the future who want to apply the centered viewport classless version of Pico CSS, just apply the following in Firefox's Style Editor (F12 to open DevTools, then click on Style Editor; click on the + sign to add a new style): @import url("https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@picocss/pico@2/css/pico.classless.min.css"); I honestly did not know that until I took about 5-10 minutes looking up how to apply arbitrary styles in Firefox.
        9rx 2mo ago
        Browser vendors have really dropped the ball in supporting CSS, which is no doubt how we get comments like the above. Firefox is likely the least-worst offender, but as you point out still needlessly complicated for what CSS considers to be a foundational feature.
    - 9rx 2mo ago
      CSS is explicitly designed for you to apply your own user stylesheet. That is exactly what it envisions you doing. If you don't like web technologies you might want to question what you are doing on the web. However, the web also encourages sharing, so no, theoretically once one user has created a user stylesheet they would share it with others so there would be no need for everyone to create their own, unless they had alternative tastes. Actions speak louder than words.
  - lyall 2mo ago
    > Go to restaurant > Order food > Food comes out as raw, unprepared ingredients > Complain to chef > Tells me to go cook it myself > wtf, I'm not here to do work for free > "Is doing something for yourself really working for free?"
    - 9rx 2mo ago
      A closer analogy is going to a gas station where a microwave is offered to heat up any food you purchased. If you don't want to heat up the food, cool. If you expect the food to come hot you're in the wrong place. Except in this case it's a gas station that only exists for the benefit of its owners and there isn't any food for sale. The owners have graciously said you could still use the microwave if you'd like, though.

chiply 2mo ago

I love this take because I had exactly the opposite idea. I thought the combo of remarkably simple text (not even wrapped) with incredible, full width visualizations was chef's kiss. I really like the balance there personally, but I hear you. Does your browser have Reader Mode or something like that? I don't use those tools personally, but I believe they will recast the text parts into something that renders optimally for reading (ideal font size, number of characters per line, etc....).

scared_together 2mo ago

It may be an artistic/engineering choice to demonstrate what minimizing bloat to an extreme degree looks like. https://danluu.com/web-bloat/ https://danluu.com/web-bloat/

nicebyte 2mo ago

reader mode helps.

Kuyawa 2mo ago

body { margin: 5%; } That's all it needs, responsive enough for all devices. He can keep his styleless design but margin is always needed.

freediver 2mo ago

Enabling 'reader mode' in supporting browsers usually takes care of this.

klibertp 2mo ago
But it eliminates JS, in this case including graphs. I prefer Ctrl+Shift+M (responsive mode) and resizing the viewport with the mouse.

keybored 2mo ago

HN’s favorite CS professor homepage webpage-style author is on top of the AIs but sticking with keeping out newfangled CSS. Nothing could tell us more about clanker inevitability.