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World's worst blog design strikes again with its mandatory Javascript and annoying layout. Here is a static copy: https://archive.today/uvbua https://archive.to
by aw3c2 12y ago
World's worst blog design strikes again with its mandatory Javascript and annoying layout. Here is a static copy: https://archive.today/uvbua https://archive.today/uvbua
- TheLoneWolfling 12y agoThank you.
- Already__Taken 12y agoIn a similar vein. Can we please never use `text-align: justify;` it might as well be called `hard-to-read: dyslexics`
- jon-wood 12y agoThanks for that, I wondered why I bounced straight off that. I'm usually fine with text heavy articles, but there was something about that page which meant I just couldn't process it at all.
- frankzinger 12y agoI always wondered why people don't use text-align: justify more often. Is this really a reason? What about all the books out there? Why are Web pages different? (I get the feeling I am missing something obvious.)
- perdunov 12y agoThe justify only works out (i.e. not too ugly) with certain text sizes and page widths. I guess in books it is much easier to make a decent layout because the page size is fixed. Another thing is that, actually, design has come a long way and many modern websites look way better than many older books. Edit: Yep, totally forgot about hyphenation. I guess I haven't seen hyphenated text in a long time, as everything in web is unhyphenated.
- aw3c2 12y agoHyphenation. Browser support is not good and so words usually are not hyphenated which leads to stretching whitespace. http://caniuse.com/#feat=css-hyphens http://caniuse.com/#feat=css-hyphens
- sp332 12y agoIt looks like browsers only support it with a prefix like -moz-. Doesn't that mean it's not even a standard yet?
- bradleyland 12y agoExperience: One of my primary clients when I ran an agency for 7 years was a book publishers. You'd fall over if you saw the subtlety of the tools and the amount of effort that goes in to typesetting a book with justified body text. It is not at all unusual for a publisher to employ staff specifically for the task of typesetting. In the final stages of book production, the typesetters are assigned sections of the book after all edits are complete (ha! in a perfect world), at which point they meticulously review each page of text, often manually inserting/removing hyphenation, until the text is laid out correctly. Care to venture a guess at the number of bloggers who do the same when using 'text-align: justify'?
- Already__Taken 12y agoI assume justifying text is to primarily maximise the amount of text on the paper to make a cheaper book. It shouldn't even exist on the web.
- wtbob 12y agoJustification doesn't change the amount of text on the paper; it spreads out lines which would otherwise have a ragged right edge (in left-to-right languages) so that the text has a visually appealing right edge. It's done to look good, and succeeds. But it requires work to do right.
- joshuapants 12y ago> Justification doesn't change the amount of text on the paper You can fit more characters per line in a justified layout. > It's done to look good, and succeeds. But it requires work to do right. Absolutely, but well executed left-alignment can also look good, and in a format where you don't necessarily have control over the size of the page and the time to properly justify the text it should be preferred. IMO, left-alignment beats poorly justified text every time.
- falsedan 12y ago
- baxter001 12y agoI assumed it was some kind of joke about page alignment
- martin-adams 12y agoMe too, in a desktop publishing sense of the thing
- jerf 12y agoIf you or some other reader are in the mood, a browser plugin that would remove the vast majority of instances of text-align: justify would be a decent bite-sized project.
- wtbob 12y agoThis business of requiring code execution in order to read a blog entry really must end. It's unsafe, but worse it's ridiculous. Mandatory JavaScript delenda est!
- sp332 12y agoWhy is this JS unsafe? It's all hosted by Google, just like the blog.
- logfromblammo 12y agoRequiring execution of unnecessary code increases the surface area for any potential exploit. You don't need JS to display HTML text. Browsers have had that ability since Berners-Lee.
- erikarn 12y agoUgh, that template sucks. Fixed.
- gwu78 12y agoFortunately it still remains easy to convert almost any blogger/blogspot blog to a simple HTML file with no gratuitous Javascript or CSS. Then open the file in your browser of choice. Here is one quick dirty way using only shell, sed, nc and the openssl binary: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7367156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7367156 Example: Copy and paste the script into a file and save as some filename. Then filename adrianchadd > f.html browsername f.html It is still an annoyance to have to do this; I wholeheartedly agree with your comment.
- dang 12y agoA reader emailed to complain about how this and other HN discussions often become derailed by off-topic carping about blog design. I agree completely. Could there be a more classic form of bikeshedding? It would seem parodic if it weren't sadly real. This has become more of a thing on HN lately. It needs to become less of a thing. I don't mean to pick on you personally, or just on this one comment. (Your second sentence alone, by the way, would have been a helpful contribution.) The problem is the tedious stampedes such comments spawn.
- aw3c2 12y agoI did not mean to have a comment that sits on top of the on-topic comments. If people upvote it so much that it does, it can mean something though. I would not call it bike shedding, it's a usability and security issue. I will always keep complaining about unnecessary Javascript requirements and especially about this specific design... Maybe a "offtopic" or "noise" flag could be used for punishing comments like this (similarly to random comments that praise a submission without adding anything) so they float down but not into the grey negative score area?