11 ms·

The web works best as a document platform. All the UI tricks that web developers work on all end up managing something related to just browsing/reading a docum

The web works best as a document platform. All the UI tricks that web developers work on all end up managing something related to just browsing/reading a document. It's amazing that modern browsers/HTML just don't have this basic user experience down. Why is it virtually impossible to read long articles on a web browser? After 25 years, why do web designers need to create their own page transition mechanics for long-form articles, for example, when the basic purpose of the web is designed for reading documents? Why weren't multi-page transitions built in by default? The same with photo galleries - after 25 years, why isn't there a standard user experience for viewing photos related to articles? Why are there a million JQuery photo gallery plugins? In fact, why do we need to write CSS to create a basic readable document in the first place? Why doesn't HTML/CSS default to a high-end and legible reader experience out-of-the-box for basic text? (proper fonts & spacings, limiting column widths to 8-15 words max, etc..) The reader-mode that web browsers are building in, that should be the default standard UX for HTML, and CSS should build upon that. But instead, it's a non-standard option.

msutherl 11y ago
Likely this hasn't been done because it would require many very difficult, "subjective" decisions to be made i.e. which font, line-spacing, photo-viewer UI, etc.? Better to make no decision at all than to spawn a few dozen endless committee debates. By contrast, corporations can more easily make these sort of decisions – by fiat – which is why native app frameworks are more "opinionated" / make more design decisions for you out of the box. This topic is as much the story of two historical forms: the operating system GUI and the World Wide Web hypertext project as it is about two organizational forms: hierarchical corporations and decentralized design-by-committee non-profits / multiple competing corporations.
pestaa 11y ago
Don't forget that you can specify related pages as <link rel="next/prev" /> and let the browser handle pagination. I recall when I used Opera, you could scroll down, hit space, and it would go to the next page as long as the website provided that information (forum softwares often do.)
- mozumder 11y ago
  That's just one UX issue among thousands. I also mentioned the column width because this site has the obvious problem of long horizontal text, which is a no-no. People naturally read in chunks of 10-15 words scanning vertically. Long, horizontal text is easy to lose track of location.
- jfoster 11y ago
  How much have browsers invested in their pagination solution, though? If I specify that tag on my pages, does that mean users who visit my site will have an awesome experience when it comes to pagination?
zhte415 11y ago
There's an answer to your questions. It is documented here: http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- xt 11y ago
  This is what you want => http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/
  - hiphopyo 11y ago
    Isn't that guy sorta missing the point of the first website?
  - coldpie 11y ago
    > A little less contrast > Size Matters Strong disagree on both of these points. I view most webpages (including that one) at around 66% zoom these days, because the text is so goddamn big. And anyone advocating for less contrast needs a shovel to the head.
    - lotsofmangos 11y ago
      anyone advocating for less contrast needs a shovel to the head. Or they have the thing where high contrast makes the letters jiggle and therefore difficult to read. I get that when tired. Maximum contrast does not make for good general usability, even if you happen to like it.
      - charliefg 11y ago
        This is also my experience. As long as the contrast is within the acceptable WCAG ratios for accessibility, I don't really see any problem.
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
nkuttler 11y ago
> After 25 years, why do web designers need to create their own page transition mechanics for long-form articles Why do you need page transitions for articles at all? The only reason I can think of is for more ad displays. Ok, if you have, say, a long manual with multiple chapters that would be several hundred pages when printed it can be nice to break it up, but that's probably not what you meant. > photo galleries - after 25 years, why isn't there a standard user experience for viewing photos related to articles? Because there's no one size fits all solution. Look into magazines, newspapers, etc. After a few centuries there is still no standard. Grouped, with captions, position, size, etc. > why do we need to write CSS to create a basic readable document in the first place You don't. Browsers can display semantic markup just fine without any CSS. The fact that you even ask this question is why you write CSS, because different people in different times expect different styling, and they don't think the default style is pretty. I agree that the default styles could be improved though after 20 years, but that could lead to breakage of current CSS styles, and why risk that if everybody uses CSS anyway? And the fact that I wrote this comment is just another reason why you have to write CSS: because not everybody agrees on how the web should look.
- mozumder 11y ago
  > Ok, if you have, say, a long manual with multiple chapters that would be several hundred pages when printed it can be nice to break it up, but that's probably not what you meant. Actually yes this is the use-case I was referring to. HTML has semantics to define sections, headers, etc.. but it doesn't manage them in any way. If you write HTML that define sections, for example, it's no different than if you write HTML without sections.
  - pjc50 11y ago
    What is your opinion of the section-structured HTML documentation itself? http://www.w3.org/TR/html/ http://www.w3.org/TR/html/ It's all neatly sectioned with anchor links and so on.
  - nkuttler 11y ago
    Section and header tags were standardized last year, it's definitely too early to tell how browsers will handle them, but with the ubiquity of CSS and for the reasons I already mentioned I doubt they will ever get any styling, unless maybe for when no CSS was defined at all. Ultimately, I don't think of the web as a page-based medium, it's document-based. Electronic documents that want to mimic pages are a relic from the past, imo. What you seem to want should probably be implemented as browser plugins.
jasode 11y ago
>The web works best as a document platform. This is only true if you constrain the "web" to mean the Tim Berners-Lee document-centric HTML and its http hyperlinks. The "web" also means the whole internet stack, TCPIP, DNS routing, etc. In that case, the web is a foundational tool for anything that connects people or Internet Of Things. To say the "web works best as a document platform" is like saying "the electricity grid works best as a lightbulb platform." We've gotten past the historical motivations of a interconnected electricity and have done other things with it. Do some "native" apps do nothing more than what a 100% static HTML could do? Yes, abuse of a Javascript widget framework does happen. However, the bad examples don't mean the "web" should be held back by the original visions of HTML or Hypercard. The Google maps app is not traditional HTML+CSS. EDIT: The replies misunderstand my position. I'm not trying to redefine the traditional technical meaning of "web" and make you like it. I'm attempting to explain that "the web" has evolved and what it now means to the world out there. (E.g. see non-document usages like Dropbox, google maps, online Sudoku games, etc.)
- rimantas 11y ago
  No, the web means web. Internet means internet.
  - jasode 11y ago
    Those were the historical and technical divisions. Because http & https is ubiquitous and they have a defacto pass through most firewalls, the modern "web" is the "internet" as far as application interfaces are concerned. The idea of a pure separation of concepts such that http is "documents" and some other protocol on some other port is "apps" is not going to happen. All those IT departments' security teams and Cisco admins at Fortune 1000 companies are not going to adjust their firewall rules to open new ports and protocols. The "http port 80" has become the "internet" on top of the old definition of "internet". It's not ideal but that's where we are today.
    - pjc50 11y ago
      This is sadly true, but I think collapsing the distinction between "internet" and "web" is annoying and needlessly confusing. Maybe things will be different in the IPv6 world.
EdiX 11y ago
> After 25 years, why do web designers need to create their own page transition mechanics for long-form articles As far as I am concerned those things only exist to inflate ad views, they have negative usability impact. I don't really see why a long document should be broken up in pages to be readable. > The same with photo galleries - after 25 years, why isn't there a standard user experience for viewing photos related to articles? There is one: right click → open in new tab. It work very well, much better than the jquery kludges that people come up with. > In fact, why do we need to write CSS to create a basic readable document in the first place? Why doesn't HTML/CSS default to a high-end and legible reader experience out-of-the-box for basic text? I find plain un-styled HTML to be much more readable than the tiny light gray webfont on white background that designers usually settle for these days.
- provemewrong 11y ago
  > There is one: right click → open in new tab. It work very well, much better than the jquery kludges that people come up with. Except when people nest the images as deep as posible and overlay other elements in front of the images so you can't simply right click the image, you have to inspect source and hunt for that image URL (or check resources tab in developer mode, or whatever). /rant
  - EdiX 11y ago
    That usually happens because someone has decided they need some special javascript "gallery" for the user. Twitter's default user timeline is the worst example of this that I know.

msutherl 11y ago

Likely this hasn't been done because it would require many very difficult, "subjective" decisions to be made i.e. which font, line-spacing, photo-viewer UI, etc.? Better to make no decision at all than to spawn a few dozen endless committee debates. By contrast, corporations can more easily make these sort of decisions – by fiat – which is why native app frameworks are more "opinionated" / make more design decisions for you out of the box. This topic is as much the story of two historical forms: the operating system GUI and the World Wide Web hypertext project as it is about two organizational forms: hierarchical corporations and decentralized design-by-committee non-profits / multiple competing corporations.

pestaa 11y ago

Don't forget that you can specify related pages as <link rel="next/prev" /> and let the browser handle pagination. I recall when I used Opera, you could scroll down, hit space, and it would go to the next page as long as the website provided that information (forum softwares often do.)

mozumder 11y ago
That's just one UX issue among thousands. I also mentioned the column width because this site has the obvious problem of long horizontal text, which is a no-no. People naturally read in chunks of 10-15 words scanning vertically. Long, horizontal text is easy to lose track of location.
jfoster 11y ago
How much have browsers invested in their pagination solution, though? If I specify that tag on my pages, does that mean users who visit my site will have an awesome experience when it comes to pagination?

zhte415 11y ago

There's an answer to your questions. It is documented here: http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
xt 11y ago
This is what you want => http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/
- hiphopyo 11y ago
  Isn't that guy sorta missing the point of the first website?
- coldpie 11y ago
  > A little less contrast > Size Matters Strong disagree on both of these points. I view most webpages (including that one) at around 66% zoom these days, because the text is so goddamn big. And anyone advocating for less contrast needs a shovel to the head.
  - lotsofmangos 11y ago
    anyone advocating for less contrast needs a shovel to the head. Or they have the thing where high contrast makes the letters jiggle and therefore difficult to read. I get that when tired. Maximum contrast does not make for good general usability, even if you happen to like it.
    - charliefg 11y ago
      This is also my experience. As long as the contrast is within the acceptable WCAG ratios for accessibility, I don't really see any problem.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]

nkuttler 11y ago

> After 25 years, why do web designers need to create their own page transition mechanics for long-form articles Why do you need page transitions for articles at all? The only reason I can think of is for more ad displays. Ok, if you have, say, a long manual with multiple chapters that would be several hundred pages when printed it can be nice to break it up, but that's probably not what you meant. > photo galleries - after 25 years, why isn't there a standard user experience for viewing photos related to articles? Because there's no one size fits all solution. Look into magazines, newspapers, etc. After a few centuries there is still no standard. Grouped, with captions, position, size, etc. > why do we need to write CSS to create a basic readable document in the first place You don't. Browsers can display semantic markup just fine without any CSS. The fact that you even ask this question is why you write CSS, because different people in different times expect different styling, and they don't think the default style is pretty. I agree that the default styles could be improved though after 20 years, but that could lead to breakage of current CSS styles, and why risk that if everybody uses CSS anyway? And the fact that I wrote this comment is just another reason why you have to write CSS: because not everybody agrees on how the web should look.

mozumder 11y ago
> Ok, if you have, say, a long manual with multiple chapters that would be several hundred pages when printed it can be nice to break it up, but that's probably not what you meant. Actually yes this is the use-case I was referring to. HTML has semantics to define sections, headers, etc.. but it doesn't manage them in any way. If you write HTML that define sections, for example, it's no different than if you write HTML without sections.
- pjc50 11y ago
  What is your opinion of the section-structured HTML documentation itself? http://www.w3.org/TR/html/ http://www.w3.org/TR/html/ It's all neatly sectioned with anchor links and so on.
- nkuttler 11y ago
  Section and header tags were standardized last year, it's definitely too early to tell how browsers will handle them, but with the ubiquity of CSS and for the reasons I already mentioned I doubt they will ever get any styling, unless maybe for when no CSS was defined at all. Ultimately, I don't think of the web as a page-based medium, it's document-based. Electronic documents that want to mimic pages are a relic from the past, imo. What you seem to want should probably be implemented as browser plugins.

jasode 11y ago

>The web works best as a document platform. This is only true if you constrain the "web" to mean the Tim Berners-Lee document-centric HTML and its http hyperlinks. The "web" also means the whole internet stack, TCPIP, DNS routing, etc. In that case, the web is a foundational tool for anything that connects people or Internet Of Things. To say the "web works best as a document platform" is like saying "the electricity grid works best as a lightbulb platform." We've gotten past the historical motivations of a interconnected electricity and have done other things with it. Do some "native" apps do nothing more than what a 100% static HTML could do? Yes, abuse of a Javascript widget framework does happen. However, the bad examples don't mean the "web" should be held back by the original visions of HTML or Hypercard. The Google maps app is not traditional HTML+CSS. EDIT: The replies misunderstand my position. I'm not trying to redefine the traditional technical meaning of "web" and make you like it. I'm attempting to explain that "the web" has evolved and what it now means to the world out there. (E.g. see non-document usages like Dropbox, google maps, online Sudoku games, etc.)

rimantas 11y ago
No, the web means web. Internet means internet.
- jasode 11y ago
  Those were the historical and technical divisions. Because http & https is ubiquitous and they have a defacto pass through most firewalls, the modern "web" is the "internet" as far as application interfaces are concerned. The idea of a pure separation of concepts such that http is "documents" and some other protocol on some other port is "apps" is not going to happen. All those IT departments' security teams and Cisco admins at Fortune 1000 companies are not going to adjust their firewall rules to open new ports and protocols. The "http port 80" has become the "internet" on top of the old definition of "internet". It's not ideal but that's where we are today.
  - pjc50 11y ago
    This is sadly true, but I think collapsing the distinction between "internet" and "web" is annoying and needlessly confusing. Maybe things will be different in the IPv6 world.

EdiX 11y ago

> After 25 years, why do web designers need to create their own page transition mechanics for long-form articles As far as I am concerned those things only exist to inflate ad views, they have negative usability impact. I don't really see why a long document should be broken up in pages to be readable. > The same with photo galleries - after 25 years, why isn't there a standard user experience for viewing photos related to articles? There is one: right click → open in new tab. It work very well, much better than the jquery kludges that people come up with. > In fact, why do we need to write CSS to create a basic readable document in the first place? Why doesn't HTML/CSS default to a high-end and legible reader experience out-of-the-box for basic text? I find plain un-styled HTML to be much more readable than the tiny light gray webfont on white background that designers usually settle for these days.

provemewrong 11y ago
> There is one: right click → open in new tab. It work very well, much better than the jquery kludges that people come up with. Except when people nest the images as deep as posible and overlay other elements in front of the images so you can't simply right click the image, you have to inspect source and hunt for that image URL (or check resources tab in developer mode, or whatever). /rant
- EdiX 11y ago
  That usually happens because someone has decided they need some special javascript "gallery" for the user. Twitter's default user timeline is the worst example of this that I know.