Internet is Becoming Unreadable Because of a Trend Towards Lighter, Thinner Fonts (telegraph.co.uk) 331
An anonymous reader writes: The internet is becoming unreadable because of a trend towards lighter and thinner fonts, making it difficult for the elderly or visually-impaired to see words clearly, a web expert has found. Where text used to be bold and dark, which contrasted well with predominantly white backgrounds, now many websites are switching to light greys or blues for their type. Award winning blogger Kevin Marks, founder of Microformats and former vice president of web services at BT, decided to look into the trend after becoming concerned that his eyesight was failing because he was increasingly struggling to read on screen text. He found a 'widespread movement' to reduce the contrast between the words and the background, with tech giants Apple, Google and Twitter all altering their typography. True black on white text has a contrast ratio of 21:1 -- the maximum which can be achieved. Most technology companies agree that it is good practice for type to be a minimum of 7:1 so that the visually-impaired can still see text. But Mr Marks, found that even Apple's own typography guidelines, which recommended 7:1 are written in a contrast ratio of 5.5:1.
And... NO CONTRAST (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's not forget that the Internet decided a couple of years ago that contrast was a bad thing, and that foreground and background had to be the same color and almost the same shade.
Re:And... NO CONTRAST (Score:4, Informative)
All major text editors have also moved to light grey on darker grey text.
And lets not go into websites with white-on black for extra afterimage after you try to read them (eg. hackaday).
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And lets not go into websites with white-on black for extra afterimage after you try to read them (eg. hackaday).
Am I the only one who actually finds light text on darker background easier to read?
I just wish webdevs would let the users decide, at least for primart text content, through browser settings instead of hardcoding everything.
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Go and read http://www.hackaday.com/ [hackaday.com] for a couple of minutes then come back here and re-read what you just posted. Don't your eyes go funny?
Re:And... NO CONTRAST (Score:4, Interesting)
Nope. Even when I get a headache and associated monocular diplopia, I still prefer my terminals (all light-on-dark) to websites (these days, practically all dark on light). I get the diplopia on light backgrounds as well, and the overall brightness makes my headache worse.
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>All major text editors have also moved to light grey on darker grey text.
To which I change to cyan on dark blue.
It's like I'm still in Turbo Pascal.
--
BMO
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Re:And... NO CONTRAST (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, let's see:
http://komodoide.com/komodo-ed... [komodoide.com]
https://www.sublimetext.com/ [sublimetext.com]
https://code.visualstudio.com/ [visualstudio.com]
https://atom.io/ [atom.io]
https://panic.com/coda/ [panic.com] (nice example of low-contrast website as well)
https://www.jetbrains.com/webs... [jetbrains.com]
That was pretty fucking easy.
If you want more examples then just type something like "best text editor" into google images and weep at the acres of grey-on-grey images that appear.
Here, let me do it for you seeing as how you're a bit out of the loop: https://encrypted.google.com/s... [google.com]
Re:And... NO CONTRAST (Score:5, Insightful)
I think I may have found the problem,
If you search for "best text editor for web development" they're all grey-on grey.
Web "designers" are probably adjusting their monitor's contrast settings to make them usable. Result: Unusable web sites because making sites with any contrast hurts their eyes.
Re:And... NO CONTRAST (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure, for an extremely exaggerated definition of "grey" - Just checked SublimeText's default theme: the text color is #F8F8F2, so just a hint of a shade off of absolute pure white leaning to yellow. The background, however, is indeed a "dark grey", but very well contrasted, as it is #272822. The default font is also a nice bold font which is easy to read. The other text editors on your list also follow a very similar style to this too.
Re:And... NO CONTRAST (Score:5, Informative)
Jesus H. That's like the anorexic fashion show of editors. There's nothing of substance there.
VIM: Whatever my terminal is, which is white on black.
Emacs: Whatever my terminal is, which is white on black.
Notepad++: Black on white.
BBedit: Black on white.
That covers all of them I think, over Linux, Windows and MacOs. Nothing else matters.
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Look, just because you can't tell the difference between gray text and the grey background doesn't mean there isn't one!
How to do this joke on /.? (Score:2)
I was going to make a joke post where my font was barely visible or just a blank response that could not be read. But /. posts do not support color, and the lameness filter kicks in when the body is empty.
How can one make a barely or unreadable post?
Re:How to do this joke on /.? (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe you should consider the lameness of your joke - filter working as intended.
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There are plenty of unreadable posts. Mostly from trolls though.
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Here's how you do it:
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It's not just the Internet. Just the other day I was trying to read some cooking instructions. They were printed in something like 4 point type in white on gold, on a plastic bag. My 14 year old daughter could read them, but I could not. (Disclaimer - I am 60 and have triple focus implanted lenses in my eyes, but still have trouble reading in poor light).
And this perpetual dark grey on light grey tiny font stuff - if you want me to use your site, I'd better be able to read it!
So get off that green stuff (I
Nothing new (Score:5, Insightful)
Idiots that value appearance over function have been around for a very long time. People only take them seriously for a little while, although management does take longer.
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although management does take longer
Don't put me in that category!!!
I actually allow crummy interfaces to make it to BETA. After that, they MUST clean it up for presentation to other managers :)
Serif fonts (Score:3)
Indeed why do people think they invented serif fonts in the first place? I can no longer read my iphone without reading glasses and all they did was change the damn font thickness not it's size. This isn't a new discovery.
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Newspaper printing rules don't apply because those extensively developed serif fonts don't work well on 72dpi monitors.
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Scripts on web pages, take ages to finish page. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Your ad blocker isn't configured correctly.
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don't run an ad blocker and I see the behavior OP complained about every day .
Yes, that was my point. It's the ads, you see. In case it's not clear, the problem you're having? It's the ads. They're what's causing that problem. The ads. In case it wasn't clear.
Re:Nothing new (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, the graphic designer who thinks that he's god's gift to beauty because the site 'looks good' on his color-calibrated multi-thousand-dollar Eizo has always deserved a smack; but that's especially true now that it is more likely that his target audience isn't just viewing the results on a smaller, cheaper, screen than he is; but on a tiny smartphone LCD, backlight dimmed for battery life, with a mirror finish to pick up every stray reflection and hint of sunlight.
Form over function has always been a danger; and failure to test your output on a reasonable simulation of what people will actually view it on has always been a mistake; but the contrast is particularly glaring when the gulf between the sort of screens that 'content creators' tend to use and the average quality of screens site visitors are using is so enormous. It has always been there; but it has not always been so wide.
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Form over function has always been a danger; and failure to test your output on a reasonable simulation of what people will actually view it on has always been a mistake; but the contrast is particularly glaring when the gulf between the sort of screens that 'content creators' tend to use and the average quality of screens site visitors are using is so enormous. It has always been there; but it has not always been so wide.
It's not the screen quality where the gap is - it is the eye quality. Designers tend to be young, between 20 and 30, and design for their peers. They have no idea that eyesight deteriorates that fast with age, they just can't image.
Add to that the principle that we tend to find things prettier when their outline is less defined (which happens when you reduce the contrast) and you have recipe for disaster. Designer lowers contrast up till the point where he can still read it, but barely. Everyone with wors
Indeed (Score:5, Insightful)
What designer originally came up with the idea that light grey, 8 point text in a thin font on bright white background was the height of sophistication? And how did this idea spread??? It's not just the elderly having problems -- normal-vision people I talk to hate it too. The web is an information medium, not a coffee-table book that no one will actually read the text of.
I know the trend is minimalism now, but even Microsoft rolled back some of the crazier design changes they made. Visual Studio became unusable around the Windows 8 era, and they've only recently added back a "dark background" mode and removed the monochrome icons. Apple shows no sign of doing anything to improve this problem. And a whole fleet of Silicon Valley startups are cargo-culting this whole design philosophy...I just wish someone influential would say something.
Re: Indeed (Score:5, Funny)
Apple did it so people cannot read all the complaints on their customer support pages.
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Not quite black text on a not quite white background looks better than black text on a white background. I'd argue that it's a bit easier on the eyes as well. (I find bright displays a bit painful, physically, and keep the display brightness on my phone and computer very low.)
It's such a simple and easy way to make boring old text 'feel' a bit more polished and professional, it's bound to spread.
The problem, naturally, is incompetent designers taking a cool trick like that to an extreme, and lowering the c
Re:Indeed (Score:5, Interesting)
Sad but true.
Having all information lately pushed in the form of images and videos doesn't help - I still haven't found a reliable means of searching for that one video where someone said ...
I remember the internet back in the late 90s, when everyone had their own little corner of the net to publish the things they wanted to share with the world, and it was all in text. There was a lot of crap, sure, but you could find the stuff you wanted to. Now I get the feeling that looking up news from just last month is an exercise in futility as it gets buried in pointless results; that is, if there even is something to search for and it wasn't just a picture meme that will be forever lost.
Its not the thinner fonts... (Score:2, Insightful)
Do you really need a 2560 x 1600 Pixel screen on your 10 Inch Android or whatever-pad? Im in my 50s, and I dont even need prescription glasses according to my doctor. I see just fine. And the screen Im typing (and gaming) with right now is a 27" 1920 x 1080 pixel screen. When Im 50 cm (about 2 feet) away from it, I cant see a single pixel, but the sharpness of the fonts is just fine. But if you replace that with a UHD (4K) screen at the same size, y
Found the Windows user! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Found the Windows user! (Score:4, Insightful)
it doesn't matter the OS when the website mixes em, %, and px for sizing. you can still find plenty of sites with px defined left/right margins.
I'm not sure why this was modded troll. The above is true to a point, though it doesn't tell the whole story. These days I find most web sites use images (blank, or bg color) to create spacing, and most web browsers, by default, scale images up as well along with the text, so those spacers get scaled up along with the text.
My biggest problem is with websites that enforce a traditional page-style format for their pages, such that when you scale things up to make it easier to read, it's like you're just taking a magnifying glass to the page. That's way too rigid a page design, but it fits squarely in the aesthetics of someone who used to do traditional layout on paper pages.
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Some sites switch to a mobile version when I zoom in, and I have to zoom back to get the desktop version. Or even zoom back one step in the first place, when the site thinks the window size or monitor resolution is too small.
Not always annoying but you have to know to zoom out to make the site easier to navigate / more informative again.
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What we need is a render target, where CSS can say "render this shit as 16x9, 1920x1080", and then the browser can obey (or tweak), and then scale.
So if you use pixel scaling (and in many cases you still need to) it'll still work.
The way it works now is all backwards. You specify targets and sizes and create different rules for each. Then you have dozens of sets of CSS and it's a mess to maintain and test. It almost makes sense for the handful of non-screen media types that no one deals with, but not rea
Re:Its not the thinner fonts... (Score:5, Interesting)
UHD doesn't require you to fit more on your screen. You can also keep everything the same size at a much higher DPI, for better sharpness and clarity (edge contrast is contrast too). Or find somewhere nice in the middle. For those with high visual acuity, it's nice not having blurry edges.
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What's missing from your system is either proper DPI or Android's DIP (probably the best measure) adjustments.
Dots-per-Inch (DPI) world: If you have a 10 point font, it should be the exact same physical ruler size if you measured a word on basically any monitor assuming they were correctly specifying their DPI setting in their EDID. Of course there are distortions in monitor pixels, etc.. but should be darn close.
Device Independent Pixel (DIP) world: The OS must knows the 'context' of the screen (aka distan
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Do you really need a 2560 x 1600 Pixel screen on your 10 Inch Android or whatever-pad?
If your DPI is set properly, the display will look much better at higher resolutions, and that includes the readability of the fonts. Anti-aliasing doesn't become quite as necessary, and fonts will be just a bit less blurry.
If a high resolution means you're seeing tiny fonts, then the system is not taking DPI into account, and it needs to no matter what size your monitor is.
Accessibility options (Score:3)
And with browsers allowing stylesheet overrides and increasing support for screen readers, why should design be done for the lowest common denominator?
Simply zooming in will make low-contrast text easier to read.
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or Ctrl-a and reading white on blue.
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A lot of web sites override those colors too. And often the selection color is even worse...though that would be what I would use override CSS for (if I needed it) - so I can see the original design until I highlight as needed.
Re:Accessibility options (Score:5, Insightful)
The entire concept of the WWW as Berners-Lee conceived it was that the website would transmit information to the client, and the client's browser would display it in a format most suitable for the client display device. That way the exact same web page would work on a tiny cell phone screen or gargantuan 50" 4k TV used as a screen. Neither of those existed at the time, but he had enough foresight to predict a wide variation in client display sizes and requirements.
But the people who became web designers were formerly page layout designers. They revolted. They were used to printed paper, where they controlled everything the reader saw - fonts, font sizes, text wrap around photos, columns, etc. Their ego couldn't stand ceding some of that control to the reader, so they fought tooth and nail to bring that control back to themselves. The early flash-only websites were their first salvo. Everyone hated flash sites, but they loved them because it would display exactly and only as they designed it. If the 1024 pixel width they chose didn't fit in someone's 800x600 monitor? Well obviously it was the reader's fault and they needed to upgrade to a better GPU and monitor. Modern websites are so design-centered that they actually have to create two different sites for display on large computer monitors vs small phone and tablet screens. There's almost nothing left under the client's control that can be modified without breaking something about the site.
Re:Accessibility options (Score:4, Informative)
But the people who became web designers were formerly page layout designers. They revolted. They were used to printed paper, where they controlled everything the reader saw - fonts, font sizes, text wrap around photos, columns, etc. Their ego couldn't stand ceding some of that control to the reader, so they fought tooth and nail to bring that control back to themselves.
In the early days this wasn't true. Good print designers know how to choose fonts and whitespace that will scale properly and keep a nice layout as you scale font size up and down. It was the managers and PMs, insisting that the web page look exactly like they wanted, on every monitor, like it was a magazine page. "The name of the company can't be smaller than 2 inches, the branding spec says so!" "On what size monitor?" "Don't bother me with your geeky trivialities!".
The "designers" willing to put up with that shit gradually drove out the old heads who knew what actually looked good. Now fashion has replaced 3 centuries of science about legibility.
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CSS breakpoints make it possible to create a design and have it look consistent (not identical) across all possible screen sizes. You can have style/design/personality and still 100% fulfill that original vision of the web.
One thing you can't get with CSS breakpoints is efficient transmission of more detailed information to UAs with larger* screens and less detailed information to users with smaller screens. You have to send HTML containing both the more detailed information and the less detailed information and use display:none in CSS to hide one or the other depending on the breakpoint. Then the user has to pay up to $10/GB** to download the HTML of both, one to view and the other to throw away unread.
If they created a modern WebTV device now
Microsoft has had a mo
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more detailed information to UAs with larger* screens and less detailed information to users with smaller screens
This is a bad way to do mobile design. Nobody wants to be forced to use a desktop computer to see the whole web page.
Using CSS to hide one element or show another is bad design, too. You can use those breakpoints to resize/reshape/reposition the content. One single copy of the content displayed two different ways. You can even use lower resolution versions of background images depending on screen size.
The real threat to bandwidth usage is ASP.Net Web Forms and HTML bloat by really inefficient design too
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designed by a genius that prevents proper zooming
i.e. someone who doesn't understand mobile-responsive web design and attempts a "mobile-friendly" design anyway.
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I think the web frameworks are partly at fault. The phone screen is the smallest "size" in the responsive grid, but when you zoom in on a phone, your "screen" becomes even smaller than the smallest size.
I design mobile-responsive web sites in hand-coded HTML/CSS with the help of a web framework and I've come into this wall a few times. Ideally, there would be a smaller breakpoint that would put that text on its own row when zooming in on mobile. And theoretically I could add one to my framework of choice
GeoCities and even "professional" sites (Score:2)
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I prefer bright text on a darker background myself. At least in low-light situations it's far easier on the eyes than a white background.
Elderly? (Score:2)
Hey, I'm not that eld.
Also preference for 1's over 0's (Score:2)
Also preference for 1's over 0's due to the 1's taking up less space is causing problems for database administrators and designers.
Larry Ellison is reported to be pushing a new industry standard in which entire Oracle databases will be compressed into nothing but 1's thus saving billions globally in storage costs.
Indeed (Score:2)
I've never understood what moron decided that making things hard to read was a good idea, even for those who still have good eyesight.
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If you goal is to communicate information to users then hard to read stuff is idiotic. If you goal is to wow your boss, VC funder, or anything like that then you might as well fill the text with latin and the style look awesome from the 10,000 foot view.
User interfaces are on a steady decline. Too many features lead MS to replace menus with the ribbon, which was a horrible cure for a real problem. Almost every program I have used scales very poorly with higher DPI screens. The few that actually pay atte
UI chases fads (Score:5, Interesting)
Part of the problem is that modern UI designers chase fads. (The previous fad was antiskeuomorphism.)
You can see this in the UI "devolution" of Photoshop and others tools:
* The background used to be black on white, aka "light" themes.
* Now "dark" themes are in vogue -- with white on black.
Also, True Type / Postscript / Web fonts still don't support color gradients. The classic is the old vertical "Orange-Yellow-White" gradient font [wordpress.com] used in Raiders of the Lost Ark
Yet back in 1992 this was trivial with bitmap fonts:
* Ultima 7 Main Menu [mobygames.com]
* Ultima 7 NPC Dialog [mobygames.com]
Most UI designers are clueless about the difference print fonts (serif) and screen fonts (sans serif). I don't expect many of them to understand the pixel grid [codinghorror.com]
--
DVD / Blu-Ray Region Locking == Price Fixing.
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The previous fad was antiskeuomorphism
The fad before that was skeuomorphism, which wasn't a great plan on its own either. The problem is that people are only copying design ideas without understanding the why - and that's when it becomes fad-like. And those are the people that decided that a floppy symbol was somehow skeuomorphic rather than representational - when the vast majority of computer users have never used a floppy disk (which is true when you consider home computer adoption was driven by Internet adoption - especially at the older
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(The previous fad was antiskeuomorphism.)
And it was good, too. Skeuomorphic design is stupid and childish.
* The background used to be black on white, aka "light" themes.
And it was excruciating to look at for longer than a few minutes.
* Now "dark" themes are in vogue -- with white on black.
Good. Now I can get some work done without wiping blood off my cheeks.
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I agree, dark themes are a savior on my eyes. White backgrounds are the devil. I can actually turn brightness up on my screens now.
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Lower your screen brightness? I've programmed 16 years professionally, 8 years in school, and probably gamed and watched TV throughout that period during my off hours. I've never had significant or even minor issues with screens 'burning my eyes' or some nonsense. There's nothing wrong with black on white as long as your screens are tuned to you. If the screen brightness is too painful, turn down the brightness. Its a pretty simple solution.
IMHO, White on black is a lot harder to focus on the words but with
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White on black used to be unreadable in CRT days, unless you had a really good monitor. Once your monitor was a couple of years old, white on black hurt the eyes more than any other theme.
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Which old days?
Back in the VT100 terminal days, black on white (aka inverse) was tough because phosphor bleed made the black text blurry. White text on a black background actually benefited slightly from phosphor bleed by smoothing the gaps and making the bitmapped fonts smoother.
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I think the "bright" themes were made for high-light situations. Lots of harsh office lights or outdoors work. If you work in a dimmer environment, the bright things are way too hard, but if I'm outside on a laptop or phone, the "dark" themes are pretty illegible.
Re:UI chases fads (Score:5, Insightful)
> Skeuomorphic design is stupid and childish.
There is a name for myopic people who assumes their religion is "best" for everyone; their immature "my way is the only way" mentality is called a cult.
The *proper* solution is to give users a **choice** -- because good style is subjective.
Naturally, that begs the question, what is good? We'll get to that in a second.
Some people think this bookshelf is absolutely beautiful [techinasia.com]. Compare and contrast to the "modern" version [mashable.com] which is bland and boring. All sense of charm, and uniqueness is flushed down the crapper -- Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft now all look the same. **Yawn**
I'm not the only one who hates the flat button look [cloudfront.net]. All these modern designs look the same -- bland. Skeuomorphism matches what a real calculator [thimet.de] looks like -- and you can pry my HP48SX from my cold, dead hands, thank-you very much.
Again, the best decision would be to match what users prefer. Some prefer the former, others prefer the latter. BOTH choices are OK. But designers love to pretend that they know better -- and shove their crap down my throat regardless if I like it or not.
Personally, I find antiskeuomorphism design to be dumb and gaudy [diffen.com] -- as there no context for what is foreground and background. Congratulations, you've removed all signal and just made everything noise!. How is completely over-loading the user with noise helping them???
Maybe you prefer the gaudy, boxy design of Windows 1 [stephenhouze.com], er, Windows 8, but many people sure don't.
UI should be about empowering users -- NOT "let's make everything look bland, sterile, gaudy, lifeless and make me want to gouge my eyes out" because that's what modern UI has become. A clusterfuck of visual vomit.
IMO skeuomorphism is like spice
* Too much and you get indigestion.
* Too little and everything is "flat" and lacking.
I also disagree that "flat design" is skeuomorphic but that is a topic for another day.
--
Henry Poincare derived the e=mc^2 Mass-Energy equivalence 5 years earlier [gpofr.com] before Einstein. Einstein also abbreviated it as a linear equation instead of an infinite series.
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Preach it brother!
Worse, all sense of color has been removed -- icons are now monochromatic.
* Before users had two ways ways to identify icons: color, and silhouette.
* Now with "flat shading" users only have 1 way to identify icons: silhouette.
And this "flat" stuff is 'better' ??? NOT.
Re:UI chases fads (Score:5, Funny)
So the solution is obvious, we need a browser extension that turns the room lights on or off depending on the site you are currently visiting.
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Also, True Type / Postscript / Web fonts still don't support color gradients.
And why should they? Fonts hold letter shapes and sometimes ligature data. CSS is for presentation/styling/color. CSS doesn't yet support color gradients on text (only backgrounds), but there are clever workarounds. [css-tricks.com]
"By the dragon embroidered on my butt pockets!" (Score:5, Funny)
My plea to designers and software engineers: Ignore the fads...
Web designers? Ignore a fad?
Hahahahahahahahahaha!
Internet becoming unreadable (Score:5, Funny)
Internet becoming unreadable because of lighter, more transparent content.
if only... (Score:3)
I wouldn't say the content is getting more transparent. I would on the contrary that there is more and more trolling, unsubstantiated claims, and unverified / unverifiable information, because some people / nations have no interest of having a free internet and see it as a way to control populations.
Damn, I used to love the internet!
Mobile browsing (Score:3)
I've noticed that after getting a 4K screen, I've felt much less need to zoom in to view text.
On some level I think this is consequence of web designers targeting mobile first a lot of the time. You tend to have much larger DPI on mobile now, and so you can make lines thinner and trade some color contrast because you have much sharper detail.
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What those designers can't seem to understand is that a lot of people don't have HiDPI displays.
quick fix (Score:4, Informative)
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Another one : in Firefox, click on the bread sandwich and on "Customize..." right in the bottom. Drag'n'drop the zooming controls left to the bread sandwich button.
Now it's a single click to zoom (or a few), and a single click on the zoom size brings it back to 100% too.
I thought it was because (Score:2)
Press next to see the rest of this story.
CSS (Score:3)
Wasn't CSS supposed to let users pick different profiles or override a webpage's settings? Or has CSS just become purely decorative?
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CSS has always been presentational/decorative. The "C" in CSS defined an easy way for a browser UI to let you override some settings easily - but these settings are underused and so are buried way down.
I would like (Score:2)
White text on a black background please
Or at least make it easy to cut/copy text from a page and paste into another program that I can set the size font and color
Hardly (Score:2)
Just substitute your own fonts, fontsizes and colors, I'm doing it since the beginning, Geocities wasn't readable otherwise. :-)
God, yes - exhibit A: iOS 9 (Score:2)
Hello 25 year-old graphic designers. Congratulations on being a designer - enjoy it. But please, please show your designs to more than just your peer group. You may get a surprise.
Too bad Readability addon went all cloudy (Score:2)
I used to use the wonderful Readability add-on in firefox before it went all cloud-based and commercial. I still use a fork of Readability called Enjoy Reading, but it's not maintained and not available anymore. I sure enjoy using it to read articles, though. I can set the font and make it clear and have all the contrast I want. Even better, often times by stripping out all the cruft, it can display a page that displays in parts normally all in one page. It also tends to cut through those popups that say
The reason is simple... (Score:2)
How to get this message across? (Score:5, Interesting)
At age 64, this article is timely for me. There are sites I would really like to read (example theintercept.com) but can not because they have fallen into the thrall of toney grey fonts as have so many others. In my example, I hardly think the people are bad people, but aren't they interested in getting their message out?
So I looked around on that site for a link like "Feedback" or "Contact Us", but without any luck. Perhaps it was in the same grey font.
Anyhow, I did find a "Jobs" link so I applied for a position of my own invention called "Web Usability Analyst, Part Time" and I explained my great interest in the position.
Haven't heard back.
Maximum Irony (Score:5, Interesting)
The linked article itself is not even using black fonts.
They are using #333333 which is a dark grey.
Remembr ArsTechnica and now reddit (Score:2)
In reddit the new
Not just the web (Score:3)
I bought an Apple TimeCapsule and I couldn't read the instruction manual. I'm over 40 and usually don't have any problem with print, but the small light gray font they used beat me. I managed to work out how to use it from the web, but it pissed me off.
Re:If you can't see the text (Score:5, Informative)
Or use the "Read Easily" addon for Firefox - flip the bird at all those "designers".
The "designers" won't be happy until the page appears to contain no information at all - 100% clean and clear.
Re:If you can't see the text (Score:5, Interesting)
That dream isn't completely dead; but it sure doesn't get much respect from the cool kids(which can make the 'just impose your own CSS' trick pretty hairy on some of the touchier sites out there).
Re: (Score:3)
Or use the "Read Easily" addon for Firefox - flip the bird at all those "designers".
Why is that better? That removes all styles, which replaces one problem with another.
The entire problem is stupid. Moronic designers who think trendy styles are better than true readability. I've used the Contact Us feature of many websites to complain about that trend. None have responded, and none have changed their sites.
I guess I'll keep reading the comments, hoping to find a real solution.
Re:If you can't see the text (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably a bit like the site you're looking at right now.
Re: (Score:2)
Get this extension first:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-... [mozilla.org]
Life is much easier when all your addons don't break with every new Firefox release.
Re: (Score:2)
put your glasses on.
I AM wearing my glasses, asshole. Still can't see shit...
Re: (Score:3)
put your glasses on.
Ignorant comment.
A failing with older people's sight (and some younger ones) is reducing contrast due to increasing clouding of the eye's lenses and/or aqueous humour. Glasses cannot correct for that.
Re: (Score:3)
It's somewhat good design. For bright screens, black on white can be harsh-looking. Part of the blame lies on people never tweaking blown out default settings on their screens - especially at larger screen sizes.
That doesn't mean body text should all be lightened (which I know some sites also do), but headline text and graphic overlay text should at least deserve special treatment.
I also wonder if ClearType isn't partly to blame. You get finer edges, but the color fringing kind of hurts the eyes at times
Re: (Score:2)
I suspected my browser of being broken, but apparently these "designers" are broken instead. Next step is that we need a "font-conditioner" in addition to an ad-blocker to keep the web readable. And to think that font-design and appropriate usage has been a solved problem for quite a few decades... The world is dumbing down even more.
Re: (Score:2)
Often it breaks stuff. Ad panels overlap and cover things up, text doesn't wrap properly or at all, etc.
Sites don't want to make it easy to extract just the text, because that makes ad-blocking easier. They thus force you to read it their way under their conditions.
Re: (Score:2)
The "zoom" feature in most browsers simply scales the whole page proportionally these days, rather than scaling fonts. The forced stylesheet would just be to enforce colors.
Re: (Score:2)
Open Sans semibold looks great, but it should really only be used for headings, maybe footers/copyrights if used properly.
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously, there's even a setting on most pages to change the default font size, so the text renders in a larger font size.
Look on /. ... long pause ... no, it's not here. I've never seen one on any page, much less most pages.
Now, what there IS is a setting in Firefox (and I assume others) where you can set not only the minimum font size but what fonts are used for various kinds of text. Preferences->Content, Fonts&Colors->Advanced. And a small checkbox that says "allow pages to use their own fonts instead of the selections above" which should be unchecked.
I long ago had to set a minimum because of morons who though