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Comment by joshuatopolsky | Hacker News Reader

The article isn't about aesthetic choices. If you don't like the way The Outline looks, that's your opinion, but we made it that way ON PURPOSE. The article is about forced compromises because of bad B2B decisions made a long time ago about what user value is.

It's useful to be able to separate those things out. You can appreciate the article and still be mad at our site because it doesn't look like what you expect.

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Wrong.

When you publish an article entitled "the web looks like shit" on a page that looks like shit, and people quite reasonably call you on that, you want to own it, because then you look subtle and smart and clever.

Whining about how people are pointing out your page looks like shit just makes you look whiny. And the page still looks like shit.

Dude I literally own it. We love the way our site looks. We made it this way with a lot of thought and care. It's not for everyone, however.

I came here looking for these comments, knowing the crowd.

Didn't expect to find you here though.

So just want to add - The Outline is one of the freshest aesthetics I've seen in a long time. I get it and I love it. Nice job.

I mean I get that it's your baby and you and whoever else worked on it are super into the style. I'm super not, but why do you care? You've got your statement to make. "That's just, like, your opinion, man, it's not for everybody" still comes off whiny, though.

That said, good call not breaking reader mode, so the less avant garde among us don't have to choose between bouncing and getting a headache. Super-saturated background for unsaturated text? Seriously? I mean, the luminance contrast is good and all, but Jesus. How is this not literally painful for you guys to look at on Apple displays? Even on a Dell it stings.

What people are saying is that the web does look like shit, and your website is part of the problem.

Unfortunately for you, the web _is_ for everyone. It's for everyone on HN, it's for people with disabilities, it's for people who have a 32" desktop screen that don't need your shitty hamburger menu and giant font size, it's for people with color blindness, it's for people who want to read the content, not marvel at your silly squiggly lines.

Saying that "my design is not for everyone" in such a dismissive manner is deliberately showing the middle finger to everyone who is outside of your group and people are calling you out on that.

Your submission is objectively ironic, regardless of what YOU think.

Yeah, but this looks like shit on purpose. The article's complaining about pages that look like shit by accident. Totally different, don't you know.

I clicked on the actual site. Took 5 seconds to load and a bunch of things wiggling on the page. Navigation was like snapchat style with full page ads. Lots or chrome reducing actual readable area. Contrast for text isn't that great for readability.

Definitely classifies as "looks like shit" in my book.

Also, just throwing it out here, 6e80b054e26bd9dad7934a0bb10699451e59f833.

> When you publish an article entitled "the web looks like shit" on a page that looks like shit...

Frankly, that's a very subjective conclusion. While I think that those article pages are still too large and slow to load on poor connections, aesthetically The Outline looks and feels pleasing, original and well designed. In my opinion.

While your opinion is just as valid I have a problem with the absolute way in which you express it.

Well, that's a shame.

I don't disagree with the point of the article. There are sites I don't visit simply because digesting the information presented on those sites takes too long due to poor design choices.

Having said that, the "aesthetic choices" that The Outline makes negatively affect the usability of the site, just like all of the other sites I intentionally don't visit.

I'm in agreement with the other posts here: I couldn't tell if the article's presentation was supposed to be a parody or not. Based on your comment it seems like the article (and presentation) were intended to be taken seriously. If that is truly the case, then the "aesthetic choices" used greatly decrease the readability and usability of the article. If you're looking for specifics:

* Narrow central column of text that leaves large, empty left and right gutters on desktop browsers; * Excessively large default font size and leading yields 1-2 sentences per screen page; * Giant paragraph breaks littered with examples referenced from the article that take away from article space; * Poor choices of color (readability) and useless animations.

All of the aforementioned "aesthetic choices" decrease usability and comprehension because they take away from the reader's ability to read the article. So while you may think these are simple "aesthetic choices", they are all "usability choices" as well.

An example of better choices that don't distract from reading the article: http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2017/04/ec...

Note that the example I provided still has huge gutters and the font size is still too large for my liking, but I understand the compromise that was made to make one site usable for both mobile and desktop. Otherwise, the use of black-on-white, sane leading, and sane paragraph spacing means I can quickly scan and comprehend the article because there are no distractions from doing so. I can quickly read and comprehend articles on the Economist. My reading and comprehension of articles on The Outline is slower due to the aforementioned usability issues. Since my time is limited, that means I'll prefer articles from The Economist first and defer (or ignore) articles from The Outline.

In what way would you improve "narrow"-ness of the text column and centered alignment? Are you suggesting the line length should be longer, or that there should be stuff in the gutters? How would that be an improvement?

I mean, in a way it is. You're advocating for readability, yet use a color that many find directly hurts it. You use arbitrary icons and moving imagery, images that are impossible to scale up (and read). It's no surprise that people are wondering if you're ironic...

That is an important distinction. But your page still won't fit on a floppy and is splattered with distracting animated gifs throughout the article and two giant full screen ads and a prompt to give over my email address at the bottom. It's a more thoughtful assault.

Did you actually just say it wouldn't fit on a floppy disk?

You are committed to this character. Kudos, I guess.

Yes. Chrome web tools say the page takes 1.7 Mb to load (disabled cache and ad block for a clear measurement).

Some people want to know what you're saying with minimal extras added in, saying it should fit on a floppy is a way of pointing to this notion.

Alluding to someone being ridiculous because 'floppy disk' isn't very generous to the other person, which is to say you seemed to be missing the point: your site could be more simple and weigh less making it better in the eyes of many on this site.

Yes. As in, 1.44 megabytes. For a four-paragraph article.

> a prompt to give over my email address at the bottom

That's the point. It's at the bottom, within the normal flow of the document. Not a fucking lightbox popup thing with confirmshaming!

> two giant full screen ads

I saw one methodhome.com ad, with a cool custom CSS animation on hover, again normally appearing within the article. How is it full screen?

If you don't like the way The Outline looks, that's your opinion, but we made it that way ON PURPOSE.

It's not just how it looks (utterly horrid on desktop, IMO), but its ostensible (anti-)usability too...

[FWIW, it freaking crashed my old iPad (not just Safari, but the whole OS), and lost all my tabs. But who cares about users right?]

> but we made it that way ON PURPOSE

Aside from everything else, why would you make animated squiggly lines on purpose? It's extremely irritating because it causes motion in my peripheral vision. I can't see how it adds value.

We think they look cool? Also it's strange but some people LOVE them and some people HATE them.

Hm. I wonder, which one of those categories of people would change their decision to read or leave the article because of that.

Yes, I think it's those who love the squiggly line would (hypothetically) continue to read the site just because of cool design, and not the other way around.

You guys should do some real A/B testing rather than rely on your own opinions.

A/B testing is exactly what has turned the web into a horrible soup of click bait.

Good design needs strong opinions.

Thats if you make decisions based on revenue, conversions, etc and not based on criteria that is most beneficial to the user. You need a little of both for a sustainable business.

I really liked what RSS readers did. Also the HN app pulls out the text from the article and shows it in a consistent style. We'll spaced black on white sans-serif text. No ads, no bullshit, just text and images. Same clean design for every post.

I would really love browsers to have a read mode, like incognito mode. If website owners want to make their site not work with standard html, then search engines should rank them lower.

I really don't care about wiggling text underlines. It hurts my eyes. I want accessible clean design optimized for readability and speed.

"I would really love browsers to have a read mode, like incognito mode."

Firefox does. It's fabulous.

Bad design does, too.

Depends what you want. A/B testing tends to lead to bland mediocrity. At the end of the day there is definitely something to be said a strong design statement that somebody is willing stand up for, even if it is a noble failure, when compared to the design by committee non-entity that A/B testing often leads to.

Lol, if that is the case, it seems strange to make such a polarizing decision about the horizontal rules. You will definitely turn away more readers that find them annoying than you will gain readers who are like "the article content is meh.... but those animated squigglies tho!"

The article points out plenty of hypocrisy in other sites. Pointing out the hypocrisy of The Outline is both reasonable and expected when it looks like someone vomited a jelly sandwich onto my screen.

Well, I find it hard to appreciate an article I can't read.

What PURPOSE would that be?

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