Medium and the Scourge of Persistent Sharing Bars
daringfireball.net
daringfireball.net
What really blows my mind is how awful so many websites from old publications with high-quality print editions are. A lot of these publications had quality standards for advertisers, and they worked hard to design nice-looking print layouts. As a result, even if there were a lot of ads they were at least unobtrusive and often kind of interesting and worth looking at in and of themselves. But it's like publishers are somehow incapable of thinking about a website the same way they think about a magazine.
When I end up on a website that takes fifteen seconds to load, makes text jump around as different ads are displayed and hidden, autoplays video, and pesters me with popups I wonder if anyone who works at the publisher ever actually uses their website. I mean, who, in their right mind, could ever think they were providing an even halfway decent product?
I have absolutely no sympathy when legacy publishers who peddle terrible, low-quality product struggle and go out of business. I mean, I hate to see media power consolidating into Facebook's hands, and it sucks when people lose their jobs, but these publishers have no one to blame but themselves.
It's just short-sighted. Various metrics might go up from month to month or year over year, but they'll drive away their cuatomers over a decade.
1 - direct response advertisers (obviously not all of them, but a big fraction) care deeply about purchases / test drives / whatever. Interactions that don't lead to purchases don't make money for a publisher. fb pretty thoroughly poisoned the well for advertisers paying for some sort of fleeting social interaction, though Snap is trying.
2 - Everyone here complaining about medium and still reading it... it's like that Woody Allen joke --
Woman one: "The food here is terrible."
Woman two: "I know, and such small portions!"
At the end of the day the content itself is mostly what matters. As long as people I want to read are posting on Medium I'll read stuff there. And really, it's not that bad these days. But, if the same content were posted somewhere else that offered a better reading experience I'd definitelt to read it there. I do generally avoid clicking on links to local newspaper and TV news sites, since they tend to be truly awful.
Publishers know that content is what matters most, and people will put up with a ton to get to it. But they have a much weaker grip on content than they probably think.
By contrast, publishers have a very weak grip on us, the end users. We prefer to consume our content on platforms like FB and Snapchat and Twitter, or linked on boards like Reddit and HN. Very few of us are actually direct-navigating to publishers' sites and apps to consume content at the source. And we have decreasing loyalty to any particular publishing brand.
Ultimately this may lead to a weaker grip on content. If anyone can make the economics of publishing work while retaining a smaller staff of better compensated journalists, they will be able to have their pick of the best journalists in the world. The compensation bar is really really low these days, and anyone who pays journalists a comfortable living wage in 2017 can clear that bar and win a ton of goodwill. It's the revenue side of the equation that's tricky to make work.
I cannot stop showing this to people:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/26/us/turkey-pro...
That is amazing.
The web has been perverted and prostituted and bent out of shape in every which way but this ...
This is the promise fulfilled, 15 years later, of "web 2.0". This is what they were talking about and what we wanted but didn't know how to ask for.
The NYT ends the article with "If you can identify anybody in the video or have other information regarding the events, you can anonymously submit information through our tips line at nytimes.com/tips."
I find I've become more focused on following individual writers/journalists/bloggers these days and less attached to publisher brands. And a lot of signs point to the future of publishing being much more fragmented and focused on individual journalists. But when the NYT does stuff like that it shows how powerful and effective a big publishing organization can be. Maybe new ways for journalists to pool resources and collaborate will emerge?
You gotta admit, that's pretty much spot-on. The resources some of these websites consume is just mind-boggling.
Ublock Origin's right-click / Block Element (then optional selection process) is an absolute boon to forever hide these artefacts.
Every now and then I'll try reading something on mobile chrome, or a friend's machine, and realise how annoying much of the web is for many people.
Seems like they use some kind of tracker that "polls" user activity on the page. I suspect that's why Chrome seems to use more CPU/RAM when I've got more Medium pages opened.
Some sites you can easily dismiss and they'll let you browse after (which makes the modal pointless) and other sites won't let you past unless you disable adblocking for that site.
They definitely use your attention and collect as detailed profiles of you as possible. But you also pay with your CPU, RAM, and electricity: they'll gladly use as much of it for their purposes as possible.
Really, deciding when to close tabs and what to close is kind of an organic process. I am running ChromeOS on ARM, though, so that may be a bit more optimized for having lots of Chrome tabs open. On x86/64, I'd probably have to use Firefox for that kind of nonsense.
But incidentally, I love ChromeOS on ARM. Very energy-efficient, there are some solid models in that rare and coveted 10-11.6" size range, now it has (beta) Android apps, and in dev mode you can pop a full Linux chroot onto it with an extension that lets you surface X sessions to a Chrome tab. Absolutely fantastic, until you run into a closed-source x86/64 binary.
Also, since I have to sync everything to a repository or cloud storage or physical media fairly frequently to use a more fully-functioned machine, it also means that if I lose it or it breaks or I have to evacuate and leave it behind or something, nbd. Data's still there, and they're only like $2-300 anyways - not bad for a secondary computer.
Hey, Apple - you know that 12" Macbook of yours? The one with a laughable single port? Maybe make an ARM version with a popular hackable core chip; like a newer Allwinner A10 or something. You could charge $400-500, easy.
Keyboards that don't bend? What makes do you recommend?
I have the C100 Flip right now, which I like a lot. It has a Cortex-A17 which doesn't have trouble running a bunch of tools I use like KiCAD, Arduino, etc. but I wouldn't use it for 3D modeling or other intensive tasks. The resolution is also a bit low at 1280x800.
I think you may have misunderstood Apple's target market ;)
What are the downsides I should know about?
To be fair to them, it's still not really clear what the answer is. But I think we've established it isn't what we have now.
A general suggestion for programming blogs: instead of Medium, try using something like Hexo[1] or Hugo[2] and deploy for free on Github Pages or Netlify. Publishing content is as easy as `hexo deploy` or `git push origin master`.
You get complete control with a static site generator and can remove things like the sharing bar and animation. There is almost no maintenance required, because the site will be a collection of static HTML files.
[1] https://hexo.io/ [2] https://gohugo.io/
I don't think I would use it for my static blog simply because I don't really feel like spinning up a separate server just for comments.
Part of the appeal of a static site generator for me is not having to administrate a server. I can just throw it up on Github or Gitlab pages and be done with it.
This is usually how I know that a library is well put together.
It features a lot of JS that does some pretty wild things (FLIP animations, push-state, touch-enabled drawer menu), but thanks to revolutionary HTML and CSS technology (tongue-in-cheek) all JS is optional and consequently fetching is deferred until after the rest of the page has finished loading.
It's what I'd consider best practice when it comes to publishing on the web: Knock yourself out with all the new JS stuff, but make it optional and put content first.
I don’t think I’m being unreasonable in wanting simple things to work. Things like preserving newlines in code blocks in the Reddit app—since 95% of my subs are technical—or showing what comment of mine someone is replying to in the Imgur app—since it might be anything I’ve commented on in the past few days, or years if someone was browsing in Random mode.
My phone barely had enough memory for the apps I do want. Their website stops working on my phone? Fine, I stop using their service.
Still uses the same "slow mobile web" underneath.
javascript:(function () {document.body.style['overflow-y']=document.body.style['overflow']='auto'; var i,elements=document.querySelectorAll('body *'); for (i=0;i<elements.length;i++) {if (getComputedStyle(elements[i]).position==='fixed' || getComputedStyle(elements[i]).position==='sticky') {elements[i].parentNode.removeChild(elements[i]);}}})();
I open the link to the listed example, and mobile.twitter.com covers the top 25% of screen with a login prompt(likely an app store redirect if I take the bait? I use, seldomly, 'Tinfoil' client app from FDroid if I want to login to Twitter), and the bottom 25% with the notice about the ever evolving 'privacy/divulgance' policy. Oy Vey... Really makes me appreciate the few text only, practical UI, bullshit free sites I have left to visit online, like this one.
Jokes aside, screen space on mobile devices stopped being considered precious by publishers and designers long ago.
And don't get me started on the irrelevancy of needing to download a mobile app purely for the purposes of reading what should be a bog-standard web page.
Of course, you don't really, because you can just as well follow the same people on Twitter or whatever.
Most traditional media orgs don't even have that excuse, of course, and are merely trying to cajole you into reading the stuff in a place where you can't turn off the ads.
Oft evil will shall evil mar.
I first ran across it on HN. I have no idea who's running it or why, though the domain seems to have been used by a Knight Foundation grantee a few years back. The contact email hasn't answered those questions (though they've answered a few others), and domain registration is through Perfect Privacy.
If anyone has any information on this, I'd love to hear it. (I'd submitted an HN item on it a week or two back.)
On Chrome/Android, it's what I'm running most long-form content through for reading, as design is simply too annoying (and variable) on too many sites. It's been a few years now that I've said: web design isn't the solution, web design is the problem.
The fact that Medium screws this up is particularly ironic for all the reasons Gruber states.
Even the NY Times is better viewed via outline.com (or https://archive.is) if you want to be able to select and copy text from it. Such as, say, to look something up. Or quote it in an essay.
Otherwise, I see an Internet adpocalypse arriving, sooner rather than later. A browser, or other tool, which simply strips all this crap off and gives a stiff middle finger to site design seems imminent.
For the small handful of app-based sites which really need full app status, sure, throw Chrome or Firefox at them. But most stuff doesn't need that.
Through try it on a feed like https://outline.com/daringfireball.net, and it's completely broken.
Obviously this is not the use-case though.
I've found sites which don't render, render incompletely, or have artifacts (one had, for whatever reason, a framed outline around the text). Letting 'em know what doesn't work may help.
I dunno. So common, and so nonsensical.
Using the History api correctly is trickier than most people think.
Am I missing something?
> People often ask me why we switched to Medium. There were a variety of reasons, but one was reaching a new audience, and another was aiming for wider distribution. But maybe the top one was curiosity — let’s see if we can learn something new.
For example, I could easily set up a personal site and post my random Medium articles there. But I already run a couple of more important ones with my time, and don't really want to spend time buying another domain, setting up my hosting, installing/customising WordPress and marketing the hell out of it when Medium can give me a decent looking place to put the content for free.
There's also a built in audience at Medium. Not necessarily a large one mind you (the platform is much better at amplifying an existing audience than building a new one), but one that may have not come across my articles otherwise. Especially if I post my work in a publication.
So that's my take on it anyway.
I wonder what kind of conversations take place when they're considering implementing this UI bloat. "People love sharing, let's help them share!" Like they're actually helping readers, rather than realize it's a rhetorical lie to help them get past the fact that they have no respect for the end user and are singularly focused on meeting a KPI that will net them more money than the creators of the actual content - you know, the reason why people are even on the fucking website in the first place.
Actual quote from someone I was working with on designing a webpage. He wanted us to basically sign our user's up with his site automatically without them knowing.
I feel it applies to most web-design nowadays.
In my experience they've often been considered non-negotiable by marketing folks, even when faced with metrics showing that nobody ever actually clicks them.
Appending the original URL (with a leading "/") to that will open the page directly.
>> Safari already has a built-in Sharing button. It has all the options for sharing I need.
And the people that don't use Safari?
Even if no native share button is available, I wouldn't use any share button provided by the website. Those rarely do what I want them to. I'd just copy the URL and paste it wherever i need it to go.
Is John Gruber that gullible? Most startups out there are led by someone with a "messiah syndrome". They all believe they are going to change the world; but really it's all about money. Find a "niche" and then juice it till it bleeds, they have no other purpose everything else is just PR. Or worse, "rationalization" where the person actually belives all their own bullshit.
Medium's builtin design and clean UI also gives an aura of professionalism to a lot of shitty writing.
Good luck getting a feed that works for you. My feed was continuously assaulted by random feminist rants with clickbait drama titles.
I also love how they write completely meaningless update notes for the iOS app. Eventually they were called out for it on the iOS app when they posted a huge block of morse code in lieu of actual update notes. Then in the following updates, they add some sarcastic message in their iOS update notes mocking their own users who were unhappy with their random/meaningless update notes. What a bunch of losers.
Also their recommendation system sucks. And your feed routinely gets articles "recommended for you" without any reason given (some say "because you follow Such-and-such-Tag, but many don't).
And even putting my rant aside, what do we have to gain from centralizing all expression through a few controlled gates like Facebook or Medium? Who gains from this?
So often a social sharing button is the easiest way to post an interesting article to my fb. But that's entirely a workaround for as stupid bug in a zillion dollar website.
Everything sucks.
It's one of the reasons I'm using Firefox even if Opera has text reflow. Sometimes I wish there is an Open in Opera addon.
This has saved me a great deal of annoyance, especially on my smaller-screened mobile phone.
They still shouldn't be there in the first place though.
javascript:document.getElementsByClassName('js-stickyFooter')[0].remove();Also all of the posts from this guy are complaint after complaint. Nothing constructive or interesting ever, just peeve after peeve. Like two weeks ago he complained about FB being closed. Week before that it was something else. Just banal.
Come on, seriously? It's one column of text with one column of navigation and a single small non-animated, non-video ad unit, and the text/background has decent contrast. What's the difficult part?
You don't like his opinions fine, but difficult to read that site is not.
I still can't get over realizing 5 years ago why Google always directed me to this site when I would googled "markdown". When I realzied this was the guy who made markdown and so I had to read his site as an authoritative source... It's ironic he complains a lot about usability, etc.