Posted on Medium with a massive pointless image at the top and page loaded asynchronously using JS.
Thankfully, my eyesight works. But I’m sick and tired of designers pretending I’m illiterate and replacing text labels with inscruitable icons and graphics. Hey, remember when you could change your preferences by going to “File -> Preferences?” Instead of hunting around the interface looking for an unlabeled gear icon or hamburger icon or whatever some designer thinks conveys the same concept?
I also loathe the unnecessary javascript everywhere.
uMatrix has prevented the following page from loading:
https://blog.logrocket.com/the-easiest-way-to-keep-your-web-apps-accessible-c2b57506cc2a
[0] Obligatory "How do you know someone uses uMatrix? They'll tell you"-joke. I know, I know... mea culpa
[1] https://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/, https://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/serverlist.php?hostformat=hos...
I did a quick Google search on them, It's kinda ironic
>LogRocket helps you understand problems affecting your users, so that you can get back to building great software.
* https://www.reddit.com/r/YouShouldKnow/comments/97an7p/ysk_r...
They also describe their service:
> LogRocket lets you replay what users do on your site
ie, they track everything you do when you visit a site using their service.
I've updated the entry to just block this instead:
logs.logrocket.com
But flip the logic. Your inaccessible site, due to tiny unreadable fonts, is punishing everyone whose eyes aren't as good as yours, which is a lot of people.
Your mother is inconvenienced, we are punished. She only has to adjust one setting, where as I get no option.
And nobody is talking about tiny unreadable fonts, we're talking normal verses gigantic. If she can't read the normal OS font size, shes the problem and not the rest of us.
No, because there are cases where having large fonts makes sense (e.g. <h1> for article titles, etc) while preserving the ability to display smaller fonts than that (e.g. for article content).
Skimming? Since when does a literate person skim? Just read it, you lazy so-and-so, like you just read a book! A book with gigantic margins, like all books ever!
/s
In the past decade designers/PMs have started to figure out that users don't read, so they aren't trying to wedge as much text in. Though I'm no fan of some iOS interface, I credit Apple with getting the concept of legible text into mainstream design thought.
As far as Medium et al goes - I think the idea there is not so much the font size as not wanting to show you more than 2-3 paragraphs, lest you get a "wall of text" opinion and not read any of it.
The irony is that people go to medium because it's kind of .. expected somehow? And looks more authoritative?
I'm honestly curious how Medium is an improvement over that. Are you referring to the technical challenges of hosting content, perhaps?
That's not plain text, it's HTML. It's a total fiddle to write by hand (lots of angle brackets), and as you say you then have to find somewhere to host it.
But it also doesn't look as good as Medium. If browser makers were willing to be progressive and act as user agents, like they were originally intended to, then the two would look very similar. Unfortunately web browser text sizes haven't kept up with increasing screen density and so we have point-size inflation instead; the complete lack of margin also makes for a struggle when reading (though I do think Medium has gone too far in the other direction lately). Medium's link styling is less obtrusive; conversely code blocks on motherfuckingwebsite-style sites aren't visible enough. Image sizing on motherfuckingwebsite-like sites is also all wrong (they're sized to pixels rather than to anything meaningful). A lot of sites look worse than motherfuckingwebsite, but Medium is an improvement IMO.
Their styling is unobtrusive, but the result is something that leaves me thinking a designer needs to be shot for working far too hard to justify their pay.