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Comment by psychometry | Hacker News Reader

What is your complaint? The text seems to expand to fill the browser window. So you set your browser to a comfortable size and then that website is a comfortable size "for free". That, to me, seems like a good thing.

That makes sense when (as in the old days) you have one window per web page, but most people these days have a single window (or a few) with lots of tabs inside that window. You don't want to adapt the window to one particular site when the window is shared for many other sites (for which that site's comfortable size might not be a comfortable size).

So you want websites to override your decision on window sizing and make the visible area smaller? That doesn't sound great to me.

It's common practise. It's how web pages commonly work for the last 15 years. Do you prefer Gopher over HTTP/HTML as well? I actually do. This page lives in some in-between universe where all users have their own client side style sheets but still use HTTP/HTML.

For a lot of stuff, Gopher is much better than HTTP/HTML (not for all stuff; and there is also stuff where neither Gopher nor HTTP(S) is good).

I also don't like the webpage stylesheet resizing it and ignoring window size; instead it should just use the window size, and the user should change the font, font size, text width, etc, if they want to do so (also, they should implement split-screen).

That is why I use user CSS.

It's partly compensated for by the fact that the pages plays well with the read-mode plugin in Firefox.

If your design requires a plugin to be readable, it's a bad design.

To be fair, the font is a bit too small on mobile. But it works with reader mode, so there's that.

I haven't gotten a chance to update the website style since I set it up about 13y ago... it indeed could use a number of css tweaks to be usable on mobile devices, which weren't really available when I set it up.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9238739

Your link shows how dang doesn't doesn't like comments complaining about blog layouts. I disagree with dang. Now what? Am I expected to stop using this site because I disagree with the admin? Does this mean I will be banned if I complain?

I don't think it is bikeshedding, and I enjoy judging the writer of the blog for their (according to me) failure to understand the common programmer's aesthetic preference for parenthesis-free code and also failing to understand that people mostly have wide-screen displays and full-width lines don't read very well. Are these musings allowed?

PS I used to have some weird fetish for efficiency before I learnt to value readability.

> Your link shows how dang doesn't doesn't like comments complaining about blog layouts. I disagree with dang. Now what? Am I expected to stop using this site because I disagree with the admin? Does this mean I will be banned if I complain?

No, but you may get flagged.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com