Are We Making the Web A Bit Bland? | Hacker News Reader

Are We Making the Web A Bit Bland?

brooksreview.net

9 pointsshowngo9 comments

Blandness is in the eye of the beholder. The writer of this piece places a high value on his site's design. Others have a different view of good design. Still others value content over design. The beauty of the internet is that we can all consume this content in whatever form makes sense for us. This amazing multiplicity seems anything but bland to me.

Its a bit meta and hard to swallow for a geek like me, but somehow I actually get what he's saying.

I believe the point that Brooks is trying to make is that the package and the content come together as one to convey the message as the author intended to convey it.

I have a few places that I write and I've been going through the process of putting a lot of thought into redesigning them to better match the tone and feel that I want each place to convey. Part of that process is making sure the content is clear and easy to read. The sidebar elements are not overly distracting, yet they do not disappear, etc.

Its interesting to read the same thing I wrote in different themes as it does seem to feel different for some inexplicable reason.

I don't give a crap about what your site looks like. I'm on the Internet for content and quick access to that content. The "quick access" is the part that means a site should be easy to read, understandable and accessible.

Conversely, I care about what peoples site looks like. I'm on the Internet both for content and visual inspiration.

It's not a zero sum game. It's possible to have things that are functional and pretty.

I'm looking forward to a web where most "sites" are irrelevant, and hardly ever visited.

I'm tired of having to dig through multiple sites to find the answer to a problem or question, or to visit multiple sites to get a stream of information that I'm interested in.

I'd much rather have a machine-readable web and an intelligent agent to fetch info for me.

I really don't need flashy intros, flaming logos, over-designed background images and a pile of animated advertisements.

If that makes the web bland, then bring it on.

You're basically describing a slightly more useful Wolfram Alpha. Is that really what you want?

I'm actually describing a future like Douglas Adams and Tom Baker showed in the 1991 film "Hyperland," or the vision Tim Berners Lee has outlined with the Semantic web.

I definitely want that.

Hacker News is a good example of how to make a site "bland" and yet instantly recognizable, I think.

The same blandness obviously applies to content being read via RSS aggregators or Planets. The question then is whether content is king, or whether site design is an integral part of it.

For example, on my blog every article shows the location posted (with a map), and photos from the week the article was written. In my view this helps readers to put the contents into context, but obviously with a feed reader (or InstaPaper) this context is lost.

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