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Comment by vaporstun | Hacker News Reader

"If you divide 480 by 44 you get a remainder of 20. Divide by 11 and you get a remainder of 9. 460 cannot be divided into equal parts of 11 nor 44. The vertical rhythm is corrupt."

I would actually argue that the remainders are a good thing.

When viewing a list, they act as a nice visual indicator that there is more content below. If the last item directly lined up with the bottom of the screen, it would not be as easy to differentiate at a glance. By showing half the last item, it encourages the user to pan down to see the remaining content.

Certainly some would suggest I'm claiming "it's a feature, not a bug" and maybe that's true, maybe the remainder it is unintended, but I think it does make more sense to have the bottom element in a list half showing to alert the user that there is more content below.

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I think this gets at a key misunderstanding in the post. The purpose of a grid is not to align everything to pixel perfection, but to assist in generating an interface that communicates well and is attractive. Departures from the grid sizing can have a variety of benefits:

1) Visually distinguish navigational elements from content 2) Account for visual weight of different elements to create a stronger perception of rythm 3) Give some warmth and life to the design so it doesn't feel sterile and robotic 4) Indicating continuation of content (as you very nicely explain)

As the Dalai Lama said, "Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively."

> As the Dalai Lama said, "Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively."

FWIW, this appears to be a misattribution.

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/dalai.asp

Thanks ggchappell for the correction. In the future I'll run quotes by snopes before using them.

It is, in any case, a nice little saying.

I used to have my data structures & algorithms class (back when I taught DS&A) read "On following rules" by Kirit Saelensminde [http://www.kirit.com/On%20following%20rules]. This little saying goes along with it nicely.

Lukas Mathis touches on this visual scrollability hint in his discussion of potential solutions to usability issues with Lion's new hidden scrollbars:

http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2011/08/01/invisible_scrollbar...

Showing a peak of extra content to indicate that there's something you're not seeing may not be deliberate, but it's definitely desirable when you've got no other permanent indicators. That said, given Apple's usual attention to detail, I wouldn't be surprised to find that this is a deliberate design choice.

I’m pretty sure it’s deliberate. I have heard more than one Apple engineer say in their WWDC talks that you should always make sure to indicate when there’s more content and the way you do that is to cut off the last entry in a list.

Content height is unpredictable so even with a baseline grid, you will still get half-visible content most of the time. I was just lucky in my example :D

But what’s the value of not having a remainder? I don’t quite understand.

I can understand the value of not ending up with a remainder in print but on screens?

I, too, thought this was a pretty weak claim.

People can resize their browser windows to whatever dimensions they want; does that mean using any kind of grid or rhythm on the web is hopeless? Of course not.

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