Comment by nkrisc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nkrisc | Hacker News Reader

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Couldn't actually read for very long. The content scrolling over the static background image gave me motion sickness.

The 1980s theme was the only one I could stand, and the 1990s theme appears to be the same as the Tropical Days theme. All the ones with the background are essentially unusable for me.

It's their site, they can do whatever they want, but it's a bit silly to act like there's something wrong with anyone who has a problem with it. For example, in the default theme the yellow text (#FFFF00) with the pink highlight (#FF00FF) fails WCAG contrast requirements across the board.

Maybe the really don't care whether everyone has an easy time reading their site or not, and that's their choice, but I find the snark about it off-putting. It's not difficult to design a site that's easy for everyone to read.

> But anyway, most of the material published on our research website is also available in gemtext format via our gemini server.

Might be the only way I'd read this site.

> I find the snark about it off-putting

Same. I think this is one of those things where they were having some fun, and then some people on the Internet overreacted with great hyperbole, and so they're issuing this response to those people, but I'm sitting here reading it and it feels aggressive, and I think, "Wait, what did I do? I'm just sitting here not bothering anybody", and it begins to feel like a low-level conflict. I think a lot of internet discourse is like that, unfortunately.

Probably trying to copy the "cool"/snarky PR approach of dbrand[1] or Ryanair[2].

[1] https://twitter.com/dbrand/status/1626716812128952320

[2] https://twitter.com/Ryanair/status/1569268623235231748

Aye. Big "we have a developer that knows CSS" vibes, rather than "we have a designer" energy. Feels like someone should have told them the pitfalls of chasing a design that was hand-crafted for a specific format (print media; magazines, specifically), or at least why the choices that were made for that medium were made, and why they may cause issues in this medium. For that kind of stuff, though, you need someone who has a deep knowledge of design, rather than just a high skill at implementing designs.

Of course, with such an obviously high skill at design implementation, they did plenty enough to be perfectly fine for most use-cases, so it's hard to be too hard on them about any of their choices. Everything works just fine. And to ignore complaints that ignore your design choices is a fine disposition, as well! No reason to bother with people who aren't interested in your vision and don't contribute.

But to snark about the complaints, as if there's nothing you could do better? Smacks of an aloofness that is an off-putting characteristic for an organizations purporting to do research.

Lol, this is the first website in a long while that made me feel sick after scrolling for a while. I need to show this to the folks in office and see who pukes or wipes their head.

Looks like we need to "seek professional medical advice"

On Firefox, you can just prepend "about:reader?url=" to any web page and you get the plain-text reader view. There's apparently a config setting in the userChrome.css file to make reader available like this on all sites.

In Edge you can highlight text and click read in Immersive Reader or prefix the url with read://

Some sites have it in the address bar, but I've never found any documentation from MS that makes it clear how to ensure that it is always there.

That's a good point, and a good tip for when Firefox doesn't prompt it automatically. I'd forgotten entirely about reader mode on Desktop, I do use it all the time on mobile though.

Playing Devil's advocate, if the themes are inaccessible, the user can always pick another one. Monochrome might provide the contrast ratio you want.

My recommendation is always accessible by default. If the default theme is not accessible, it may be difficult for the user to switch to one that is.

It's so easy to make a site that is accessible - a blank HTML document with no CSS essentially is. It takes work to make a site that isn't.

Too late to edit but I didn't mean "blank" as in no content, that would be pretty pointless. Poor choice of words.

But why would they? It's much easier just to move on to another site.

Isn't that why HN sucks?

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