Hacker News Reader

Comment by mushufasa | Hacker News Reader

I love the concept of re-invigorating html as the only source of truth for document layout -- and I totally see this being productive for documents that don't need complex design.

That said, I don't love the default design choices here -- colors and "polish." I'm not a professionally trained designer, but I've hand rolled enough software that users eventually complained about to sense when something "feels off" compared to what a really good designer creates with a background in color theory, information density, gradient shadings etc.

If the author is here, have you considered leveraging the aesthetics from other FOSS projects like bulma or tailwind, or collaborating with a professional designer? I know jgthms is sometimes on this site.

View on HN

Thanks for the constructive feedback!

To be honest I was kind of taken aback seeing this on HN because it was posted before I could do a show hn myself

I'm not a frontend dev nor a designer so it can be indeed apparent that I lack knowledge on color theory, accessibility concerns and other aspects that may seem obvious for other people. Probably hence the "artisanal" feel too.

I'll research more about the things you mentioned in the future. As for collaboration with a professional designer I'm open to receive advices, but I don't plan especially on hiring one as it's a side project. I don't think currently that professionals are the target audience for it, but I guess it'll definitely appeal more to hobbyist

The only thing I picked up on is probably <aside> should be floated the other side on RTL. I need to go fix this on my Arabic CSS myself now that I thought about it.

Here's a possible all-CSS solution:

https://stackoverflow.com/a/69630308/17917884

I get the "feels off" too, but I've had that happen with designer-made things too. It looks good enough that to me it seems as though someone with some decent design skills and/or a newer designer created it. The longer I look at it the better it looks overall, but the stronger the "slightly feels off" feeling gets. Pretty wild!

Edit: I think maybe the color on the tea cup is what is feeling a little off to me. Overall I love the logo, but I perhaps if the tea cup color was changed to be closer to the background color at the top?

I agree!

One example of something that feels off is the button styling on hover, dark backgrounds with black text doesn't work well aesthetically or for accessibility.

Having a more polished default set-up will be the cherry on top.

There's a section on the site where you can create your own custom build allowing you some control over basic styling choices.

But yes, designers trying to conform to a corporate look can spend hours on spacing etc. I suspect this isn't for them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com