All: "Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting."
It's not that these things aren't annoying—it's that they are annoying, and that drives tons of dyspeptic, offtopic discussion that in the end drowns out anything that's actually interesting. Since that's a bad outcome, we need to refrain from driving the thread there.
What I mean is that I think this website (at least from my perspective) has a successful, novel approach to representing books on the web.
I don't mean to discount your point. UX issues are very serious and can ruin an otherwise carefully presented work. My point is that despite these issues, I am impressed by the creator's approach to the website.
If this bothers people, it can also be changed with Stylebot or the like, using a rule like this to change the max-width, which is set to 400px, to a larger value:
p, ul, li { max-width: 800px; }
"Each time you see a word that is highlighted, [...] it means that this term is a lexicon enabled term. By clicking on that term, you will see a page listing all other uses of that term within the book."
a { background-color: transparent; }
javascript:document.querySelectorAll('a').forEach(el => el.style.backgroundColor = 'transparent')Commenters are correct that the whole thing reads like a meta joke, where the site itself is a mess. We have to at least consider the possibility that the author is in on the joke.
Petition to eliminate this stub, and merge this discussion of *the website's primary distinguishing feature* into the main conversation.
Seriously, a paginated interface for longtext? Hyperlinks not styled as hyperlinks? Text with random highlights? And most of the short blurbs really just more words without any additional clarification?
You make sense of a mess by having the ability to organize thought & data, and I am 100% convinced that the author does not have that ability.
I suspect it’s intentionally designed to be unpleasant to encourage book sales.
If you’re reading a book preview and have an awful time of it, why would that encourage you to buy the book? You’re more likely to close the site and move away.
Probably a mix of a style choice that didn't hit, and how pages were split up so it isn't as convenient as reading the book.
If it works, they'd be dumb not to. (For the record, I don't think it works, and I don't think that was their intent.)
And the columns are painfully narrow which impedes readability. Overly wide body text is often a problem people recognize, but overly narrow is equally problematic.
It's a very strange experience to have to scroll to read all the text, even when there's barely any text to begin with.
The highlighted links are incredibly off-putting, like buying a second-hand book that someone has already highlighted. The readable text is so narrow and small, but the sections are so short that you immediately hit the massive "Buy a Book" upsell banner at the bottom, which distracts you. All of this makes it hard to focus on the text itself.
I'll never understand sites that have way too many links in their articles. Am I mean to click away as I'm reading a paragraph? Do you want me to stay on the article or do you want me to be distracted and go somewhere else?
https://www.howtomakesenseofanymess.com/chapter1/19/every-th...
I think most people can't write nothingness like this even if they try very hard. And if they achieve that they can't make the emphasis this ugly.