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Comment by DiabloD3 | Hacker News Reader

I was going to say that font is unreadable, but its Courier New.

By my own extensive testing[1], it's optimal at minimum 18px, you're at 13.5px.

[1]: https://github.com/Diablo-D3/dotfiles/blob/master/fontsizes....

Courier New is a bad font that no one should choose to use. In typical font-weight terms, where Regular should be 400, it’s 200–250, because it was improperly digitised, not taking ink bleed into account. Windows put some hacks into ClearType to make it render a little less badly, but they’re not dependable these days.

(“Courier”, as provided by macOS, is fine. But Courier New is irredeemably bad.)

Concerning font-family declarations, if you’re doing something like `"Courier New", Courier, monospace`—please just write `monospace`.

(I’m not going to address the font size.)

It renders terribly on sizes below ~14px, even on a Retina display. No anti-aliasing setting can save it.

A modern typeface like IBM Plex Mono [1] or Office Code Pro [2] that offers more weights and can still render nicely at 10px size would be a better choice, maintaining the same aesthetic.

[1] https://fonts.google.com/specimen/IBM+Plex+Mono

[2] https://open-foundry.com/fonts/office-code-pro

Yep, on my phone I opened this page and closed it in 20 seconds. Can't see shit, captain! Didn't figure out if it's the font, weight, or size but this is the worst looking website I've hit in a while.

Beauty /is/ in the eye of the beholder. The rationale /here/ is that the more text in a page the more code you'll fit in your head the more you'll get done, the more confidence you'll have and again the more you'll achieve.

OP has a valid point. On my Mac, it's unreadable without zooming in. I immediately left the page.

Thanks for the valuable feedback. I've added a mediaquery for your use case. This should be more legible now: https://lukeb42.github.io/vertex-manual.html

Send me a screenshot via https://catbox.moe if it's unreadable and I'll get this done and dusted before leaving the thread. Thanks.

Zero code is in your head if you can't read it.

The predominant monitor in existence is your average 24" 1080p monitor, sat at, on average, 32" away from the head. The average person has worse than 20/20 vision.

You must test your website in such conditions and make sure it is readable, and also make sure it meets at minimum WCAG A, but preferably the whole way to AAA if possible.

Thank you but the predominant monitor's probably a smartphone. The average professional is probably using a 4k monitor at the moment.

Everything in the free documentation I've provided you out of my own time and money that you're referring to exists in relation to the other elements in that page, so to get the experience you're after simply ctrl+scroll and change the CSS zoom level like the riot at parties that you could be or catch up with circa 2013-2014 and invest in a 4k display please.

"Zoom in" or "buy a different monitor" is not an appropriate response to people bringing up the plethora of objective & subjective a11y issues on the page.

If you really don't care about providing an accessible experience, try this: no one will use the tool if they can't read the docs. With my monitor and eyesight, it's entirely illegible.

read the rest of the author's responses here. Everything comes across as very defensive and "take it or leave it". OK, you're the one trying to get me to adopt yet another SPA framework in 2026 so I guess I'll leave it.

Presumably you've posted it here because you would like others to either view it or consume it, neither of which are possible on (at least my) fairly common Galaxy S23 phone. Of course it's your decision how you want to serve the experience; we're just saying that right now your page is a fairly poor experience compared to the average website.

>> is that the more text in a page the more code you'll fit in your head the more you'll get done

I don't know in what world that makes any sense. Or why someone would want to "fit code" in their head...

I find it very readable. Macbook Air M2 with chrome set to default 90% zoom.

edit: I just noticed a newer comment from OP saying that changed the font size.

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