CSS @ Ten: The Next Big Thing | Hacker News Reader

CSS @ Ten: The Next Big Thing

alistapart.com

17 pointsivankirigin12 comments

Yes, just what we need... more ways to make webpages look shitty, bloated and unreadable. Over the past 4 years, I've personally done at least two dozen usability studies and every one of the tests showed that simplicity always trumps elaborate design. No matter what you're trying to accomplish, you're always better off sticking to what people expect. People are used to Verdana, Times, Arial. I hate some of these fonts but people will test better if you stick to those fonts. Also, a lot of fonts just don't look great on screen and test even worse on readability. MS spent a lot of time on properly hinting these fonts so they are easy to read. By giving beginners this web fonts option, you're giving them more bullets to screw things up.

Now, one place where you think this stuff would help is Linux. Since Linux doesn't come with these "standard" web fonts, you need to substitute. Problem is that you cannot just put a link to these fonts inside your CSS since they're copyrighted by MS. So we're back to square one.

Rant: I wish Opera, MS etc. spent some time working on getting CSS2 working properly! They're already pushing for CSS3 and yet BASIC stuff, like box model, is all over the map and you still need hacks to get stuff working in multiple browsers. How about these companies (cough, MS) spend time getting the bugs out of current code so they can pass all those CSS tests instead of pushing even more useless stuff? Opera's JS is still subpar and supporting it takes a lot of tweaking.

Anything that lets designers get closer to their intent is good. You can't blame tools for bad design.

Fact is, people don't care about design. They care about usability.

Another fact, "ugly" sites sell better too: http://www.sitepronews.com/archives/2006/mar/27prt.html

> Fact is, people don't care about design.

As if designers only make things pretty. I'm amazed at how people get easily confused by this.

Interaction design is essentially the first step in making a useful system. It's more important than the tech-cool aspects of a project, and is contained in that nice phrase "make something people want"

Today's tools to make a webpage are worse than the options available to designers for print media. That's too bad.

Amen. Why don't more software engineers realize designers are on their side? If your product isn't meant to be used only by hackers like yourself, then you need to have someone thinking about how the end user will understand/interact with/experience your product.

If your design team is not trying to make a usable and delightful user experience, then get a new set of designers.

Interaction design is NOT about making things pretty. It's about giving the user a delightful experience. This includes making it match the user's mental model of how the system should work, AND designing it so that users enjoy spending their time (yes, using your product will take some non-zero amount of time) using it.

> They care about usability

I don't think so, I think most users will put up with a painfully unusable site if its the first one they come across that fulfills their need. Only software designers care about usability.

Look at free online dating. http://www.plentyoffish.com has terrible design and is almost unusable. http://www.okcupid.com has great design, yet plentyoffish is ten times bigger. Same with i'minlikewithyou.

Wasn't plentyoffish the first free one? After that, network effects is all that matters.

You can blame the tools if the only kind of intent they let designers get closer to is misguided intent. I can't think of a single use for non-standard fonts. In that, they are much like flashing images or control over the LEDs on your keyboard. Would you like designers to have that at their disposal, too?

Re: your rant

This is exactly why I'm seriously considering Flex for my next project. Progress in browsers is now moving at a glacier's pace. It still sucks. It's still incredibly limiting. Appealing to the W3C and Microsoft to fix stuff is like getting the government to act swiftly on something for which there is no immediate need. It basically won't happen.

I agree with you on the shabby state of CSS support, but it's hard to see how more font options will be bad for design. Horrible designs will always exist, so the fact that they have more fonts to choose from won't make them worse. It'll just make them bad in new ways.

For good designers, though, wider support of more fonts is wonderful. There's a reason that rich print typography developed in the first place. And at the very least, we can begin to kiss sIFR goodbye.

Oh boy, a new generation of annoying, unreadable websites!

This along with Flex (who needs to copy/paste/bookmark things on the Internet?) is going to make the web of the future really fucking annoying. I can't wait! Dare I say, it is a GAME-CHANGER. Yeah, I said it, whatchoo gon' do?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com