Stop developing for the 90% use case
gist.io
gist.io
Using such a typeface on such a technical website is for one totally anachronistic, but also without any logic that I can discern. Moreover, that particular font is somewhat hard to read and looks like it's wiggling its serifs around as you eyes pass over the letters. Try something like Sabon if you're going for that aesthetic.
It used to be the case that serif fonts were a no-no on VDUs because their low resolution made serif fonts difficult to display and less readable. This really hasn't been a problem for a long time, especially when the font size is larger, as in this case.
I tend to find that dark text on a high contrast background "jumps" around making it somewhat difficult to read for long stretches when I'm reading on my computer or phone. You might want to play with the accessibility settings in your browser to make plain white backgrounds a light gray and text a dark gray. (I have my PDF reader set to display content like this and it's infinitely more readable when I'm reading something that's several hundred pages long!) Apparently impaired contrast sensitivity is common in dyslexics [2], although I'm almost certain I'm not dyslexic! Dyslexics also have issues with serif fonts, although this isn't an issue for me.
[1] http://www.fastcodesign.com/1670556/are-some-fonts-more-beli...
[2] http://uxmovement.com/content/6-surprising-bad-practices-tha...
This 'study' was a survey that appeared on an online version of a newspaper. The tested content was wedged inside an article that always used a serif font, on a website that always uses a serif font, in a part of the writing industry that nearly always uses a serif font.
I'm not that confident that the findings can be generalized to technical readers reading technical blogs, where the standard is sans serif. How do we know that following industry standards for the type of content isn't what made the serif fonts look more credible?
This is not really an empirical matter. Serif type might make something appear more credible, but this is only by association to other things that seem credible. In this particular case, the association is to the early Renaissance, and to some extent the early 20th century, which I think now both have a somewhat mixed reputation when it comes to credibility.
Neither. It was proffered as an explanation for the choice of typeface.
> Using such a typeface on such a technical website is for one totally anachronistic, but also without any logic that I can discern.
http://www.historyofinformation.com/expanded.php?id=3454
When the humanist hand was invented, the prevailing hand for illuminated manuscripts was blackletter. While either is aesthetically pleasing, the humanist hand caught on because it was readable and vastly more ergonomic to write.
Practice some dip pen calligraphy and you'll quickly notice that a humanist hand feels natural, and takes much less effort than blackletter to form beautiful characters.
Blackletter (as an everyday hand) persisted in church manuscripts (and in Germany, perhaps due to a cultural love of precise craftsmanship), but it's not surprising that many monks also adopted humanist: if your job is copying written works by hand, it makes sense to keep your eyes and hands under as little strain as possible.
P.S. What's a "typeface"? ;)
Opinions on fonts are very hard to quantify. The font in question, used here is Alegreya, and I've found that it is both aesthetic and pleasing to the eyes. I use it as default font in MS-word/Libreoffice and also as a font replacement (using Stylish - FF, font replace table - Opera addons) in my browsers.
So, as a regular user of the font in question precisely because of its (in my view,) readability and aesthetics, I respectfully disagree with some of the opinions you make about the font, regardless of how learned your opinion appears to be. :-)
The reasoning is more prosaic. I wanted a workhorse body serif that met the following criteria:
- Google web fonts. I love and use typekit, but gist.io sees a decent amount of traffic. I needed something unmetered in this case.
- A full four cuts: I don't control the content that people post, so I needed roman and italic cuts in both book and bold weights. This cut the selection of fonts available down to almost nothing. At the time, I didn't know about Poly, and Merriweather still doesn't have italics. [Edit: realized Poly doesn't have a bold weight either, so nevermind.]
The face isn't ideal, but it's grown on me the more I read it. Ideally, I'd love to license Process Type's Elena for use on gist.io.
I think that could be a nice effect if you were writing something suspenseful, at least for me, depends on how everyone else sees it too.
Edit: And I see another reply from someone who loves it. So maybe it's just you and me that see it moving. Maybe we should get that checked out. :)
I'm tired of looking at fonts that leave no trace of the history of the act of writing. Perhaps tech writers want to emphasize the act of writing itself?
For example, maybe they are trying to get as far away from something that looks like a monospaced font, since that looks too much like code and this is writing.
A technical text should be more easy to read and I would appreciate some eye candy. People understand texts much easier when there is an illustrative picture inside or a summary table.
That said, I appreciate the advice and will build a better version to host future articles. Now that you say it, the text bothers me :)
He uses "Square" as an example of doing it right. I have no idea what square is, but quoting the article:
> Square processes payments. They don't handle group payments, they won't auto pay your bills, and they have no presence online to compete with PayPal.
A payment service that doesn't handle all the use cases of payment? Isn't this exactly what he's saying you shouldn't do? Yet he quotes it as an example of doing things right?
I don't get it.
The message, while I don't agree with it, is clear solve a small problem completely, don't try to do more because you can't do it well and will drive away all your customers. What he is speaking out against is what you suggest doing solving the wider problem, because he automatically assumes you will do it in a halfassed manner.
They are not trying to handle "all the use cases of payment", and I'm saying that they should not move into any other type of payments until their product is as good as they can make it. And they don't, on purpose, because they don't want to solve 90% of 10 different aspects of payment. They solve 1, 100%.
Edit: I do agree that the author really sould have made the problem statement more clear.
It seems like what you did there is just reformulate the problem statement to make it look like a stand-alone problem instead of as a use case (or subset) of a large problem.
Other than paypal, no one offers BOTH services... Paypal seems to have done it, purely as a response to square.
Banks I guess do it, but they don't do any of it well.
So which problem are you refering to that groups In person payment with online payment? Because it feels much harder to frame them together than apart...
"Quite flummoxed. Terribly sorry."
http://developer.yahoo.com/blogs/ydn/many-users-javascript-d...
This article's audience: software developers
Given that the article is in English as well, and English countries have higher levels of disabled javascript than other countries from that report, and that the target audience is a very specific type of technical focus rather than the general public, I'd hazard that the original point stands.
Not to mention that if some crawlers don't access javascript, you'll serve up nothing to the relevant search index.
I normally browse with it on by default though, but I'll blacklist it for sites that cause my browser to slow down or do other things that are detrimental to the user experience.
I can't even get anything to show after enabling it for that page.
I'm not sure if it's gone or if I'm failing at something :)
"As a user, I complain about things that don't exist (sorry), but I almost never leave a service that is solving one of my needs – no matter how small – well."
In other words, customers don't want features, they have problems, and a product that wholly solves more than zero problems gets sales.
Succinct and clear - unlike the rest if the article which I guess he had to write before understanding enough to write the last para
I'd also like to add that often developing for the 99% will end up benefiting the 90% also in ways that weren't immediately apparent when you were only going for that 90%.
0.90 ** 4 => 0.6561