The making of Medium.com
teehanlax.com
teehanlax.com
I searched for methods to disable MP4 video downloading on both Chrome and Firefox, but they don't appear to work (for Firefox, it was about setting media.autoplay.enabled to false). If anyone knows how I would be able to do so, I would appreciate learning how to.
[1] http://www.teehanlax.com/resources/img/story/medium/header.m... (2.4MB)
The interface is really very easy to use, with the only annoying thing being the difficulty in browsing Collections when deciding which one to post your work in.
A+
I give Teehan+Lax and portfolio sites in general a free pass on this (most important visitors are sitting at desks), but much of the internet seems to willfully disregard audience needs and desires as devices, contexts, and limitations expand.
28MB will cost you a fortune on 3g if you don't have a good plan, and the page will be freeze most devices and be unusable on most of the rest.
Might as well have used Flash.
It completely crashed Chrome on my iPad 3.
Progressive enhancement is a cornerstone of good web design. There is no excuse for this.
Reading the site on my laptop, it was horrible.
That could explain the mixed responses to the UI of the site.
http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/dYfjkg/http://www.teehanlax....
Medium isn't a big thing because it's special in any way, it's a big thing because it was made by "web celebrities".
This is dumb to the point of annoying. Did you read the article at all? Lots of great design thinking went into Medium. I'm constantly finding new features on Medium that are very well thought out.
Yes they have a huge problem of not letting the authors own their own work, which is why I will never use Medium as-is, but let's not say nothing is special about it either.
Even if the only thing you want to give them is credit for their beautiful typography, you have to at least them give them.
Now you're putting words in my mouth. I didn't say that.
Do you think great writers all over the world would happily give me their content for free if I designed something better than Medium?
Blah blah blah. Yeah right. The design is a clone of svbtle. Lots of ripping off and self promotion went into Medium.
Like you I have problems with the lack of ownership, it feels like submitting work to a magazine (which appears to be what they're trying to be). I'm looking forward to polished open source clones being created.
I remember many of my engineering friends saying the same thing about Twitter in the early days.
-bowerbird
Besides, on the rare occasion I have read an article on Medium (I don't anymore) I could never remember the author. It's all just the faceless Borg.
For anyone thinking of using Medium, don't do it. It's like giving your work away for free, and for no recognition.
Not sure how they will handle open publishing.
If nothing else it sure makes posts from Medium very annoying on HN because I can't actually tell which blogger's post I'm going to read until I click the link (primarily read on iPad so no hovering).