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Comment by devilshaircut | Hacker News Reader

Is it not self-obvious that if every page attempting to serve up content similar to that in the OP (pictureless editorial), the web would be bleak and characterless?

Not debating the effectiveness of that kind of design, but rather pointing out the obviousness that this sort of anti-"always, ever" statement is easily validated.

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Most of the web is awash in ugly junk. Whenever I go to a machine that doesn't have adblock, Ghostery etc., I am increasingly horrified. It's like a highway with so many billboards that you can't see the direction signs, never mind enjoy the view. That or some sort of infinite supermarket magazine rack.

I HATE the way web design has evolved. I want to make the design choices at my end, not have them imposed on me or consuming a ridiculous amount of bandwidth. Most of the design on the web is no good.

Having webpages that are not bleak and characterless is not a resignation to having webpages that are like highways with unending billboards.

I don't find text to be bleak or characterless; if it needs design that badly, then it's not well-written. And judging by the audience for things like ReadItLater and so on, I'm not alone. I just want the option to read text the way I want, not how someone thinks I ought to be see it, which is more often about getting me to look that providing me with a comfortable reading experience.

I didn't say text is bleak and characterless. I said that having no design variation is bleak and characterless.

Then style the web as you fit on your own browser, but don't try to impose your design sensibilities on mine. That's why I keep saying 'client side'. I prefer not to download and process most of the graphic cruft that I see, and vastly prefer reading articles in an RSS reader to visitng pages that remind me of being a shopping mall.

You are already able to do this; simply disable stylesheets or as you said use a reader app. We've already discussed using technology like adblocker.

Your issue therefore is not with the design but rather with the browser. There is nothing preventing you from using a text-based browser or even writing your own.

I do not know if you are a developer, designer, or something else, but you must realize that minimalism is itself a "design sensibility" as you term it.

I appreciate where you're coming from and I'm sorry if my earlier comments came off as snippy. But I do think the influence of design on the web has been too heavily tilted towards the publisher end and not enough towards enabling the consumer.

I have the skills and experience to retool my browsing experience for my more minimalist aesthetic, but most consumers experience the web as something more like an animated version of a supermarket checkout magazine. Since getting a smartphone a few years back, I've been especially struck by how much bandwidth is consumed on transmitting cruft on things like news stories, where the actual text is only a few kilobytes and relevant photographs take up no more than a few hundred kb; but after you pile on all the trackers, divs, ads, etc. etc. the page ends up being many megabytes and can easily take 30 seconds over a typical 3g connection.

To me that's enormously consumer-hostile to very little real publisher benefit; the more shit I have to download to see a page the less likely I am to consume news from that source and the more likely I am to reinforce my ad blockers etc. (whereas I will make exceptions for site that make restrained use of such things so they can get a little extra ad revenue or tracking data value in return for the service they provide).

I agree that ads can be garish. I just see this as a separate problem from design itself.

Recently XKCD made me think about how minimalism fits into design. For example, entirely text-driven:

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_pace_of_modern_life.png

... and more visually oriented:

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/balloon_internet.png

Obviously there are many ways to communicate ideas, and each in various contexts can be quite effective.

"Only on TV and radio. And in magazines and movies and at ball games, on buses and milk cartons and T-shirts and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams."

I imagine a lot of users would love to have a web browser alternative or software extension that gave users complete creative control in an accessible way- including advertisements, colors, typography and margins.

I think such a software would have to be free, but I also believe it would change the way web design and advertising works if it caught on.

If every page was similar to this one, the web would be plainer and simpler. It seems that you seem to think this is a bad thing by characterizing it as "bleak and characterless." I think it would just be a whole lot less stupid :D.

Pretty much everything I read on my Kindle looks the same in terms of font, styling, etc. Far from being "bleak and characterless", it gets out the way and lets me read the story, which is what I'm there for.

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