Comment by alok-g | Hacker News Reader

Comment by alok-g | Hacker News Reader

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>> And that even before talking about protecting the nature from wasteful habits like this.

Unfortunately, reading on paper is an order-of-magnitude better than reading on the screen. I have consistently noted that:

1. I absorb the material better when reading in printed form, not sure why. 2. My eyes strain less. 3. I find three times more typos (when proof-reading my own stuff), not sure why. 4. Annotating and highlighting is doable (possible on screen, but does not even compare to the same on paper). 5. Moving back and forth within the material is a lot better.

Not that I like hurting nature, but technology doesn't yet offer a suitable replacement here. E-Ink helps but fails on #4 till better products (like Sony's recently announced E-reader) show up and are less costly (Sony's priced at $1000+). Also, moving content to the new device needs to be at least as convenient as printing (and while staying within the firewall).

>> It is normally meant to be read with an electronic device

This is exactly what OP is questioning, and I fully agree. Why is this normal?!

>> to be interactive and linked, though those devices can be quite different of course.

I am web newbie. But I wonder about mankind spending so much effort on making web pages "responsive" based on the screen sizes of the various devices, and yet, not applying the same techniques to printing.

Part of this is because most web media is awful for reading.

Column widths are standardized in print, magazine, and books for a reason: to minimize eye movement required. The larger that web screens get, the broader the column lengths often are, which forces more eye movement, which causes eye strain, which requires vision interruption, which impedes reading comprehension.

Smart phones are great for short articles because the screens are roughly the width of a newspaper column. It forces the text into an appropriate width, rather than expanding to fit the available monitor space like many websites do.

Screens also tend to cause eye strain.

Even if you do make pages responsive, chances are that the user will not realize that they should be using a skinny window or that they should shrink the text. Further, commercial web publications tend to optimize for maximized windows to display ads.

In print, we have hundreds of years of professional readability and layout experience. On the web we have some cobbled together standards. Most people who are responsible for handling web design aren't layout/typography/etc. specialists. So really basic mistakes get made all the time and few people notice them because our knowledge base has effectively eroded because there are so many other priorities to worry about on the web.

This was insightful. Thanks.

Readability with paper is better even without columns though. Also, since I do majority of my work on big desktop screens, positioning with respect to the body also could be impacting. Using bigger fonts on-screen helps, though does not work out on many websites designed with small fonts.

You're welcome. Yes wrt paper being better even without professional layout.

I didn't really start to get these things until doing some print work after years of being internet-only.

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