Internet is Becoming Unreadable Because of a Trend Towards Lighter, Thinner Fonts (telegraph.co.uk)

An anonymous reader writes: The internet is becoming unreadable because of a trend towards lighter and thinner fonts, making it difficult for the elderly or visually-impaired to see words clearly, a web expert has found. Where text used to be bold and dark, which contrasted well with predominantly white backgrounds, now many websites are switching to light greys or blues for their type. Award winning blogger Kevin Marks, founder of Microformats and former vice president of web services at BT, decided to look into the trend after becoming concerned that his eyesight was failing because he was increasingly struggling to read on screen text. He found a 'widespread movement' to reduce the contrast between the words and the background, with tech giants Apple, Google and Twitter all altering their typography. True black on white text has a contrast ratio of 21:1 -- the maximum which can be achieved. Most technology companies agree that it is good practice for type to be a minimum of 7:1 so that the visually-impaired can still see text. But Mr Marks, found that even Apple's own typography guidelines, which recommended 7:1 are written in a contrast ratio of 5.5:1.

Comments

And... NO CONTRAST

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's not forget that the Internet decided a couple of years ago that contrast was a bad thing, and that foreground and background had to be the same color and almost the same shade.

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[Joce640k]

All major text editors have also moved to light grey on darker grey text.

And lets not go into websites with white-on black for extra afterimage after you try to read them (eg. hackaday).

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[Qzukk]

Look, just because you can't tell the difference between gray text and the grey background doesn't mean there isn't one!

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[Anonymous Coward]

0x6b6b6b is completely different than 0x828282, it isn't our fault that your clumsy meat-eyes confuse the two.

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok which text editors default to light grey on darker grey text since "All major text editors" have moved to this? Since "All major text editors" have made this move you should easily be able to name 5-10 that are configured this way by default.

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't go blaming the Internet for this. The Internet has it right until Mobile appeared! Less contrast less power needed so phone battery lasts longer.

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[Joce640k]

OK, let's see:

http://komodoide.com/komodo-ed...
https://www.sublimetext.com/
https://code.visualstudio.com/
https://atom.io/
https://panic.com/coda/ (nice example of low-contrast website as well)
https://www.jetbrains.com/webs...

That was pretty fucking easy.

If you want more examples then just type something like "best text editor" into google images and weep at the acres of grey-on-grey images that appear.

Here, let me do it for you seeing as how you're a bit out of the loop: https://encrypted.google.com/s...

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[Joce640k]

I think I may have found the problem,

If you search for "best text editor for web development" they're all grey-on grey.

Web "designers" are probably adjusting their monitor's contrast settings to make them usable. Result: Unusable web sites because making sites with any contrast hurts their eyes.

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[skids]

And lets not go into websites with white-on black for extra afterimage after you try to read them (eg. hackaday).

Am I the only one who actually finds light text on darker background easier to read?

I just wish webdevs would let the users decide, at least for primart text content, through browser settings instead of hardcoding everything.

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[darkain]

Sure, for an extremely exaggerated definition of "grey" - Just checked SublimeText's default theme: the text color is #F8F8F2, so just a hint of a shade off of absolute pure white leaning to yellow. The background, however, is indeed a "dark grey", but very well contrasted, as it is #272822. The default font is also a nice bold font which is easy to read. The other text editors on your list also follow a very similar style to this too.

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[Joce640k]

The purple numbers are a nice touch, too. Just like the yellow strings and pale grey comments.

The text attribute "bold" could have been used for something useful if they hadn't used such a crap color scheme.

easy to read

Do you honestly see that as an improvement over the previous white-on-black styles? Do you think it's "easier to read" than (eg) the page you're looking at right now? Put them side by side and take a good look.

If so, we found the problem. (shrug)

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[Joce640k]

Go and read http://www.hackaday.com/ for a couple of minutes then come back here and re-read what you just posted. Don't your eyes go funny?

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[KlomDark]

I totally agree. I find it way easier to read light-on-dark.

But I do give my users the choice on my sucky blogsite (Look for the "Theme" dropdown in the top-right), MessageBase.net

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[Sowelu]

It's starting to make me miss the Geocities days of green-on-purple.

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[TechyImmigrant]

Jesus H. That's like the anorexic fashion show of editors. There's nothing of substance there.

VIM: Whatever my terminal is, which is white on black.
Emacs: Whatever my terminal is, which is white on black.
Notepad++: Black on white.
BBedit: Black on white.

That covers all of them I think, over Linux, Windows and MacOs. Nothing else matters.

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[Calydor]

Actually it was coming back to the stark white background of Slashdot that hurt my eyes the most.

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[skids]

Nope. Even when I get a headache and associated monocular diplopia, I still prefer my terminals (all light-on-dark) to websites (these days, practically all dark on light). I get the diplopia on light backgrounds as well, and the overall brightness makes my headache worse.

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[Anonymous Coward]

"Atom: A hackable text editor for the 21st Century"

What a load of pretentious bullshit. And how many text editors. The lengths kids these days will go to just so they don't have to learn Ed or Vi.

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[I4ko]

Who are those guys, never heard of them all, except visualstudio and the VS itself low contrast is optional

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[bmo]

>All major text editors have also moved to light grey on darker grey text.

To which I change to cyan on dark blue.

It's like I'm still in Turbo Pascal.

--
BMO

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[Anonymous Coward]

These all look great to me and I find them far easier to stare at for extended periods of time. So maybe to each their own.

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[dcollins117]

White (rgb #FFFFFF) means "I want the very brightest possible, like staring at the sun." It should be used very sparingly if at all, in my humble opinion. I have a new monitor which I'm not completely happy with as white backgrounds cause significant eye strain.

That being said, most of the websites I use have a stark white background so my opinion obviously doesn't count for much.

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[CptLoRes]

Have you considered there is a reason your searches for "best text editor", "best programming color scheme" etc. result in similar looking 'low contrast' schemes. If they are so bad and people don't use them, why are they so popular then? Here is a hint. Try sitting in front of a computer reading text and coding all day, every day using a full contrast black on white editor and your brain is going to fry. For people with normal vision it is much less taxing on the eyes during long sessions using a well designed low contrast scheme designed for the task. Something like for example Obsidian or similar that you further tweak to your personal taste/sight.

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[Anonymous Coward]

> Web "designers" are probably adjusting their monitor's contrast settings to make them usable.

Close, but that's not it!

As a guy who owns a laptop with a somewhat-worse-than-typical screen as well as a high-color-and-contrast-accuracy IPS monitor, I know what's going on:

Web designers often have nice monitors because they're concerned about color accuracy. Nice monitors also have good contrast.

Remember a while back when folks were going apeshit about how the border around Google's "Sponsored Results" was invisible, and they would post screenshots that "proved" this? I would look at those screenshots on my laptop and say "Yep, that border is invisible". I would look at those same screenshots on my nice monitor and say "Nope, that border is clearly visible.".

Noone is adjusting anything to make those web dev text editors usable. The designers just have decent monitors. If the market worked correctly, _everyone's_ monitor would have perceptually perfect color accuracy, 10bpp+ color range, and good contrast. Sadly, the market does not.

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[Anonymous Coward]

I have always preferred bright white on blue as my default since back in the DOS days when it became available.

Now I accept my aging and have a Vizio 32" TV as a desktop monitor.

Manipulate the fonts and contrast ratio to your liking... I can compensate.

  -Jim

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[reboot246]

It's not just text editors. Graphics and photo editing programs are going the same way. The one I use the most, DXO, is getting harder to read. I'm using an older version of Photoshop because the new versions are low contrast.

I'm 63 and have fairly good near vision. I mostly need glasses for vision from a few feet to infinity. There's no problem with sites using a high contrast scheme, but those where the background is gray and the text is light gray are impossible to read. I usually hit CTRL-A to select all the text. It's not perfect, white text on dark blue, but it helps.

If you are serious about your website and have a desire to communicate, then make the damned thing readable. Stop being artsy.

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[SimonInOz]

It's not just the Internet. Just the other day I was trying to read some cooking instructions. They were printed in something like 4 point type in white on gold, on a plastic bag. My 14 year old daughter could read them, but I could not. (Disclaimer - I am 60 and have triple focus implanted lenses in my eyes, but still have trouble reading in poor light).

And this perpetual dark grey on light grey tiny font stuff - if you want me to use your site, I'd better be able to read it!

So get off that green stuff (I think it's a lawn).

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[Anonymous Coward]

And lets not go into websites with white-on black for extra afterimage after you try to read them (eg. hackaday).

Am I the only one who actually finds light text on darker background easier to read?

I just wish webdevs would let the users decide, at least for primart text content, through browser settings instead of hardcoding everything.

Certainly not. I greatly prefer light on dark. Zenburn works, or for that matter VS 2015 dark theme works. You can get various dark themes on firefox and with stylish make other things that way. Sadly, sometimes brute force changing of colors does not work well.

Another idea I've found that does help is adding light behind your monitor. It is called Bias lighting. The idea is so that your eyes see roughly the same level of brightness around your monitor(s).

Redshift/F.lux / just turning down the blue level in nvidia settings, also help somewhat..

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[mea_culpa]

I just did as you suggest and find that it is similar to how I prefer using my kindle app. It is 10x more easier on my eyes reading hackaday.com than Slashdot.

What's your room lighting like? I like to keep mine on the darker side.

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[hambone142]

My kid's school website had black background with blue text.

I'm not sure whether or not the asshole that designed it actually tried to read it. Come to think of it, she's also the "attendance secretary" that ducks out early (driving her Mercedes 500 SL).

Fuggin' moron.

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[Joce640k]

Web designers often have nice monitors because they're concerned about color accuracy.

Nearly: Web designers have huge, expensive monitors because they're all hipsters.

"Color accuracy" is just a side effect.

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[Anonymous Coward]

I just wish webdevs would let the users decide, at least for primart text content, through browser settings instead of hardcoding everything.

Why would the webdev be involved in that decision? Wouldn't a browser setting to override the page attributes be sufficient?
I thought modern browsers had the support to load extra stylesheets.

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[Anonymous Coward]

> Don't your eyes go funny?

No joke, your monitor is too bright for your viewing conditions.

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[Anonymous Coward]

Seen Outlook 2013?

Microsoft made the bizarre decision to completely 'wash out' the difference between read and unread messages by using a light blue colour - and a white background.

My eyesight is... passable. I'm 47 and now need reading glasses, but I'm no Magoo. Being forced to use Outlook 2013 at work was a real WTF moment. Fucking designers. Put the techies back in charge - they all have mole vision.

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[Anonymous Coward]

Already in the '90, if I remember correctly, the internet decided that fonts should be smaller than the browser default (often accomplished by specifying a relative size) because the default font size in web browsers was larger than designers liked. I had reduced the font size settings in my browser to something I liked and subsequently had to deal with websites punishing me for using settings as they were meant to be used. Later websites added font size buttons to their web pages, rebuilding a function that was already present in every browser.

Why do things like this happen? Because many users can't find settings and don't even realise they can look for them. The GUI style with pull-down menus was designed to make all functions discoverable. The smart people who came up with that idea didn't realise a huge part of humanity simply doesn't explore. At all [*]. They don't find anything unless it's actively thrown in their face. That's why Microsoft introduced the ribbon.

This may be similar. Most people set the contrast of their monitors far too high for the environment they're in. Or rather, they probably don't set anything, they just use it with the default settings. That is tiring, and many people somehow completely fail to recognise what causes their fatigue and don't realise they can do something about it by pressing a few buttons. I can believe that web pages with lower contrast have become popular simply because they are less tiring to look at on high contrast monitors.

[*] Really. I once knew someone who wasn't aware of the street parallel to his own. He had to cross it to reach the nearby supermarket, where he routineley did his shopping. He crossed that street almost on a daily basis for years and somehow didn't register that it existed until I took him on a slightly different route to the supermarket and walked him through it. He was amazed. I can't fathom how someone manages to miss something like this, what life can be like without the basic curiosity that makes one see that street and at some point walk into it just to have a look, but this is just an extreme example of something that is quite common. There is a coal power plant at the border of my town, its chimney is prominently visible from many places and in the cold season its white chimney plume mingles with the clouds in such a suggestive way that that it's locally known as the cloud factory. A surprisingly large portion of the people who know this nickname do not know it's the local power plant. Because they just never ever wonder about such things, they look at the world and have no questions.

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[AmiMoJo]

I have found blue-cut glasses help with white screens, and I always turn the brightness way down. People ask why my screens are so dim, I tell them it's so I don't have to wear sunglasses indoors.

Black on light grey is okay, like printed paper. The only down side to paper is that it depends on ambient lighting, and a lot of bulbs have that horrible yellow tinge to match the old filament ones. 4000k seems to be ideal.

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[AmiMoJo]

Dark backgrounds don't go very well with syntax highlighting, that's the problem. With a white background you have have a lot of light and medium shades that are easy on the eye. With a dark background you are much more limited and it either ends up looking neon bright or too low contrast.

I'm no expert, maybe it's to do with typical monitor gamma values and poor rendering of darker colours, maybe it's just the way the human eye works.

Can someone recommend a good, reasonable contrast but not neon bright theme with dark background?

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[AmiMoJo]

Look at screenshots #3 and #4 on their site. The comments are way too low contrast. This seems to be a common mistake, comments are good anchors to help navigate code by sectioning things off, so they should stand out.

Similarly they use a bright yellow for strings, when strings are usually the least important part. Apart from printf style formatting they contribute nothing in terms of syntax or program flow.

Their use of dark red for keywords is a bad choice too. The human eye is less sensitive to red and especially blue, so dark colours with little green in them are hard to read next to bright white text. The eye has to recalibrate a bit.

It all looks like it was designed to pop out on their web site, rather than based on human interface or usability guidelines.

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you think you're clever? Your not. You should have been aborted.

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[erikscott]

ISPF: Whatever my 3270 emulator is, which is green on black.

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[skids]

Wouldn't a browser setting to override the page attributes be sufficient?

Try it. On Firefox its preferences/content/colors. It does not work out well.

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[TechyImmigrant]

ISPF: Whatever my 3270 emulator is, which is green on black.

I liked the VT100s at college hanging off a microvax. You got the green screen glow.

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[arglebargle_xiv]

That was pretty fucking easy.

WTF sort of search did you use to turn up that lot? I can't see vi, emacs, or ed in there, and I'm not sure there are other text editors. Were you searching for unicorns or something?

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[allo]

You're missing out the major ones.
vi(m), emacs, nano, kate, gedit, notepad++

Who uses stuff like atom.io? Thats niche.

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[allo]

you're confusing color with brightness. In the best case you would have good e-paper and light it as you like it.
We're currently stuck with backlights, but you just do not know the brightness of the monitor.
Wait ... for black you know it. That's why some people like light on black, as the background will always have a nice dark tone (as black as the device can get). See the hackaday example above.

Re:And... NO CONTRAST

[toddestan]

Maybe Zenburn? It's a low contrast mess and I don't use it, but it's found in many editors and the colors are rather subdued.

I'm more of a VIM dark blue fan, but if you don't like neon colors I doubt you would like it.

Black Backgrounds Will Come Back

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just waiting for black backgrounds to make a comeback. It's easy to manage the font size. Changing the background color on every site you view is not so (useably) easy.

Nothing new

[penguinoid]

Idiots that value appearance over function have been around for a very long time. People only take them seriously for a little while, although management does take longer.

Re:Nothing new

[Ravaldy]

although management does take longer

Don't put me in that category!!!

I actually allow crummy interfaces to make it to BETA. After that, they MUST clean it up for presentation to other managers :)

Re: Nothing new

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately somebody thinks these idiots are cool and hip and all that. It's not just a problem for the elderly, and even though I can read this crap they create it takes extra brainpower to process, whereas actual text with contrast is kind of natural and automatic.

We should never have let these 'designers' in at all, and now they need to be kicked out.

Re:Nothing new

[OakDragon]

Maybe just my perception, but it seemed like it was about 10 years ago where itty bitty fonts and low contrast type was the big thing. If anything, I think things have gotten better. In any case, the client becomes more important in how text looks, particularly in the mobile arena.

Re:Nothing new

[Anonymous Coward]

Small fonts were common back in early 2000's, especially with those terrible Flash sites. It's nothing new.

Re:Nothing new

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It certainly isn't new; but it is, arguably, even more glaring(and idiotic) now that 'mobile' is such a thing.

Yes, the graphic designer who thinks that he's god's gift to beauty because the site 'looks good' on his color-calibrated multi-thousand-dollar Eizo has always deserved a smack; but that's especially true now that it is more likely that his target audience isn't just viewing the results on a smaller, cheaper, screen than he is; but on a tiny smartphone LCD, backlight dimmed for battery life, with a mirror finish to pick up every stray reflection and hint of sunlight.

Form over function has always been a danger; and failure to test your output on a reasonable simulation of what people will actually view it on has always been a mistake; but the contrast is particularly glaring when the gulf between the sort of screens that 'content creators' tend to use and the average quality of screens site visitors are using is so enormous. It has always been there; but it has not always been so wide.

Re:Nothing new

[Incadenza]

Form over function has always been a danger; and failure to test your output on a reasonable simulation of what people will actually view it on has always been a mistake; but the contrast is particularly glaring when the gulf between the sort of screens that 'content creators' tend to use and the average quality of screens site visitors are using is so enormous. It has always been there; but it has not always been so wide.

It's not the screen quality where the gap is - it is the eye quality. Designers tend to be young, between 20 and 30, and design for their peers. They have no idea that eyesight deteriorates that fast with age, they just can't image.

Add to that the principle that we tend to find things prettier when their outline is less defined (which happens when you reduce the contrast) and you have recipe for disaster. Designer lowers contrast up till the point where he can still read it, but barely. Everyone with worse eyesight, which is everyone 10 or more years older, can't read the text anymore.

Re:Nothing new

[Anonymous Coward]

on a tiny smartphone LCD, backlight dimmed for battery life, with a mirror finish to pick up every stray reflection and hint of sunlight.

No matter what the designer does, the end result will not be visible with that set-up.

OK, maybe a 20pt font size works. Barely.

Re:Nothing new

[Josh-Levin]

I do almost all my work on an old Asus laptop. Black is 000000, and white is FFFFFF, as they should be.

Re:Nothing new

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, mobile seems to be the only thing.

Some of us out here still use laptops or *gasp* desktops. A style optimized for mobile devices is chunky, bland and a waste of screen estate on an 18"+ screen.

Worse, I see the return of errors that I thought eradicated. Many layouts check for screen width, not window width, therefore marginal widgets like the "add to shopping basket" button may need sideways scrolling before they can be found.

And sometimes not even that... one layout was so broken that I couldn't reach that elusive button. Oh well, not my loss...

Indeed

[ErichTheRed]

What designer originally came up with the idea that light grey, 8 point text in a thin font on bright white background was the height of sophistication? And how did this idea spread??? It's not just the elderly having problems -- normal-vision people I talk to hate it too. The web is an information medium, not a coffee-table book that no one will actually read the text of.

I know the trend is minimalism now, but even Microsoft rolled back some of the crazier design changes they made. Visual Studio became unusable around the Windows 8 era, and they've only recently added back a "dark background" mode and removed the monochrome icons. Apple shows no sign of doing anything to improve this problem. And a whole fleet of Silicon Valley startups are cargo-culting this whole design philosophy...I just wish someone influential would say something.

Re: Indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple did it so people cannot read all the complaints on their customer support pages.

Re:Indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

Where have you been?

The Internet all but ceased to be an information medium and instead morphed into Just Another Pop Culture Mess a while ago. In fact, the signal to noise ratio is now so low that just about the only thing the Internet is good for these days is downloading software, videos, and books.

Re:Indeed

[narcc]

Not quite black text on a not quite white background looks better than black text on a white background. I'd argue that it's a bit easier on the eyes as well. (I find bright displays a bit painful, physically, and keep the display brightness on my phone and computer very low.)

It's such a simple and easy way to make boring old text 'feel' a bit more polished and professional, it's bound to spread.

The problem, naturally, is incompetent designers taking a cool trick like that to an extreme, and lowering the contrast way too dramatically. I can only assume its so people can 'tell' immediately that it's not just black text on a white background. Those people shouldn't be allowed to make design decisions.

Re:Indeed

[Moof123]

If you goal is to communicate information to users then hard to read stuff is idiotic. If you goal is to wow your boss, VC funder, or anything like that then you might as well fill the text with latin and the style look awesome from the 10,000 foot view.

User interfaces are on a steady decline. Too many features lead MS to replace menus with the ribbon, which was a horrible cure for a real problem. Almost every program I have used scales very poorly with higher DPI screens. The few that actually pay attention often end up with awkward.

I'm currently dredging through Cadence documentation on how to get the dozen or so font call-outs to be large enough to read on my 4K screen, as they shrank a bunch of already small text int he latest release and are DPI agnostic as a matter of course. There is no central location for setting fonts, but rather an unholy peppering of variables, each one requires hunting down and tinkered with.

Re:Indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, fuck the elderly. The interwebs are really just for millennial hipster consumers to begin with. And the old folks'll all be dead pretty soon anyway.

Re:Indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

I find bright displays a bit painful

Solved half a century ago with amber/green text on black.

Re:Indeed

[Calydor]

Sad but true.

Having all information lately pushed in the form of images and videos doesn't help - I still haven't found a reliable means of searching for that one video where someone said ...

I remember the internet back in the late 90s, when everyone had their own little corner of the net to publish the things they wanted to share with the world, and it was all in text. There was a lot of crap, sure, but you could find the stuff you wanted to. Now I get the feeling that looking up news from just last month is an exercise in futility as it gets buried in pointless results; that is, if there even is something to search for and it wasn't just a picture meme that will be forever lost.

Re:Indeed

[mea_culpa]

What designer originally came up with the idea that light grey, 8 point text in a thin font on bright white background was the height of sophistication? And how did this idea spread???

Probably the same idiot that changed the color scheme on recent versions of Waze. Night mode in Waze is absolute shit now. Completely unusable without at least 3x more visual effort and/or putting the screen directly in front of you. (yeah, great idea while driving) Just like the new shitty websites Waze has a brighter gray background with thinner roads of a slightly brighter shade. I'd like to punch that guy!

Re:Indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate this so much. For years I've been thinking I'm losing my vision. I am not. Even on this page, what is this - 8pt + thin font? lol.

This is what happens when you let 22 yr olds with eagle vision design an internet on 36" Mac screens.

Re:Indeed

[noodler]

"What designer originally came up with the idea that light grey, 8 point text in a thin font on bright white background was the height of sophistication? And how did this idea spread???"

I think apple is to blame by way of the iphone and ipad. Those devices have a weird gamma curve and if you visually optimize black on them they turn out to be grey on other devices.
And since web design focusses on mobile devices these days and the hippest of the hip 'designers' all have apple mobile devices you get terrible readibility and usability on everything not mobile and not apple.

I even have a custom CSS on slashdot so not to make the font dissolve into the background at the edge of my field of view..
Whatever the 'designers' think they're doing, it's wrong.

Re:Indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember the internet in the late 80s/early 90s where all that people wanted to share with the world wound up on USENET, and it was all in text.

You didn't need to search for a site where you could ask your question, or which might already have your answer. You only needed to find the appropriate newsgroup.

Then every company and their cousins wanted to direct traffic to their sites, and content splintered until search engines came to the rescue. Sort of.

Its not the thinner fonts...

[MindPrison]

...its the insane resolutions that most people dont need.

Do you really need a 2560 x 1600 Pixel screen on your 10 Inch Android or whatever-pad? Im in my 50s, and I dont even need prescription glasses according to my doctor. I see just fine. And the screen Im typing (and gaming) with right now is a 27" 1920 x 1080 pixel screen. When Im 50 cm (about 2 feet) away from it, I cant see a single pixel, but the sharpness of the fonts is just fine. But if you replace that with a UHD (4K) screen at the same size, your fonts will be reduced and youll have a lot more screen real-estate, but it will be finnicky to read and look at (even to my 10-12 year old students at school).

Re:Its not the thinner fonts...

[omnichad]

UHD doesn't require you to fit more on your screen. You can also keep everything the same size at a much higher DPI, for better sharpness and clarity (edge contrast is contrast too). Or find somewhere nice in the middle. For those with high visual acuity, it's nice not having blurry edges.

Re:Its not the thinner fonts...

[ADRA]

What's missing from your system is either proper DPI or Android's DIP (probably the best measure) adjustments.

Dots-per-Inch (DPI) world: If you have a 10 point font, it should be the exact same physical ruler size if you measured a word on basically any monitor assuming they were correctly specifying their DPI setting in their EDID. Of course there are distortions in monitor pixels, etc.. but should be darn close.

Device Independent Pixel (DIP) world: The OS must knows the 'context' of the screen (aka distance from the viewer's eye). They use the DPI of the panel and multiply by some factor based on how far away a human reader 'should' be from the screen. If you're 10 feet away vs. 10 inches, the number of physical inches representing that same character can vary wildly, but the human perceivable size of the words should 'feel' about the same size.

Re:Its not the thinner fonts...

[Rakarra]

Do you really need a 2560 x 1600 Pixel screen on your 10 Inch Android or whatever-pad?

If your DPI is set properly, the display will look much better at higher resolutions, and that includes the readability of the fonts. Anti-aliasing doesn't become quite as necessary, and fonts will be just a bit less blurry.

If a high resolution means you're seeing tiny fonts, then the system is not taking DPI into account, and it needs to no matter what size your monitor is.

Re:Its not the thinner fonts...

[Jesus_666]

It's great with low visual acuity as well. I find that on 1920x1080 ClearType can sometimes render fonts as horrible pixelated, badly kerned messes that are harder to read than the same fonts with no hinting applied whatsoever. At 3840x2160 that issue disappears.

Re:Its not the thinner fonts...

[Anonymous Coward]

Font size and resolution are two different things... actually scratch that: they should be two different things. Ideally you should specify font size in mm (USians substitute whatever the next measure down from inches is) independent of resolution, so additional resolution would just mean a clearer, smoother characters, no smaller fonts. Which istr is what apple does.

Re:Its not the thinner fonts...

[Altrag]

The "system" isn't usually the problem -- even Windows has kind of tried to sort out its DPI issues by now.

The problem is application software. Try running steam on even a 1920x1080 screen. The font is absolutely tiny and they don't provide any option for changing it (at least not that I've found.) And that's an enormously popular and profitable product made by a company with plenty of technical skills. They just don't care. And you can sure as hell bet that smaller companies without Valve's finances and technical talent behind them really really don't care.

Web sites have a little less ground to stand on since the browser handles much of the layout work for them, but even then it usually doesn't work right for more than a small range of screen sizes and DPI choices unless they do a bunch of extra work.

Re:Its not the thinner fonts...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a 28 inch 4K monitor so it is effectively a 2x2 array of 1920x1080 screens in the same amount of space as your 1920x1080 screen. Mine has identical pixels-per-inch as my 14 inch 1920x1080 laptop screen. At a comfortable working distance, which is closer to 80cm away from my eyes, I can certainly see a single pixel dot on a field of solid color, or tell the difference between a single and double pixel line width. I can switch my desktop to 1920x1080 mode and simulate your monitor with 2x2 screen pixels for every logical pixel. Those look huge to me... I'd never be able to tolerate such a pixelated screen!

Rendering full-page PDFs at their correct physical size yields a very satisfying and readable display, even for two-column academic papers with smaller main body and caption fonts. It is true that I cannot resolve individual pixels in a continuous checkerboard pattern at the native 4K resolution, even if I bring my face to 50cm distance. Qualitatively, this test pattern reminds me more of an older CRT monitor where I can partially resolve phosphor dots within a "solid" color area. But, I can resolve the alternating pixels at the intersection of the checkerboard with a solid edge, or see similarly small textures and discontinuities in diagrams and images. I find this so useful, I actually have two of these 4K monitors side-by-side to have a larger desktop with more surface area and a larger field of view at a comfortable viewing distance.

Re:Its not the thinner fonts...

[thegarbz]

I see just fine. And the screen Im typing (and gaming) with right now is a 27" 1920 x 1080 pixel screen. When Im 50 cm (about 2 feet) away from it, I cant see a single pixel

Maybe it's time to find a better doctor. I'm on a 26" 1920x1080 pixel screen, I'm about 75cm away from it, and I can see pixels. I can see them even better when I put on my glasses.

Re:Its not the thinner fonts...

[craighansen]

Specify font size in points, please. Those of us who've been working in typography for years all specify point size. While the definition of a point has varied with geography and time, the most common definition today is 1/72 of an inch (0.013888... in), or 3.175/9 mm (0.352777.... mm). This "DTP point" definition came to be as Warnock & Geschke of Adobe either didn't know or care that Donald Knuth was already using 1/72.27 in in Tex. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Even so, fonts are often designed to be a little bigger or smaller than the stated point size, as subtle adjustments are made for font weight and other design issues, such as running curved lines slightly beyond straight ones so that characters appear to be properly aligned to the human eye - at least they used to be until display on low-resolution CRTs and printers totally destroyed the subtle adjustments that font designers made - though greyscale fonts can somewhat repair the damage.

Re:Its not the thinner fonts...

[Anonymous Coward]

A while back there were two LCD monitor 'equivalent' sizes where both monitors had the same amount of pixels; the smaller one had the standard 96 dpi and the larger one had fewer dpi. In other words, things looked larger on the larger one, plus it was pretty good for people who looked at monitors from afar, or for people with worse eyesight.

Here are a couple of such sizes:

17" -> 19" (1280x1024)
23" -> 26" (1920x1080)
24" -> 27" (1920x1200)

You may notice that you're using the larger variant. It's easier to see the pixels on it.

Personally, I'm young and don't need glasses but my monitor is quite far away (about a metre) and I wish I had the larger variant (19 inches) ... Hell, I wish Slashdot would have text a bit larger than the current 9,75pt. (11 pt is optimal for me. Yes, I know I have a zoom function in my browser.)

Re:Its not the thinner fonts...

[Rakarra]

The problem is application software. Try running steam on even a 1920x1080 screen. The font is absolutely tiny and they don't provide any option for changing it (at least not that I've found.)

The Steam network is pretty nice. The client even does some cool things. But I have never seen a worse instant messenger / chat platform than the steam UI. It is... I mean, we throw the work 'horrible' around often, but the Steam client is horrible I use it on a monitor with a 101 DPI, and it's horribly tiny and it can't be adjusted. And unlike Skype, telegram, AIM, gchat, IRC, and just about every other chat netowkr out there, the protocol is entirely closed and there's no way to access it with a third-party client. So... so long, Steam friends!

Accessibility options

[omnichad]

And with browsers allowing stylesheet overrides and increasing support for screen readers, why should design be done for the lowest common denominator?

Simply zooming in will make low-contrast text easier to read.

Re:Accessibility options

[cmiller173]

or Ctrl-a and reading white on blue.

Re:Accessibility options

[omnichad]

A lot of web sites override those colors too. And often the selection color is even worse...though that would be what I would use override CSS for (if I needed it) - so I can see the original design until I highlight as needed.

Re: Accessibility options

[Anonymous Coward]

It does, until you get a site designed by a genius that prevents proper zooming. It's generally an unintentional and thoughtless artifact of some other cool design decision they made.

Re: Accessibility options

[omnichad]

designed by a genius that prevents proper zooming

i.e. someone who doesn't understand mobile-responsive web design and attempts a "mobile-friendly" design anyway.

Re:Accessibility options

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless they decided that the text should only be a percentage of the page. Then when you zoom in far enough that it's easy to read you get about one word per line. Also when you are trying to do this on a phone the damn page keeps reloading and adjusting as you download more and more useless graphical elements over what is supposed to be 4G. I swear that the internet in general has been going backwards in usability over the last few years. We get rid of stupid banner advertisements and browser plugins and what happens? The websites bring them back. How about a permanent header and footer while you're trying to watch a video in landscape mode. WTF web designers? Cut that shit out.

Re:Accessibility options

[omnichad]

I think the web frameworks are partly at fault. The phone screen is the smallest "size" in the responsive grid, but when you zoom in on a phone, your "screen" becomes even smaller than the smallest size.

I design mobile-responsive web sites in hand-coded HTML/CSS with the help of a web framework and I've come into this wall a few times. Ideally, there would be a smaller breakpoint that would put that text on its own row when zooming in on mobile. And theoretically I could add one to my framework of choice but that would potentially require a lot of work.

Re:Accessibility options

[Solandri]

A lot of sites break if you try to zoom in or change the default fonts. Word wraps don't align properly. Letters start to overlap pictures or sidebar menus.

The entire concept of the WWW as Berners-Lee conceived it was that the website would transmit information to the client, and the client's browser would display it in a format most suitable for the client display device. That way the exact same web page would work on a tiny cell phone screen or gargantuan 50" 4k TV used as a screen. Neither of those existed at the time, but he had enough foresight to predict a wide variation in client display sizes and requirements.

But the people who became web designers were formerly page layout designers. They revolted. They were used to printed paper, where they controlled everything the reader saw - fonts, font sizes, text wrap around photos, columns, etc. Their ego couldn't stand ceding some of that control to the reader, so they fought tooth and nail to bring that control back to themselves. The early flash-only websites were their first salvo. Everyone hated flash sites, but they loved them because it would display exactly and only as they designed it. If the 1024 pixel width they chose didn't fit in someone's 800x600 monitor? Well obviously it was the reader's fault and they needed to upgrade to a better GPU and monitor. Modern websites are so design-centered that they actually have to create two different sites for display on large computer monitors vs small phone and tablet screens. There's almost nothing left under the client's control that can be modified without breaking something about the site.

Re:Accessibility options

[MrKrillls]

"...why should design be done for the lowest common denominator?..." If I have only a binary choice between show-off-design vs "lowest common denominator" high legibilty typography, I'm going to choose high legibility. As it is, I zoom most web sites larger since I like to sit back from my laptop. But then, must it be binary? Isn't there another path, a middle road with elegant design, but enough contrast and size to make reading easy?

Re:Accessibility options

[omnichad]

The entire concept of the WWW as Berners-Lee conceived it was that the website would transmit information to the client, and the client's browser would display it in a format most suitable for the client display device.

And the continuing drafts of CSS are enabling that to remain true while still allowing design into the process.

Modern websites are so design-centered that they actually have to create two different sites for display on large computer monitors vs small phone and tablet screens.

None should be that way in 2016 - there is no excuse. I'm a relatively non-designer, who does happen to build mobile-responsive web sites. CSS breakpoints make it possible to create a design and have it look consistent (not identical) across all possible screen sizes. You can have style/design/personality and still 100% fulfill that original vision of the web.

On the other hand, this is also why I still hand-code my HTML/CSS with the help of CSS frameworks to save a bit of typing.

There is no possibility for WYSIWIG on the web at this time, and you're right - it's entirely the wrong mentality. Because you have to design with forethought to all possible devices. Any sites that break in 2016 because of different browser sizes or settings are because they aren't cut out for the gig.

What's funny is that Microsoft was way too far ahead of the game with the much-hated WebTV. No web sites worked with it - there were no screens or portable devices besides computer screens. If they created a modern WebTV device now, a lot of the major sites on the web would look like they were made for it. It's a solved problem. Most web sites that break at odd screen sizes today were based on cheap Wordpress themes out of India.

Re:Accessibility options

[lgw]

But the people who became web designers were formerly page layout designers. They revolted. They were used to printed paper, where they controlled everything the reader saw - fonts, font sizes, text wrap around photos, columns, etc. Their ego couldn't stand ceding some of that control to the reader, so they fought tooth and nail to bring that control back to themselves.

In the early days this wasn't true. Good print designers know how to choose fonts and whitespace that will scale properly and keep a nice layout as you scale font size up and down. It was the managers and PMs, insisting that the web page look exactly like they wanted, on every monitor, like it was a magazine page. "The name of the company can't be smaller than 2 inches, the branding spec says so!" "On what size monitor?" "Don't bother me with your geeky trivialities!".

The "designers" willing to put up with that shit gradually drove out the old heads who knew what actually looked good. Now fashion has replaced 3 centuries of science about legibility.

Re:Accessibility options

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of sites break if you try to zoom in or change the default fonts.

Could you please give an example? Seriously, I don't think I have found one yet.

Re:Accessibility options

[dbIII]

If the 1024 pixel width they chose didn't fit in someone's 800x600 monitor? Well obviously it was the reader's fault and they needed to upgrade to a better GPU and monitor.

This sort of shit is rampant with software development as well as web design. I had a developer who had a fixed window size for his piece of shit dotnet application used in-house and it wouldn't fit on the monitors of most of the clerical staff. So they all got shiny new monitors ... but had to stay on the same slow as shit PCs for three years more than had been budgeted for.

Re:Accessibility options

[tepples]

CSS breakpoints make it possible to create a design and have it look consistent (not identical) across all possible screen sizes. You can have style/design/personality and still 100% fulfill that original vision of the web.

One thing you can't get with CSS breakpoints is efficient transmission of more detailed information to UAs with larger* screens and less detailed information to users with smaller screens. You have to send HTML containing both the more detailed information and the less detailed information and use display:none in CSS to hide one or the other depending on the breakpoint. Then the user has to pay up to $10/GB** to download the HTML of both, one to view and the other to throw away unread.

If they created a modern WebTV device now

Microsoft has had a modern WebTV device ever since the Xbox 360 added Internet Explorer.

* Measured in square ems, to be specific.
** Typical price of mobile Internet or satellite home Internet in the United States market.

Re:Accessibility options

[Anonymous Coward]

There's almost nothing left under the client's control that can be modified without breaking something about the site.

Can always fix things with more Greasemonkey, at least on commonly used sites like Slashdot, Facebook, Youtube, etc. When you send a page to my browser, the DOM belongs to me, not you. Everything is under the client's control, when it's running on the client's computer.

Re:Accessibility options

[Anonymous Coward]

I think those complaints were true for a while but things have swung back the other way. It is trivially easy to tweak some CSS and layout the page however I like these days. Just a couple of years ago most this kind of thing wasn't really possible. Thanks to responsive design web developers have finally seen the light and they are falling over themselves to abstract layout and content.

Re:Accessibility options

[Anonymous Coward]

Simply zooming in will make low-contrast text easier to read.

Fuck you and fuck your website.

Fuck Google and fuck your slow ass "responsive" design.

Fuck your shitty fonts with your pants-on-head retarded color schemes that can't be read properly at fucking 14 pt fonts.

Fuck your website. I've walked away from dozens of my old regular websites over the last 5 years and every single time it was because some adolf-haired, head up his own ass hipster like you came in and literally shat all over the whole site. Disgusting fucking garbage design spewed like digital faeces all over the web. Like a cross between a CGA monitor and a 5th grade Comic Sans birthday party flier.

No I will not just "Zoom in". Nothing can fix how badly you design.
Fuck you and all you Stand for. You've set this industry back 20 years.

Re:Accessibility options

[omnichad]

more detailed information to UAs with larger* screens and less detailed information to users with smaller screens

This is a bad way to do mobile design. Nobody wants to be forced to use a desktop computer to see the whole web page.

Using CSS to hide one element or show another is bad design, too. You can use those breakpoints to resize/reshape/reposition the content. One single copy of the content displayed two different ways. You can even use lower resolution versions of background images depending on screen size.

The real threat to bandwidth usage is ASP.Net Web Forms and HTML bloat by really inefficient design tools - or worse, embedded CSS/Javascript in the HTML that can't be cached from page view to page view.

Re:Accessibility options

[Cederic]

But the people who became web designers were formerly page layout designers. They revolted. They were used to printed paper, where they controlled everything the reader saw - fonts, font sizes, text wrap around photos, columns, etc. Their ego couldn't stand ceding some of that control to the reader, so they fought tooth and nail to bring that control back to themselves. The early flash-only websites were their first salvo. Everyone hated flash sites, but they loved them because it would display exactly and only as they designed it

Making a complex website with rich content not look shit was fucking difficult back in the day. Functional and accessible, sure, but not glossy magazine professional polish.

Reducing the problem domain so that you don't have to be all things to all devices meant that a good aesthetic could be achieved far more easily. It may never fully exploit the awesome screen some users had, for others it may load as fast as a one-legged dog running through a swamp and someone browsing on a C64 may get RSI from the scrolling but it'll look the same for all of them.

Personally I'm all for functionality, ease of use and loading fast, but I'm in the minority. People like prettiness.

GeoCities and even "professional" sites

[Negafox]

"Where text used to be bold and dark, which contrasted well with predominantly white backgrounds" Huh. I remember brightly colored text, black backgrounds and rotating GIFs.

Re:GeoCities and even "professional" sites

[Rakarra]

I prefer bright text on a darker background myself. At least in low-light situations it's far easier on the eyes than a white background.

Everything old is new again

[Anonymous Coward]

You get bad design, you get bad design, you get bad design, EVERYONE GETS BAD DESIGN! At least it will give the kiddies something to do after they redo everything *again*.

Re:Everything old is new again

[omnichad]

It's somewhat good design. For bright screens, black on white can be harsh-looking. Part of the blame lies on people never tweaking blown out default settings on their screens - especially at larger screen sizes.

That doesn't mean body text should all be lightened (which I know some sites also do), but headline text and graphic overlay text should at least deserve special treatment.

I also wonder if ClearType isn't partly to blame. You get finer edges, but the color fringing kind of hurts the eyes at times.

Style sheet override, CTRL+MouseWheelUp

[Anonymous Coward]

You can enforce your own style sheet and scale the website up if you need to. What's the problem?

Re:Style sheet override, CTRL+MouseWheelUp

[Tablizer]

You can enforce your own style sheet and scale the website up if you need to. What's the problem?

Often it breaks stuff. Ad panels overlap and cover things up, text doesn't wrap properly or at all, etc.

Sites don't want to make it easy to extract just the text, because that makes ad-blocking easier. They thus force you to read it their way under their conditions.

Re:Style sheet override, CTRL+MouseWheelUp

[omnichad]

The "zoom" feature in most browsers simply scales the whole page proportionally these days, rather than scaling fonts. The forced stylesheet would just be to enforce colors.

Re:Style sheet override, CTRL+MouseWheelUp

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Browsers do have built-in font size change, but that's only 5 sizes and is clumsy to use as it is menu based.

Maybe ctrl-shift-wheel on the desktop would make it worthwhile. On phones I have no idea.

"But the server needs to know your font size! How will it readjust???" It won't need to if the web designer is doing it right.

Re:Style sheet override, CTRL+MouseWheelUp

[Bing Tsher E]

Web designers don't "do it right".

They think they are running Aldus Pagemaker.

Re:Style sheet override, CTRL+MouseWheelUp

[Tablizer]

If you scale proportionally, then the text wrap point can be off the page. Thus, you have to scroll back and forth to read the text. The "solution" is to have a non-proportion scaling, but that can have other side-effects if the markup is screwy or poorly planned.

Re:Style sheet override, CTRL+MouseWheelUp

[omnichad]

If the page is designed with a responsive stylesheet that won't happen until you get to probably higher than 18-20pts or much higher. And that's what every web site should be doing - the page will reflow correctly, and if there are too many elements in a row, they will be wrapped and text blocks widened. Non-proportional scaling is only a good fallback after proper design.

Re:Style sheet override, CTRL+MouseWheelUp

[Tablizer]

There is little financial incentive to test and implement such well. Unless the boss and QA team test such zooming in multiple client brands, few implementors have financial incentive to care. (They "should" do it out of professionalism, but humans be humans.)

Elderly?

[cmiller173]

Hey, I'm not that eld.

Found the Windows user!

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows users always think higher resolution means smaller fonts. Proper operating systems automatically render the fonts based on the monitor's DPI.

Re:Found the Windows user!

[Anonymous Coward]

it doesn't matter the OS when the website mixes em, %, and px for sizing. you can still find plenty of sites with px defined left/right margins.

Re:Found the Windows user!

[Rakarra]

it doesn't matter the OS when the website mixes em, %, and px for sizing. you can still find plenty of sites with px defined left/right margins.

I'm not sure why this was modded troll. The above is true to a point, though it doesn't tell the whole story. These days I find most web sites use images (blank, or bg color) to create spacing, and most web browsers, by default, scale images up as well along with the text, so those spacers get scaled up along with the text.

My biggest problem is with websites that enforce a traditional page-style format for their pages, such that when you scale things up to make it easier to read, it's like you're just taking a magnifying glass to the page. That's way too rigid a page design, but it fits squarely in the aesthetics of someone who used to do traditional layout on paper pages.

Re:Found the Windows user!

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome back! It must have been lonely under that rock.

Re:Found the Windows user!

[Blaskowicz]

Some sites switch to a mobile version when I zoom in, and I have to zoom back to get the desktop version. Or even zoom back one step in the first place, when the site thinks the window size or monitor resolution is too small.

Not always annoying but you have to know to zoom out to make the site easier to navigate / more informative again.

Re:Found the Windows user!

[sexconker]

What we need is a render target, where CSS can say "render this shit as 16x9, 1920x1080", and then the browser can obey (or tweak), and then scale.
So if you use pixel scaling (and in many cases you still need to) it'll still work.

The way it works now is all backwards. You specify targets and sizes and create different rules for each. Then you have dozens of sets of CSS and it's a mess to maintain and test. It almost makes sense for the handful of non-screen media types that no one deals with, but not really.

Just flip it around. Make the CSS tell the browser what the page should look, as intended. Stop using CSS to try to catch dozens of common resolutions (while making a mess of anything in between should a user not maximize). Specify a ratio and let the browser (or user!) decide to rotate, zoom, scale, pan, or whatever. Specifying a res also handles enables full pixel-based scaling and positioning in your layout, the only issue will be possible rounding errors after scaling. I believe HTML 5's canvas shit already works on a similar principle.

All the big sites already shit on convention by making the page scroll endlessly, moving content around when a user scrolls to create stupid effects, etc.

Re:Found the Windows user!

[rnturn]

``All the big sites already shit on convention by making the page scroll endlessly, moving content around when a user scrolls to create stupid effects, etc.''>

This^3

This ``infinitely long page'' idea was the way to format web pages will forever be at the top of my worst-web-site-ideas list. I really just love to death moving my mouse one pixel down only to have the page re-format taking me several screen's worth of material down. If the designer's goal was to limit the amount of time I want to spend on their web site, then, Mission Accomplished.

Re:Found the Windows user!

[Anonymous Coward]

CSS3 defines a "px" not as a pixel, but as 1/96th of an inch. That makes pt (1/72nd of an inch), in, mm and cm directly translatable. Using px is not a problem in modern browsers.

% is a percentage of the containing element, so e.g. 50% is simply half of the containing element.

em is special as it refers to the font, a good thing when used correctly. You could actually design a page such that everything scales according to the users default font (selectable in the browser preferences), so even a 90-year old who needs a 24pt font can see the page as intended.

Re:If you can't see the text

[Joce640k]

Or use the "Read Easily" addon for Firefox - flip the bird at all those "designers".

The "designers" won't be happy until the page appears to contain no information at all - 100% clean and clear.

Also preference for 1's over 0's

[myowntrueself]

Also preference for 1's over 0's due to the 1's taking up less space is causing problems for database administrators and designers.

Larry Ellison is reported to be pushing a new industry standard in which entire Oracle databases will be compressed into nothing but 1's thus saving billions globally in storage costs.

Glad it's not just me...

[Anonymous Coward]

I noticed that recently there seems to be a trend to text with low-contrast backgrounds, wondered if I was just getting more sensitive or something. Idiocy.

Re:Glad it's not just me...

[gweihir]

I suspected my browser of being broken, but apparently these "designers" are broken instead. Next step is that we need a "font-conditioner" in addition to an ad-blocker to keep the web readable. And to think that font-design and appropriate usage has been a solved problem for quite a few decades... The world is dumbing down even more.

Re:Glad it's not just me...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not quite sure what you mean by font conditioner, but try turning off font downloads, and you should no longer get these thin fonts the summary title mentions.

gfx.downloadable_fonts.enabled

If by font conditioner you mean something that sets a decent font size and contrast, to that I do not have a simple solution.

Indeed

[vanyel]

I've never understood what moron decided that making things hard to read was a good idea, even for those who still have good eyesight.

Re:If you can't see the text

[Anonymous Coward]

I can only imagine what the Internet would look like in your perfect digital utopia.

UI chases fads

[UnknownSoldier]

Part of the problem is that modern UI designers chase fads. (The previous fad was antiskeuomorphism.)

You can see this in the UI "devolution" of Photoshop and others tools:

* The background used to be black on white, aka "light" themes.
* Now "dark" themes are in vogue -- with white on black.

Also, True Type / Postscript / Web fonts still don't support color gradients. The classic is the old vertical "Orange-Yellow-White" gradient font used in Raiders of the Lost Ark

Yet back in 1992 this was trivial with bitmap fonts:

* Ultima 7 Main Menu
* Ultima 7 NPC Dialog

Most UI designers are clueless about the difference print fonts (serif) and screen fonts (sans serif). I don't expect many of them to understand the pixel grid

--
DVD / Blu-Ray Region Locking == Price Fixing.

Re:UI chases fads

[omnichad]

The previous fad was antiskeuomorphism

The fad before that was skeuomorphism, which wasn't a great plan on its own either. The problem is that people are only copying design ideas without understanding the why - and that's when it becomes fad-like. And those are the people that decided that a floppy symbol was somehow skeuomorphic rather than representational - when the vast majority of computer users have never used a floppy disk (which is true when you consider home computer adoption was driven by Internet adoption - especially at the older ages - and the rest are too young to have used one).

Re:UI chases fads

[erapert]

(The previous fad was antiskeuomorphism.)

And it was good, too. Skeuomorphic design is stupid and childish.

* The background used to be black on white, aka "light" themes.

And it was excruciating to look at for longer than a few minutes.

* Now "dark" themes are in vogue -- with white on black.

Good. Now I can get some work done without wiping blood off my cheeks.

Re:UI chases fads

[Ayanami_R]

I agree, dark themes are a savior on my eyes. White backgrounds are the devil. I can actually turn brightness up on my screens now.

Re:UI chases fads

[omnichad]

Also, True Type / Postscript / Web fonts still don't support color gradients.

And why should they? Fonts hold letter shapes and sometimes ligature data. CSS is for presentation/styling/color. CSS doesn't yet support color gradients on text (only backgrounds), but there are clever workarounds.

Re:UI chases fads

[ADRA]

Lower your screen brightness? I've programmed 16 years professionally, 8 years in school, and probably gamed and watched TV throughout that period during my off hours. I've never had significant or even minor issues with screens 'burning my eyes' or some nonsense. There's nothing wrong with black on white as long as your screens are tuned to you. If the screen brightness is too painful, turn down the brightness. Its a pretty simple solution.

IMHO, White on black is a lot harder to focus on the words but with so many of these things, its largely subjective. I've known some to use blue on grey, which I find abhorrent, but they loved it...

Re:UI chases fads

[whoever57]

* The background used to be black on white, aka "light" themes.

And it was excruciating to look at for longer than a few minutes.

White on black used to be unreadable in CRT days, unless you had a really good monitor. Once your monitor was a couple of years old, white on black hurt the eyes more than any other theme.

Re:UI chases fads

[swb]

Which old days?

Back in the VT100 terminal days, black on white (aka inverse) was tough because phosphor bleed made the black text blurry. White text on a black background actually benefited slightly from phosphor bleed by smoothing the gaps and making the bitmapped fonts smoother.

Re:UI chases fads

[Rakarra]

I think the "bright" themes were made for high-light situations. Lots of harsh office lights or outdoors work. If you work in a dimmer environment, the bright things are way too hard, but if I'm outside on a laptop or phone, the "dark" themes are pretty illegible.

Re:UI chases fads

[whoever57]

Which old days?

The days between monchrome CRT monitors and LCD monitors.

Re:UI chases fads

[UnknownSoldier]

> Skeuomorphic design is stupid and childish.

There is a name for myopic people who assumes their religion is "best" for everyone; their immature "my way is the only way" mentality is called a cult.

The *proper* solution is to give users a **choice** -- because good style is subjective.

Naturally, that begs the question, what is good? We'll get to that in a second.

Some people think this bookshelf is absolutely beautiful. Compare and contrast to the "modern" version which is bland and boring. All sense of charm, and uniqueness is flushed down the crapper -- Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft now all look the same. **Yawn**

I'm not the only one who hates the flat button look. All these modern designs look the same -- bland. Skeuomorphism matches what a real calculator looks like -- and you can pry my HP48SX from my cold, dead hands, thank-you very much.

Again, the best decision would be to match what users prefer. Some prefer the former, others prefer the latter. BOTH choices are OK. But designers love to pretend that they know better -- and shove their crap down my throat regardless if I like it or not.

Personally, I find antiskeuomorphism design to be dumb and gaudy -- as there no context for what is foreground and background. Congratulations, you've removed all signal and just made everything noise!. How is completely over-loading the user with noise helping them???

Maybe you prefer the gaudy, boxy design of Windows 1, er, Windows 8, but many people sure don't.

UI should be about empowering users -- NOT "let's make everything look bland, sterile, gaudy, lifeless and make me want to gouge my eyes out" because that's what modern UI has become. A clusterfuck of visual vomit.

IMO skeuomorphism is like spice

* Too much and you get indigestion.
* Too little and everything is "flat" and lacking.

I also disagree that "flat design" is skeuomorphic but that is a topic for another day.

--
Henry Poincare derived the e=mc^2 Mass-Energy equivalence 5 years earlier before Einstein. Einstein also abbreviated it as a linear equation instead of an infinite series.

Re:UI chases fads

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure visual art-related software tends to use dark or neutral themes due to the way human eyes work.
Staring at a bright light and then looking at a darker color causes an afterimage which makes it harder to tell precisely what you're working with. I know I usually have to wait a minute between reading slashdot and drawing something for my eyes to readjust and I can see colors clearly again.

Re:UI chases fads

[Anonymous Coward]

(The previous fad was antiskeuomorphism.)

And it was good, too. Skeuomorphic design is stupid and childish.

Ah, yes, because 16 x16 dark grey icons on light grey are so much easier to understand - you just have to hover over or click each one to figure out what it does and memorize it.
Seriously, Microsoft deciding to drop colors from icons had me very preplexed.

Re:UI chases fads

[Anonymous Coward]

Outstanding response. Examples and everything.

Re:UI chases fads

[UnknownSoldier]

> Seriously, Microsoft deciding to drop colors from icons had me very preplexed.

That's because all the modern UI designers are color blind. They would rather pick gaudy colors and visual vomit, then work within a 1 or 2 color "theme" and make that look good.

It is the modern approach of "throw shit at a wall and see what sticks" mentality.

Re:UI chases fads

[MobyDisk]

Back when I was growing-up, every book, newspaper, magazine, and billboard had a white background. It was terrible on the eyes! They even went out of their way to use horrible chemicals like bleach to make the paper even whiter. Imagine how bright that was if you were reading in the sunshine!

Re:UI chases fads

[jandrese]

I thought white on black was good if you are in a dark room, and black on white is good if you are in a well lit room.

So the solution is obvious, we need a browser extension that turns the room lights on or off depending on the site you are currently visiting.

Re:UI chases fads

[Anonymous Coward]

God I hate this flat button craze that is infecting all software, let me see what is a button, if it looks like a button, I know I can click on it.

If it is a flat piece of shit, I don't even want to touch it.

Re:UI chases fads

[UnknownSoldier]

Preach it brother!

Worse, all sense of color has been removed -- icons are now monochromatic.

* Before users had two ways ways to identify icons: color, and silhouette.
* Now with "flat shading" users only have 1 way to identify icons: silhouette.

And this "flat" stuff is 'better' ??? NOT.

Re:UI chases fads

[TeknoHog]

God I hate this flat button craze that is infecting all software, let me see what is a button, if it looks like a button, I know I can click on it.

Good point. Skeuomorphism is fine if it actually works on a computer, such as buttons you can click on. A worse example would be a rotary knob on music software, since you cannot actually grab and turn it. It's somewhat OK with a mouse wheel, because you have some kind of rotation going on, but even that's stretching it.

IMHO, the point of doing things in software is that you can escape some of the limitations of hardware. But since a lot of software is designed to act like old-fashioned hardware, you also get a lot of the same old limitations.

(More on this in my keyboard/mouse and GUI rants)

Re:UI chases fads

[Anonymous Coward]

This nails it.

I was so confused why Microsoft, Google, and Apple all degraded their fonts and icons into thin lines and monochrome colors at the same time. Why go backwards in usability, and why do it at the exact same time as your competition? Now I understand.

Also I wondered the reason why AutoCAD switched from black on white ribbons to white on black. Now I know -- there is no reason. They're just following the trend like fucking sheep.

Except what users both want and need is usability.

Re:UI chases fads

[drinkypoo]

the best decision would be to match what users prefer

Absent user-selectable themes, the best decision is to use the simplest, clearest, most discoverable interface with the least amount of decorative gewgaws. This has been taken dramatically too far in many cases, where people aren't even drawing borders around buttons any more. The existence of a button frame is not decorative. It is informative.

Obviously, the best solution is to present a fluid, themeable interface. Then if the user adds a bunch of baroque bullshit, it's on them.

Re:UI chases fads

[drinkypoo]

Back in the VT100 terminal days, black on white (aka inverse) was tough because phosphor bleed made the black text blurry.

And in the VT220 terminal days, it was tough because they were green or amber

Re:UI chases fads

[swb]

I had a VT320 and it had a poor CRT. Which is kind of surprising, because the VT100 I used in high school had a really good display, smooth yet sharp, and I would have expected the 320, with newer parts, would have been better. But the 100 was probably a more premium product when new than the 320 was. And the 100 I used was brand new, bought for a friends dad to telecommute, and my 320 came off EBay in 1997.

Re:UI chases fads

[Anonymous Coward]

Marketers chase and propagate fads because the human mind has the attention span of a squirrel; if you are showing someone the same old cereal box every day, you get a "meh", so they have to use a new look and style to catch your attention then shove a bunch of nonsense about it being better in there somewhere to sell the next product. Marketers know if they can appeal to and capture your reptilian brain (yes, it's a thing), then they can bypass that filter of rationality and objectivity, hopefully triggering your brain and endorphin or dopamine dump your ass into buying a product This is the reason why the TV commercials all switch between camera views so often (like twice a second), your reptilian brain can focus on what's going on, but the mammalian can't. Another good one is forcing the eyes to constantly struggle to maintain focus by making them move around with a shakey camera. Watch commercials on youtube, you'll start noticing all kinds of techniques.

Antiskeuomorphism was largely about catching people's attention by making everything else look more complicated than it needed to be; Techies know it's a load of bull-crap, but even the most competent and educated end users think "magic the button" actually exists and is possible. Hit a button, do my taxes. Hit a button, do my laundry. Hit a button, design my part end to end. Hit a button, solve world hunger. Amazon has buttons on a FOB that can wirelessly order things for you from amazon with a button press. It's an attractive fantasy for the average Joe, and only the most hard-nosed, skeptical, and objective person will call BS.

Today's websites are all about catching and keeping attention span. HTML5 was largely about bringing the same psychological warfare techniques, namely psychovisual and psychoacoustic techniques, that get used in television and movies to the browser. If you have any doubt about my referring to them as being psychological warfare techniques, go youtube "psyop anthem", they are an actual company that does ad's for fortune 500 companies, their origins go back to the Psyop corps from Vietnam. Imagine the TimeCube website, but re-written in HTML5, or any late 1990's or early 2000's era conspiracy theorists website that just had text scrolling down and down, for dozens of pages on end, all restating the same things over and over.

What they are doing is using psychographic profiles to determine what exploits work the best, then as you scroll down, they are tossing out whatever they think will work. They start you off with brand recognition to get the endorphans started, then a full page fuzzy video to screw up the mamillian mind, then a bunch of icons with one word under them of what they want you to associate with their product, then usually halfway down they have some kind-of sort-of sensible looking stuff that might tell you what the software does but really it doesn't tell you a damn thing. You can literally web-spider the sucker, and the information the reasoning mind needs to have in order to compare products and make a good informed decision, like a battery of screen shots or an admin guide in pdf, just is not there; this is intentional. Websites have been turned into 30 second TV Ad's, and they funnel that into contacts because they are capturing the market they believe will pay the most for their product. Amazon changing pricing based on your IP Addresses Zip code (why else won't they give you a shipping price until you make an account? Because if you browse the site via vpn from a poor area, then stuff your cart with discounted merch, then go to check out, all of a sudden you're shipping goes up through the roof because they add margin back by Zip code).

It's sad and depressing the internet has become this, and it's sad and depressing marketers do this. If you were maybe 24 or younger you might really remember what the internet was before google instant, social media, and world governments trashed it. You can still find little tidbits of what it was if you look hard.

Re:UI chases fads

[tepples]

Also, True Type / Postscript / Web fonts still don't support color gradients.

And why should they? Fonts hold letter shapes

Because letter shapes in some styles of lettering are more complicated than a binary choice of "this set of points is inside the glyph" and "this set of points is outside the glyph". One example is a font used to represent the emoji characters in Unicode.

Re:UI chases fads

[Anonymous Coward]

Your opinion is wrong, and you should feel bad.

Re:UI chases fads

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people think this bookshelf is absolutely beautiful [techinasia.com]. Compare and contrast to the "modern" version [mashable.com] which is bland and boring.

Those are both skeuomorphic designs based on bookstore magazine racks. I agree the second looks worse, but that is merely the harsh colors. They are both the same bad design, because they don't scale to the number of books (10k+) that real people have in their ebook collection.

I'm not the only one who hates the flat button look [cloudfront.net]. All these modern designs look the same -- bland. Skeuomorphism matches what a real calculator [thimet.de] looks like -- and you can pry my HP48SX from my cold, dead hands, thank-you very much.

Once again, those are both skeuomorphic designs, both terrible. the Common Lisp REPL in Slime, for example, or Excel for another, are both more powerful and easier to use than either of those crappy emulations of a desktop calculator. A real desktop calculator is also easier to use as you can feel the keys, and carry it around in your pocket.

Both your examples fail, because you are purporting to contrast skeuomorphism against non-skeuomorphism, but gave no examples of a non-skeuomorphic design.

They are terrible designs, not because of how they look, though I agree with you on your preferences between the two choices in both cases, but because of both the lost potential in what they could have been if they weren't skeuomorphs, and in the lost capability vs. the real thing that they are seeking to emulate.

To restate your argument, in a way that agrees with the examples you provided: If you are going to design a skeuomorphic user interface, including skeuomorphic decorative elements enhances the effect and creates a better interface.

However, skeuomorphic user interfaces still suck. A spreadsheet is a much more powerful and easy to use tool than a desktop calculator, and a Database, modern APL system, Python with numpy or Sage, Common Lisp with Maxima, are all much more powerful and easier to use tools than spreadsheets (A spreadsheet is itself a skeuomorph of a ledger book).

This kind of proves the point that the further you get from the constraints of emulating real life, the better software user interfaces get.

Re:UI chases fads

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not what the word "cult" means.

Re:UI chases fads

[Anonymous Coward]

Back when I was growing-up, every book, newspaper, magazine, and billboard had a white background.

And not a single one of them was backlighted.

The closest was some magazines that were printed on very glossy paper.

Re:UI chases fads

[omnichad]

One example is a font used to represent the emoji characters in Unicode

One proprietary example proposed by a browser/phone vendor. It really doesn't belong in a font - just because it's represented with unicode code points is not reason enough.

Re:UI chases fads

[AmiMoJo]

It's not easy to offer both skeuomorphic design and a standard interface in the same app, because skeuomorphic design is about how the user interacts as well as what it looks like. That brings us to the general problem with it - it ignores ease of use for emulating how older, wildly different interfaces work.

Your book shelf example is a good one. It's not really like a bookshelf at all, where books are placed sideways. If it were the text and click area for each book would be too small, so they fudged it and made the books well spaced out on an infinitely tall stack of shelves. The lack of text labels is bad too, it makes your eye decode the random images and fonts on the faces of the books.

Re:UI chases fads

[Cederic]

Finally a use case for those IP enabled light bulbs! You're a genius!

Re:UI chases fads

[tepples]

One proprietary example proposed by a browser/phone vendor.

A particular font may be proprietary software, but the encoding of characters in the Unicode Standard is not "proprietary" in the sense of being encumbered by exclusive rights or limited to one platform.

Re:UI chases fads

[omnichad]

The ability to decode the font is also still proprietary. It's not an ability inherent in any widely adopted font format.

Codepoints does not mean characters. Emoji are not characters. Unicode is only involved as a way to represent them in a small number of bytes.

Re:UI chases fads

[MobyDisk]

And not a single one of them was backlighted.

So don't set the backlight to be brighter than paper.

It is strange to me that people complain that the white background is too bright, when the brightness is adjustable. Do you complain that the sun is too bright, when you have your sunglasses hanging around your neck? :-P

Re:UI chases fads

[Anonymous Coward]

IMHO, White on black is a lot harder to focus on the words

Grey on black is the correct combination. White on black is too bright, and causes these focus issues.

Like MS-DOS had it.

Re:If you can't see the text

[bev_tech_rob]

put your glasses on.

I AM wearing my glasses, asshole. Still can't see shit...

How to do this joke on /.?

[Kludge]

I was going to make a joke post where my font was barely visible or just a blank response that could not be read. But /. posts do not support color, and the lameness filter kicks in when the body is empty.
How can one make a barely or unreadable post?

Re:How to do this joke on /.?

[omnichad]

Maybe you should consider the lameness of your joke - filter working as intended.

Re:How to do this joke on /.?

[Anonymous Coward]

How can one make a barely or unreadable post?

Ask this guy

Re:How to do this joke on /.?

[Archangel Michael]

There are plenty of unreadable posts. Mostly from trolls though.

Re:How to do this joke on /.?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some options:
1. Post color-setting code, latex, html etc.
2. Write out the specifications of the joke and a verbally explained mock-up. Hey good job!

Re:How to do this joke on /.?

[sexconker]

I know how to make them more readable.

There is also a way to submit a blank post. I forget which entity you use, but Slashdot thinks it's printable and thus won't stop you from posting it with the "you can type more than that for your comment" error.

Re:How to do this joke on /.?

[KlomDark]

Here's how you do it:

Re:How to do this joke on /.?

[rudy_wayne]

How can one make a barely or unreadable post?

Ask this guy

ZING!!

Re:How to do this joke on /.?

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

No, no. Sashdot sucks for humor that could benefit from spoiler, strikethru, lots of CAPS, and other humor tools.

You can't even start a line with three dots to humorously continue someone else's quoted thought.

Re:How to do this joke on /.?

[bingoUV]

Are you saying it doesn't work when done humorously ? My non-humerous attempt is below, working fine in preview at least.

Or does it not work when it is not someone else's thoughts?

...someone else's quoted thought

... Like this ?

Re:How to do this joke on /.?

[Cederic]

I think you've hit on a reason for the enduring nature of Slashdot.

It's not hip, it's not trendy, it's not cool and quite often it's not technology. But it's fucking readable.

"By the dragon embroidered on my butt pockets!"

[Pseudonymous Powers]

My plea to designers and software engineers: Ignore the fads...

Web designers? Ignore a fad?

Hahahahahahahahahaha!

Re:"By the dragon embroidered on my butt pockets!"

[Tablizer]

But often they are hired because their stuff looks "new and high-tech". They are often being interviewed, hired, and paid by PHB's who judge books by covers.

You cannot realistically blame them for focusing on looks above function or maintainability if that's what they are judged on.

Humans are not much different from apes: distracted by shiny red things (and shapely females, but that's another story).

Most of the CRUD apps I see made would be more intuitive and simpler if they followed common GUI practices that existed since the early 90's. But, they gotta use some new-fangled Turbo-JS slippy slidy framework to look cool. The PHB goes "ooh aah, you are good!"

Then the coder moves on and some poor shmuck is stuck with their buggy client-version-dependent spaghetti. Sometimes I'm that poor shmuck.

Re:"By the dragon embroidered on my butt pockets!"

[Anonymous Coward]

So perhaps browsers should pick up the slack and just start ignoring CSS declarations when the fonts get too thin or the contrast gets too low.

Serif fonts

[goombah99]

Indeed why do people think they invented serif fonts in the first place? I can no longer read my iphone without reading glasses and all they did was change the damn font thickness not it's size. This isn't a new discovery.

Re:Serif fonts

[Joce640k]

Newspaper printing rules don't apply because those extensively developed serif fonts don't work well on 72dpi monitors.

Re:Serif fonts

[SvnLyrBrto]

Well, it's a good thing that monitors have progressed pretty far past 72 dpi/ppi, isn't it?

Re:Serif fonts

[goombah99]

No one uses 72dpi

Re:Serif fonts

[Sowelu]

You'd be surprised how many people still use ten or twenty year old tech, especially pensioners on a fixed income or people living in less-rich countries. Also a lot of elderly people crank down the resolution to fix the problems described in this article, which doesn't help font styles.

Re:Serif fonts

[Anonymous Coward]

Monitors, even CRT ones, have been 96 dpi for ages, but with twenty year old tech you may have a point.

The 1980s and early 1990s Macintoshes were 72 dpi, FWIW. Anything past 800x600 on a 14-inch display and you're not at 72 dpi.

...come to think of it, the 'modern' 15" Nokia monitor I used to have with my P133 had a dot pitch (?) that caused eyestrain at 1024x768 so it was set to 800x600. So, er, that would be 72 dpi (or lower) too.

Re:Serif fonts

[toddestan]

A 32" 1080p TV is pretty close.

Might have to do with the designer's monitor

[Anonymous Coward]

Give your employees the best, brightest monitors on the market, and all of them will be dazzled. The smart ones will turn the luminosity setting down and be done with it. The dumb ones will fix the glare by designing from light-gray to dark-gray. Those dumb ones are the problem.

Re:Might have to do with the designer's monitor

[tomhath]

Nah. The problem is that graphic designers are mostly young with very good eyesight, and are more concerned with aesthetics than actually making something useful.

Internet becoming unreadable

[Oswald McWeany]

Internet becoming unreadable because of lighter, more transparent content.

Re:If you can't see the text

[Joce640k]

Probably a bit like the site you're looking at right now.

"Web expert" LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, you were serious? Let me laugh even harder...

Just click on ADA accessible

[WillAffleckUW]

Seriously, there's even a setting on most pages to change the default font size, so the text renders in a larger font size.

Now go by some reading glasses, millenials, you're getting old. Stop pretending you're young.

Re:Just click on ADA accessible

[Obfuscant]

Seriously, there's even a setting on most pages to change the default font size, so the text renders in a larger font size.

Look on /. ... long pause ... no, it's not here. I've never seen one on any page, much less most pages.

Now, what there IS is a setting in Firefox (and I assume others) where you can set not only the minimum font size but what fonts are used for various kinds of text. Preferences->Content, Fonts&Colors->Advanced. And a small checkbox that says "allow pages to use their own fonts instead of the selections above" which should be unchecked.

I long ago had to set a minimum because of morons who thought that I should be able to read their fancy 3 point font. Where it doesn't always work, I think, is because "size=-1" gets around the limit -- a bug. It's sometimes interesting to undo those setting for a page just to see how awful it looks based on the designer's "vision".

This problem is not limited to web pages. "Art" has taken over the technology world, including many technical magazines and journals. Sidebars that are dark blue text with light blue background, for example, which means you cannot xerox the article even if it was readable. Or background images that have the same lack of contrast for the text. And while Wired did just fine with the circus layout they adopted, this format does not fit well with all kinds of magazines. "Eye catching" does not equate to "useful" or "readable."

Re:Just click on ADA accessible

[WillAffleckUW]

Seriously, there's even a setting on most pages to change the default font size, so the text renders in a larger font size.

Look on /. ... long pause ... no, it's not here. I've never seen one on any page, much less most pages.

click on your name upper right - options - ta da! there it is on slashdot

On most web sites there is a font size (usually an A) and +/- next to it. Click on that.

Re:Just click on ADA accessible

[Hognoxious]

Now go by some reading glasses.

What good will that do, unless I turn round and go back? Typical millennial - it doesn't matter if your shit is unreadable because it's not worth reading anyway.

Re:Just click on ADA accessible

[WillAffleckUW]

Ooh a gramma nazi. News flash, english changes over time. C?

Re:Just click on ADA accessible

[Obfuscant]

click on your name upper right - options - ta da! there it is on slashdot

Not on the page I'm looking at right now, not on the page where I read your reply, and not on the page I get when I click on my name->options. Zero for three.

On most web sites there is a font size (usually an A) and +/- next to it. Click on that.

Not on most pages. Some, maybe. Most, no.

Re:Just click on ADA accessible

[WillAffleckUW]

Then you turned off the menu bar. Turn it back on.

Re:Just click on ADA accessible

[Obfuscant]

No, I didn't turn off the menu bar. Had I somehow turned off the menu bar, 1. that's a browser operation which has nothing to do with /. "name at the top right", and 2. were it /. specific, I wouldn't have gotten a "name->options" button to click on at all.

What you are telling me about is a setting for the site, not a setting on a page. Yeah, some sites (still not "most") have saved settings for users with accounts. And a few have the per-page font option. That's not a setting on "most pages". It may be "most pages you access", but that's not a valid extrapolation to the rest of us.

Re:Just click on ADA accessible

[WillAffleckUW]

If you are having font size problems due to readability, in general, a site-wide font size increase is recommended. If a specific article chose very small fonts, most sites have A symbols with a +/- font size increase/decrease that applies to the page.

Or you can increase font sizes in general on Chrome and Opera and Firefox.

Now go Read The Fine Manual. I'm not here to solve your problems, grandpa.

Re:Just click on ADA accessible

[Obfuscant]

If you are having font size problems due to readability, in general, a site-wide font size increase is recommended.

Thank you for your unsolicited recommendation. Given that most pages, and most sites, do not have font size settings, using a general solution such as the one I already spoke of is the best course of action.

If a specific article chose very small fonts, most sites have A symbols with a +/- font size increase/decrease that applies to the page.

No, most pages do not have such an option. Your experience with the sites you visit is not universal.

Or you can increase font sizes in general on Chrome and Opera and Firefox.

I think I already said that. Not for Chrome or Opera which I do not use, but for Firefox. Perhaps you remember seeing that somewhere and thought you needed to recommend that to me?

Now go Read The Fine Manual. I'm not here to solve your problems, grandpa.

I didn't ask you to solve a problem. I don't know what made you thing I had. I corrected your claim that most pages have such a setting by using /. itself as a counter example.

You managed to be civil for so much of that post, it is a shame that you couldn't manage 100%.

Re:Just click on ADA accessible

[Anonymous Coward]

Alas, ignorance does not

Re:Just click on ADA accessible

[thoughtlover]

Now go by some reading glasses, millenials, you're getting old. Stop pretending you're young.

Millenials are probably* going to have poorer eyesight, earlier in life, than prior generations did for two reasons... the wavelength of standard LED lighting (mostly blue ~ 400nm) and the fact that myopia will set in earlier from not exercising the iris enough. *Probably –because they might discover the errors of the previous generations, earlier, and not go down that path!

LED lighting:

http://articles.mercola.com/si...

Myopia:

http://www.npr.org/sections/13...

Solutions:

https://iristech.co/

Re:Just click on ADA accessible

[thoughtlover]

Now go by some reading glasses.

What good will that do, unless I turn round and go back? Typical millennial - it doesn't matter if your shit is unreadable because it's not worth reading anyway.

Or they were using a touchscreen and it didn't register the 'u' because they were typing too fast. Happens all the time on my slower iPhone 4. Also, the spelling (by vs buy) wouldn't be underlined as a misspelling because it's correctly spelled.

Re:Just click on ADA accessible

[WillAffleckUW]

Ha! I'm getting the full spectra vision mod done in Bioengineering next week!

Mobile browsing

[PhrostyMcByte]

I've noticed that after getting a 4K screen, I've felt much less need to zoom in to view text.

On some level I think this is consequence of web designers targeting mobile first a lot of the time. You tend to have much larger DPI on mobile now, and so you can make lines thinner and trade some color contrast because you have much sharper detail.

Re:Mobile browsing

[Yvan256]

What those designers can't seem to understand is that a lot of people don't have HiDPI displays.

quick fix

[blogagog]

"ctrl +" will fix websites by making the text bigger in most or all browsers. Just fyi in case someone didn't know that.

Re:quick fix

[Anonymous Coward]

"ctrl +" will fix websites by making the text bigger in most or all browsers. Just fyi in case someone didn't know that.

and breaks a lot of formatting nowadays...

Worst case: Online banking page where you have to switch sizes to be either able to use your TAN generator or be able to read the form fields.

Re:quick fix

[Blaskowicz]

Another one : in Firefox, click on the bread sandwich and on "Customize..." right in the bottom. Drag'n'drop the zooming controls left to the bread sandwich button.
Now it's a single click to zoom (or a few), and a single click on the zoom size brings it back to 100% too.

Re:quick fix

[blogagog]

Thanks. Didn't know that one.

Re:quick fix

[Nunya666]

"ctrl +" will fix websites by making the text bigger in most or all browsers. Just fyi in case someone didn't know that.

Bigger, yes, but that doesn't always fix the problem. I've used that on sites 5-10 times, and the (now huge) grey text is still difficult to read.

But for the majority of sites, I agree that it does help. Other programs often use the same shortcut, such as many PDF readers.

If you use Firefox or Pale Moon, the NoSquint add-on remembers the "ctrl +" settings for each individual site.

Re:quick fix

[Sowelu]

Ctrl-Zero puts it back to 100%, too. Almost as important to know (especially if you scale with ctrl-mousewheel and it's hard to count how many times you've done it).

Re:quick fix

[CanadianMacFan]

Or go into your preferences and under the fonts section there should be a checkbox that lets you say that you don't want to use fonts specified by the website and only use the ones you choose there. There are also options to specify the minimum font size.

Re:quick fix

[Anonymous Coward]

ctrl + scroll wheel is faster.

Re:quick fix

[Anonymous Coward]

and ctrl mouse wheel. And ctrl -. And ctrl 0 to reset. Works for single pictures, too, not just web pages.

Re:quick fix

[31eq]

Or, again on Firefox, View | Page Style | No Style

If you believe progress in technology, it's depressing how many sites this improves. Including Slashdot.

Re:quick fix

[Anonymous Coward]

If you use Firefox or Pale Moon, the NoSquint add-on remembers the "ctrl +" settings for each individual site.

If you use SeaMonkey, these settings are remembered even without any add-ons ...

I thought it was because

[Rinikusu]

Press next to see the rest of this story.

Re:I thought it was because

[kybred]

Or:

Computer users can improve their web browsing with this one weird trick!

Re:If you can't see the text

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried to get this add on but it's not supported with the latest version of Firefox.

CSS

[OrangeTide]

Wasn't CSS supposed to let users pick different profiles or override a webpage's settings? Or has CSS just become purely decorative?

Re:CSS

[omnichad]

CSS has always been presentational/decorative. The "C" in CSS defined an easy way for a browser UI to let you override some settings easily - but these settings are underused and so are buried way down.

Re:CSS

[Anonymous Coward]

install Stylish and use:
*{color:black!important;background:white!important}

leave it disabled, and keep it around for shitty websites

Re:CSS

[thegarbz]

Wasn't CSS supposed to let users pick different profiles or override a webpage's settings? Or has CSS just become purely decorative?

Yes, and it still does. You have however missed the bit that this is all provided by the designer.

Re:CSS

[OrangeTide]

Who rarely seems to provide it. I very briefly remember websites that offered "Screen", "Print", and a few other options for high-visibility. It was probably too unwieldy of a system so it seems that there is only desktop versus mobile profiles.

If javascript was less of a requirement or at least worked better in lynx & links, I'd probably go back to one of those old fashion text browsers. 90% of my web usage is reading text anyways. (my usage is probably not universal among all web users)

Re:CSS

[thegarbz]

Oh yeah I agree. Just making the point that CSS empowers the designer not the user.

C'mon folks!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about other web browsers, but in FireFox you can over-ride the web pages font and font size settings, and even set your own default text colours.

Using too high a screen resolution can make text on the screen hard to read too. For a 19" (non-widescreen) monitor, the max resolution I would recommend is 1280x1024. 1440x900 works ok on my 16:10 14.1" laptop screens.

For older folks like me (I am 56), a pair of +1.00 to +2.00 reading glasses may help. I get the ones from my local dollar store.

I would like

[rossdee]

White text on a black background please

Or at least make it easy to cut/copy text from a page and paste into another program that I can set the size font and color

Hardly

[nospam007]

Just substitute your own fonts, fontsizes and colors, I'm doing it since the beginning, Geocities wasn't readable otherwise. :-)

Font face fanciers foist failed features

[Anonymous Coward]

Our graphics designer said "oh I've got this fabulous fancy looking font we simply must use everywhere" so we started using Open Sans everywhere.

Then the boss said "this is too thin, make it bolder" so we switched to Open Sans semibold (600) everywhere. The problem now is that things that are actually bold (700) are imperceptibly so without staring hard at various text samples to see that certain text is, in fact, bolder than the rest of the text.

The correct solution would have been to keep using Arial/Helvetica rather than falling into the trap of using the latest and greatest font.

Re:Font face fanciers foist failed features

[Yvan256]

Open Sans semibold looks great, but it should really only be used for headings, maybe footers/copyrights if used properly.

Unreadable Internet?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wasn't aware web the internet == web sites

Re: Unreadable Internet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks, autocorrect

Re:If you can't see the text

[Joce640k]

Get this extension first:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-...

Life is much easier when all your addons don't break with every new Firefox release.

God, yes - exhibit A: iOS 9

[mccalli]

iOS 9 redesigned the Music app to the point where I, a 44 year-old, could barely see it let alone read/use it. The overly chunky iOS 10 version was such an incredible relief. Have to say this is a big bug-bear of mine.

Hello 25 year-old graphic designers. Congratulations on being a designer - enjoy it. But please, please show your designs to more than just your peer group. You may get a surprise.

Re:God, yes - exhibit A: iOS 9

[Anonymous Coward]

According to every 25-year-old, drop dead. You're not supposed to be using apps because at 44 you're too old to exist.

Re:God, yes - exhibit A: iOS 9

[Anonymous Coward]

Most 25 year old graphic designers don't show their designs to people outside their peer group because they can't handle negative feedback.

Re:God, yes - exhibit A: iOS 9

[CanadianMacFan]

Did they actually improve the functionality of the app though? So many things you had to go to another screen to do just so that they could show a larger image of the album cover.

Re:God, yes - exhibit A: iOS 9

[mccalli]

In iOS 9? No, iOS 8 Music was 'better' in the sense it was considerably more simple to use. iOS 9 music packed on more text, but nothing readable. iOS 10 - not sure about functionality changes, but the text is now chunky and clearly designed to be glanced at, i.e. used on the move, rather than iOS 9's "I am going to sit and admire the beauty of this interface before making a single touch gesture".

Too bad Readability addon went all cloudy

[caseih]

I used to use the wonderful Readability add-on in firefox before it went all cloud-based and commercial. I still use a fork of Readability called Enjoy Reading, but it's not maintained and not available anymore. I sure enjoy using it to read articles, though. I can set the font and make it clear and have all the contrast I want. Even better, often times by stripping out all the cruft, it can display a page that displays in parts normally all in one page. It also tends to cut through those popups that say I can't read the article unless I turn off my ad-blocker, which I refuse to do because it's not worth the risk.

Anyway I hope this add-on gets picked up again some day. I understand Safari has this functionality built-in (at least it used to).

The reason is simple...

[QuietLagoon]

The websites care so little about the content they provide, that they intentionally make it difficult to read. Why else, besides a lack of pride in the content, would a content provider prevent people from consuming their content?

Re:The reason is simple...

[Anonymous Coward]

Its never been about the content, its the page views and thus advertising money.

Did you like this comment? Please subscribe and give me a like/thumbs up!

Re:If you can't see the text

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Remember those crazy, utopian, idealists who tried to design web standards so that content and presentation could be, and would be, cleanly separated; and thus easily adapted to the requirements of just about any user agent out there?

That dream isn't completely dead; but it sure doesn't get much respect from the cool kids(which can make the 'just impose your own CSS' trick pretty hairy on some of the touchier sites out there).

Scripts on web pages, take ages to finish page.

[whoever57]

What annoys me the most is the effect of all those scripts on web pages. It's not possible to start reading many web pages for several seconds after it is initially rendered: I need to scroll down to read the text past the lead paragraph, but the scripts keep causing the page to be re-rendered and hence jump back up to the top again. Ugh!

Re:Scripts on web pages, take ages to finish page.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why you disable javascript by default, and only whitelist the tiny fraction of things that use it for something sensible.

Correction: this is one of a dozen or so reasons ...

Re:Scripts on web pages, take ages to finish page.

[lgw]

Your ad blocker isn't configured correctly.

Re:Scripts on web pages, take ages to finish page.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your ad blocker isn't configured correctly.

I don't run an ad blocker and I see the behavior OP complained about every day ... on Slashdot main page. Scripts causing the page to jump back to the top is actually the needle under my fingernails that almost has me ready to use an ad blocker.

Re:Scripts on web pages, take ages to finish page.

[lgw]

don't run an ad blocker and I see the behavior OP complained about every day .

Yes, that was my point. It's the ads, you see. In case it's not clear, the problem you're having? It's the ads. They're what's causing that problem. The ads. In case it wasn't clear.

Re:Scripts on web pages, take ages to finish page.

[tepples]

Not all web browsers support ad blockers. Chrome for Android does not, for example. And even on those that do, the user ends up seeing notices like "Here's The Thing With Ad Blockers". I even get that on my laptop despite using only a tracking blocker, not an ad blocker.

Re:Scripts on web pages, take ages to finish page.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your brain isn't configured correctly.

the web is not the internet

[Anonymous Coward]

There are protocols other than HTTP, and there are software programs other than web browsers.

The internet will be just fine.

How to get this message across?

[Geste]

At age 64, this article is timely for me. There are sites I would really like to read (example theintercept.com) but can not because they have fallen into the thrall of toney grey fonts as have so many others. In my example, I hardly think the people are bad people, but aren't they interested in getting their message out?

So I looked around on that site for a link like "Feedback" or "Contact Us", but without any luck. Perhaps it was in the same grey font.

Anyhow, I did find a "Jobs" link so I applied for a position of my own invention called "Web Usability Analyst, Part Time" and I explained my great interest in the position.

Haven't heard back.

Re:How to get this message across?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you use firefox:

Preferences / Content / Colors -> pick whatever colors you like, and then select "Override: Always".

That will ignore whatever is on the page, and use colors you can actually read. Works fine for about 98% of web sites, and the other 2% have some issue or another, but it beats not having any solution at all.

Re:How to get this message across?

[Anonymous Coward]

Reminds of Wired magazine. apparently i wasn't the only one that got tired of red/grey/blue/all-of-the-above/anything-but-white backgrounds on feature articles :/

Maximum Irony

[brunes69]

The linked article itself is not even using black fonts.

They are using #333333 which is a dark grey.

Re:Maximum Irony

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the fucking point of using gray text? I pay good money for a screen with a deep black level and a high contrast, and the idiot web designer thinks I want to see gray text?

Re:Maximum Irony

[PJ6]

The linked article itself is not even using black fonts.

They are using #333333 which is a dark grey.

While I agree with the main premise of the article, pure black on white hurts my eyes - there's nothing wrong with tempering text with #333.

From what I understand, it's mostly the thinness of the fonts, and this goes with what I already knew - look at a Commodore 64 screenshot, with the light-blue on blue text. "Terrible" contrast in comparison, and yet it's (at least I found it) very easy on the eyes, and very easy to read.

Those lucky blind people

[Anonymous Coward]

the internet has become mostly unreadable for me because of all the stupid bullshit and opinions.

much like this one

Remembr ArsTechnica and now reddit

[Streetlight]

A few months ago, Ars changed their web page to a grey text on grey background which made the site unreadable. There was a major uproar and the designers cancelled the change for a while and now it's black text on a lighter grey background.

In reddit the new /r/googlepixel subreddit has white text on a nearly white background in the header that allows one to select one's subscribed subreddits or change from the default Hot to New formats. They did change the font yesterday size, but if you want to read the text your mouse pointer must be on the heading line. Where do these people come from?

Screen Brightness has much blame

[TigerPlish]

White background hurting your eyes? Maybe your monitor's too bright. Easy to fix. Set ambient light to where you use your monitor the most. Take a piece of white paper, set it on your desk. Now put a white background site on your browser.. say.. slashdot, as an example.

Now turn the brightness up or down on your monitor until the intensity of the white background matches the intensity of the white paper. Problem fixed! Does your ambient light vary? Get intimate with your Brightness control!

Some monitors do this automatically, as do most phones and pads. I'm frankly amazed by how many people have the brightness setting on their monitors at or near full intensity in a place with low-to-moderate ambient light.

If you have a crap monitor with crap defaults, you can use Huey or something like it to correct your crap color gamma, etc. Like my desktop's monitor: I have an ancient Acer 24 inch with horrible defaults. It's so much work to tweak that I just use Huey. My Dell E6420 laptop, in comparison, has a glorious screen that requires no color or gamma adjustment to look awesome. I just vary the brightness according to environment. (yes, I know there was an option for auto adjust on the 6420, but alas, I bought mine used and then retrofitted the backlit keyboard and "hd" screen, I don't see a way to retrofit auto brightness)

As to text / widgets with low contrast relative to the background.. yeah.. that's a bone-headed design and will only be cured by time, when something worse replaces it.

Re:Screen Brightness has much blame

[Early Six Digit UID]

Properly calibrated monitors do make whites quite bright, as they should be. Personally, a wall of white with black text, like on Slashdot, is quite hard on my eyes. I wish more sites had grey backgrounds or at least gave us the capability to choose themes.

use your browser settings

[Anonymous Coward]

and also send an email to the webmaster in html with poorly contrasted font and background.. like light grey background and white text .. just to ask them how they like it.

Its the same with applications and OSs

[Anonymous Coward]

"An ounce of looks is worth a pound of performance." I miss the days when UIs were designed by people with some ergonomics knowledge and not just art-directors.

Re:If you can't see the text

[Nunya666]

Or use the "Read Easily" addon for Firefox - flip the bird at all those "designers".

Why is that better? That removes all styles, which replaces one problem with another.

The entire problem is stupid. Moronic designers who think trendy styles are better than true readability. I've used the Contact Us feature of many websites to complain about that trend. None have responded, and none have changed their sites.

I guess I'll keep reading the comments, hoping to find a real solution.

This is a browser problem, not the "Internet"

[Applehu Akbar]

Make a rich set of font and size options available in computers and devices, and every user will be able to read whats' out there.

Re:If you can't see the text

[Falos]

Convenient? Useful?

Not as pretty as yours, I'm sure. But I doubt you'd stop there; let's turn the pretentious dial until it snaps off and the page makes less sense than the time cube guy.

if only...

[DavidMZ]

I wouldn't say the content is getting more transparent. I would on the contrary that there is more and more trolling, unsubstantiated claims, and unverified / unverifiable information, because some people / nations have no interest of having a free internet and see it as a way to control populations.

Damn, I used to love the internet!

Re:if only...

[Anonymous Coward]

Woosh!

I'd rather not

[raymorris]

> fuck the elderly.

I'd rather not.

I'd rather fuck someone in her twenties.^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^thirties. Hey sweetheart, I didn't see tou standing there.

Re: I'd rather not

[Anonymous Coward]

Give her the trump treatment if she resists.

This makes me feel old

[TJHook3r]

Don't want to sound like an old fart, but I'm going to... the first web pages looked fairly similar to a printed page because the printed page is pretty much the ideal way to read. Jesus, some of us have grandparents who died in the war over Serif/Sans-Serif fonts.

Re:This makes me feel old

[WillAffleckUW]

Don't want to sound like an old fart, but I'm going to... the first web pages looked fairly similar to a printed page because the printed page is pretty much the ideal way to read.
Jesus, some of us have grandparents who died in the war over Serif/Sans-Serif fonts.

unfortunately, Comic Sans won the font wars, in a lightning strike that was unforeseen by all

I must be going to the wrong websites

[jader3rd]

I haven't noticed this at all.

green text on black background

[Anonymous Coward]

bash has no problem showing me content, what's this fancy browser thing you're talking about?

A Web Expert

[Shaman]

... really?

vector vs raster?

[SirMasterboy]

Unless the fonts are rasterized into an image can't you just change the font to your liking with an extension?

https://chrome.google.com/webs...

Wrong story title...

[Anonymous Coward]

The story title should've read "Internet is Becoming Unreadable Because of ISP Interference". Certain ISPs, like CenturyLink in Yakima, WA, connect their customers to equipment that can dynamically modify and rewrite web pages on-the-fly; the technology isn't flawless. Certain LEAs do this to dupe targets into breaking N+1 laws, usually related to sex crimes, or to gaslight them for amusement. Stay out of Yakima, WA; it's a nasty place.

Re:Wrong story title...

[wonkey_monkey]

The story title should've read "Internet is Becoming Unreadable Because of ISP Interference".

No it shouldn't, because that's a completely different story. If it's such a big deal to you, submit it as a story.

Not just the web

[cliffjumper222]

I bought an Apple TimeCapsule and I couldn't read the instruction manual. I'm over 40 and usually don't have any problem with print, but the small light gray font they used beat me. I managed to work out how to use it from the web, but it pissed me off.

Re:Not just the web

[thegarbz]

I bought an Apple TimeCapsule and I couldn't read the instruction manual.

I couldn't either but I was assured this was because I was male and made no effort to do so.

How is 21:1 the maximum?

[wonkey_monkey]

True black on white text has a contrast ratio of 21:1 -- the maximum which can be achieved.

Is it? How come TVs keep advertising themselves with contrast ratios of 400:1 and such?

Re:How is 21:1 the maximum?

[TeknoHog]

This. True black vs. true white would be an infinite contrast ratio. If your mere mortal display cannot represent that, too bad.

So it wasn't my imagination...

[rnturn]

... web designers really are out to make us lose our eyesight.

Other pet peeves about the new, modern Web:
* web links that don't change color after being visited.
* web links that won't even appear if you dare to assign your own colors using your browser settings.
* Browsers that don't allow you to easily change the font size for things like tab labels. (Not really a web design problem but I'm talkin' to you Mozilla!)
* Including graphics everywhere on the web page but never including the image sizing tags to preallocate the space for images that haven't loaded yet. As a result, it takes way, way too long for a web page to stabilize before you can begin reading anything.
* Drop down menus that obscure other drop down menus making it impossible to access certain menus. (Not without going to the "site map". If, that is, they even bothered to include that on the site pages.)
* (Just the tip of the iceberg.)

Why My Browser Overrides Font Selections

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not the colors that are a problem but the fucking idiots that are still using 640x480 and trying to keep the fonts from being to large so they set the fucking size to 2pts.

What I've done is configured all of my browsers to a minimum font size that's at least recognizable (16pts) and overridden the fonts selected to stick with Tahoma and Verdana. I don't give a shit about some fancy script or other effect if I can't easily read it and for those websites the deliberately select low contrast colors and backgrounds that make it difficult to read, fuck off and die idiots as I wont bother coming back to your crappy site though if you're a business site that's that crappy, I'll report you for an ADA (disabilities act) violation.

TT;DR

[Anonymous Coward]

Too thin, didn't read

Fuck these fucking faggot font freaks

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no problem with fonts. My worst problem is with pages that BLOCK the content and tell me I cannot view it because my browser is outdated. So I get a user agent spoofer to trick the site into thinking I am using the latest and lamest shit and of course, it fucking works! Because these fucking wankers think I have nothing better to do than update my browser twice a week and lose my precious plugins. Because that's what the WWW has become, a jungle of applications that have replaced web pages and MUST NOT be universally compatible ever!

Web designers should be flogged and pilloried right next to their mothers. Only politicians and lawyers are worse than their ilk.

And don't get me started on this fucking fad where all pages now must give you just a tiny fraction of content and force you to click SEE MORE, SEE MORE, SEE MORE to view the whole fucking thing, even if it's one fucking paragraph.

Yes, I'm angry, because I saw what the Internet used to be like and I see what it's like now. Millennials do have to ruin everything, don't they? They fucking make me miss Geocities, for fuck's sakes!

Overlooking the obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone knows that thinner fonts travel faster and are less likely to get clogged in the tubes!

No great loss

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost nothing of value to read anyway.

Re:If you can't see the text

[DickBreath]

And here I thought the reason the internet was unreadable was because of trolls.

And Windows 10.

Just come out and tell the truth

[Anonymous Coward]

Lighter thinner fonts = feminized.

Yeah, bad fonts suck

[wonkey_monkey]

Reading poorly designed and ambiguous fonts makes me feel Ill!

(NB joke may not work on your computer)

Re: If you can't see the text

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't even read TFA. Main reason is that I just don't want to...

Re:If you can't see the text

[nukenerd]

put your glasses on.

Ignorant comment.

A failing with older people's sight (and some younger ones) is reducing contrast due to increasing clouding of the eye's lenses and/or aqueous humour. Glasses cannot correct for that.

Re: If you can't see the text

[ArmoredDragon]

I must be the only person who doesn't notice any change in the size of packets going across the internet.

Re:If you can't see the text

[thegarbz]

content and presentation could be, and would be, cleanly separated

An idea that ends with text based content alone. There was good reason that content and presentation were merged, the old way broke more often than not.

Work around - e-ink

[dbIII]

The web browsers on the large e-ink readers are quite good now so that's how I read web novels and news sites. A side benefit of e-readers now needing serious processing power to deal with badly structured PDF files is that they are quick enough to run such full featured web browsers as if you were viewing it on a PC (so long as you don't have a lot of tabs open).
Unfortunately due to the licencing model of e-ink the large screen devices are stupidly expensive. Amazon had one that wasn't (better licencing deal negotiated) but they are very rare.

Re: If you can't see the text

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course none have changed. Everything has been ruined as far as the Internet is concerned. Even my android phone has this bullshit light Gray on bright white background. I've given up long ago on these losers and suggest you don't waste your time, they're all a bunch of fruit loops.

Well fuck

[Ryanrule]

Nothing makes for slashdot fights like god damn font.

Re:If you can't see the text

[ShanghaiBill]

I guess I'll keep reading the comments, hoping to find a real solution.

Here is the solution: When you see a crappy website, click on the "Contact Us" link, and send them a quick email explaining why their site sucks. Then (and this is the important part) tell them it violates the ADA by imposing unnecessary barriers to the elderly and disabled, and they should either educate their designer on usabilty, or consult with an attorney.

Re: If you can't see the text

[Anonymous Coward]

Mentioning an attorney like that is usually enough for one to contact you. Make sure you're personally willing to foloow through on the "threat" before ever bringing it up.

Web becoming unreadable because of fonts

[khz6955]

Isn't it possible to overwrite the sites fonts with your own selection.

What Ever Happened to the ADA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Once upon a time there was the Americans with Disabilities Act. Creative lawyers sued, in-house counsel advised, and there appeared an array of government and publicly-funded web sites that were mostly readable on multiple devices (including screen readers) and followed at least basic rules. "Enough contrast" for people with moderately bad eyes was the point of some of the rules. Offhand, I'd say that approximately none (well OK, maybe 20% or so) of the web sites out there might meet the majority of the most important standards these days. Another criterion was that (because of the screen readers) the site had to be able to provide its necessary information with all scripts blocked - I don't think ANY general news sites these days do that including /. (try doing anything here with all scripts blocked!). Even many of the government sites that used to be kind of dowdy-looking to keep counsel happy have gone well off the rails. Why do I get the impression that web designers these days react to "get off my lawn" with "get off the web, old (or less-abled) fart?"

Re:If you can't see the text

[baerd]

Indeed, the internet is becoming unreadable due to lower information density and an abundance of click bait garbage posing as links to articles. Does everything need to be dumbed down? I hope not.

Every Web Redesign

[Anonymous Coward]

Every Website redesign, ever, has been justified with the following:

1). The existing site looks dated;
2). It does not support modern (hardware, software, standards, you name it);
3). The content is not current.

Point #1 is entirely stylistic in nature, and thus prone to design fads.

Not every desktop PC is a Retina Mac

[tepples]

Not all viewers of a particular website have a Retina display, especially viewers on desktop or traditional laptop PCs.

Not really...

[Anonymous Coward]

... I mean, memes with the black bordered white impact font are all anybody really reads on the internet anymore.

Re: If you can't see the text

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in the day, design etiquette had mostly to do with the inability on the computers to process the madness possible to tell them to produce. There definitely was some snobbery about strict rules for font colors and backgrounds if you wanted any respect.

My first geocities and Angelfire websites were lacking in absurd havasctiptd, but I remember my thirteen year old self being called out for red text on black.

I was conscious of this sort of thing ever after, and feel that it's mostly beneficial to use sidebars navigation and footer and header formats that aren't visually confusing... if the purpose of your site is to be direct and to the point.

They have a style of site you didn't have back then... the site that's entire point is to overwhelm you with too much to process, so that you can gleam through mass quantities of content in the span of time it takes to scroll down a distance.

Frankly, I hated when FB started playing videos immediately my default just for scrolling through their mention. But... it's mostly a hang on from an era that necessitated such strict design conventions, that we don't need to still live by all of them entirely.

MySpace allowing users to edit the html and add web code to their page and infinite pictures and videos was perhaps the first time the old way of design was a shat upon so completely by everyone new to the net and publicly accepted as not being a problem.

It was absolutely ridiculous at that time and possibly still would , way more than auto play videos an infinite memes on FB or TW

So it is not the content

[techdolphin]

And all this time I thought is was the content that made the internet unreadable.

On a more serious note, I do some web design and one of my pet peeves is low contrast on websites. I like to use black text on a light gray background (background-color: #111; or #222;). The light gray cuts down on the glare. It is not just websites that are the problem. It seems every release of Windows becomes harder to read.

Re:If you can't see the text

[Anonymous Coward]

It broke for people who decided it was more important to satisfy their vision of the presentation than it was to deliver any useful content, and therefore threw in tons of hacks and complexity and stretched the model beyond all sanity. And let's be clear that that "vision of the presentation" had nothing to do with making anything any easier to use, conveying information more effectively, or anything like that. It was and is all about masturbating with design.

It worked fine for people who actually had something to communicate and cared about that communication. Unfortunately those people seem to be a minority.

Re: If you can't see the text

[laurencetux]

better version if you can do it (having paid the needed fees) is to CC magoglia@mofo.com to have the site owners go into a blind panic.

Ctrl +

[Anonymous Coward]

Does nobody know how to use Ctrl + anymore? The real reason things are getting unreadable is adblock blockers.

Re:If you can't see the text

[NReitzel]

Amen! Play Hosannas! Angles from on High!

What Artistic Idiot decided that pastel on pastel was artsy, I'd like to have a conversation with in a dark room, maybe with a wooden (traditional) baseball bat.

Original Blog Post

[Hypoon]

Here's a shortcut to the original blog post (linked in the article).

How the Web Became Unreadable
https://backchannel.com/how-th...

LCD displays are constant power

[Anonymous Coward]

At least on LCD screens, which many phones have, there is no power difference between gray, white, or black. The display backlight is on full blast and the brightness or color is controlled by filtering out some of the backlight. OLED screens work differently, though.

ctrl-shift-+

[Anonymous Coward]

Now fuck off.

Inline CSS above the fold

[tepples]

Nobody wants to be forced to use a desktop computer to see the whole web page.

I was thinking of a news site that shows photo, headline, and first paragraph to desktop or tablet users, but only the headline and a differently cropped photo to users of 6" or smaller devices. This way you can still fit as many stories into 320x440px.*

The real threat to bandwidth usage is [...] embedded CSS/Javascript in the HTML that can't be cached from page view to page view.

I thought additional HTTP 1.1 requests were more expensive than repeating any styles or scripts that block rendering of the first screen of the document. Google PageSpeed Insights recommends that web authors inline CSS above the fold.

* In CSS, px means roughly 1/2700 of the distance from the eye to the surface, rounded to the nearest hardware half-pixel.

Re:Inline CSS above the fold

[omnichad]

I was thinking of a news site that shows photo, headline, and first paragraph to desktop or tablet users, but only the headline and a differently cropped photo to users of 6" or smaller devices. This way you can still fit as many stories into 320x440px.*

And so the mobile user loses functionality / is forced to waste MORE bandwidth by loading the entire article just to see the first paragraph, because the content is there but hidden with no way to reveal.

I thought additional HTTP 1.1 requests were more expensive than repeating any styles or scripts that block rendering of the first screen of the document.

Improving the page loading speed does not reduce bandwidth usage. Render-blocking is only hardware/time expensive. This only matters if you expect users to visit only one page of your site and then go back to SERP (which is where Google wants people to get). On subsequent page visits ALL CSS is cached (at most you go out for an HTTP 304) and no bandwidth is wasted if you use CSS.

regurgitate

[RageRifter]

I remember this being a news story from the early 2000's, I swear the older I get the less I have to read the news.

It's the PC, stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

This is because twenty-something graphic designers invaded the digital world, and graphic designers care only about "beauty" and not function.

Graphic designers continue to invade the digital world because companies are under pressure to hire women.

These designers will get old too....

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing new here. Move along, move along. Let's all just got to your homes.
"Zaphod Beeblebrox: It's the weird colour scheme that freaks me. Every time you try to operate one of these weird black controls, which are labeled in black on a black background, a small black light lights up black to let you know you've done it." The Restaurant at the End of The Universe (1980)

I think the first to adopt unreadableness was the audio industry. Tiny print on the back receivers and amps, etc, labeling all the inputs and outputs. By some sly genius to further the unreadableness the labels are usually under the connections, so, when you bend over from the top to try to read any of them, other wires are always above the ones you need to read, blocking your vision.
A few audio components (mostly higher priced audiophile stuff, a category a lot of /.s sneer at) had the genius idea to label the back of the unit with right side up and upside down lettering.
The front of most home electronics is dominated by black. Again with tiny lettering, even displays that show volume, channel, etc, are usually to small with unreadable 'fonts' to be read from a few feet away.
At least we can look forward to the young whippersnappers screwing all this up getting old and creaky. Or maybe they will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes. (Bonus points if you know where that phrase came from.
Google "universal design."
Further (very droll) reading: Harrison Bergeron (1961) Kurt Vonnegut

Another field that absolutely revels in designed to fail communications is any circumstance where one party has 'power' over another party.
Clerks and bureaucrats who mis-inform by informing
Police who give orders to disperse, knowing full well the echos and ambient noise insure that most cannot understand the order (or their fellow cassocks are blocking any exists)
, and to come to and end, and TOS

Re: If you can't see the text

[Anonymous Coward]

No, those are not your glasses. Put YOUR glasses on. (Does it feel weird that I can tell from here that those aren't your glasses?)

Unless I'm wrong, in which case those aren't your EYES. Grab a fork and remove them, then take them back where you got them and ask for a replacement pair at least.

Re:If you can't see the text

[Anonymous Coward]

Or just set your own fonts in your browser and don't allow anything else. That's what I have done for decades.

Re:If you can't see the text

[Anonymous Coward]

Better yet, stop using Firefox and start using Pale Moon. I find that Pale Moon doesn't break compatibility with Firefox's own extensions as much as Firefox itself does.

Re:If you can't see the text

[Anonymous Coward]

It violates nothing. The user is fully in control of the font style and size that their browser and OS uses. Being ignorant is no excuse.

Also, many sites don't fall under US jurisdiction and would simply laugh at you and tell you to eat shit.

The correct way to deal with this is to stop visiting sites that you don't like and go elsewhere.

SVG Fonts

[tepples]

The ability to decode the font is also still proprietary.

AOSP is free software. Does AOSP lack support for color emoji?

It's not an ability inherent in any widely adopted font format.

W3C published a specification for scalable fonts whose glyphs include color information five years ago, titled SVG Fonts. Whose fault is it that this specification has failed to become "widely adopted"?

Re:SVG Fonts

[omnichad]

AOSP is free software. Does AOSP lack support for color emoji?

I'm using a different definition of proprietary. It's being pushed by a single proprietor. But yes, that one OS as a whole does contain support for it (5.0+).

The W3C has no business specifying fonts. They are a web consortium - it's well outside their scope. They are one of many people who use fonts.

Different web pages use different fonts?

[RockDoctor]

Why?
And how would I know (unless I allowed their preferences to show, instead of my own preferences)?
It's almost as if people didn't use Braille displays any more.