Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
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.
...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).
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Probably a bit like the site you're looking at right now.
No sig today...
(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.
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!
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
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.
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.
> 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.