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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.
Windows users always think higher resolution means smaller fonts. Proper operating systems automatically render the fonts based on the monitor's DPI.
Apple did it so people cannot read all the complaints on their customer support pages.
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.
My plea to designers and software engineers: Ignore the fads...
Web designers? Ignore a fad?
Hahahahahahahahahaha!
Probably a bit like the site you're looking at right now.
No sig today...
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).
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!
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.
The linked article itself is not even using black fonts.
They are using #333333 which is a dark grey.
> 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.