Also; some sites still havenât learned lessons regarding background choice - be it texture, contrast or issues that only show up when scrolling/in particular browsers.
Things Iâve noticed on some blogs/sites - âvibratingâ columns, where moving the mouse over the area causes it to judder up and down by a pixel or two. Has an unnerving effect similar to a picture taken deliberately out of focusâŠ
Another is using dithered (I think thatâs the right word) colours for backrounds⊠Fine when stationary, but combine with an LCD screen that has a distinct refresh rate and scroll down and all of a sudden you have juddery nastiness again.
Never mind the good old grey text on slightly different grey background.
Or long winded posts written in very ornate fonts. yuck.
Aaaaaah. That was cathartic.
First, fascinating that ~80 characters per line is actually near-ideal. Historical accident or have we (some of us) known that for a while?
Second, if theyâre so sure sans serif fonts are better for digital body text, why did they right with a serif font?
What font should be used for blinking text?
Comic Sans, Duh!
I suspect that a lot of the rules of thumb that were learned in the few centuries after the invention of the printing press but before the invention of the WWW, were pretty good rules of thumb.
Hmm. 80 characters is also the size settled on for IBM punched cards in 1928.
I wonder how much of this applies to other than Latin fonts?
Typefaces, not fonts.
/Sorry, one of my pet peeves.
This is all pretty much graphic design 101. At least when I went through school, this aspect of typography was covered extensively.
De gustibus non est disputandum. I find Cracked with its tight, busy layout easier to read than Medium with its fat, flabby layout. Maybe itâs because I have a neurological condition that quickly fatigues and spazzes my eye muscles. I guess some sites are easier for normal folks, while others are more handicapped friendly.
Yeah â I donât really see the problem with the Cracked layout myself. Maybe the ads on the right are annoying, but I wouldnât know â I use AdBlock.
Maybe it didnât load right, but that site is practically unreadable and worsens my headache.
The objective reason to hate Papyrus is that itâs one of few script fonts that is shipped with windoze and as such is a classic choice for anyone doing their creative in MS Word.
Iâve heard that serif fonts are quicker to read as the âtailsâ differentiate the letters better.
LCDs have substantually attenuated the pain (at least for me). Back in the CRT days, there was nothing better to remind you that your monitor geometry settings were slightly shot and it was time to futilely petition the control yoke gods.
Now even the cheapest and nastiest LCDs on the market map every pixel neatly in its place and the effect isnât nearly as obnoxious.
It also just happens to be a number that you can see at a glance. I really donât follow that whole scan path idea to well - and I mean, both as an idea, and as an actual practice. I tend to grok 75-100% of each line at a swipe, with longer pauses between Eh - maybe thatâs why many people donât find reading so enjoyable. That scan path sure makes it look like theyâre working overtime!
My biggest gripe, by far, is developers pinning sidebars to fixed positions, so that when I expand the page, they stay put. and obscure the article or picture I was trying to see. Itâs a dumb. Thereâs really nobody on this planet who is so very interesting that I will put up with that for long. There is only just so much blam and pow and clickbait I will countenance. And the smaller the screen real estate Iâm looking at? The less of this kind of stuff I will put up with. When it becomes annoying enough? I will begin to dislike whoever and whatever all that junk refers to. So, a developer can easily mess with someone elseâs street cred and business by being dumb about this.
But I did like the suggestion on spacing and font groupings! Sooo much nicer to read.
Exactly. Papyrus is grossly overused and just screams of grabbing the free âspiritual nature vegan hippieâ typeface off your PC. Once you start noticing Papyrus in business logos, you canât unsee it; itâs everywhere (especially vegan, all natural foods, healing crystals or spiritual type stores). If you look down a natural/gluten free/granola aisle, itâs 70% Papyrus on the labels.
I donât know why it even bugs me. Itâs just shitty, lazy branding and it can only hurt their image (even then only mildly because most people probably donât even care). But I canât help being annoyed. Itâs like an itch: I just want to send every natural-stuff store a list of free, distressed, ancient grains-looking open source fonts; âPlease take 5 minutes and pick anything thatâs not Papyrusâ.
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