Also; some sites still havenāt learned lessons regarding background choice - be it texture, contrast or issues that only show up when scrolling/in particular browsers.
Things Iāve noticed on some blogs/sites - āvibratingā 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 focusā¦
Another is using dithered (I think thatās the right word) colours for backroundsā¦ 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 theyāre 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 itās 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 ā I donāt really see the problem with the Cracked layout myself. Maybe the ads on the right are annoying, but I wouldnāt know ā I use AdBlock.
Maybe it didnāt load right, but that site is practically unreadable and worsens my headache.
The objective reason to hate Papyrus is that itās 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.
Iāve heard that serif fonts are quicker to read as the ātailsā 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 isnāt nearly as obnoxious.
It also just happens to be a number that you can see at a glance. I really donāt 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 thatās why many people donāt find reading so enjoyable. That scan path sure makes it look like theyāre 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. Itās a dumb. Thereās 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 Iām 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 elseās 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 āspiritual nature vegan hippieā typeface off your PC. Once you start noticing Papyrus in business logos, you canāt unsee it; itās everywhere (especially vegan, all natural foods, healing crystals or spiritual type stores). If you look down a natural/gluten free/granola aisle, itās 70% Papyrus on the labels.
I donāt know why it even bugs me. Itās just shitty, lazy branding and it can only hurt their image (even then only mildly because most people probably donāt even care). But I canāt help being annoyed. Itās like an itch: I just want to send every natural-stuff store a list of free, distressed, ancient grains-looking open source fonts; āPlease take 5 minutes and pick anything thatās not Papyrusā.
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