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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   3695 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 7, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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How do people feel about white space in web design?

There has been this ongoing trend of massive amounts of white space, where it's basically a single sentence per screen. I find the experience awful on desktop. But only mildly annoying on mobile.

I'm also trying to find professional web design blogs or posts that point out how annoying this trend is. Instead all designers seem to have nothing but nice things to say about white space. Rather than making me think I'm wrong for going against all designers I instead just think the whole profession is wrong.

I hate it with a burning passion. (This is, unironically, what a website should look like: https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/) I guess they want things to look nice and clean, but for practical reasons, I want as much information to fit on the screen at one time as possible. I can understand limiting clutter, but they have gone way too far. I don't like clicking through menus, especially if I don't know where to find what I'm looking for, and I really really don't like scrolling.

For the same reason, I abhor the trend of making things too big. I really don't like that if I open YouTube on my 27" monitor, I can only see 8 videos at a time (or just 1 or 2 on my Pixel 6 XL). My bank used to have a nice website that they ruined by replacing with the design from their app. I have five accounts and only two fit on the screen because they're using 24 point font with huge chunks of white space between them. They can't fit 5 numbers on a 312 square inch screen! I'm seriously considering switching banks over it and I only hesitate because the others will probably do the same.

I have to resist going on a rant about this, so I'll just conclude by saying I also dislike the trend of replacing text with symbols that I have to decode, and by saying that if God is just, there is a special place in hell for whoever is responsible for pushing this.

For some reason I hadn’t seen that site before.

Not only was there good information density screenwise, it practically gave me a jumpscare by how quickly it loaded.

I find it very sad that websites load more slowly than they did 30 years ago or whenever it was when my parents first got high speed internet.

motherfuckingwebsite.com is unironically better than 95% of sites on the Internet today. I know that the author is like "this is satire", but I would far rather read that website than the vast majority of what people put out.

Agreed, except for the font.

http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/ is my preference. I don't care if my screen fits a lot of information when it doesn't fit into my eye focus.

No, I much prefer the other one. This one has a narrow column that wastes two thirds of my screen. That's the main problem with modern websites.

What he referred to as "a grotesque pile of shit" was perfectly fine. Text should hit the side of the browser. It should be small and packed together.

As for line width, the priority in my view should be not wasting space so that less scrolling has to be done. I don't have any trouble tracking my eye back to the left side of the screen, but for those who do, maybe they can use multiple columns. But only using a narrow column is not good.

I don't care if my screen fits a lot of information when it doesn't fit into my eye focus.

What do you mean?

I mean it's easier for me to scroll down than scroll left to right and back to left with my eyes. I don't get the "use ALL of my screen" demands, especially as screens only ever get bigger. Different physical widths have different purposes.

It seems obviously easier to move your eyes than to use a scroll wheel.

And yet it is not, in my case. Perhaps I am but a young grasshopper and will speak differently once I acquire mouse-related hand fatigue.

I’m not so sure. Mostly because of the failure mode I observe when tired or otherwise impaired, where my eyes lose the line on wrapping around. I suspect that correlates with line width and especially with text density.

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