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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   3665 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.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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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.

It's awful. We truly live in a dark (or too bright) time.

Consider New Reddit:

  • This is the default. I'm only getting 2 posts per massive browser screen. After browsing a bit, it does fill some of that space with a "recently viewed" list, but the massive bars on the side are still there. I'm convinced these design choices have dumbed down participation on reddit such that people now only posts pics and simple questions rather than longer discussions.
  • This is if you change it to "Classic" view, but that still only shows 7 posts compared to old reddit 's 13. These aren't so bad. The whitespace would be filled by longer post titles, so it doesn't feel like a waste. Personal preference, but I still think old reddit is much cleaner, despite displaying more.
  • This is "Compact" - dropping the thumbnails, shrinking even further, and new reddit still only gets 12 posts on screen. In an effort to shrink things, they've moved the comment button way off to the right, which looks awkward when the post title is short. And for what? Now I have to trace along that whitespace with my eyes to find the comment info.

Substack is even worse:

  • Just look at this shit! We are approaching 80% whitespace here, and half of it is Substack pushing their stupid twitter clone.
  • This page should be the home screen instead, and it's still half blank.
  • Another sin: If you accidentally hover over a username, it pops up a giant box like this full of yet more whitespace, covering your view of what you were looking at. On mobile, this happens if you thumb the screen to scroll down and accidentally press anywhere near a name.

Can anyone familiar with design explain why we can't have stuff like the old slatestarcodex blog back? It worked just fine on mobile. If the text is too small, you just pinch zoom the screen a bit.

It's 80% white space if you only count wide open space. It's more like 95% or more when you consider how much space there is around everything. For example, look at the ridiculously large orange shape around the New note button. There's no reason for it to be that big. There's no reason for the items on the menu above it to be spaced so far apart.

I agree the old Slate Star Codex website was a really well designed.

This is a website I built, and mostly designed:

https://www.mpsbrettonwoods.org/

My disdain for empty space has probably created the opposite problem of things being too cramped. But the audience is monetary economists. The kind of people that read books, and write books.

A book is nothing but a wall of text and it's a design that has endured for hundreds of years. I think as long as a design isn't more dense than a book then it's fine.

I don't think things are too cramped at all and I would prefer even less white space. I don't even like the big title page that makes you have to scroll down to where the content starts. I would rather have the "It is our pleasure ..." start the top left of the page, with a narrower top banner.

I think Gwern probably one of the best designed websites I've ever seen, though I'd be tempted to reduce the font size a bit.

This is the kind of design I'd argue against:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=beck+and+stone&atb=v390-1&ia=web

The throughlink to a search engine is intentional. Please don't direct link.

I "mostly designed" it. I did operate on concessions to other parties, and things that "look good" that "most website do" are hard to argue against.

Part of my original question is looking for a design group that says "obscene amounts of white space is stupid" because I constantly have to have these arguments.

Gwern's website is closer to my preference.

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