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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   3725 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.

I was trying to convince some devs at an up-and-coming twitter-esque platform to do away with whitespace and their only argument was that people viewing on a wider screen don't want an entire sentence to span across horizontally. So they kept their design, where on even a regular desktop 50% of the website is white space.

I countered with the fact that no one needs to maximize their browser to fill the entire width of their monitor.. and alternatively they can just as easily zoom in.

It seems as though, either for monetary reasons tied to continued engagement, or possibly genuine preference from enough people, the extra-white-space design is here to stay for a bit longer.

If it wasn't obvious I'm not a fan of it. But for a website that is following the numbers, we can see that extra whitespace is beyond an experimental stage as the style has been, and continues to be, adopted by many websites.

I was trying to convince some devs at an up-and-coming twitter-esque platform to do away with whitespace and their only argument was that people viewing on a wider screen don't want an entire sentence to span across horizontally.

I wish that these people would get it into their heads that some people do, in fact, want that. I want it very badly! But nobody will give it to me, and it drives me crazy.

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