I keep checking those minimalism-related websites and guidelines, as well as software projects, just to find out how much views on such a seemingly simple thing vary.
For instance, this article argues against unnecessary elements, yet it's about 1.8 MB, has rather useless (IMO) pictures, and I had to scroll down 1.5 screens (in a desktop FF) to see the beginning of the article. And then there are regular vague advices.
Apparently some focus on visual minimalism, others -- on pages being lightweight, yet others -- on minimal technologies. And what some would see as necessity others see as bloat.
Agree. Shouldn't a "minimal" website have everything it needs on one page? Huge images you have to scroll past to read anything useful isn't being minimal, it's just cruft. Surely it's possible to build a website that doesn't take up a lot of screen real-estate, has everything necessary to function, and still looks professional and aesthetically pleasing?
With Internet Explorer (and some cruel and unusual filters, proxies and firewalls) the linked article loads but it is displayed as a solid black rectangle.
No better way to prove the importance of avoiding useless complication, in this case gratuitous ornamental Javascript.
It's strange how different things mean to different people; Some people see web pages as images and so minimalism is an aesthetic decision while others (most people here probably) see a tree of boxes and the aesthetic minimalism should (usually) be a consequence of a simpler description of that tree.
I like a data-first approach when designing websites. Or another way to think of it: how HTML was intended.
You write HTML and later use CSS to give that data a nice look.
Let's say you want to create a blog.
Then you might have the following HTML tags in your page: H1, H2, TIME, P, A, IMG
That's it.
Then style those element and you are done.
Now ofcourse the above is an extreme simplification.
But with frameworks like Bootstrap you take the complete opposite approach. You fill your HTML with loads and loads of DIVs just to make something look good. Imho this is a mistake.
It also makes people to add data they don't need because 'every bootstrap page has a hero'.
As for a minimalistic design: just use 1 or 2 margins/paddings and around 3 to 4 colors everywhere.
Although I mainly agree with you — I pretty much take exactly that minimalist approach with my own site — I think you're being a bit unfair on Bootstrap. Using just your example tags in conjunction with Bootstrap is perfectly acceptable, and it would only really take a single DIV (container) to wrap the content. Bootstrap gets more complicated when it comes to layout, navigation, and additional content, though, but this also becomes an issue in plain HTML anyway.
I would, though, like a really good 'minimalist' framework that just works — almost as a reset — with no classes at all. '<table class="table">' has always bugged me in Bootstrap, and there are other examples with certainly feel overengineered, that lead to spaghetti HTML.
Unfortunately, everyone else is not reading this... and for those bastards that make you click through 3 popups and then scroll jack you in the middle of reading etc: I really frickin love FireFox's "reader view" (top right in your address bar), it's also beautifully minimal text.
Now my first reaction to a popup opening as soon as I navigate to an article or a terribly illegible and busy design is to reach for the reader - guarantees one click, minimal, legible text.
In other words, if you can't trust the designers, remove the design.
hacker news has been incredibly influential on me in exemplifying what a site could be.
I too have been thinking about the philosophy of a minimal amount of "design." After a certain point or certain amount of "design" I feel like we have to ask ourselves, "what's it all for?" I've been getting into more front end territory and have been delighted with how much HTML does.
For me, it's not so much about minimalism. I feel that minimalism semantically conveys, "the absolute bare minimum possible." Whereas I like to see the design goal as, "what is necessary to fulfill the required purpose."
Shameless little plug here, this is a little experiment I've been working on:
Search for "minimalist design timeless google" and you'll find an endless number of posts exactly like this one. Bloating the web with these copycat posts isn't very minimalist.
I'm going to be honest, one thing I wish we could leave behind as we enter the 2020s is this obsession with flat/material and minimalist design as some kind of profound one size fits all design ethos that you can build your entire professional self around.
Don't get me wrong. There are plenty of occasions where so-called minimalist layouts are perfectly appropriate. Most of the lessons at the core of it are absolutely fundamental to design. And what it replaced, the very brief period of corporate skeuomorphic design was never that great and in my opinion had much more to do with companies wanting to showoff their fancy new technology than designing anything great in its own right.
However, I despair when I think of the amount of young designers who know nothing else and can barely imagine a life without the strict framework of minimalism and its accepted practices. They will never know the feeling of going off the beaten path and discovering something cool and valuable, because your inner minimalist has long since shot down that line of thought as frivolous self-indulgence. Only minimalist self-indulgence is accepted.
I'm sure most people here can agree that the web is kind of in a sad state right now. We're using staggering amounts of man-hours to run this thing. An enormous bloated stack of technologies maintained by a horde of programmers just so that designers can spend their days meticulously handcrafting minimalist websites that pretty much look the same and do the same thing, while being far heavier than they have any reason to be.
I can appreciate the programmers who build perfectly optimized "programmer minimalist" personal websites, but at the end of the day, I think that just amounts to a lot of really nice sandcastles. How do we translate that to the real world?
I'm hoping 2020s could be a decade when people get real about moving forward. Less aping of aesthetics and technologies from the 60s and 70s. More of productive experimentation, like in the 60s and 70s.
The article doesn't say anything about considering the needs of your users. It's a design choice unencumbered by the realities of your business.
Google's home page. What is this, 1999? Users spend just as much time on Youtube as they do on Google, and YT's interface is the opposite of "minimal". Even Google's SERP is littered with ads, and they're shown inline with regular search results.
Be minimal design to avoid CSS and JavaScripts and usually pictures too. Do not specify your own fonts or colours. (There are sometimes cases to do otherwise, but normally you should not need to add all of that stuff.)
I really like data-first approach. For example, I scaffold everything in Rails, make it work with all the features then I proceed to edit fully the views, etc.
[+] [-] defanor|6 years ago|reply
For instance, this article argues against unnecessary elements, yet it's about 1.8 MB, has rather useless (IMO) pictures, and I had to scroll down 1.5 screens (in a desktop FF) to see the beginning of the article. And then there are regular vague advices.
Apparently some focus on visual minimalism, others -- on pages being lightweight, yet others -- on minimal technologies. And what some would see as necessity others see as bloat.
[+] [-] godshatter|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HelloNurse|6 years ago|reply
No better way to prove the importance of avoiding useless complication, in this case gratuitous ornamental Javascript.
[+] [-] janci|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swiley|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thdrdt|6 years ago|reply
You write HTML and later use CSS to give that data a nice look.
Let's say you want to create a blog. Then you might have the following HTML tags in your page: H1, H2, TIME, P, A, IMG
That's it.
Then style those element and you are done.
Now ofcourse the above is an extreme simplification.
But with frameworks like Bootstrap you take the complete opposite approach. You fill your HTML with loads and loads of DIVs just to make something look good. Imho this is a mistake.
It also makes people to add data they don't need because 'every bootstrap page has a hero'.
As for a minimalistic design: just use 1 or 2 margins/paddings and around 3 to 4 colors everywhere.
[+] [-] oneeyedpigeon|6 years ago|reply
I would, though, like a really good 'minimalist' framework that just works — almost as a reset — with no classes at all. '<table class="table">' has always bugged me in Bootstrap, and there are other examples with certainly feel overengineered, that lead to spaghetti HTML.
[+] [-] Tomte|6 years ago|reply
That's how I did it a few days ago, after a stint with DokuWiki: https://www.2uo.de/myths-about-urandom/
It is kind of "ugly" and I still need to tinker with some things, but it also feels liberating.
[+] [-] warpech|6 years ago|reply
[1] https://milligram.io/
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21948472
[+] [-] plg|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] juped|6 years ago|reply
http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com
https://thebestmotherfucking.website (actually significantly worse)
https://bestmotherfucking.website (the best design of the lot)
and probably other niche ones
[+] [-] tomxor|6 years ago|reply
Now my first reaction to a popup opening as soon as I navigate to an article or a terribly illegible and busy design is to reach for the reader - guarantees one click, minimal, legible text.
In other words, if you can't trust the designers, remove the design.
[+] [-] Nadge|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ericsanchez|6 years ago|reply
I too have been thinking about the philosophy of a minimal amount of "design." After a certain point or certain amount of "design" I feel like we have to ask ourselves, "what's it all for?" I've been getting into more front end territory and have been delighted with how much HTML does.
For me, it's not so much about minimalism. I feel that minimalism semantically conveys, "the absolute bare minimum possible." Whereas I like to see the design goal as, "what is necessary to fulfill the required purpose."
Shameless little plug here, this is a little experiment I've been working on:
erictheread.org
[+] [-] ggm|6 years ago|reply
if it did that, and had some elements at top and bottom of the list, so you can [more] even from the top of the new view..
[+] [-] Minor49er|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rchaud|6 years ago|reply
- The death of personal websites?
- Decentralized social networks?
- Setting up a static website with Hugo/Jekyll?
- Why we did X in Julia/Rust/Go and not [commonly used framework]?
[+] [-] sibane|6 years ago|reply
Don't get me wrong. There are plenty of occasions where so-called minimalist layouts are perfectly appropriate. Most of the lessons at the core of it are absolutely fundamental to design. And what it replaced, the very brief period of corporate skeuomorphic design was never that great and in my opinion had much more to do with companies wanting to showoff their fancy new technology than designing anything great in its own right.
However, I despair when I think of the amount of young designers who know nothing else and can barely imagine a life without the strict framework of minimalism and its accepted practices. They will never know the feeling of going off the beaten path and discovering something cool and valuable, because your inner minimalist has long since shot down that line of thought as frivolous self-indulgence. Only minimalist self-indulgence is accepted.
I'm sure most people here can agree that the web is kind of in a sad state right now. We're using staggering amounts of man-hours to run this thing. An enormous bloated stack of technologies maintained by a horde of programmers just so that designers can spend their days meticulously handcrafting minimalist websites that pretty much look the same and do the same thing, while being far heavier than they have any reason to be.
I can appreciate the programmers who build perfectly optimized "programmer minimalist" personal websites, but at the end of the day, I think that just amounts to a lot of really nice sandcastles. How do we translate that to the real world?
I'm hoping 2020s could be a decade when people get real about moving forward. Less aping of aesthetics and technologies from the 60s and 70s. More of productive experimentation, like in the 60s and 70s.
[+] [-] deftturtle|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rchaud|6 years ago|reply
Google's home page. What is this, 1999? Users spend just as much time on Youtube as they do on Google, and YT's interface is the opposite of "minimal". Even Google's SERP is littered with ads, and they're shown inline with regular search results.
[+] [-] LordAtlas|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TickleSteve|6 years ago|reply
- Scroll bar on left.. why?
- superfluous links
- messy typography
- overly contrasty colour scheme.
[+] [-] chacha2|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tehjoker|6 years ago|reply
Edit: 2014
[+] [-] zzo38computer|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davedx|6 years ago|reply
https://redskyforge.com/
[+] [-] theandrewbailey|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AlexDragusin|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] meerita|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ErikAugust|6 years ago|reply
No JS. Actual minimalism.
[+] [-] forgotmypw_|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] daureg|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jstimpfle|6 years ago|reply