[pavlus]

I've read your comment before visiting the site, and it got me wondering -- how bad can it be? Can it be worse than those acid green on red sites of the 90s-00s?

Imagine my surprise, when I opened the site and it looked and felt just like a museum or art exhibit. This was the literal feeling I had -- being at an art gallery, but online.

I guess, these comments tell more about the commenters, than TFA. We should remind ourselves to be more critical to the content we consume, regardless where it comes from.

[elestor]

I did the opposite, I opened the website before looking at the comments and thought it was like a beautiful art gallery too. Then I read the top comment, and thought 'What are they talking about??'. Had a complete opposite feeling.

[taneq]

The issue is that it's beautifully designed for a portrait phone-ish-sized screen. Try viewing it in 16:9 and it's a mess. I'm not saying this to criticise; the author owes me nothing, and if I shrink my browser window down then it looks lovely. But I think this is where the confusion is coming from. Half the comments are from people looking at it on a widescreen and half are on a portrait monitor or a phone. "What this website looks like" can be two very different things and nobody bothers to ask which we are talking about.

[markdown]

I too thought it was a beautiful art gallery, and not an article. Mainly because all I could see was art. Apparently there was an article too but I couldn't read it. I assume it was made for 21 yr olds with perfect vision and not intended for people over 40yrs old.

[bartread]

There's an assumption, that people sometimes state explicitly, on HN that the discussion is more interesting or valuable than whatever's on the end of the posted link. Sometimes that's true - often even - but sometimes it's not.

That's not necessarily a value judgement on the discussion though. From me, at any rate, it's more often a personal perspective: sometimes I'm just more interested in or charmed by the thing, and in digesting and coming to my own conclusions about it, than I am in reading other peoples' thoughts and perspectives on the thing.

But, yeah, to me it felt almost like an old magazine: the typography, the layout, the way images are used. A lot of the discussion about web design in the 90s came about as a result of people coming from a traditional publishing background and really struggling to do what they wanted with the web medium, so to me it sort of hearks back to that a bit, does a good job of embracing some parts of that older aesthetic, but works well with modern web capabilities. Mind, I'm looking at it on a desktop browser, and maybe the experience on mobile is less good (I can't say), but overall I like it. It has some personality to it.

[hirako2000]

To some it felt like nothing as they couldn't render the content.

The challenge when tackling difficult problems is to bring in solutions to those problems.

Subway offered an alternative to junk food. By offering custom flavors of choice, giving consumers more control over what they eat. I don't see any fresh food at subway. Does it mean what they did is futile? No. Can't we point out this is another type of junk ? We better do.

The site is wonderful when rendered with JavaScript. A web to aspire to is one where the system font is set by default, at least could be chosen.

All valid concerns looking at an endeavor discussing a better web. The author may even take note and iterate, there was no claim it was definitive work.

[baubino]

I too think it’s a beautiful website and really refreshing in its simplicity. Too often “good design” means “needlessly complex.” The design of the site also nicely fits the argument being made in the text.

[tren]

I thought the same when loaded it on mobile. When I went to the desktop version, it is kind of glitchy and the images overlap the text: https://i.postimg.cc/bJgjcDD1/desktop.png

[stephendause]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. My personal taste for the presentation of a piece of writing is that less is more. I usually find artwork that accompanies a text to be distracting. I love reading work that can stand on its own, invoking images in the mind. I also dislike animations that seem to be made for a certain scroll speed.

Having said all of that, I certainly don't think it's bad, nor is it a commentary on the arguments being made. It's just not my cup of tea.

[bartread]

> I usually find artwork that accompanies a text to be distracting. I love reading work that can stand on its own, invoking images in the mind.

But the images are a part of the work, not separate from it, no?[0]

You might have a preference against that, which is absolutely fine, but I think you're making an artificial distinction.

[0] There's obviously a separate conversation to be had about how much that part contributes or detracts with any such work, but the point stands that I tend to view such works as all of a piece including all constituent parts.

[janalsncm]

> My personal taste for the presentation of a piece of writing is that less is more.

TFA works with iOS reader mode, which is all that matters to me. I use it instinctively as it makes style more or less uniform and lets me focus on the content of the article.

[ryandrake]

I think when you make such strongly opinionated design decisions on your website, you're deliberately inviting strong criticism. They could have used a readable vanilla bootstrap theme and HN would be actually discussing the actual text content instead of the design, but they didn't, and here we are.

[ch4s3]

Yeah, its a really beautiful site.

[nicbou]

I read the post first. The website is gorgeous, but not pleasant to use on an iPad Mini. I couldn’t keep reading without reader mode.

But damn, it is absolutely beautiful. The fonts and paintings, wow.

[strobe]

is one of the issues of modern web as it's optimized for quick most efficient reading, but something like this website is more optimized for slow thoughtful experience. Like some of the books about art history where you not only trying to get extract meaning of words but trying imagine how that time felt and try look on things from different perspective or different values.

[cataphract]

I think we can agree it's uncomfortable to read though: the font is too small, for instance. I had to use Firefox's reader mode.

[mattmanser]

Depends on your age. I remember being warned in my 20s that older people couldn't read 10pt font, 12pt was a stretch, I didn't really believe them.

Now I'm in my 40s, oh wow. Small, illegible, font is everywhere. Instructions on food is especially bad for this. At least on the computer you can usually force 125% font rendering.

Point being, the site is probably quite legible to people in their 20s.

[pavlus]

You could scale it to 120%, font would become more readable and it would even remove the text overlap with the tilted image in part three. At 100% font looks similar in size to the one on HN, but a bit less readable, I agree.

[Leno1225]

Right. I was also pleasantly surprised; it looks great, reads fluidly, and is clean on the page. It is somewhat artsy, to be sure, but nothing complaint-worthy in comparison to modern websites.

[emodendroket]

I don't think it's a bad analogy but I think there's some tension between the visual interest and making a design that makes it pleasant for someone to actually read your article through. Though even if you format it optimally for that few people bother so maybe this guy has the right idea.

[KellyCriterion]

Me too! The website actually looks like a curated art version of something; beautiful font.

[II2II]

> Can it be worse than those acid green on red sites of the 90s-00s?

I think people are nostalgic for the social environment that enabled people to create websites of all fashions, may they be well or poorly designed. We simply hold up the poorly designed websites as an example of how accessible content creation was ("hey, anyone can do it"), though perhaps we should hold up the better sites ("hey, look at what we can accomplish").

[alex1138]

Myspace was a problem with this

On the one hand, the pages were kind of ugly. Nobody likes autoplaying music. On another hand, they ruined their own site with a (separate) series of boneheaded decisions. On the other hand, Tom didn't seem quite as odious as Zuck (Myspace had a visible wall, you otherwise knew what you were dealing with with the privacy settings, and the wall was a good way to have network effects and connect with people). On another hand, Myspace worked (there was Friendster too and apparently their problem was the servers only worked half the time) because in 2006 relatively few people were online, so you knew you could find people on there

I don't know how it would have evolved if Murdoch(?) hadn't ruined the site; yes it was always a bit messy, but still. (At the same time, they completely lost all user data in some 2015 (possibly 2016) database incident, so so much for that)

[blobbers]

A little art gallery museum exhibit-y. Is that bad?

[100721]

I think it'd be good to keep in mind that Hacker News is mostly populated by a demographic commonly referred to as "Tech Bros" who, for the most part, are here as part of their journey in creating profitable businesses.

[quijoteuniv]

Profitable (very) was Thomas Midgley Jr. when he introduced lead petrol for cars, it took 75-100 years til the «profit» was stopped. What did we learn?

[LoganDark]

Is that the definition of tech bros? I thought tech bros were people who shilled cryptocurrencies, NFTs and other grifts.

[gcanyon]

I'm looking at the article now, and where I am in it, the header "The Invention of the Automobile," the image of someone driving, and the first paragraph of that section are all overlapping each other. I came here to type the above, then went back to that tab to find the layout had changed without me doing anything, so now "Part two," the title, and the picture are overlapping, but not the first paragraph. And the title is cut off.

That's just one complaint, but it's not me, it's the site.