Ironically (I cannot seem to word this in my mind without sounding like an ass so please don't take offense), your comment is about 10 lines long on my 15 inch laptop making it somewhat difficult to read for us vision readers. A double new line every few sentences which causes a paragraph on hacker news makes it much easier.
I appreciate this feedback, I'll keep it in mind for my future comments.
And by the way, it is very common that people can't find words to give me feedback - happens pretty often. So I encourage people to give me feedback - no need to feel like ass :)
Hacker News could easily set a max-width on the problematic items. Every designer (and so should every web developer) knows that the sweet spot for reading is around 60 characters and a column of text if readable between 40 and 60 characters. Check for example the free course from https://betterwebtype.com/
> Every designer (and so should every web developer) knows that the sweet spot for reading is around 60 characters and a column of text if readable between 40 and 60 characters.
That is interesting. For source code, I've always preferred maintaining a maximum line length of 80 characters. But there are plenty of people who prefer significantly longer line lengths because they feel it's more readable that way.
If you make your browser window half width, or increase your text size, you may find it's easier to read. When I'm awake and focused, I can read smaller text across longer lines without problems. When I'm more tired, I need to increase the text size, bring the screen closer, make window widths smaller.
You may also benefit from getting your vision checked. This may be early stages of something occurring, and the sooner it's identified the better.
There's other cognitive issues here. I find reading from the screen difficult, CRT, LED, OLED, but I'm fine given e-ink. Any web pages with text more than a paragraph or so is sent to an e-reader for me, otherwise I just cannot comprehend the content. I can cope with snippets.
The problem isn't line spacing whatsoever, it's tracing which one of the 10 lines you are reading from one side of a screen to another as your read it.
Did you make your comment 3 paragraphs ironically?
> The problem isn't line spacing whatsoever, it's tracing which one of the 10 lines you are reading from one side of a screen to another as your read it.
Then make your window less wide. It's not the writer's problem.
> Did you make your comment 3 paragraphs ironically?
No, but I don't think it would be hard to read if it was one paragraph. That formatting is to add in small pauses, not to make it easier to read when lines wrap.
Are you arguing that, or offering it as a potential argument? § That's not what mrep claimed made it hard to read. They said it was hard to trace lines. § And there are other ways of adding pauses, on top of those pauses not being very necessary in the first place. I could do without them just fine. § More generally, as long as a big paragraph is focused on one topic, and nobody is doing a point-by-point reply, it works just fine.
I am arguing that, and it's also how I read mrep's comment: it's a wall of text with no clear pauses, making it hard to read.
And if those §'s are your other ways of adding pauses, then those are entirely insufficient for inserting pauses for most readers, including me: we're not trained to read those characters as pauses.
Sure, there might be other ways. But they're not applied, making the comment harder to follow for some people than it would be had it been subdivided into paragraphs, and mrep was merely helpfully pointing that out in case mltony wanted to keep those people in mind in the future.
But good for you that you're not one of those people, I guess.
> those are entirely insufficient for inserting pauses
Pretend I said "indicator of separation" instead of "pause" then.
> Sure, there might be other ways. But they're not applied, making the comment harder to follow for some people than it would be had it been subdivided into paragraphs, and mrep was merely helpfully pointing that out in case mltony wanted to keep those people in mind in the future.
By talking about "other ways" to mark a logical separation, I think you're on a completely different argument than mrep. mrep is saying that it's physically hard to track the lines when reading, which is entirely a function of line length and spacing. mrep's problems would be solved if I started adding newlines in the middle of sentences, even though that would make things worse in terms of subdividing into coherent paragraphs.
Then I think we have a different interpretation of mrep's point. (Where my interpretation has going for it that mrep themselves isn't even doing what you're saying they want.)
> Then make your window less wide. It's not the writer's problem.
Exactly. Not all we want and need to tell other people can be reduced to tweets. whoever has the windows maximised on a desktop has another option, and the paragraph was never a 140 character slogan.
It’s the opposite: if you insist on keeping your browser maximized that can mean that you probably need all the width on some other site which scales poorly.
As a reference, I maximize my browsers when I'm using developers tools or when I'm using pseudo desktop web apps, usually customer mandated. I'm thinking about Kanbanize, Trello, almost all of Google, Travis, etc. Apps that display a lot of information.
HN and other text based sites are more readable in narrower windows or on a phone.
HN on a phone suffers when comments are deeply nested (this one) and when somebody quotes text using spaces as of it was a block of code.
Just tried out Tree style tabs, how does this prevent this issue? I have two pages in two tabs open. To read one I resize the window, I go to the other it has been resized also.
I have such bad eyesight that I gave up my driver's license. I didn't find it that burdensome to read the comment in question.
You might want to get your eyes checked or read up on other disabilities that can impair reading ability even if your eyesight is fine. If you feel so impinged upon that it makes sense to you to ask a blind person to accommodate your needs and problems, you may have an unidentified handicap.
So the GP volunteers unasked for feedback and that's cool. I do the exact same thing they did and somehow that makes me the asshole?
I already covered the fact that tracking problems can be due to reasons other than poor eyesight. I even provided supporting links for that assertion.
Part of my background is working for an educational organization that catered to the needs of gifted kids, including twice exceptional kids. It was common for early readers to have tracking problems and for parents to share practical tips on how to cope, as well as talk about at what point to get concerned and get the kids checked for something else.
