I can corroborate that the scrolling is painful on sufficiently old hardware (and two of the not-home not-work places I most like to hang out in these days have hardware that is sufficiently old).
Scrolling for example is painful near the bottom (in the comments) of the recent article on the Cambrian explosion on a Core 2 Duo running Windows Vista, in Chrome. In particular, it takes whole seconds for the text to appear. (Till then the view port is blank / white.)
But even when I’m using reasonably fast hardware, my reaction to any signs that the text on a web page is not being produced “the old fashioned way” (and the new site certainly has such signs) is to ask myself if I really need to continue using the site.
Even a site’s use of a font I don’t recognize I provokes that reaction in me.
Why? Well, it is a sign that I will run into further irritants. Some actions will work slightly differently from the way I am used to with the result that I have to stop concentrating on the reason I came onto the web site to figure out scrolling or searching in the page or making sure the right pane on the screen has “keyboard focus” or how to change the size of the text. Or I will have to figure out how to undo the effects of some action I took accidentally.
If you’re reading this and cannot relate, then maybe that is because I have cataracts, so a large text size is more important to me than it is to you. Or maybe it is because I have a 57-year-old brain and some chronic health issues so that it is harder for me to retain what is in my working memory when things jump around on a page in ways that my brain cannot predict.
Or maybe it is because I prefer the kinesthetic sensory modality which makes me care more about subtleties in the computer’s response to various “attempted manipulations” (e.g., attempting to scroll or to use the pointing device to select an extent of text) of the web page.
The new LW site is not doing anything that many many other web sites are not also doing, so this is a comment about modern web sites more than it is a comment about the new version of LW.
I realize that this comment is rough on the creators of the next version of LW since it is negative feedback, but not actionable negative feedback (since they’ve already implemented a particular design). I considered refraining from publishing it, but went ahead because writing this comment, then observing how many points it ends up with is by far the easiest way for me to find out how many LWers share my frustrations (and knowing that is even more useful to me than knowing how many in the general population of internet users share my frustrations). I won’t make a habit of complaining about it.
Even a site’s use of a font I don’t recognize I provokes that reaction in me.
Speaking of font difficulty, the new font doesn’t render well on my desktop (Windows 10, Chrome, default font/size, 1680x1050). It comes out looking poorly aliased, or maybe just not fully black. I compare to another serif-heavy site like nytimes and the latter just seems so much darker and crisper, even at similar sizes.
On my older MacBook Air the LW font is not as ugly, though it still seems less than fully black.
I can corroborate that the scrolling is painful on sufficiently old hardware (and two of the not-home not-work places I most like to hang out in these days have hardware that is sufficiently old).
Scrolling for example is painful near the bottom (in the comments) of the recent article on the Cambrian explosion on a Core 2 Duo running Windows Vista, in Chrome. In particular, it takes whole seconds for the text to appear. (Till then the view port is blank / white.)
But even when I’m using reasonably fast hardware, my reaction to any signs that the text on a web page is not being produced “the old fashioned way” (and the new site certainly has such signs) is to ask myself if I really need to continue using the site.
Even a site’s use of a font I don’t recognize I provokes that reaction in me.
Why? Well, it is a sign that I will run into further irritants. Some actions will work slightly differently from the way I am used to with the result that I have to stop concentrating on the reason I came onto the web site to figure out scrolling or searching in the page or making sure the right pane on the screen has “keyboard focus” or how to change the size of the text. Or I will have to figure out how to undo the effects of some action I took accidentally.
If you’re reading this and cannot relate, then maybe that is because I have cataracts, so a large text size is more important to me than it is to you. Or maybe it is because I have a 57-year-old brain and some chronic health issues so that it is harder for me to retain what is in my working memory when things jump around on a page in ways that my brain cannot predict.
Or maybe it is because I prefer the kinesthetic sensory modality which makes me care more about subtleties in the computer’s response to various “attempted manipulations” (e.g., attempting to scroll or to use the pointing device to select an extent of text) of the web page.
The new LW site is not doing anything that many many other web sites are not also doing, so this is a comment about modern web sites more than it is a comment about the new version of LW.
I realize that this comment is rough on the creators of the next version of LW since it is negative feedback, but not actionable negative feedback (since they’ve already implemented a particular design). I considered refraining from publishing it, but went ahead because writing this comment, then observing how many points it ends up with is by far the easiest way for me to find out how many LWers share my frustrations (and knowing that is even more useful to me than knowing how many in the general population of internet users share my frustrations). I won’t make a habit of complaining about it.
Speaking of font difficulty, the new font doesn’t render well on my desktop (Windows 10, Chrome, default font/size, 1680x1050). It comes out looking poorly aliased, or maybe just not fully black. I compare to another serif-heavy site like nytimes and the latter just seems so much darker and crisper, even at similar sizes.
On my older MacBook Air the LW font is not as ugly, though it still seems less than fully black.