After discussing a bit with Said (two-column layout: not too hard; table layout: very easy but bad idea; toggle with JS: harder but doable) about possible paradigms relating to the toggle hiding/showing links, I came up with the idea of ‘reader mode’ (loosely inspired by web browser reader-modes & plugins). We want to hide the links, but keep them accessible, but also not require toggles to make it work because first-time readers will approximately never use any features that require them to opt-in & a toggle would be tantamount to always showing links or never showing links. How to square this circle?
In reader-mode, most of the default gwern.net UI would be invisible/transparent: link underlines/icons, footnotes, sidebar, metadata block, footer, anything marked up with a new hideable class, until the user hovered (or long-pressed on mobile) over a hidden element and they would be rendered again. Reader-mode is disabled per-page when the user scrolls to the end of the page, under the presumption that now all that metadata may be useful as the reader goes back to reread specific parts. Reader-mode would cater to readers who complain that gwern.net is just too much of a muchness for them and they need to disable JS to make it bearable; other readers might enable it on pages like the ebook pages like Notenki Memoirs where there is a lot of useful annotation going on, but the reader may just want to read the plain text without distraction as if it were a print book.
With such a reader-mode implemented, then the story page can reuse the reader-mode functionality for a subtle one-two punch effect by adding a small special-case feature, such as a CSS class which triggers reader-mode by default (rather than being opt-in as usual). With that class now set on the Clippy story page, the reader loads the page and sees just a normal plain unhyperlinked SF story—until they hit the end of the page (presumably having read the whole story), at which point reader-mode terminates permanently and suddenly all of the links become visible (and now they suddenly realize that the technobabble was all real and can go back and reread). Or, if they are curious enough while reading, they can hover over terms to decloak the hidden formatting and reveal the full set of links. (They will probably do so accidentally, and that is how first-time reader-mode users will discover it is enabled.)
And then at the end, I can also throw in a link to the ‘link bibliography’, which is a page just of all of the links + annotations, intended to let you read through a page at the link level instead of having to hover over every single link. (I don’t think many people ever bother to use that particular gwern.net feature, but that’s at least partially due to the link bibliography being in the metadata block, and as we all know, no one ever reads the metadata.)
This seems a good deal more elegant than copy-pasting versions, and would be useful on a few other pages, and address a small but voluble contingent of readers’ minimalism need.
(I don’t think many people ever bother to use that particular gwern.net feature, but that’s at least partially due to the link bibliography being in the metadata block, and as we all know, no one ever reads the metadata.)
I don’t have any idea whether people use that feature or not, but I definitely love it. One of my fav things about browsing gwern.net.
I was directed to the story of Clippy from elsewhere (rabbit hole from the Gary Marcus vs SSC debate) and was pleasantly surprised with the reader mode (I had not read gwern.net for months). Then, I came here for discussion and stumbled upon this thread explaining your reasoning for the reader mode. This is great! It’s a really useful feature and incidentally, I used it exactly the way you envisioned users would.
After discussing a bit with Said (two-column layout: not too hard; table layout: very easy but bad idea; toggle with JS: harder but doable) about possible paradigms relating to the toggle hiding/showing links, I came up with the idea of ‘reader mode’ (loosely inspired by web browser reader-modes & plugins). We want to hide the links, but keep them accessible, but also not require toggles to make it work because first-time readers will approximately never use any features that require them to opt-in & a toggle would be tantamount to always showing links or never showing links. How to square this circle?
In reader-mode, most of the default gwern.net UI would be invisible/transparent: link underlines/icons, footnotes, sidebar, metadata block, footer, anything marked up with a new
hideableclass, until the user hovered (or long-pressed on mobile) over a hidden element and they would be rendered again. Reader-mode is disabled per-page when the user scrolls to the end of the page, under the presumption that now all that metadata may be useful as the reader goes back to reread specific parts. Reader-mode would cater to readers who complain that gwern.net is just too much of a muchness for them and they need to disable JS to make it bearable; other readers might enable it on pages like the ebook pages like Notenki Memoirs where there is a lot of useful annotation going on, but the reader may just want to read the plain text without distraction as if it were a print book.With such a reader-mode implemented, then the story page can reuse the reader-mode functionality for a subtle one-two punch effect by adding a small special-case feature, such as a CSS class which triggers reader-mode by default (rather than being opt-in as usual). With that class now set on the Clippy story page, the reader loads the page and sees just a normal plain unhyperlinked SF story—until they hit the end of the page (presumably having read the whole story), at which point reader-mode terminates permanently and suddenly all of the links become visible (and now they suddenly realize that the technobabble was all real and can go back and reread). Or, if they are curious enough while reading, they can hover over terms to decloak the hidden formatting and reveal the full set of links. (They will probably do so accidentally, and that is how first-time reader-mode users will discover it is enabled.)
And then at the end, I can also throw in a link to the ‘link bibliography’, which is a page just of all of the links + annotations, intended to let you read through a page at the link level instead of having to hover over every single link. (I don’t think many people ever bother to use that particular gwern.net feature, but that’s at least partially due to the link bibliography being in the metadata block, and as we all know, no one ever reads the metadata.)
This seems a good deal more elegant than copy-pasting versions, and would be useful on a few other pages, and address a small but voluble contingent of readers’ minimalism need.
I don’t have any idea whether people use that feature or not, but I definitely love it. One of my fav things about browsing gwern.net.
I was directed to the story of Clippy from elsewhere (rabbit hole from the Gary Marcus vs SSC debate) and was pleasantly surprised with the reader mode (I had not read gwern.net for months). Then, I came here for discussion and stumbled upon this thread explaining your reasoning for the reader mode. This is great! It’s a really useful feature and incidentally, I used it exactly the way you envisioned users would.
/sheds tears of joy that someone actually uses the link-bibliographies and noticed the reader mode