Readability
I feel like ranting a bit today, and I happened to stumble up this website, courtesy of Yoshiboshi, so I thought I’d comment a bit.
While I agree that web design should try to involve and engage the user, the sad reality is that a vast majority of websites out there simply don’t have the excellent content to keep the reader wanting more.
It’s easy to make a point on a single site, and certainly the well-planned typography helps, but staring at that wall of text on the example and I already want to close my browser.
The reason online readability is so poor is because this wasn’t how we learned to read a kids. We don’t open up a book and then flip down 5 pages at a time. When we finish reading a page, we flip it over an continue reading.
And for everyone who’s going on about how this is the internet generation, and everyone’s learned to scroll, blah blah blah….. It’s not that it can’t be done, it just ends up being taxing on the reader. The pause required to turn a page gives the reader a chance to rest his eyes.
On a website the reader doesn’t have a chance to rest his eyes if he’s required to keep scrolling down. And how many websites can honestly afford all the white space that is needed to make the layout engaging enough for the reader to want to scroll down?
On another note, I checked out this post, also by the same blogger. The best part of the whole thing was this comment:
“Print this fucking guide”.
Ha. This guide is a spelling guide and not a fucking guide. See even those who can spell can fail to communicate effectively.”
