Item — HN Reader

The text on hilapeleg.io is nearly unreadable on Windows 7 with Firefox 30. The font is rendered strange, way too thin and uneven with gaps in the strokes.

The link color is just as washed out as the very light grey of the body text.

Maybe they could design their own site properly before re-designing HN?

11 comments

A screenshot (Windows 7, Chrome 35): http://i.imgur.com/I7KTlZs.png

Doesn't look any better with Firefox 35. I don't know how brilliant the OS X font rendering must be, but the strokes are 1px thick when the font is zoomed to 300%. How is this supposed to work?

This is exactly what I expected when web fonts came out. Does anybody know how to deactivate them globally in Chrome? I'm really tired of constantly changing fonts via F12, just to be able to skim some random article.

I don't know how brilliant the OS X font rendering must be, but this font is 1px thick when zoomed to 300%. How is this supposed to work?

Doesn't work on OS X either.

http://i.imgur.com/J4Avl0Q.png?1

Weirdly, it's teetering towards unreadable on FF, but looks reasonable in Chrome, here on Debian (though it's still subject to that stupid gray-on-gray fad).

http://i.imgur.com/QNwMQC6.png

Thanks for the heads-up. I'll check it out in a more detailed way.

I think just changing the font-weight from 200 to 300 makes it a lot better. http://i.imgur.com/9XucxQh.png

Yeah, this was my biggest issue--especially in the side-by-sides, it is just so much easier to read the text on the old site, black on orange. The white-on-orange thing in the navbar is terrible.

I know that the only people these days browsing HN are nutropic-fed paleo startup bros that are killing it when they're not in the box, but for some of us fat C++ neckbeards with bad vision many web design trends are pretty inconvenient.

EDIT: Thanks for the downvotes...now my post is similar in font to the proposed design. :(

Hair-thin type seems to be a growing trend. I see it commonly in "retina"-resolution-aware apps, as if the designers were trying to show off how small teh pixels are. It's now creeping into advertisement.

I hope this trend dies soon. Such fonts are very difficult on the eyes.

> It's now creeping into advertisement.

Relevant case study: German political ads: http://up.picr.de/18272570zq.jpg - Helvetica Inserat vs Helvetica Ultra Light.

Yeah the main paragraph text is definitely too thin/faint on OS X Chrome even. It was bugging me too so I simply stopped reading after a few paragraphs.

Looks bad on Windows 7 Chrome as well.

Chrome 35.0.1916.153 m. Font is barely readable. Far too thin.

Here's how it looks for me. Good in Firefox, average in IE, bad in Chrome. http://gyazo.com/4600558863db35890b9ca60f304c47be

My thoughts exactly, have to strain to read it on Windows 7 using Chrome. Would expect more from a post on design...

Font is rendered ok on chrome/ubuntu but the text is way too light to be readable

your comment is not constructive, that's not ok.

The current presented design doesn't seem to have or suggest at having any of your criticized elements. in fact what you're criticizing seems to be a hastily thrown together front end to a website that can host that one blogpost describing the HN redesign. Your comment is just an attack on the designer.

Nonsense. Tomte's comment points out some serious and real flaws with the design of the website that severely impact its usability. It's very constructive to point out such problems.

And pointing out such flaws in somebody's work is not a criticism of the person. Nor is it an "attack" on somebody to request that they have their house in order before trying to put the houses of others in order.

> Nor is it an "attack" on somebody to request that they have their house in order before trying to put the houses of others in order.

it is.

There's nothing conceptually wrong with a cleaner who has a dirty house. The measure of a cleaner is their work. If a good cleaner has a dirty house, then that doesn't make the cleaner's work bad by proxy. It just means the cleaner is a bit of a curiosity.

Tomte's comment might have value in a speculative setting (dubious value, but value). No speculation is needed when the work is on display.

fixed, sorry :)

No, it's not - http://imgur.com/yeLrLlY - W8/FF30

Still does not look good -- Look how lightly some colors show in vertical lines (zoomed in 8x): http://i.gyazo.com/38415091f10db0cba694f55dcb3cbff4.png

I'm sorry, it definitely isn't. I had to increase the font-weight from 200 to 300 to even get basic legibility.

Still looks broken to me. I see Roboto, 18px, 200 weight, which is really hard to read. 14px 300 looks much better to me.