Messing With the Site Theme

By Shamus Posted Friday Oct 23, 2015

Filed under: Notices 107 comments

I spend a lot of time looking at this site. Statistically, you stop by once or twice a day, but I’m here all day, every day. On one hand, it’s really important to keep the site consistent, because nothing drives people crazy like change. On the other hand, every once in a while the monotony gets to me and I have to change SOMETHING.

Guess what we’re doing today?

Rationale:

  1. Rutskarn is posting twice weekly now, and lots of people are missing the detail that some stuff is from me and some stuff is from him. So I need to make the author more prominent. This means adding author image and name and having it link to our respective Patreons.
  2. I need to make the footnotesWhich aren’t really footnotes because they don’t appear at the foot of the article but you know what I mean. work better for mobile usersOr people on tablets, touchscreens, or using any other non-standard interface that makes precise selections difficult and small text unreadable.. Specifically, the default footnote size is much too small and hard to selectOr if you’re me, IMPOSSIBLE. I can’t even use the mobile version of most sites on my phone. My fingers are too fat and opaque and so I’m always poking the wrong stuff., and the text itself is a little on the small size. So for mobiles, I’ve expanded the size of both the link and the text to match the size of the rest of the article text.
  3. I’m sick of the look of the site. So I want to change something, but I don’t want to cause trouble. Changing fonts is a good way of making things look fresh without moving everything around and causing chaos. I’ve been using the same fonts for almost half a decade now, and Google has greatly expanded their collection of fonts since the last time I messed with them.

So that’s what I’m doing / have done.

This post is just a catch-all for feedback so we don’t clutter up Mass Effect and KOTOR comments with discussions on typography.

 

Footnotes:

[1] Which aren’t really footnotes because they don’t appear at the foot of the article but you know what I mean.

[2] Or people on tablets, touchscreens, or using any other non-standard interface that makes precise selections difficult and small text unreadable.

[3] Or if you’re me, IMPOSSIBLE. I can’t even use the mobile version of most sites on my phone. My fingers are too fat and opaque and so I’m always poking the wrong stuff.



From The Archives:
 

107 thoughts on “Messing With the Site Theme

  1. Viktor says:

    Okay, if you’re making footnotes larger this issue is going to get worse, so…
    I can’t close footnotes normally on my iPad. Clicking the text around it or the footnote again does nothing. The only thing that does close them is finding a different footnote and opening that, which closes the first one(and can be hard in articles like this where all the footnotes are covered by each other). Normally I just read the next couple lines before clicking a footnote, but if you’re making the font larger, that’s not going to work anymore. iOS 9.0.1, not sure which Safari that is.

    1. MichaelGC says:

      I’ve been having this issue too, and using exactly the same strategies! However, I’ve just inadvertently cracked it – all you need to do is hold down very briefly somewhere other than a link, and the note goes away. I guess that’s the iEquivalent of clicking off the link on a computer.

      You have to make sure you’re holding down on nothing at all – e.g. if you hold down on some text, you’ll get the option to copy it, etc. So, at the side of the article is best, over on the background.

      1. MichaelGC says:

        Actually even just a quick tap works, as long as it’s on ‘nothing’/the background.

      2. Warstrike says:

        Thanks. I’ve been struggling with that for a long time now.

        1. Sean M. Paus says:

          Likewise for me. I happened to stumble on the same solution after struggling with it for a long time.

          However, if there were a way to dismiss the footnote by either tapping on it or the link (I believe this is the behavior on laptops and desktops), that would be more natural. See What If by Randall Munroe for an example that seems to work consistently on both mobile devices and traditional computers.

      3. Hermocrates says:

        Thank you! Normally I prefer to read articles on my Android tablet when I’m mobile, but every so often I need to use my iPhone and that problem has been driving me nuts.

  2. Fizban says:

    I’d noticed the return of author images. Hadn’t thought about the footnote size but now that it’s bigger I wouldn’t want it to shrink. Like this font more than the last one, I believe it’s still different from the old default? But if you told me it was the same and it just looked different because of the background I’d facepalm. Now that I think about it I still miss/wouldn’t mind the dice back since they vanished, but this skyscrapers and (Citadel?) is growing on me.

    Ah, and the comment dialog box is indeed using a different font from the post at the moment. Again can’t be exactly sure which one but it doesn’t look bad with the brighter background.

    But it posts in the same font, okays.

    1. Trix2000 says:

      I feel like the image is a little small, but then again I’m not sure making it larger would actually help.

      I did actually notice the picture yesterday on one of Shamus’s comments, though, which I thought was kind-of neat.

  3. Blake says:

    Change to make other peoples posts more obvious is good, footnote change is fine, not a big fan of serif fonts for screen reading though.
    I think at my viewing size a lot of the little bits of the serifs want to be slightly less than a pixel in size leading them to look a bit off. Not a huge deal, but typography feedback needs to go somewhere!

    1. mhoff12358 says:

      Yeah, not as big a fan of the serifs. Especially since the fonts for every other header or label or whatever in sans-serif. Obviously not the end of the world, but it makes the content seem a bit more disconnected from the headings.

      1. Jarppi says:

        This font thing seems to be about personal preferences. I prefer this serif font over the previous sans serif one. Texts on this site are usually long-ish and I usually read them on large screen so serif typefaces are in my opinion a more suitable solution than sans serif fonts. I think the latter are more suitable for shorter texts and, depending on screen resolution, for mobile devices.

        Although I do agree that fonts in headings etc. should be consistent with main text font. This also may be just a personal preference.

        E: Now it changed again. To be clear, when I originally posted this font was in a serif typeface and now it is sans serif again.

        1. AileTheAlien says:

          Oh, god! The font in the edit box is different from the font after the comment is posted! Madness! Madness everywhere! :P

          On a serious note, does anyone know of studies of serif vs sans-serif, that took into account the history of somebody reading the different fonts? I know that me and my friends/coworkers are able to more easily/quickly read serif or sans-serif, but I want to know how much of the speed differences are from the font itself / human vision system, and how much is from exposure to that type of font. i.e. Maybe your brain learns to recognize serif / sans-serif more quickly, if you see it every day?

          1. Jarppi says:

            I am too lazy to search for actual researches but I assume that, in theory, serif fonts are easier to read especially in longer texts. That’s would explain just about every book you see is printed with serif fonts. However, if resolution is low, meaning we are talking abot digital media and especially mobile use, serifs may not be as easy to read because there just aren’t enough pixels for details in the symbols.

            Anyway, this is only an assumption on my side so if someone would know about actual research on the topic it would be interesting to take a look on the results.

    2. Blake says:

      After refreshing, I like these font choices better :)

    3. swenson says:

      I’m OK with the serifs, I especially like the commenter names, but the main text seems huge on my screen–okay, maybe not HUGE, but a little larger than is comfortable. I feel like all the text is in bold.

      1. Jonathan says:

        The old font was easier to read. This one blurs together a bit, especially if I am skimming or reading quickly.

    4. Zak McKracken says:

      So I guess Shamus has already emoved the serifs?
      I like the article heading font, comment and article font is also fine with me, but the commenters’ names and the font while composing comments look a bit fancier than feels right to me.

      I do like that the backgrounds are a little more muted lately.

  4. Da Mage says:

    Not a fan of the serifs fonts for this type of text…..and this font in particular is very thin so there is so much white compared to the black of the test. A thicker font generally helps me when reading.

    1. Mephane says:

      Yepp, same here. Please consider using a font without serifs and more “meat”, Shamus. :(

      1. Syal says:

        Like Wingdings!

    2. AileTheAlien says:

      I suspect we’ll all have different preferences for what we find most readable, for a font. I, for example, prefer sans-serif, monospace fonts, where Zeros and Ohs are visually distinguishable. (e.g. The Hack font.) Unless I get lucky, and have a choice for a nice font like Open Dislexic on the device I’m using, everything is difficult to read in non-monospaced fonts. My family all think I’m nuts, to want a monospaced font.

  5. bubba0077 says:

    Since you mentioned footnotes, they’re still weird in the RSS feed. The text of the footnote is no longer dumped in-line (it doesn’t appear at all anymore), but the numbers still start with n+1, where n is the number of footnotes. I don’t know that there is really a fix for this, but just wanted you to be aware.

  6. I’m going to make the radical suggestion that you should just stop using footnotes entirely. They’re bad UX. Why create extra work for the reader for the least important text? If it’s worth reading, just have it be part of the main text. If it’s not worth reading, cut it entirely. Plus your footnote implementation is completely broken in your RSS feed.

    1. 4th Dimension says:

      Problem is they are rather prominent in the articles in previous year or so, so he can not simply discontinue their use because he has to support them for the readers looking through the archives.

      1. Right, I didn’t mean strip out the old ones or the code supporting them – just stop writing new ones.

    2. Steve C says:

      As a counter opinion; I really like the footnotes. I don’t use RSS nor a mobile device though.

      1. AileTheAlien says:

        I also really like the inline footnotes. I can get optional information without having to stop reading the current sentence, or having to scroll down to the end/footnote section and scroll back up to where I was before.

    3. Smiley_Face says:

      I dunno, I enjoy the structure; my favourite example of it done well would be the Discworld novels. It can add to a piece.

    4. Daemian Lucifer says:

      Ill voice for the other side and say that I like footnotes.The alternative is to either stuff the whole text into parentheses(like this),which is fine for a few words,but for bigger text it feels kind of weird(for example if I were to write a whole paragraph here,as an aside,and then continue the sentence,you would completely forget what you were reading once the tangent stops,but the tangent is still a useful one,so I cant just cut it,but it doesnt really fit as a sentence on its own),or to make actual footnotes,like this* which are fine for small text,but for huge articles they still need links to let you jump between the two without losing your place.

      *Example.

      1. If I’m the only one who dislikes the footnotes, then cool, that’s not a reason to stop using them. But I have to admit I don’t really get the arguments in their favor. If the extra text disrupts the flow of the sentence or is long enough that you’d forget what you were reading by the end of it, that’s true regardless of whether you have to click (or scroll, which I agree is worse) to see it. Stuffing it into a hidden note feels to me like the writing equivalent of shoving options into a context menu instead of doing the hard work of figuring out where they really belong – it looks like you’ve reduced complexity, but you’ve really just offloaded the work to the reader/user.

        For the footnotes, my user experience is this:
        1. While reading Shamus’s post in my RSS reader, notice a footnote annotation.
        2. Since footnotes don’t work in RSS, click through in my reader to open the post’s page in a new tab.
        3. Scroll to where I was in the article. (This is harder because the footnote numbers don’t match up, as bubba0077 noted.)
        4. Move the mouse pointer to the little number and click on it.
        5. Read the footnote text.
        6. Click elsewhere to close the footnote.
        7. Find my place in the paragraph and resume reading the main text.

        Granted that steps 2 and 3 are only there because I’m using an RSS reader, but I’m still changing my interaction mode and doing extra work to read this text. To me, this feels more disruptive than even a long parenthetical. But again – if I’m the only one who feels this way, then whatever.

        Since I’ve now spilled so many words on something so minor, I might as well add some straight-up positivity here and mention that I’m a huge fan of Shamus’s work. :) I get super excited whenever a new entry in the Mass Effect retrospective goes up. And a friend who has not played Mass Effect read some of it over my shoulder, declared that she really liked the writing style, and went digging in Shamus’s archives for more to read. :)

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          If the extra text disrupts the flow of the sentence or is long enough that you'd forget what you were reading by the end of it, that's true regardless of whether you have to click (or scroll, which I agree is worse) to see it.

          Its not.With a parentheses its way harder to skip it,then come back to it once you come to the period(or to the end of the text,if you prefer to do it that way).So the choice is between an actual footnote that comes to the bottom,or the hidden one thats the case here.The ones that are in the bottom are harder to link,and jump between text and them than the hidden ones though.

          As for the rss,I use it to read the comments,and when an article comes up,I immediately jump to the blog to read it there.Its easier for me to read it that way,easier to respond to it,and like youve said,easier to read the footnotes.

      2. I wonder how a sidebox would work? (maybe using the HTML5 aside tag, or just a plain old div).
        It could be floated the right and thus have the article text wrap around it, it could even contain a small image etc.

    5. MichaelGC says:

      This post talks a little bit about the reasons why it’s not a binary thing, importance-wise (although you have to use the notes to get the full story, I’m afraid):

      http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=23559

      PS This is hilarious – every time I refresh the page, all the fonts have changed again! I don’t know why that’s so funny for me … but it is.

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        I find it funny too.If a bit weird.

    6. Zak McKracken says:

      When html was a new thing (to me) I totally loved the idea of having a branching text because that’s how I was thinking (and had been wanting to write like), too.
      I’ve learned a thing or two since then, and need to put my thoughts into linear text regularly, which is a really good exercise in sorting them before putting them out there.

      … it’s also painful and not fun, so I completely support the footnotes’ existence! It is exactly where I think side-jokes with no consequences for the main narrative should live.

  7. Daemian Lucifer says:

    because nothing drives people crazy like change.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWnVmQZS_pU

  8. Felblood says:

    This new theme doesn’t seem to be causing me any physical pain.

    So that went bout as well as I could have hoped.

    1. Felblood says:

      Actually this current font for the body of the post doesn’t feel so great. Something about the edges of the letters strains my astigmatic eye, with this shade of gray.

      Maybe move back to something with serifs? I don’t know fonts, but I know when my eye hurts.

  9. Mephane says:

    The new background drives me crazy. Or, more precisely, this particular white blob can’t stop grabbing my attention. At first I even thought it was dirt on the screen!

    http://fs5.directupload.net/images/151023/etqfzn3u.png

    1. AileTheAlien says:

      On the positive side, the background image is large enough, that when I drag my window bigger, I get to see more and more image! Fun hidden ME content! :D

    2. Duoae says:

      I dislike the background image more because it’s SO BRIGHT my retinas are burning out just looking at it!!!

      1. Zak McKracken says:

        I think that means you should reduce the screen brightness…

        1. It’s pretty bright here too, and my monitors are calibrated for film (and using the SRGB profile and static contrast).

          The gamma of the background could probably be reduced by 50%.

  10. Steve C says:

    I have been waiting for a meta post to mention something; the site is a bit slow.

    It has nothing to do with recent changes as it’s been around for months. To refresh this page (with currently 10 comments) it takes 8.6 seconds. That’s not normal on other blogs but common here. It’s not a problem for me as a reader. Just something I thought you might want to know.

    1. LadyTL says:

      It may be something on your end. I can refresh a post and it takes only a second no matter the amount of comments.

      1. Steve C says:

        Possibly. I only mentioned the # of comments because it does not seem to be related to quantity of comments. It’s always takes approximately that long and it’s only this site I’ve noticed the issue. Also it seems to be unrelated to how much I’m using my connection doing other things.

        Not a big deal. Just something that exists.

  11. MichaelGC says:

    It’s great having Rutskarn posting twice weekly! (‘Bi-weekly?’ ‘Bi-enweekly?’) As a general rule, I think you could both stand to get a bit more all up in our faces Patreonwise. Reckon we can trust you not to go overboard! But sometimes people aren’t even aware of it, which is a bit of a shame.

    Ongoing process, though, of course! Things like the share buttons and ‘From the archives’ are great – and extremely well-judged – steps in the right direction, as are your author links. Yay.

    1. Hermocrates says:

      I like to use biweekly to mean twice a week, since we already have fortnightly to mean once every other week. I realize there’s no standard to this, though.

      1. Soylent Dave says:

        “semiweekly” would always mean ‘twice a week’ (because semi- always means ‘half’ and bi- only sometimes ‘twice’ (and sometimes means ‘two’)).

        But readers would probably still get confused, because it’s not like it’s a common prefix, and people compare it with ‘bi’ and get even more confused about which is which etc.

        So that’s why there’s no word for it. Language would be so much easier if it wasn’t for all of these people speaking it.

        1. Duoae says:

          I’m afraid I have to disagree – ‘semi-‘ doesn’t always mean half (even though people think it does). It’s often used to be synonymous with “partially”, “incompletely” and “somewhat”.

          E.g. Semi-detached. Articulated semi-trailer. Semi-structured interview.

          It’d be more sure if we used demi-weekly as the term as that tends to mean ‘half’ more often than not, though it can also be interpreted as ‘lesser’.

          In short – we just need to avoid using these prefixes that have multiple meanings. I think Shamus’ “twice weekly’ is a great example.

          [edit] Doing some searching has turned up this handy page:

          http://mentalfloss.com/article/59521/semi-hemi-demi-whats-difference

  12. SlothfulCobra says:

    I never had any trouble with the notes on my nexus. Must be an apple problem. I like the new pinkish city background, although at first I thought it was the citadel (or was it Illium) back again. The new fonts are messing with my head, but that’s just not being used to them.

    Although as I remember, this is like the third or fourth time you’ve tried to make the author part of your blog more prominent. I think at this point you’re going to just have to live with people being mistaken.

    1. AileTheAlien says:

      What about coloring the boxes that summarize the posts on the main page? Shamus could show up as green, Rutskarn as blue, etc?

  13. Daemian Lucifer says:

    Since you are making changes,how about you add blockquote tag into the examples above posts?They are quite useful,but having to constantly type them instead of copy-pasting them is annoying.

    1. MichaelGC says:

      Sumfink like this, for e.g.?

      You can emphasise quotations in [blockquote] tags like so:
      [blockquote]I … am your father.[/blockquote]

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Precisely.

  14. Daemian Lucifer says:

    Or if you're me, IMPOSSIBLE. I can't even use the mobile version of most sites on my phone. My fingers are too fat and opaque and so I'm always poking the wrong stuff.

    Thats weird.I dont know if its a browser or a device thing,but on my cell no matter where I tap,if I even graze a link,it will register.And if there are multiple links in a small space,a helpful magnifier will pop up to let me fine select which one I meant to tap.

    1. Tektotherriggen says:

      My phone does that too (Chrome on Android).

  15. Daemian Lucifer says:

    Im in the neutral camp when it comes to the font.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxK_nA2iVXw

    1. Retsam says:

      I love that every version of that quote on YouTube seems to have the same number of likes and dislikes. That one you posted has 6891 likes and dislikes; the most popular version is this one, which has 268,947 likes and dislikes.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ussCHoQttyQ

      1. Dreadjaws says:

        Wow, that is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. The fact that people can actually work together to such a goal is astounding.

        1. Unless it’s a Youtube (Google) in-joke such that the like and dislike are actually linked.
          There are a few odd youtube things like that.

          Although if it really is people cooperating on the joke then that is indeed awesome.

          1. Retsam says:

            Yeah, I’m pretty sure this is either something that just happened organically… or else was coordinated by some group like 4chan; it doesn’t seem likely to be a YouTube feature.

        2. Daemian Lucifer says:

          Not just people,but people on youtube.

  16. Neko says:

    It all looks fine to me, but I don’t allow web fonts by default.

    1. Domochevsky says:

      That’s kinda the thing, yes.

      Noscript by default disallows web fonts if they come from an untrusted domain (like, say fonts.gstatic.com), meaning google’s fonts are an universally blocked object.

      So I usually don’t see any of these fancy fonts. >_>

  17. SpaceSjut says:

    Something you could and should do with the mobile design: make it use the whole screen. In both orientations, I have free space on the right edge, used by nothing. The article-, comments-, post-comment- and bottom-of-the-side-boxes are of different widths while non uses the whole width of the screen. And as soon as I zoom in, scrolling down instantaneously becomes an excersize in not scrolling sideways.
    I can provide a screenshot later.

    Also:buttons on mobile.

    1. MichaelGC says:

      I’ve had this scrolling issue too, and the way I mitigate it is to push slightly to the right whilst scrolling (which may not be easy for all depending on handedness, DEX bonuses, etc.). That of course does pull everything sideways, but because there’s nothing on the left, it all snaps back into alignment as soon as you let go.

      Also if you make the slight diagonal movement gentle enough – not easy!; I don’t get it right each time – any right-shift-&-snap back is barely noticeable. Pulling or pushing ever so slightly to the right of the centre line where possible does work well, though.

      1. SpaceSjut says:

        Yeah, I am aware that with enough points in scrolling-fu this problem can be avoided.
        (This probably reads WAY more hostile than I intend it to be – it’s meant to be a snarky-yet-friendly comment.)
        But it still is a technical issue with the site, so if Shamus is looking for stuff to mess with…

  18. evileeyore says:

    I love everything about the way it is at the time of my posting.

    Title it crisp and clean, author is very obvious now. Footnotes were almost impossible for me to find previously, super easy now. Font is beautifully easy to read at a glance, seems to be faster and easier to read as well.

  19. Piflik says:

    I’d like to mention another issue with mobile browsing: flavor text that appears when hovering over an image. There is no hover on mobile, so that additional text is impossible to discover.

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      You can hold your finger on the image and the text will pop up after about a second,above the options to save,open,etc.

    2. Eskel says:

      I second this. And not only on mobile devices. I often forget that there is a title text and miss the commentary.

      I would prefer captions displayed directly under the image, as was done in the past, if I remember correctly.

      1. I have to agree, image subtitles/caption should be overlayed on the image or underneath it.
        Hover is inherently a desktop mouse feature.

  20. Tektotherriggen says:

    My fingers are too fat and opaque…

    I love the idea that, in the future, people who get their hands amputated will be able to choose prosthetics with totally transparent fingers.

  21. Halceon says:

    I enjoy this font. It’s got a bit of an art deco vibe to it without going into the lavish overdesigns that tends to bring along.

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      Now I wonder if Shamoose will know what font every comment was referring to.

      1. MichaelGC says:

        Good point! Well, let’s see: I liked the old one, and the new one, and the new-new one, and now the newest one.

        Although given they were all completely different I’m not sure I’m providing particularly useful feedback … if there is a further change I’ll try and dislike the next one just for a bit of variety.

        1. Wide And Nerdy says:

          I think all the comments today (after posting) are in Roboto. Thats the font at the moment of this posting. He was using Ubuntu yesterday. You can check in Chrome Dev Tools.

          1. MichaelGC says:

            Coo! Cunning. Well, I think Roboto is a good choice.

            … Good Roboto! :D

  22. el_b says:

    sorry shamus, but i cant stand this new font…i hear wingdings is pretty easy on the eyes.

  23. Ardis Meade says:

    While you’re at it, maybe you should change Josh’s byline so that it links to the Spoiler Warning Patreon instead of just linking to the front page.

  24. Wide And Nerdy says:

    The name font makes me feel like we’ve all just opened classy nostalgic 50’s diners. Which is cool.

    The text in the “Leave a reply” form is a little harder to read. Its a bit thin for that style. Maybe increase the font-weight a bit? EDIT: Yup, setting it to bold is an improvement. EDIT EDIT: Actually Looks like you’re using Josefin Sans in the textarea and Roboto for the posted comment. I think it would work better if you used Roboto for both. Just tested it.

    I like thin fonts too but they seem to work better on larger text thats shorter in length (titles, headings, our names ). Roboto is much better for body text.

    And I think the icons could stand to be bigger and sharper if you can manage it. Like, a lot bigger. 2 to 3 times their current diameter.

    1. Wide And Nerdy says:

      Much better. Roboto in the textarea is very readable. Also, I like that you took the suggestion to fix the background. That rose color helps. Still think you should enlarge and clean up the icons (Pencil and Trashcan), they’re fuzzy.

      They have a white fuzz border. I was going to suggest enlarging the associated text but for some reason it looks cleaner now than it did so its not necessary (like I get to dictate your design ;) ).

      If you want to keep the text for those links that size, you might try a little letter-spacing. I find it works great with thin fonts (can’t believe I didn’t think of this earlier). I tried 0.1 through 0.25em and would recommend you look at 0.2em.

  25. Lee says:

    On the subject of footnotes, is there anything that can be done about how they get displayed in the RSS feeds? They’re frequently (pretty much always) mis-numbered. As an example, this article has 4,5, and 6 in the RSS feed currently. I’m assuming whatever code makes the numbers sequential doesn’t play nice with the code that generates the RSS feed.

    I don’t really expect the footnotes’ content to exist in the RSS feeds (though that would be great), but if we could at least get the numbers to match, it would be an improvement. It’s a minor thing, but it does drive me a little nuts every time it happens. I always wonder if there’s a footnote I missed somewhere (though the larger font may help that once I click through to the full site.)

  26. LowercaseM says:

    I’d suggest dropping the drop shadow for the article title font – it’s a thin font with clean corners, so it should read pretty well without the gradient. The Futura style fonts are geometric and have low contrast due to their unchanging stroke thicknesses, so they usually look best with a clean transition between two contrasting colors.

    That said, I like the redesign, it moves things forward. I wish I worked in a company that saw the value in periodic redesigns to keep things fresh, rather than the toxic idea of ‘corporate branding’.

  27. WWWebb says:

    Is it just me, or is the font down here in the Leave a reply section (including where I’m typing in now) very different from the one in the body and the comments? It seems to be the same one as in the “enjoyed this post? please share” text. It’s not a bad font, but it gets hard to read when it gets small (especially the letter “e”).

  28. Christopher says:

    I think Papyrus or Comic Sans should be the fonts. Because why not!

  29. Christopher says:

    The new font is slightly more annoying to look at, and while the font size might me larger on articles on the main page of the blog, they shrink in front of my eyes in the proper blog post(using chrome on an android phone). The difference from before is microscopic, so whatever makes you happy.

    The other Christopher is up to no good.

  30. Warclam says:

    I was uncertain for a bit, because the text seemed unnecessarily big. Then I realized I had set Chrome to give me the site at 110% size at all times. Turns out the new font size is what I actually am used to looking at here.

    That said, the thin scribbly font used in the titles and in the in-progress comment box is (are?) hideous.

  31. Duoae says:

    As I said in a comment above, I don’t mind the background image but it’s way too bright, IMO.

    I also don’t mind the font change (I do prefer the old one as this just feels a bit generic as it is atm) although it is a bit large in the post content and a bit small for the comments and previous/next articles in the category.

    i.e. http://imgur.com/KPgjORQ

    However, I can get over those without too much fuss. However, the most unforgivable thing is the absolutely huge-ass footnotes.

    i.e. http://imgur.com/7hZZU7G

    Now, I don’t mind that you and other people want them to be larger (I can see how they would be a bit small for some readers as they were). That functionality could be better on mobile devices as well… but this just doesn’t work for me at all! They’re way too big, take up too much screen real estate and with the new font look ugly to boot.

    If I was browsing from a tablet or mobile phone then these would probably be acceptable but browsing on a laptop or monitor feels horrible with this one change. It makes me not want to click on the footnote which instead has become a screen-engulfing pop-up, albeit one you choose to make pop-up.

    Is there no way to detect whether a reader is browsing from a mobile device versus a desktop environment so the website would have a toggle to adjust this for the different devices? I don’t like having to view something that’s designed for a mobile device on a desktop device any more than the other way around…

  32. Pearly says:

    Yanone is a good choice for the title font, I probably should have led with that, the last time I commented. (It is yanone something, right? I used it for a test layout not too long ago.) It’s stylish without being too far off neutral. And….it’s also the text your type appears in, in the comment-typing box? Well, that’s interesting. I like how wide the height difference is between the mean letters (like all the shorties in the word “mean”) and the cap letters.

    1. Shamus says:

      Yanone Kaffeesatzis the font I’ve been using for 5 years and wanted to get rid of. :)

      1. Pearly says:

        ….

        I’m very bad at this commenting thing. I’m going to go away and be quiet now.

  33. Dreadjaws says:

    What the f…? New font? Now I can’t understand anything! That’s it I’m outta here!

    With the new font I can’t find the exit!

  34. “it's really important to keep the site consistent”

    Nah Shamus. Once in a while go nuts. Be adventurous. At worst you end up spending a few days on something you don’t like and need to roll back, at best you got the whole site re-designed to something awesome.
    It’s only data.

  35. The red part on the left of the image is pretty distracting. My eyes keep trying to leave the article and focus on that, instead.

    Maybe desaturating it a bit more will help.

  36. Raygereio says:

    On the other hand, every once in a while the monotony gets to me and I have to change SOMETHING.

    If you want to change something, can you change it back to where it was?

    My two cents: The font is not working for me. Maybe it’s something I have to get used to, but I don’t find it easy on eyes.
    Also I think the background now has too much colour to it. It draws attention away from the text.

  37. gully says:

    The new font is giving me a BioShock vibe.

    I-I-Is that what you wanted?

  38. drlemaster says:

    The new font is not my favorite, but I can read it clearly on my phone, and I don’t hate it or anything. I’d say my vote is keep, FWIW.

    Also, you say you are making it more prominent who the author of a given item is?

    Josh Plays Shogun 2 continuation confirmed.

  39. I’d strongly recommend color coding if you think it’ll be more common as time goes on. In particular – though this may be drastic – I’d suggest a solid color bar w/ text where the color is changed depending on whos posting while the text is a uniform color. Speaking of which, I’d also have this design apply to all aspects of the post that involve color i.e. the prev/next arrows ‘n such to avoid color clash and to remind the reader who’s responsible for the post in question.

  40. Wide And Nerdy says:

    I don’t normally like Serifs but the one you’re using for some of the text, Noto Serif, is nice. I feel like its understated. Adds a bit of style without getting in the way.

  41. Fizban says:

    So it sounds like the little accents I like are called “serifs.” Font is non-serif atm and a bunch of people voiced against it so I doubt it’ll be changing back (since obviously Shamus was leaning that way in the first place). Background has changed again, maybe a little too bright overall for my taste, or maybe I’m just leaning in too much.

  42. default_ex says:

    Just a font suggestion. Source Sans Pro for non-code and Source Code Pro for code. Nice clean fonts designed for high readability and available on Google Fonts. Source Serif Pro isn’t as nice unfortunately, looks more like Sans with hints of Serif. Primarily what makes Source Code Pro so nice for code is that it’s mono space but uses the condensed spacing typically found in Microsoft mono space fonts like Consolas.

  43. Leviathan902 says:

    1 piece of feedback: put the author name/pic above the header image, next to the article title or something.

    I, for one, look pretty much at the title, the image, and skip straight to the content of the post. I didn’t even know you had added the pictures and links until I read this post and scrolled up to see it.

    So if your goal is visibility/differentiation, I would suggest that.

  44. Rick says:

    The author page could use some attention… for example Rachel’s author page that is linked to from the header of her site.

  45. Loonyyy says:

    Just a small suggestion-the new author bylines link to Patreon, but not to the author’s other content on site. Maybe a link to the list of that user’s content could go somewhere in there too, maybe under a “More by this author”, which lets the Patreon link keep it’s place.

  46. mwchase says:

    In the article view, not the main page, the sidebar (Search, Twitter, Categories, Archives, RSS, Support) gets bumped all the way to the bottom, even if I have my window at maximum width.

    I actually just now realized it’s still on the article view, because the page is weirdly tall.

    Recent Chrome on OSX Yosemite, if it makes a difference.

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