
Medium and the Scourge of Persistent Sharing Bars - K2L8M11N2
https://daringfireball.net/2017/06/medium_dickbars
======
skewart
It's amazing how unpleasant most media sites are to read. Medium may still be
better than most, but, like Gruber points out, they've been heading down a bad
"growth hacking" path lately.

What really blows my mind is how awful so many websites from old publications
with high-quality print editions are. A lot of these publications had quality
standards for advertisers, and they worked hard to design nice-looking print
layouts. As a result, even if there were a lot of ads they were at least
unobtrusive and often kind of interesting and worth looking at in and of
themselves. But it's like publishers are somehow incapable of thinking about a
website the same way they think about a magazine.

When I end up on a website that takes fifteen seconds to load, makes text jump
around as different ads are displayed and hidden, autoplays video, and pesters
me with popups I wonder if anyone who works at the publisher ever actually
uses their website. I mean, who, in their right mind, could ever think they
were providing an even halfway decent product?

I have absolutely no sympathy when legacy publishers who peddle terrible, low-
quality product struggle and go out of business. I mean, I hate to see media
power consolidating into Facebook's hands, and it sucks when people lose their
jobs, but these publishers have no one to blame but themselves.

~~~
rsync
"It's amazing how unpleasant most media sites are to read."

I cannot stop showing this to people:

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/26/us/turkey-
pro...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/26/us/turkey-protesters-
attack-video-analysis.html)

That is _amazing_.

The web has been perverted and prostituted and bent out of shape in every
which way but _this_ ...

This is the promise fulfilled, 15 years later, of "web 2.0". This is what they
were talking about and what we wanted but didn't know how to ask for.

~~~
skewart
That's awesome! I wish there was more content like that out there.

I find I've become more focused on following individual
writers/journalists/bloggers these days and less attached to publisher brands.
And a lot of signs point to the future of publishing being much more
fragmented and focused on individual journalists. But when the NYT does stuff
like that it shows how powerful and effective a big publishing organization
can be. Maybe new ways for journalists to pool resources and collaborate will
emerge?

~~~
nebabyte
It usually comes down to the hard work of a few key people either way. The
publisher just gives them and the grunt-workers a steady paycheck.

~~~
jrimbault
The steady paycheck is what allows some (maybe even many) journalists to do
amazing investigative reporting. I have a hard time imagining another way to
have in-depth, months to years long ago investigations.

------
mindcrime
_The SEO folks are the same dopes who came up with the genius strategy of
requiring 5-10 megabytes of privacy-intrusive CPU-intensive JavaScript on
every page load that slows down websites. Now they come to their teams and
say, “Our pages are too slow — we gotta move to AMP so our pages load fast.”_

You gotta admit, that's pretty much spot-on. The resources some of these
websites consume is just mind-boggling.

~~~
napsterbr
Browsing the web with 5-10 open tabs is enough to use 100% of my cpu (Firefox
and chrome). I wonder when and how things got so wrong.

~~~
daveguy
ublock origin + privacy badger and you will have much less usage. I get 10x10
tabs (10 tabs in 10 windows) with few problems.

~~~
Jedd
Agreed.

Ublock Origin's right-click / Block Element (then optional selection process)
is an absolute boon to forever hide these artefacts.

Every now and then I'll try reading something on mobile chrome, or a friend's
machine, and realise how annoying much of the web is for many people.

~~~
SomeStupidPoint
I had to turn off JS on mobile chrome for almost all websites, because they
just wouldn't run on my phone.

~~~
JoshMnem
Firefox for Android -- you can install extensions to block extra JS.

------
JoshMnem
> "Oh, crap, it’s on Medium."

A general suggestion for programming blogs: instead of Medium, try using
something like Hexo[1] or Hugo[2] and deploy for free on Github Pages or
Netlify. Publishing content is as easy as `hexo deploy` or `git push origin
master`.

You get complete control with a static site generator and can remove things
like the sharing bar and animation. There is almost no maintenance required,
because the site will be a collection of static HTML files.

[1] [https://hexo.io/](https://hexo.io/) [2]
[https://gohugo.io/](https://gohugo.io/)

~~~
scriptkiddy
Thanks for those suggestions. Hugo looks particularly awesome. I've been
wanting to spin up a blog so I can write tutorials and such. I actually
started building my own web app from scratch for it because I couldn't find a
static site generator I actually liked. Hugo, on the other hand, doesn't look
like it could be any easier.

~~~
outsidetheparty
I used Hugo recently for a one-off brochure site. It was predictable and
straightforward and boring, and generally did what I needed it to do without
getting in the way. A+++ five stars would recommend.

~~~
scriptkiddy
> It was predictable and straightforward and boring, and generally did what I
> needed it to do without getting in the way.

This is usually how I know that a library is well put together.

------
subpixel
Reddit's 'stop reading this on the slow mobile web and read it in our fast
app' persistent dialog is a similar scourge.

~~~
evincarofautumn
Seems like a lot of companies are trying to go “mobile first” while their apps
are still missing core features found on their websites…so I just continue to
use the websites, even if they are slower.

I don’t think I’m being unreasonable in wanting simple things to work. Things
like preserving newlines in code blocks in the Reddit app—since 95% of my subs
are technical—or showing what comment of mine someone is replying to in the
Imgur app—since it might be anything I’ve commented on in the past few days,
or _years_ if someone was browsing in Random mode.

~~~
SomeStupidPoint
I just don't want 2 dozen 100MB apps on my phone when I can access all the
same stuff with 1 100MB app.

My phone barely had enough memory for the apps I do want. Their website stops
working on my phone? Fine, I stop using their service.

~~~
heartles
Exactly! The number of services that actually _need_ to be an app to
accomplish their goal is staggeringly low compared to the number of apps out
there. I would far rather use a well-designed website that works for everyone
with a web browser over a bloated, ugly app.

------
Doctor_Fegg
An HN commenter pointed me towards this bookmarklet recently, which removes
such 'dickbars'. I find it invaluable, especially as someone who presses Space
to page through an article. (I've modified it to ensure that the page body is
always scrollable, which is something that goes hand-in-hand with dickbars.)

javascript:(function ()
{document.body.style['overflow-y']=document.body.style['overflow']='auto'; var
i,elements=document.querySelectorAll('body *'); for
(i=0;i<elements.length;i++) {if
(getComputedStyle(elements[i]).position==='fixed' ||
getComputedStyle(elements[i]).position==='sticky')
{elements[i].parentNode.removeChild(elements[i]);}}})();

------
drewmol
Click the link and start to read, I am certainly familiar and similarly
annoyed with the first complaint: >Every Medium site displays an on-screen
“sharing” bar that covers the actual content I want to read. This is
particularly annoying on the phone, where screen real estate is most precious.

I open the link to the listed example, and mobile.twitter.com covers the top
25% of screen with a login prompt(likely an app store redirect if I take the
bait? I use, seldomly, 'Tinfoil' client app from FDroid if I want to login to
Twitter), and the bottom 25% with the notice about the ever evolving
'privacy/divulgance' policy. Oy Vey... Really makes me appreciate the few text
only, practical UI, bullshit free sites I have left to visit online, like this
one.

~~~
noisem4ker
Maybe you just need to buy one of these new smartphones with a stupidly tall
18:9 display.

Jokes aside, screen space on mobile devices stopped being considered precious
by publishers and designers long ago.

~~~
imron
It's still considered precious by me, and I stop visiting sites on mobile that
don't also value it.

------
apapli
Totally agree. I now sigh when I see _another_ article on Medium. It's just so
damn frustrating - I come to _read_ the article, I don't want be encouraged to
share it before I have even have had the opportunity to read the first
paragraph.

And don't get me started on the irrelevancy of needing to download a mobile
app purely for the purposes of reading what should be a bog-standard web page.

~~~
tragic
It seems to be a holdover from the social media goldrush, where no web app was
complete without a way to follow people and so on. Thus you 'need' the app to
get push notifications about the latest scribblings of your network.

Of course, you don't really, because you can just as well follow the same
people on Twitter or whatever.

Most traditional media orgs don't even have that excuse, of course, and are
merely trying to cajole you into reading the stuff in a place where you can't
turn off the ads.

------
coleifer
Along with these complaints, I wish there was a greater sense of urgency among
publishers to reduce page bloat. Some news sites require megabytes of
javascript, video, and god-knows-what to display a couple kilobytes of text.
It's crazy out there.

~~~
wmf
And if you act today, we'll throw in a little lightning bolt icon! Oh wait, is
AMP good today or evil?

~~~
twobyfour
Evil every day. It breaks tabbed browsing and pins one of those stupid bars to
your screen.

------
dredmorbius
There's a recent (past couple of months?) website-simplification tool,
[https://outline.com](https://outline.com), which I've been using heavily.
Advantages are that it's fast, the styling's pretty good, it works on most
sites, and you can simply add it (and a tailing '/') ahead of a URL to view
it.

I first ran across it on HN. I have _no_ idea who's running it or why, though
the domain seems to have been used by a Knight Foundation grantee a few years
back. The contact email hasn't answered those questions (though they've
answered a few others), and domain registration is through Perfect Privacy.

If anyone has any information on this, I'd love to hear it. (I'd submitted an
HN item on it a week or two back.)

On Chrome/Android, it's what I'm running most long-form content through for
reading, as design is simply too annoying (and variable) on too many sites.
It's been a few years now that I've said: web design isn't the solution, web
design is the problem.

The fact that Medium screws this up is particularly ironic for all the reasons
Gruber states.

Even the NY Times is better viewed via outline.com (or
[https://archive.is](https://archive.is)) _if you want to be able to select
and copy text from it._ Such as, say, to look something up. Or quote it in an
essay.

Otherwise, I see an Internet adpocalypse arriving, sooner rather than later. A
browser, or other tool, which simply strips all this crap off and gives a
stiff middle finger to site design seems imminent.

For the small handful of app-based sites which really need full app status,
sure, throw Chrome or Firefox at them. But most stuff doesn't need that.

~~~
newsbinator
[https://outline.com](https://outline.com) seems to work great on single
articles.

Through try it on a feed like
[https://outline.com/daringfireball.net](https://outline.com/daringfireball.net),
and it's completely broken.

Obviously this is not the use-case though.

~~~
dredmorbius
There's a "report problems" link (you may have to load up a working page to
see it), which allows you to submit bugs.

I've found sites which don't render, render incompletely, or have artifacts
(one had, for whatever reason, a framed outline around the text). Letting 'em
know what doesn't work may help.

------
SwellJoe
I've just noticed that Medium has also broken the back button (at least in
Firefox for Linux). That's a pet peeve of mine, and it makes me angrier than
most dark patterns because it's so damned pointless. Like, do you think I'm
not going to leave because it takes multiple actions? Or that I'll be anything
but less likely to return to a site that hijacks navigation for no reason?

I dunno. So common, and so nonsensical.

~~~
strict9
More often than not, it's just a bug. A side effect of the react/vuejs SPA
world we live in. Fewer pageloads can be a good thing, but if not engineered
properly, a much worse user experience than perceived faster loading.

Using the History api correctly is trickier than most people think.

~~~
SwellJoe
I guess I would buy that, and I've had my own (mostly lost) battles with the
history API. I just expect better of a company like Medium. It's their _thing_
, ya know? Being readable, clean, serious, non-intrusive. If Medium isn't
that, they're just another random blogging platform.

------
kinkrtyavimoodh
Why do people post on medium instead of just posting on their own personal
blogs or websites? I understand the appeal for laymen who are not technically
inclined, but I see so much content on medium from the ostensibly 'hacker'
crowd, and I fail to see why anyone would write there instead of improving
their personal brand by posting it on their own sites and blogs.

Am I missing something?

~~~
pramodliv1
Basecamp published an article explaining their migration to Medium
[https://m.signalvnoise.com/medium-has-been-great-for-
us-35d9...](https://m.signalvnoise.com/medium-has-been-great-for-
us-35d9b0cc665d)

> People often ask me why we switched to Medium. There were a variety of
> reasons, but one was reaching a new audience, and another was aiming for
> wider distribution. But maybe the top one was curiosity — let’s see if we
> can learn something new.

------
icanhackit
This doesn't add much to the discussion but the term _on-screen “engagement”
turds_ , as Gruber puts it, is what I'll be calling them in the future. Really
cuts to the heart of what marketing/business development teams have served up
to everyone.

I wonder what kind of conversations take place when they're considering
implementing this UI bloat. "People love sharing, let's help them share!" Like
they're actually helping readers, rather than realize it's a rhetorical lie to
help them get past the fact that they have no respect for the end user and are
singularly focused on meeting a KPI that will net them more money than the
creators of the actual content - you know, the reason why people are even on
the fucking website in the first place.

~~~
CaptSpify
"If we made it clear what was happening, nobody would ever click on that!"

Actual quote from someone I was working with on designing a webpage. He wanted
us to basically sign our user's up with his site automatically without them
knowing.

I feel it applies to most web-design nowadays.

------
macNchz
I've had a number of heated discussions over the years about whether some new
site/app I'm working on _needs_ these social sharing buttons slathered
everywhere. They're absolutely a scourge.

In my experience they've often been considered non-negotiable by marketing
folks, even when faced with metrics showing that nobody ever actually clicks
them.

~~~
yellow_postit
Even without clicks they act as tracking beacons which is valuable to the
publishers selling ads.

------
myrandomcomment
So I do most of my non-work read of IOS devices. I just avoid / block sites
like this. Hey Yelp, when you do not let me go to page 2 in the browser and
want to force me to use the app, I stop looking at your site.

~~~
dredmorbius
If you ever have 2nd thoughts, you can also generally workaround a block by
utilising [https://archive.is](https://archive.is) or
[https://outline.com](https://outline.com)

Appending the original URL (with a leading "/") to that will open the page
directly.

------
bluedino
Anyone who uses light gray on dark grey for their blog shouldn't be
complaining about Medium.

>> Safari already has a built-in Sharing button. It has all the options for
sharing I need.

And the people that don't use Safari?

~~~
falcolas
Firefox has the same. Not sure about chrome, but given the ubiquity of the
share bar in iOS, I'd be moderately surprised if it wasn't there.

~~~
kitsunesoba
Chrome on iOS also gives you a share button (albeit buried under a dot-
hamburger menu).

Even if no native share button is available, I wouldn't use any share button
provided by the website. Those rarely do what I want them to. I'd just copy
the URL and paste it wherever i need it to go.

------
CodeWriter23
And the scourge of that fucking "Open in App" button. THAT alone makes me hate
Medium. I understand people's ire at the persistent sharing bar, but that
doen't bother me nearly as much.

------
joshka
Even worse are the app based "dickbars". Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, etc... all
seem to think that embedding a webview is the helpful rather than an extra
annoying step.

~~~
askafriend
They do it because it keeps you in the app more and reduces bounces from
native app sessions. I'm saying this with firsthand experience at one of the
companies you mentioned.

------
birksherty
That's why I love Firefox's Reader View button on the address bar. I click it
even before the page loading completes and instantly clean view.

------
Digit-Al
If you expect all your journalism for free you'll end up with journalism that
is worth exactly what you paid for it.

~~~
everybodyknows
True enough. And yet, now that the Internet gives us choice across 100+
publishers with a few keystrokes to query the browsing history database, how
do we pay the journalists​?

------
johndoe489
> When people click a URL and see that it’s a Medium site, their reaction
> should be “Oh, good, a Medium site — this will be nice to read.”

Is John Gruber that gullible? Most startups out there are led by someone with
a "messiah syndrome". They all believe they are going to change the world; but
really it's all about money. Find a "niche" and then juice it till it bleeds,
they have no other purpose everything else is just PR. Or worse,
"rationalization" where the person actually belives all their own bullshit.

Medium's builtin design and clean UI also gives an aura of professionalism to
a lot of shitty writing.

Good luck getting a feed that works for you. My feed was continuously
assaulted by random feminist rants with clickbait drama titles.

I also love how they write completely meaningless update notes for the iOS
app. Eventually they were called out for it on the iOS app when they posted a
huge block of morse code in lieu of actual update notes. Then in the following
updates, they add some sarcastic message in their iOS update notes mocking
_their own users_ who were unhappy with their random/meaningless update notes.
What a bunch of losers.

Also their recommendation system sucks. And your feed routinely gets articles
"recommended for you" without any reason given (some say "because you follow
Such-and-such-Tag, but many don't).

And even putting my rant aside, what do we have to gain from centralizing all
expression through a few controlled gates like Facebook or Medium? Who gains
from this?

------
spenrose
Gruber's site (1) attracts one of the richest advertising targets in the
world, iOS developers (2) serves as a leader for directly monetizable media
such as speaking events and podcasts aimed at the same elite audience. His
business model enables his reading model. Also, which is more distracting: a
"dickbar" or Gruber interrupting his podcast to read a spiel?

~~~
ingenuous2
The dickbar, by far. The spiel is a momentary interruption, usually delivered
w/in the flow.

------
Pxtl
I have to admit I actually use social sharing buttons because fb on mobile
(the site, not the app) somehow doesn't create a link preview when I copy-
paste URLs like it does on desktop.

So often a social sharing button is the easiest way to post an interesting
article to my fb. But that's entirely a workaround for as stupid bug in a
zillion dollar website.

Everything sucks.

------
pmontra
I'm using uBlock to pick and hide all those elements that steal space on the
screen of my phone. It's a much better browsing experience. I won't use those
buttons anyway.

It's one of the reasons I'm using Firefox even if Opera has text reflow.
Sometimes I wish there is an Open in Opera addon.

------
franciscop
A small reminder to throw some money to Ghost if you can and that it's an
amazing open source publishing platform _actually_ focused on the reading
experience: [https://ghost.org/](https://ghost.org/)

------
coldcode
My fav feature in iOS/MacOS next is the ability to stop autoplay video. I
would rather dodge dickbars than fight the cleverly blocked pause button and
jumpy video box. If I want to play your video I will click play.

------
wgx
The market will decide. People moved _to_ Medium because it was so user-
friendly and ad-free. People will move to the next thing (whatever that is)
for the same reasons.

------
circadiam
Just pre-pend outline.com/ to any Medium link to remove it.

------
ungzd
Bloggers using Medium is primarily from the same camp as who added these
"UI/UX enhancers": smug post-hipster developers who worship all these things
like "growth", "disruption", "engagement", "UI/UX", "mobile-first" and
companies like Uber and Snapchat. Medium is the most cancerous and disgusting
blog service ever.

------
floatboth
[https://idontwantyourfuckingapp.tumblr.com/](https://idontwantyourfuckingapp.tumblr.com/)

------
endemic
Obligatory link to a "kill sticky headers" bookmarklet:
[https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-
headers/](https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/)

This has saved me a great deal of annoyance, especially on my smaller-screened
mobile phone.

------
jim-jim-jim
I'm on an iPhone 5 and can't adblock without side-loading an app, so I just
keep javascript disabled in Safari instead. Keeps these bars from appearing on
Medium and everywhere else.

They still shouldn't be there in the first place though.

------
jccalhoun
this is yet another reason why people use adblockers and things like noscript

------
JoshMnem
You can add this bookmarklet to the Firefox or Chrom[e|ium] bookmarks bar to
remove it with one click:

    
    
        javascript:document.getElementsByClassName('js-stickyFooter')[0].remove();

~~~
johny115
even better, you can have certain page elements removed permanently without
any clicking ... with adblocker uBlock Origin you can right click page
elements and block them, I "cleaned" the UI of many apps I use like this ... I
often hide bars like this or even whole menu sections or features that I just
don't use and would only add to the clutter

~~~
magic_beans
I just downloaded it right now. This is AMAZING. Usually I spend a minute or
going into the console and deleting nodes all over the place. This is much
easier!

------
roryisok
I agree with the sentiment, but Gruber can't seem to write a simple article
without name checking multiple Apple products and services. They're completely
irrelevant here but he still manages to mention his iPad pro review unit and
how great safari is.

------
linkmotif
This from the guy whose site is one of the most difficult to read sites on the
net. I've always resented this site on so many levels. First among which was
its illegibility. Come on now...

Also all of the posts from this guy are complaint after complaint. Nothing
constructive or interesting ever, just peeve after peeve. Like two weeks ago
he complained about FB being closed. Week before that it was something else.
Just banal.

~~~
jbigelow76
_This from the guy whose site is one of the most difficult to read sites on
the net. Come on now..._

Come on, seriously? It's one column of text with one column of navigation and
a single small non-animated, non-video ad unit, and the text/background has
decent contrast. What's the difficult part?

You don't like his opinions fine, but difficult to read that site is not.

~~~
x0x0
I find the text very small (that's easily remedied); the white on blueish gray
to be difficult to read; and most of the space on the page wasted. Even
hitting cmd-+ a couple times I can't get text to use more than half the
horizontal space.

~~~
andrewingram
Yeah, a baseline font size of 11px is far too small. These days I tend to
advocate for 18px or 21px for body copy (Medium is 21px).

~~~
wyclif
The design of Gruber's site is very 2010. It looks quite dated now.

