
This is a web page - mijustin
http://justinjackson.ca/words.html
======
ChuckMcM
First time [1] my in-laws saw "the web" they were trying to find information
about vacation spots in Brazil but their travel guide was obsolete, I found a
web page a student had written up about where the best places to stay and see
were in Brazil.

I could almost see the dots connect when they realized that someone they
didn't know, _in Brazil_ , had written up a piece of information at some point
that they were now seeing and using, and _anyone could do that._ It was like
watching a Pachinko machine pay out a jackpot :-)

[1] It was circa Christmas 1994 since I was trying to explain to them what
Java was and why I thought it might have an impact on the world.

~~~
simpleglider
That's a great anecdote. Out of curiosity, how did you find the site? I had
just turned four at the time, so I don't quite remember what browsing the
Internet was like then.

~~~
petercooper
Because other people have given good answers, I just wanted to add.. the Web
was so much better _linked together_ back then. Prior to Altavista made
searching useful most of the time, it was common to rely on jumping from one
site to another through plentiful link pages, web rings, and lists of
resources that people had put together. There was also Usenet which people
often posted links on and which was sorted by topic and a handy way to find
stuff.

~~~
euxneks
ah.. web rings.. I remember babylon 5 web rings... Nostalgia's a hell of a
thing.

~~~
visarga
If we knew back then what is common knowledge today, we could build an early
version of Google search in a few months. Web spider, parsing HTML, extracting
links and text, computing Page Rank and then making an inverted index to look
up info by keyword. Imagine this would have been 100 times better than Yahoo's
links and Altavista's search.

By the way, syntax highlight thinks "Altavista" is a spelling error. Talk
about becoming the footnote of history. Google was the company that took the
lead from AV and now Google's own browser can't understand their main
competitor of 10 years ago. AV did it to themselves, putting all that shit on
the homepage and not providing good results. LOL

~~~
dredmorbius
Search was actually anticipated (along with social graphs) by TBL in his first
WWW proposal documents, posted to HN a few months back.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
It was anticipated in the protocol, that's what ? is for.

------
adventured
"At it's heart, web design should be about words."

No.

The web is not just a place for text / words, that is not its heart and soul,
and therefore neither is that the case for web design. It really never has
been. I see no great argument in favor of words being the core over any other
form of expression. Today's bandwidth more than allows for beautiful video,
animation, high quality graphics and photos, etc. Or low key graphics, subtle
interactivity, and so on. It's absurd to argue that such a rich medium should
always be focused on words.

Text does not have to be the focus. It depends on what the purpose to be
achieved is.

~~~
bitwize
_The web is not just a place for text / words, that is not its heart and soul,
and therefore neither is that the case for web design._

I'd say that text is not only the heart and soul of the web, but also of
_motherfucking civilization_. Animation and video are nice, and great adjuncts
to text. But language is still the most common and easy way to store and share
information intended to be consumed by humans, and since that's what the Web
is all about, it's not only natural that the Web should be language-focused,
but also unnatural that it be anything else.

~~~
vorporeal
Drawings are the heart and soul of civilization. For one, they originated ~37
_thousand_ years before the first written language. Second, understanding text
requires knowing how the information it contains is encoded (what language it
is written in). Drawings are far more universal.

~~~
1123581321
It is speech that is most universal -- words. Drawing came after, and
relegated to being foci of rituals and stories that were spoken and symbolic
of spoken agreements.

------
rkuykendall-com
This was a bit of an obsession of mine ever since I saw Coding Horror a few
years ago. I had seen a lot of extremely minimalist designs, but they were all
doing things to accomplish that minimalism. As a developer though, you have a
nagging feeling in the back of your brain saying "that's a lie, it's not
simple, it's very complicated, it just looks simple." Coding Horror is
complex, but it was plain enough for me to imagine it with even less
structure.

I decided to stick as close to plain HTML for my personal website as possible.
The problem is, plain HTML is ugly. So instead, I tried to imagine what the
default style of HTML would be if it was created today.

I've am still far from that ideal, but it is a work in progress:
[http://rkuykendall.com/](http://rkuykendall.com/)

~~~
jaykru
Your site looks great. I especially like your logo.

~~~
chas
The logo is nice, but the aliased angled lines really kill it for me. I think
a vector (or better anti-aliased) logo would really make a positive difference
in the feel of the site.

~~~
tehwalrus
it looks as if the colour is just a background-color attribute in CSS, which
changes on mouseover. If so, it should be white->transparent anti-aliased in
the RK image, which is looks like it's trying to be.

Vector, e.g. drawn with Canvas, would be better (e.g. with a fallback to a
single colour png.)

~~~
rkuykendall-com
It was trying to be, and failing. I am currently serving up a ( antialiasing
fixed ) png, and @2x png for hdpi displays. Do you think a canvas logo would
provide any additional benefit above these two?

~~~
tehwalrus
If there was an error in the original anti aliasing that's now fixed, that
should be fine - I was speculating how to get a vector version up and running
(I am sure there _are_ vector image formats, but all the web-friendly ones
I've found turn out to be bitmap underneath.)

(just checked, after refreshing my cache a few times, and it looks much better
now, nice one.)

~~~
iso8859-1
What do you mean by "bitmap unterneath"?

~~~
tehwalrus
uhh, I have been wrong about many things when it comes to web images - this is
going back a long way. First, I always used JPG. Then, I discovered PNG, which
I thought was vector (because I created Bezier curves in my editor, and when I
exported them the quality was retained exactly). I can't remember what other
formats I've tried in between (EPS and PS were involved somewhere, but they're
not web friendly). I've never succeeded in creating a vector image that I can
use on the web with a normal editor - although I have heard of SVG before.
Maybe I'll look up how to export to it next time I need to solve this problem.

------
smackfu
Centered text, large white borders, and larger than standard font size are all
design. Minimal design, but it does feel very different if you look at it
completely unstyled:

[http://i.imgur.com/xOWPr8E.png](http://i.imgur.com/xOWPr8E.png)

I feel like it subverts the message a bit that he still felt the need to style
things.

~~~
tl
This is the full stylesheet:

    
    
      <style type="text/css">
      body { font-size:18px; }
      .wrapper { max-width: 600px; margin:0 auto; }
      </style>
    

I feel like you're being a little unfair here.

~~~
calinet6
That's quite beautiful for such a small stylesheet.

I once almost started a web site called SimpleStyleSheets that had that goal
-- maximum of 4 lines of CSS, no ugly compression, maximum of 120 characters
per line. And see how good you can make a page of simple semantic content
look.

I should do it now -- it'd be a good exercise in this day of complex designs
and bloated styles.

~~~
adregan
It could even be a little smaller if the max-width and margin were placed on
the body tag. You don't even need the wrapper!

~~~
iso8859-1
This wouldn't work with background colors though, would it? I imagine the
document background color would be undefined outside the body then. Do you
suggest putting the background color on the html element? I never saw that.

------
a3_nm
"I wrote these words, and you're reading them"... and Google knows you're
reading them.

I find it a bit ironical that a manifesto for minimalism still carries Google
Analytics code to track people.

~~~
mijustin
It's true. There's a bit of CSS. There's also a tracking script.

I also needed a web server to host them, an FTP client to transfer them, plus
the entire infrastructure of the web to make this work. ;)

So beneath the simplicity of "just words" is some complexity.

But all that stuff is invisible for most people visiting the page. The point
is that simple words on a page can be powerful and effective.

~~~
wtvanhest
How do I download your app so I can read the text better?

~~~
mijustin
;) I'm working on it!

------
null_ptr
There's something magical about personal websites. Something that a Facebook
profile page or a Twitter stream or a Tumblr will never reach. I really wish
more people would go back to the earlier roots of the internet, and share
what's on their mind in a more personal and genuine way.

~~~
mikeg8
I agree completely. Learning HTML was such an empowering feeling for me. You
can make something fancy or minimal, whatever you feel like. We are all unique
and personal websites show that much better than a social media website ever
can IMHO

~~~
yen223
I miss MySpace pages too.

------
minikites
Reminded me of _This Is the Title of This Story, Which Is Also Found Several
Times in the Story Itself_ mixed with _Web Design is 95% Typography_

[http://consc.net/misc/moser.html](http://consc.net/misc/moser.html)

[http://ia.net/blog/the-web-is-all-about-typography-
period](http://ia.net/blog/the-web-is-all-about-typography-period)

~~~
dredmorbius
This is a sentence. That fragments. Useful.

One of my favorite of Hofstadter's essays. And thanks for your links.

------
RBerenguel
I agree with him, and this is why I find Reddit, HN and some blogs I get to
read around here (M. Gemmell's, M. Arment's, J. Gruber, PG) so good: they
focus on the text, not on the fancy (and this nags me again to clear all cruft
from my blog, but... some other day.)

PS: I kind of missed "all craftwardship is of the highest quality" in the
page, though (or text that menaced with spikes of http or something.) I guess
I'm too geeky today

------
ignostic
Sure, simple text is fine for a blog. But if I'm selling something like a
piece of art it's all about the images: large, high-quality images from
multiple angles. Pinterest wouldn't be called minimalist, but it does a damn
fine job of accomplishing its goals.

Design should help accomplish business (or personal) goals. We run into
trouble when we adopt some sort of "minimalism, always, ever, for everything"
dogma.

~~~
bad_user
> _We run into trouble when we adopt some sort of "minimalism, always, ever,
> for everything" dogma._

Evidence? Examples?

~~~
devilshaircut
Is it not self-obvious that if every page attempting to serve up content
similar to that in the OP (pictureless editorial), the web would be bleak and
characterless?

Not debating the effectiveness of that kind of design, but rather pointing out
the obviousness that this sort of anti-"always, ever" statement is easily
validated.

~~~
anigbrowl
Most of the web is awash in ugly junk. Whenever I go to a machine that doesn't
have adblock, Ghostery etc., I am increasingly horrified. It's like a highway
with so many billboards that you can't see the direction signs, never mind
enjoy the view. That or some sort of infinite supermarket magazine rack.

I HATE the way web design has evolved. I want to make the design choices at my
end, not have them imposed on me or consuming a ridiculous amount of
bandwidth. Most of the design on the web is _no good_.

~~~
devilshaircut
Having webpages that are not bleak and characterless is not a resignation to
having webpages that are like highways with unending billboards.

~~~
anigbrowl
I don't find text to be bleak or characterless; if it needs design that badly,
then it's not well-written. And judging by the audience for things like
ReadItLater and so on, I'm not alone. I just want the option to read text the
way I want, not how someone thinks I ought to be see it, which is more often
about getting me to look that providing me with a comfortable reading
experience.

~~~
devilshaircut
I didn't say text is bleak and characterless. I said that having no design
variation is bleak and characterless.

~~~
anigbrowl
Then style the web as you fit on your own browser, but don't try to impose
your design sensibilities on mine. That's why I keep saying 'client side'. I
prefer not to download and process most of the graphic cruft that I see, and
vastly prefer reading articles in an RSS reader to visitng pages that remind
me of being a shopping mall.

~~~
devilshaircut
You are already able to do this; simply disable stylesheets or as you said use
a reader app. We've already discussed using technology like adblocker.

Your issue therefore is not with the design but rather with the browser. There
is nothing preventing you from using a text-based browser or even writing your
own.

I do not know if you are a developer, designer, or something else, but you
must realize that minimalism is itself a "design sensibility" as you term it.

~~~
anigbrowl
I appreciate where you're coming from and I'm sorry if my earlier comments
came off as snippy. But I do think the influence of design on the web has been
too heavily tilted towards the publisher end and not enough towards enabling
the consumer.

I have the skills and experience to retool my browsing experience for my more
minimalist aesthetic, but most consumers experience the web as something more
like an animated version of a supermarket checkout magazine. Since getting a
smartphone a few years back, I've been especially struck by how much bandwidth
is consumed on transmitting cruft on things like news stories, where the
actual text is only a few kilobytes and relevant photographs take up no more
than a few hundred kb; but after you pile on all the trackers, divs, ads, etc.
etc. the page ends up being many megabytes and can easily take 30 seconds over
a typical 3g connection.

To me that's enormously consumer-hostile to very little real publisher
benefit; the more shit I have to download to see a page the less likely I am
to consume news from that source and the more likely I am to reinforce my ad
blockers etc. (whereas I will make exceptions for site that make restrained
use of such things so they can get a little extra ad revenue or tracking data
value in return for the service they provide).

~~~
devilshaircut
I agree that ads can be garish. I just see this as a separate problem from
design itself.

Recently XKCD made me think about how minimalism fits into design. For
example, entirely text-driven:

[http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_pace_of_modern_life.png](http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_pace_of_modern_life.png)

... and more visually oriented:

[http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/balloon_internet.png](http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/balloon_internet.png)

Obviously there are many ways to communicate ideas, and each in various
contexts can be quite effective.

------
md224
Slightly off topic, but if we're talking about simplicity...

why are people still using this doctype:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"[http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">](http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">)

instead of the beautifully simple HTML5 doctype:

<!DOCTYPE html>

I get that people might use the old doctype out of habit, but it's such an
ugly, unnecessary habit, and it would probably be smart to work on discarding
it. At the very least, we should be making sure that new developers learn the
new doctype.

~~~
mijustin
Dang it! You're right. Bad habit. :(

I've just updated it. Thanks!

------
callmeed
_> > But the most powerful tool on the web is still words._

No. YouTube comments are words. They're also terrible. Also, images can be as
powerful (or more so) than words.

IMO his thesis would be better stated as:

"But the most powerful tool on the web is still a compelling piece of content
(words, image, video)"

------
obviouslygreen
While I agree that the substance of a web page is the most important part of
it, there's a whole lot of visual work that aids marketing, retention, and
conversion, and while those things are often not appreciated by those of us
who enjoy plain text, they are significant and have real benefits.

The problem with all of the "You're reading this" and "You're still reading
this" is that the only reason _anyone_ read it is because of the author's
networking, and in our case the fact that it was promoted up HN. That says
_nothing_ about the content of the page or its power. It'd be just as true and
just as irrelevant if the author were the only one who ever read it.

Yes, I agree with some of what's presented. But I also think it's a very
narrow and outdated way of looking at the web, and it marginalizes disciplines
that, for better or worse, have effectively changed the way that most people
experience and internalize the experience of browsing.

~~~
mijustin
I'd say that there's a whole lot of _effort_ that goes into marketing,
retention, and conversion (as opposed to _visual work_ ).

I didn't cover how to drive traffic to a web page; that'd be a great "sister
topic" to this one.

As an aside: that little link at the bottom of that page has converted better
than anything else I've done. ;)

------
speg

      > One of my friends is named Montreal,she is fun to play with
    

I smell a sequel...

~~~
mijustin
Ha ha. She's working on it!

------
frogpelt
I can pay my bills online, shop online, transfer funds between accounts,
invest, watch videos, listen to music, share pictures, reserve hotel rooms,
flights and rental cars, see maps of the world and my own city.

The web is also expanding every day to include more capabilities.

It is about way more than words. Let's not oversimplify it just because we
think minimalism is cute.

------
rabino
Interesting that the website where he makes money, is full of pictures and
colors for the call to actions.
[http://buildandlaunch.net/](http://buildandlaunch.net/)

~~~
mijustin
So is my blog: [http://justinjackson.ca](http://justinjackson.ca)

I'm thinking of doing a redesign. ;)

To be fair, in both cases I started with a simple text file on my computer.
After that I send them as a plain-text email to friends for review. And then I
publish on the fancy website.

I don't think there's anything wrong with pictures or colors.

"If that additional styling or image gives the audience more understanding -
then add it."

At this point, I think I can experiment more with _taking things out_. Maybe
that's where I'll start with my websites.

~~~
meerita
I changed the format of my blog many times. I came up with this
[http://www.minid.net](http://www.minid.net) and its pleasant to read even on
phone. The readers love it and it loads lighting fast. I can say faster than
OPs website.

------
zobzu
I much prefer those simple pages. Load fast, display fast, no distraction. A
little bit like HN.. except for the load fast part :P

~~~
mijustin
Only 4KB!

~~~
dreen
It made me look - the front page of HN is currently 7.8KB, and this is:

    
    
        - 1.6% of yahoo.com size (477KB)
        - 18.9% of reddit.com size (41.2 KB)
        - 23.6% of stackoverflow.com size (33KB)
    

and

    
    
        - 108.3% of gmail.com size (7.2KB)
        - 520% of google.com size (1.5KB)
        - 866.6% of your blog post size (908B)
    

so this gives some perspective.

edit: the most surprising is gmail.com for me, id have thought they load tons
of js in the background. but maybe so does hn?

~~~
monkeyspaw
How did you do these measurements? I would be shocked if the entire gmail
webapp is 7.2KB.

Just looking at the Network tab in Chrome's inspector, I see a lot more than
7KB being transferred. It seems the main page on gmail is just loading the
other j.s. files.

~~~
dreen
Same as you, even on disabled cache its about the same, thats why I was
surprised.

edit: OK so in Incognito Mode i got 17KB which is a bit more believable, but
why doesnt it show that in normal mode with disabled cache?

~~~
monkeyspaw
When I use incognito mode, I see about 200k of Javascript. I wonder why we're
getting different sizes.

The largest file I see is the ?shva=1 /mail/u/0 file, clocking in at 173KB.

------
JasonFruit
I think this is a beautiful exposition of a powerful truth: words are magical,
and we can now publish anything we want so that _anyone who wants to_ can read
it. That is amazing power, and it's available to almost anyone who is
literate, in the developed world.

~~~
mijustin
Thanks; I think you put it better than I did. ;)

------
cia_plant
Just a note on the text style: it all seems kind of overemphasized and
breathless, due to the heavy use of bold, italic, short sentences, one-
sentence paragraphs, and so on.

Less is more with such devices, especially bold text. I'm not a skimmer by
nature, but when a post is full of bold text I find myself involuntarily
skimming the bolded parts, because they have such a higher visual weight than
the rest of the text. It's almost as though those words are shouted, and it
becomes harder to hear the rest of the text.

Simply paying close attention to the flow of your writing can usually give a
sufficient sense of emphasis without resorting to special formatting.

------
foobarbazqux
The irony of this essay is that he went overboard with the bold and italic
text. Otherwise I wish I could read more articles in a form like that.

------
pajju
This is the same reading experience we get in HN.

Just think — we treat text as our user interface!

High quality content + focus on readability = bliss.

~~~
inthewind
The actual HN interface though isn't that readable (for me) though!

I read it with my own style - so that it is just words.

A few issues I have with it, is the contrast, the bright background, and when
you zoom in, the text isn't fluid so soon flys out the side of the browser.

And I have to restyle most of the articles that are linked from HN so I can
read them too.

Any article of any length ends up on my eReader - which is particularly no
frills but readable.

------
mijustin
Just realized I published this on the same morning that "Video on Instagram"
is one of the day's top stories.

Interesting irony. ;)

~~~
freehunter
It's funny because in that Instagram thread, I just wrote a comment about how
"beautiful" is the new "it just works"[1]. This post and the many like it are
a direct backlash from that mindset, just as the Linux users mantra during "it
just works" was "I can make it work better". It's a grab for control in a
world where oftentimes your choices are limited. Everything is beautiful, and
everything looks the same. What will be the new "beautiful"? I don't know. But
I'll bet there will be a counter-culture there to espouse an alternative as
well. Perhaps the new "beautiful" will be "content is simple". Time will tell.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5913461](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5913461)

------
uxwtf
> At its heart, web design should be about words.

The Web is for sure a place to communicate with words. But can you imagine
what will it look like if every web page will have only words? I can't. I
wouldn't enjoy it anymore.

As a UI designer, I always try to create an interface as intuitive as
possible, and sometimes words do work better than icons and images. But
sometimes it will break the concept. Let's take Airbnb as an example.

If we'll remove all those attractive images and UI elements, which create its
particular universe, Airbnb will look like Craigslist (though some apts have
pictures today). And it won't be fun!

Both words and images play important roles in the web design. The role of the
words is to communicate an idea. The role of the images is to illustrate the
idea and to bring an additional value to the content.

------
Nux
I'm not obsessed with fancy designs and scripts. Have a look at my home page.

What I'm obsessed with is the fact every god damned web site on the internet
includes google-analytics stuff! You would have made your point had you left
it out.

------
RyanMcGreal
It's the anti qz.com.

~~~
samtp
Why is there so much hate for Quartz on here? It may be hard to read on a
mobile device, but if you focus on just the articles it is very distraction
free and easy to read. Nit-picking is fine, but overly criticizing is stupid
when qz.com is miles ahead of almost every other publishing outlet online.

Would you rather see more sites like qz.com that focus on content and
navigation or more sites like traditional newspapers that throw 100 links, 10
ads, pop-us about related articles, and other crap at you?

~~~
glesica
I find quartz painful to interact with. I generally skip links once I realize
they go to Quartz. The problem is that it tries so hard to be simple, but just
isn't. It's actually just what the author of the article seems to have been
thinking about.

For instance, the right-hand sidebar is totally pointless and serves no
purpose other than to push the scroll bar into a weird position. The header at
the top is just meaningless clutter. Why does the left side-bar need to exist?
Why can't the links to other articles just scroll with the rest of the page
(the '90s called, they want their frames back)?

Sure, Quartz is somewhat less cluttered than Huffpo, but Huffpo doesn't claim
to be about simplicity, Quartz does, I find that infuriating.

------
darrelld
Thanks for sharing this. I've been obsessing over so many new fancy effects
using javascript and fancy CSS3 styling and getting held up about the
technology, but you reminded me why I ever got into programming / web
development in the first place. To share things with people all over the
world. As a kid growing up on a tiny island that was a huge deal for me when I
first started. I think some of the magic got lost over the years as I I
focused more and more on the technical aspects but you've reminded me that
sharing is important and the tech is just "syntactic sugar"

------
dclowd9901
Something that struck me with an unexpected amount of force was a recent scene
in Game of Thrones where one of the characters is explaining to another
(sheltered) character that he knew the location of a secret passage because he
had read about it in a book.

The sheltered character was astounded that he looked at squiggles on a page,
and through which was able to know something about the world. "Wizardry", was
I think the word used.

But when you break communication down to what it is, _ideas and knowledge_
abstracted so they can be externalized, it's pretty fucking amazing.

------
tenpoundhammer
I can't speak for the author,but what I can say what I got out of this.

This article spoke to the idea that we often start our endeavours in the wrong
place. We start off trying to find the flashy angle and trying to hit all the
write aesthetic notes before we even know what we are trying to communicate.

We should start our process by making a clear and distinct communication and
filling our sites with content --the meat-- and then building everything else
around that.

~~~
mijustin
Yes; that's it exactly!

------
devilshaircut
I can't speak for all designers, but when I design webpages, I _do_ start with
words. Typography and content serve as most the fundamental concerns when
working toward a usable, visually stunning design.

If the thesis of this editorial is "add only which serves to aid in achieving
the spec/goal", I agree. But there is an implicit danger here as well of
underestimating the total needs of the resource's end user.

------
nhamann
I had an insight a few months back when I was looking at djb's website
([http://cr.yp.to/djb.html](http://cr.yp.to/djb.html)). I was spending far too
much time playing with toys (static site generators) and not enough time
actually producing interesting content. Nobody cares about your pretty blog
theme, they care about your _ideas_.

~~~
adregan
I've been adopting an incremental approach. Enough style to get you going, and
as you produce content, you refine the design. So by the time you announce it
to your friends, the world, etc., you've got a bit of content and a good
looking site.

------
DanBC
I strongly agree with this post.

Please, when creating content, concentrate on the words first. There are some
obvious exceptions, but almost always the words are most important.

You can then add the markup, and the css, and the javascript, and all the
other stuff.

But having great copy means that your visitors will always have good quality
content even if they turn all that other stuff off.

------
FrankBlack
Way back in the 90's, when this new-fangled web thing was just starting to
take off (especially the .com side) I was teaching an "Introduction to the
Internet" course at my college. I took meticulous care in trying to explain
what was happening, why it happened and how to best sort through the
voluminous information resources. To me, the web was about information. To my
classes (dozens of classes after a while) all that mattered was they could
"surf the net". They didn't care about information, they cared about seeing
pictures. They were seduced by the flashy images and bored by the banal
information resources available. This is when I learned that the web is just
TV with a more precise remote control. Who cares if you have (more or less)
the sum total of human knowledge at your fingertips? All that matters is
"Dancing Baby" and "Peanut Butter Jelly Time".

 _sigh_

------
gbog
That's what I'd call responsive design.

No snarks: it displays perfectly on phone screens and large monitors and loads
fast. How could it be made more responsive.

I think the key to responsiveness is to remove all javascript, all unnecessary
styling, and most importantly to remove all dynamic social features. Then you
have an html static page with long cache life.

~~~
bti
I'd like the font size to be larger on mobile. But I agree with you about
javascript. Those dynamic social buttons are horrible, multiple requests and
200kb+ additional data in some cases. All for a couple buttons that no one
will use.

------
cpdean
After sitting on the setup of my blog for a good nine months -- trying out
several static site generators, experimenting with different color schemes,
reactive layouts, font sizes, font families, deployment scripts, and composing
about 15 stubs for posts and not finishing a single one -- i have accomplished
less than this.

~~~
krapp
I had a perfectly usable blog built in laravel 3 with a content manager,
hosted comments, the works -- but I destroyed it because one day I decided
everything had to be turned into modules, and then one day everything had to
be statically cached, and the switching the css framework from bootstrap to
skeleton then back to bootstrap, then I built a custom static-page generating
php framework, then I realized what an awful idea that was (although it's what
my site is running now, minus a blog and anything interesting), and now I'm
trying to port my laravel 3 stuff over to 4.

Just dumping textfiles into an open directory honestly would've been more
productive (if less fun.)

------
steveplace
I agree, but...

...the author made the choice to display the text at 600px wide with a font
size of 18px. There's plenty of markup (design) to point out key ideas on the
page.

Would this writing have the same impact if the font was at 12px, with smaller
spacing between paragraphs, or maybe with a page width of 1280px? I don't
think so.

~~~
derleth
> Would this writing have the same impact if the font was at 12px, with
> smaller spacing between paragraphs, or maybe with a page width of 1280px?

Yes. Of course. Books don't need precise pixel rules to be readable.

------
sirwanqutbi
He still used CSS styling. If anything, its a take on bringing back Times New
Roman... everything is designed.

------
s4m20
This is why I love
[https://github.com/circa75/dropplets](https://github.com/circa75/dropplets)

Simple, minimalist, publish through markdown. I stripped the Twitter button
out of my fork because I thought even that was too much clutter (example:
[http://notes.darkfunction.com](http://notes.darkfunction.com)). Now I have
just a list of articles, with a link to each article, and I can't think why I
would need any more. I always found article history navigation on traditional
bogs tedious (how am I supposed to know which month/year you wrote what I am
looking for?) and as for social media buttons, if I want to put your post on
my Facebook page I don't need a button to do it.

------
inthewind
I think you've got to question the definition of "web design". I'd argue that
the text is framed content and is part of the design.

The post at least highlights that 'web design' is somewhat of a distraction.

There is so much (unnecessary?) labour involved in framing the content by
posturing programmers (lost down some rabbit hole) and anal pixel pushers that
you could easily forget that to many: the content is what matters.

Getting your head around HTML, publishing and hosting is still not that
trivial. That's why people take to something like Facebook, or sharing photos
via Instagram via their mobile phones.

That's not to detract from the beauty and the 'miracle' of web publishing.

------
vivekian2
I think what I really miss is reading web pages which were truly written from
the heart. I remember even as far as back in 2005, for a search like
"unrequited love", Google's top hit would be a link to a physics Phd's home
page who had written about his multiple experiences of being declared 'just a
friend' and how to get past being rejected over and over again.

Jump to today and the Google search yields following the obvious wikipedia
link, is a whole bunch of wikihow, nytimes, urban dictionary and youtube
links.

Those personal web pages with an intellectually rich content have just been
lost to the dark internet.

------
FreeFull
True minimalism would be a plain text file.

------
jmagoon
I'm not sure if this applies to artistic theory, but in film theory there's an
entire discipline based around formalist, or stylistic critique.

Briefly, they would say that an effective ideological argument stems from
style--two films with the exact same script that are shot, set, lit, and
edited differently could have totally different meanings. So, what's most
interesting is that your argument perhaps isn't actually about words or
content -- it's about the way those words and content are presented.

------
logn
Thank you. I've shared this with someone whom I know who's interested in
learning to program. I think HTML is a great first step. After you learn HTML
you can learn to write programs to generate HTML... and that's an application.
From there you could learn more advanced programming concepts or native app
development, but I think this is probably the best way to introduce people to
programming, something which seems almost magical and impossible, until you
get the right introduction.

------
breck
Neat, and I like what you're saying. However, although words are important,
and longer lasting, looks are perhaps equally as important to an individual in
the present. Always were, always will be. People care about looking good.
People are attracted to good looking things. Great words might improve the
legacy of your ideas, but great looks will improve the legacy of you. Both are
justifiably important to people.

Also, often a great picture is greater than many words. And the web is equally
powerful for that.

------
aklein
From the perspective of someone who works with data, I simply have to disagree
that words seem to be the most important way to convey information. Perhaps it
is to some; but I'd bet the majority of information consumers prefer an
alternate mode of visual communication with a well-executed design component.
It is the concept is critical; words are simply one way to execute that
concept. [Disclaimer: my wife is an advertising art director who has educated
me a tiny bit on semiotics]

------
skw
Good design facilitates the function and purpose of the message you want to
communicate. Your example is just a handful of paragraphs, so it's easy to
interpret such simple information. When you have text, images, lists, objects
and dynamic content your argument falls apart.

All of the elements I just described are made up of words and/or represent
words.

Sure designers can lose their way and become engrossed in decorating elements
(which in some cases becomes a USP), but that's not typically the end goal.

------
psibi
Reminds me of the HTML hell page from Eric Raymond:

[http://catb.org/esr/html-hell.html](http://catb.org/esr/html-hell.html)

~~~
leephillips
All reasonable gripes, except "CSS that changes the hotlink colors".
_Everyone_ with a stylesheet does this. I understand the value of
standardizing here, but the default colors are a bit garish, and in any case
are unlikely to harmonize with your design. What are you going to do?

------
swamp40
Anyone else think the referenced 37Signals "Know Your Company" idea was
interesting?

I wondered how it worked w/o asking employees to sign up for anything, and
this is what I found:

 _" What they came up with was Know Your Company, which poses one question to
all employees via email, three days a week.

The queries vary from day to day. Responding is optional, and answers are
attached to employee names.

Workers can also choose whether they want their replies shared with the whole
group."_

------
tericho
While I do agree that copy is an important and valid starting point, don't
dismiss the power of images either.

This[1] is a very important and meaningful symbol in any language.

[1][http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7c/A14...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7c/A14.svg/220px-A14.svg.png)

~~~
iso8859-1
Just because it's a symbol doesn't mean it's an image:

[http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/26a0/index.htm](http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/26a0/index.htm)

Related: In my head, webpages should visually only consist of vector graphics
and photographs. You can put JPEG's in SVG's, so there is no reason to
rasterize hybrids.

------
exodust
sorry, but words on a web page isn't "magic".

> "We've become obsessed with fancy designs, responsive layouts, and scripts
> that do magical things."

When we didn't have those fancy things, we wanted them. If they were taken
away, we'd want them back. Nothing wrong with fancy presentation if your
intention is to _present something_.

The first thing I ever did on the internet back in the 90s was look up guitar
tab for beginners. I skipped the words and printed out the guitar tabs I
found.

The author of "this is a web page" is flogging a book. That's nice, but I
don't really think that reading his words is "magical".

Oxygen is magical. Gravity is magical. Magic is everywhere. Can we please move
on to the magical things that actually stand out as deserving such a label
relative to where we are in online evolution?

The internet of things is settling in nicely, and it isn't about words, it's
about things. Linking data and real-time manipulation from online to things in
our immediate and remote environments. _THAT_ is closer to magic than plain
text on a white page.

------
laureny
> At it's heart, web design should be about words.

If you're going to praise the power of words, you might want to start with
spelling them correctly.

------
dendory
I don't know about the over-reliance on words, I think images and videos are
just fine on the web, but I do agree with the sentiment that pages have become
way too bloated around the web. When a single news site that should be telling
you about a story has dozens of external scripts, hundreds of assets and takes
way too long to display, things have gotten too far.

------
muppetman
Sure, that page is just text. But I found it via hackernews. If hackernews
looked like that, I wouldn't visit it every day.

~~~
mijustin
Don't you think Hacker News _does_ look like that?

A lot of people (below) have commented that they _like_ HN because it is just
text and links on a page.

~~~
muppetman
Absolutely, it's one of the things I love about HN, it's simple.

But the fact it appears simple doesn't mean no design's gone into it. It's
still visually appealing.

I suspect if HN was just <h1> <h2> that, regardless of its content, it'd have
a lot less traffic.

~~~
trendoid
I dont think you are getting the point of his post. He specifically mentions
"Will that additional styling, image, or hyperlink give my audience more
understanding? ".

I think HN is a perfect example of what he is arguing.

------
quackerhacker
This article really embodies what I love about the net and why I became a web
dev first then a software engineer.

A Webpage is designed to be reached by anyone, anywhere, and now...can be read
(at least the words) in different languages. I love text just for the global
demographic that it can reach thanks to online translators like Google and
Bing!

------
leeoniya
oh the joy loading a static html page @ 150ms

------
chris_mahan
I recently redid a restaurant main page
([http://californiacanteen.com/](http://californiacanteen.com/)) in a very
similar way, targeting mostly mobile/tablet. Same principle. (the rest of the
site is a work in progress and looks horribly 1996'ish).

------
anigbrowl
I wish there were a lot more client-side design tools. I liked the idea of
building something that was like your own daily newspaper, but that's not
practical when every article is trying to differentiate itself visually
(frequently to obscure the fact that the textual content is largely churn).

------
lsiunsuex
this is exactly what i'm trying to accomplish with version 2 of one of my
sites - although I still need the cms and all of that, i'm stripping away all
the fancy colorful css, photos, etc... only keeping what I need.

minimalistic - let the content speak for the site, not the fancy design

------
chris_mahan
The main problem is that writing is hard, and leaving just the words will make
bad writing stand out. It seems that making a site "pretty" is easier than
making the writing better, which is why I think the majority of sites go for
glitz rather than excellent prose.

------
marban
I built postagon.com under this dogma but nevertheless I think that it comes
with an almost arrogant touch if you deliberately publish an article in a
format as simple as this and expect everyone to extract the message from an
otherwise horrible reading experience.

~~~
threedaymonk
"an otherwise horrible reading experience."

What's horrible about the article? It's straightforward, conventional
typography of the sort used in printed books for a long time.

------
kenbellows
I read his daughter's squirrel story [1]. I loved the last line: "Poor grandma
Jalapeno she got arested for turning into superman."

[1] [http://justinjackson.ca/words.html](http://justinjackson.ca/words.html)

------
jaredcwhite
I love it. Even seeing Times/Times New Roman in use brings back a tinge of
nostalgia.

I like sites with some design pizazz, but a simple page like this with well-
written content trumps most over-designed, over-widgetized crap sites any day.

~~~
threedaymonk
It's only Times [New Roman] because that's what your browser is set to use by
default.

Imagine: a world in which you could choose your preferred font for reading
websites! Sure, most people would choose Comic Sans, but that would be better
than making people download some super-thin font that looks great on (and only
on) the designer's Retina display.

------
angrytoast
The future of the web is ideas, and the medium that it is delivered through,
whether it be test, video, audio, or whatever that I can begin to comprehend,
will hopefully be one that will be seen by as many as possible.

------
csomar
Sorry, but this is not true in many dimensions:

1\. He doesn't have an RSS feed. That's a medium many people use it to
connect.

2\. He doesn't have a mailchimp (or other) list to subscribe to. That's
another medium people use.

3\. He didn't optimize for Google. That's a huge medium people use to reach
content. (he uses analytics, though. guess why)

4\. Font size is set in pixels. This is the wrong way to do it if you want to
be optimized for reading. You should set it in "em" to have the size of the
browser default. Another reason why you need a professional to design a site.

It's true that we are sometimes (or in many occasions) taking the features to
the extreme. But there is a reason why they are there. That's the new web.
Learn how to use the feature to improve the experience, and not to make it
worse.

Not using is just moving us backward.

~~~
kryten
There is something infuriating about your post.

It misses the point entirely and concentrates on the banality of the medium
rather than the message.

The _new web_ is the old web, rehashed with less content and more money making
prospects through complicated meshes of dross leeched from the veins of media
startups.

 _Not using_ is putting the message first for a change and I applaud that.

------
csel
Wait...whatever happened to "A picture is worth a thousand words"?

------
undo
I think this is a great reminder to make our words on the web more meaningful.
If you create something, make sure that the words make sense and are well
supported by design, not the other way around.

------
wfunction
[http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs61a/sp12/diatribe.html](http://www-
inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs61a/sp12/diatribe.html)

------
kombine
"I didn't need a Content Management System, a graphic designer, or a software
developer."

The guy is arguing that we don't need software then, since it is possible to
create every page by hand.

~~~
lmm
I agree with a lot of his position, but HTML is so tiresome to write by hand
(all those angle brackets) and the tools to manage it already exist. My blog
([http://m50d.github.io](http://m50d.github.io)) is all about text like the
OP, but I still use strapdown so that I can write markdown rather than html.

------
Pitarou
True, but don't for get, IF IT LOOKS GOOD, MORE PEOPLE WILL WANT TO READ IT.

That's why, for instance, even with the driest of academic textbooks, they
still spend a few extra dollars on a cover design.

------
borgchick
So we've come around full circle. Back to plain old text. NCSA Mosaic anyone?
I just hope we don't all go back to <marquee> and <blink>...

------
andrewljohnson
I only read the bold words, so I guess style matters.

------
jerednel
I read the first sentence, one in the middle and the last just because it was
the top link on a page I frequent. Nothing too revolutionary.

------
kidsil
Except Web Design has long been more similar to commercials, which have next
to nothing to communicate except "BUY ME!"

------
martin_
This page is a little conflicting to the main website has fancy mail in
widgets and runs a powerful (arguably bloated) CMS.

------
shalander
I instantly recognized what he was doing, and yet, I was still reading, and
kept reading, until the end. Great article!

------
koshak
seems like echo of [http://mnmlist.com/w](http://mnmlist.com/w)

------
olaf
Forget the web/web page, it's only a means, a tool for a higher purpose. It's
no end in itself.

------
Felix21
Interesting to see this today.

My next website is sitting in Tomboy Notes at the moment. I'm just about to
start coding.

------
daralthus
Damn, you have this medium full of potential that could be anything and you
just want to mimic paper...

------
dragontamer
Looks a lot better than what was here a few hours ago. Good job fixing the
typesetting issues.

------
rakeshsharmak
Brilliant. Thank YOU for the simplicity. The best things in life are always
the most simple..

------
crimezone20xx
Fantastic, and makes me hopeful for how I'm about to launch my resumé. Just
words.

------
phawk
And what? Your font looks like crap, line-height is not nice for me to read
either.

------
capex
Hope the book page he's writing follows the same simplicity as in the article.

------
tytyty
You had me until your twitter and I read "I wear a fake mustache."

------
Nate630
That's why web typography is worth knowing as well!

------
freejack
Nice, except it needs a "like" button.

~~~
iso8859-1
Why does it need a like button? You can like every webpage! Just use a "like"
bookmark.

Let's assume every webpage is made to be liked (I'm an optimist). Hopefully
you see the madness of like buttons now.

------
ahawkins
I'm surprised this post has so many votes.

------
hnriot
This guy is living in the 90's. Today the web is a platform for providing
digital services. Words are a very small part of the story.

~~~
raymondduke
You couldn't be more wrong.

~~~
haldujai
Actually, he couldn't be more right. This post is the internet equivalent of a
newspaper article, really simple and some people will like it, but you can't
really sell anything in that format or build a community.

Modern, design based websites, are the equivalent of magazines. People would
rather read the Economist in color than (insert newspaper here) in black and
white by far.

~~~
raymondduke
You are missing the point. Words are the backbone of any deliverable content.
You said it yourself, in your own words: "...people would rather READ the
Economist in color than b & w...," which I agree with.

And you can sell plenty with just words. I'm not harking on design. I think
design is just important as anything else is. What I am saying is that words
are like vital to life itself. Just like air, water, and food is.

------
tiagofernandez
Thanks for bringing me back to 1994.

------
davidrudder
Loved the story about the squirrel

~~~
SpeakMouthWords
"One's she had to go the emergency tree" caused me to spit out my drink a
little with laughter. All done with words.

------
kuchaguangjie
understand the core, and do things as simple as possible.

------
olalonde
And tomorrow's top story on HN: "Users can't read".

------
disclosure
This is typography

------
hhorsley
Wow. Love this.

------
loceng
Abracadabra!

~~~
loceng
P.S. Can I hire you for my copy editor? ;)

~~~
loceng
To whoever downvoted me, I know Justin -- we go waayyy back. I was being
silly.

------
withparadox2
I really like this article!

------
bastifantasti
word.

------
dmourati
i'm a squirrel ftw

------
aaron695
It works because it's a one off.

If every page did this then a contrary page with images would make the point
against just words and everyone would agree.

Looking at simple page's like that all day would be depressing, I want beauty
in my life, not just words which can be beautiful, that's why I read novels, I
also want visual beauty.

------
Myrmornis
> This is a web page.

Pretentious drivel more like.

~~~
pg
If that's all you have to say, better to say nothing.

~~~
Myrmornis
I respectfully disagree with this ethos of positivity or nothing. Criticism is
a valuable thing. We don't want our discourse to resemble some sort of
Christian summer camp.

~~~
grey-area
If you have a criticism, try to expand on it and produce something others
might find interesting as a counterpoint. Constructive criticism can be very
useful, but just choosing an epithet as you have done here adds nothing and is
not valuable criticism.

------
knotdvn
TL;DR

~~~
levosmetalo
Find a story on Reddit, and usually TL;DR is a first comment. Here, we
actually prefer to first read and then comment, or not comment at all.

~~~
antoko
Speak for yourself.

I'll often read the comments briefly first before deciding if I want to read
an article.

~~~
levosmetalo
While tldr summary is certainly valuable, asking for one without even
bothering to form a single sentence is the same level of spam as +1 type of .

~~~
antoko
I totally agree, I don't read the comments for an explicit summary. I read the
comments to see what opinions people have of the article, on the basis of the
comments I determine if the article is worth reading.

I don't do this for all articles, but it is a pretty common occurrence.

