
Rules for Creating Gorgeous UI, Part 2 - jgrodziski
https://medium.com/@erikdkennedy/7-rules-for-creating-gorgeous-ui-part-2-430de537ba96
======
bshimmin
I think this, and the previous part, are probably most usefully viewed from
the perspective of "The design zeitgeist dictates that I must do
$DESIGN_TREND; here is how to do $DESIGN_TREND and make it work well" (where
$DESIGN_TREND is, for example, having a huge image and making the overlaid
text readable), rather than from the perspective of critiquing whether these
trends in design are actually necessarily a good idea.

I say this as someone who routinely does get asked to build sites that are (to
put it kindly) heavily indebted to other current sites; I can definitely
confirm that overlaying text on top of images and making it readable genuinely
is quite hard work - especially if your clients are choosing the images! - and
these tips are certainly very helpful for those occasions when you can't hire
a designer with a natural instinct for making this stuff work.

So, I say: great pair of articles with some great tips.

~~~
jobu
The examples pictured are very trendy, but most of the tips are about ways to
create a minimalist design, and that's something that's been proven to be
timeless. (e.g. Dieter Rams: [http://goo.gl/ncLg0j](http://goo.gl/ncLg0j))

~~~
themoonbus
Minimalism isn't timeless, minimalism itself is a trend in design.

It's definitely a trend with merit, but it isn't some absolute truth to always
strive towards.

I would recommend reading "Living with Complexity" by Don Noarman for some
interesting arguments about why complexity in design isn't inherently bad.

~~~
m3mnoch
> Minimalism isn't timeless, minimalism itself is a trend in design.

i suppose. depending on the length of your view. but, given minimalism has
been a "trend" for the last 100 years or so, i am going to assume you're
looking at broad trending across centuries instead of through the "flat design
is trendy" lens.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
On that basis classical architecture and design have been far more successful
than anything else.

There's a reason for that Roman word in Times New Roman.

Minimalism works well on small screens. But my guess is that as UI devices get
bigger and more immersive we'll see more texture and decoration beginning to
reappear; six feet of extreme white space is too much to hold interest as a
container of useful content.

Incidentally, not a few Victorian and Edwardian (i.e. pre-Bauhaus) public
buildings in the UK have amazingly rich and detailed designs. They were
incredibly labour intensive building projects, and there's something very
compelling about spaces that were built and decorated almost entirely by hand
with expert craft and precision and take pride and pleasure in expensive
decoration.

I'm not sure what the UI equivalent would be, but it's interesting to think
about.

------
julianz
Some good tips, published on a site that moves all the fucking content out of
the way every time you click the mouse and makes it impossible to easily
figure out who wrote something. Love the message, hate hate hate the Medium.

~~~
ryanSrich
I find it odd that Medium, a company that preaches design from every corner of
their soap box, can't even create an enjoyable reading experience. From top to
bottom the entire site is just a UX mess.

~~~
jamesdelaneyie
Medium's hallmark is an 'enjoyable reading experience'. Care to give some
opinion on what makes it poor? Not being funny here, I'm not their biggest fan
but such an dousing comment provokes debate.

~~~
ryanSrich
Sure.

• Home View: I see two visible stories on my screen (with the second almost
cut off). That's it. Two stories. If I didn't already know what medium was I'd
have no idea what it _is_, how it works, or how to see stories that I actually
want to read (I'd probably think it's someone's personal blog). If I was truly
curious about what Medium was I would probably click on the tiny "Learn More"
button in the masthead but given it's size and low contrast I might miss it.

• Article View One: Massive obnoxious image that takes up the entire screen
with the title overlaid in white text....scroll scroll..finally! Words! I
can't entirely blame medium for this layout though. A user has the option to
add an image, which brings me to...

• Article View Two: These elements are also on View One as well but I'll talk
about them here. The medium logo "M" is in no way representative of it's
function (a menu). I was thinking that it would bring me back to the home
view. Instead a menu slid out from the side like I was on a phone. This isn't
the worst experience in the world but I'm confused why the logo doesn't
function like every other website. So then I look inside the menu. I see
collections..hmm what's that? Why didn't they tell me about that on the home
view? This allows me to traverse articles I find interesting by collection
topic?! That's awesome! WHY DIDN'T THEY PUT THIS ON THE HOMEPAGE? (IIRC they
actually had collections on the homepage but have since gotten rid of it). The
green hearts on top. What are those? People who liked the article? I actually
don't know the answer to this question. I clicked on one and it just took me
to the persons profile.

• The actual words: Reading a medium article gives me the experience of
floating in space. I often loose my spot. It's a combination of the overuse of
whitespace and the random "hallmarks" on the page, inline comment icons
appearing on hover but only on a specific line, sticky headers that come back
on scroll, and elements that appear to be just kind of thrown on the page, the
author spot at the bottom where you can share and subscribe seems oddly
misplaced.

I don't have time to go one but you get what I'm saying.

------
lomnakkus
Rule #N: Use _black_ and _opaque_ text for your main text, not RGBA(0,0,0,0.8)
or some such[1]. Please.

[1] [http://contrastrebellion.com/](http://contrastrebellion.com/)

~~~
sehr
Christ, does every misgiving involving web development and design need a
manifesto and site these days?

website motherfucker, reactive manifesto, you might not need jQuery, contrast
rebellion, extensible web manifesto, slow web movement.

so many manifestos, so little time.

~~~
hrjet
I must say, it does help. Just today I was creating a simple web-page (with my
developer-designer chops) and remembered the complaints that people have about
contrast. I went back and tuned the colors to make them readable as much as
possible. This is inspite of I myself hating the low-contrast designs;
sometimes you get carried away by the aesthetics.

~~~
qubitcoder
This is especially true with HiDPI screens. If your primary content is textual
in nature, then using low contrast colors is disrespectful to your readers.

This is amplified when designers don't use relative scaling units for font
sizes. Medium.com is a good example of presenting readable content,
independent of DPI.

But many sites require substantial zooming to read comfortably, even with
perfect vision.

Another major usability issue is disabling pinch-to-zoom on mobile devices.
This is a behavior that users have come to expect.

I've had to explain to several older people that their iPad isn't broken when
they couldn't zoom in on a product while shopping.

~~~
Digit-Al
Amen to that. My other bugbear is floating menus that expand to fill the whole
phone screen when you zoom in. Because they are fixed, you can't scroll away
from them, hence your only choices on a phone are 'too small to read' or 'can
only read a small segment of a floating menu'. Fail!

------
bdavisx
Rule #x - Test your design on lower resolution/quality screens. I see a lot of
articles/blogs/whatever that look like crap on my Dell 1680x1050 (non-ips)
work display.

~~~
illicium
And on different OSes. For example, many designers work on Macs and don't
bother testing on Windows, then get surprised when users complain that the
type on their website is unreadable -- OS X's rasterization makes light fonts
look much bolder than Cleartype on Windows.

------
mattkevan
While there's some useful stuff in these articles, there is a problem in that
they are about technique, perpetuating a narrow style of design, without
exploring the underlying principles of what makes a UI good or bad.

Techniques are good as they make it possible to implement a design well, but a
collection of good techniques do not add up to a great design.

~~~
drcomputer
That happens whenever there is an attempt to formalize a creative field. UI
design itself is typically judged good or bad, very loosely, on the
relationship between how the user base 'knows' how to
use/navigate/read/understand things and how that translates to something new.
That's a loose definition on what intuitive design is. You can couple that
with simple elements like surprise and intentionally manipulated expectation
for a light creative jump.

However, if you stray outside of the "function and form = great design" crowd:
the kind that makes things that are actually usable and considered well-
designed in their use by a random sampling of people with a well defined
intended use case, and venture off into scary territory like post-modernism,
metamodernism, and so on, you might find that "great design" has no definition
at all; not even a single leg to stand on. And you can bring those elements of
what you learn there, back into popular design, just to shift it a bit.

Those facets of design and art are all about breaking your expectations and
understandings of what a thing is, of what it means to see it, interact with
it, even think about it, and instead it forces you to see that you are looking
through one window of aesthetics, when there are really billions of windows.

Technique is good for mainstream, a how-to, a guide, an introduction,
something to google when you want to start incorporating various elements of
design that are thought of as 'fundamental' by contemporary culture. Design
and aesthetics (let alone defining greatness of either) are something much
more philosophical; and arguably debatable.

~~~
mattkevan
I agree, the success or failure of UI design depends on conforming to the
implicit assumptions and culture of its intended audience, and, being task-
based, having a thorough understanding of its intended use-case: how easily
the target audience achieves the desired goal.

While the 'greatness' of aesthetics are debatable, I'd argue for design it's
not. Aesthetics are based on taste, culture, technology, background and
approach, whereas design is about solving problems. Everything that goes into
a design must have a purpose – aesthetic choices are important, but they
should be in alignment with the brief.

There are rules and concepts which one must understand and know when to follow
or subvert: form, size, colour, contrast, proximity, structure, action,
relationship etc. This visual grammar forms the building blocks of design.
Scary territory like postmodernism or constructivism or whatever just use
these concepts in different combinations to express their ideas.

~~~
drcomputer
What about cultures that don't have problems to define, or where 'problems'
are defined in such a way that solving one directly causes one to be created?

> Scary territory like postmodernism or constructivism or whatever just use
> these concepts in different combinations to express their ideas.

Not true. You begin with a foundation in order to assume that concepts like
form, size, color, contrast, proximity, structure, action, relationship
actually exist. You have your foundation, and you see post modernism through
it. Post modernism is then an combinatorial expression of what already exists,
to you.

What if nothing exists to begin with, or it is undefinable, or it is only
definable in relation to a definable undefinable? The transience and
dependency of terms on one another is what I am trying to express.

> There are rules and concepts which one must understand and know when to
> follow or subvert

One must not do anything. The most absurd, ridiculous, and controversial
creations are what shape wave after wave of art, to then be analyzed and
sifted through, to identify and separate something that was not separate to
begin with, to define good and bad. But the definitions of good and bad are
dependent on the context. The terms exist in relation to that which has
already been defined.

The rule of design is not "follow the rules or do the opposite". There is more
to do than use the rules to measure the value and define the potential of
design, if you choose to do those things at all.

However, in general, in broad culture today and historically, I would say you
are correct. But things change subtly, until everything is completely
different.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Post-modernism is meta-aesthetics. It's not a specific visual style, it's a
social game played by well-educated people to signal their learning to other
well-educated people.

The standard example would be an architect building the usual everything-is-a-
rectangle modernist house and 'ironically' putting a classical portico two
feet in front of it.

That kind of thing was done to death in the 80s and 90s, and it's not so much
of a thing any more.

>The most absurd, ridiculous, and controversial creations are what shape wave
after wave of art

You could probably argue that the entire web is one massive work of art.

It's certainly been absurd, ridiculous and controversial enough to qualify. (I
mean that as a fan, not a critic.)

~~~
drcomputer
I don't agree with you on that definition of post modernism, but I think you
meant that as a pejorative.

I agree with you on the internet.

------
jxf
Instead of creating "gorgeous" UI, shouldn't we be creating _usable_ UI? Just
because something is wonderful to look at in no way guarantees that it's
functional or usable.

I feel like these articles miss the point that ultimately, UI is about
_people_. If _people_ don't actually enjoy it and have a better experience,
then it doesn't matter how nice it looks.

~~~
jljljl
Is there any reason a UI can't be both?

If you take his comments about overlaying text, for example, he's offering
tips on how to keep overlaid text readable while also looking gorgeous. This
is something that combines both usability with visual appeal.

I'd also argue that _people_ aren't a bunch of automatons who use computer
interfaces simply to accomplish tasks. A "gorgeous" UI can make an otherwise
mundane task (e.g., looking up which recipes to cook) into something fun and
enjoyable.

~~~
jxf
They can definitely be both! But the function of a UI is not to be "gorgeous"
\-- it's to be _usable_.

A UI that's entirely functional without being flashy or visually attractive
still accomplishes its mission (e.g. space shuttle control panels). A UI
that's beautiful to look at but can't be understood is of little value.

~~~
scott_s
I think you're arguing against a point nobody made. The article is about
"creating gorgeous UI". The article is explicitly focused on making things
that look good. The author does _not_ argue this focus on aesthetics is more
important than usability. (Although usability is partially a concern if you
consider how much he talks about text legibility.)

I think reasonable people can agree that interfaces should be usable _and_
beautiful. I think it is then also reasonable that someone would want to have
a focused discussion on just one part of that.

------
AndyNemmity
Rules like this are often for websites without a lot of actions on a given
page. Does anyone have a link to a site with tips or can give their own
thoughts for extremely action heavy sites?

I run an extremely complicated game with a ton of actions and complexity, and
I find it very difficult to provide even a not terrible UI, let alone a
Gorgeous one.

~~~
tripzilch
A bit heavier on the theory (still a great introduction), describing what to
me pretty much seem axioms of human perception in the area of user interfaces,
you're going to need the Gestalt Principles:

[http://www.andyrutledge.com/gestalt-principles-1-figure-
grou...](http://www.andyrutledge.com/gestalt-principles-1-figure-ground-
relationship.php)

It's a series of five, that should provide great insights on principles like
spatial relationships, grouping, contrast, size, texture, and more. Read them,
get a piece of paper and a pencil, list all the actions and buttons and
whatnot you need, start sketching until you've got something sensible.

Oh but before that, do what Pxtl said, and simplify. I was going to say, "you
can't confuse a user with a button that's not there", but that's not strictly
true. You gotta make sure the user doesn't expect the button to be there
either :)

Still, simplify ruthlessly. And make it easy for the player. I don't know your
game, but say there's a number of buttons that almost always get used in
sequence or together. Combine them into one. Even if you think "yes but this
is a powerful combo move that I want the players to discover", that's cool but
you can always make your game harder later on, after you've made it easier to
play.

Another (tangentially related) rule of gameplay UX is this one: make the game
follow the player's _intention_ , which is not always the literal machine-like
interpretation of the rules. For instance for action-platformer games, make
the hitbox of powerups slightly bigger, and the hitbox of enemies slightly
smaller. Add a bit of leeway to jump after you walked off a ledge. Again it
makes the game easier, but the player will feel their intentions are followed
(also, barely missing an enemy that you feel you should've hit is _fun_ , as
is just barely grabbing an item that you didn't think you could reach, the
opposites of both are _not fun_ ), you can always add more stuff to challenge
them, but without encumbering the gameplay.

Now your game sounds like some sort of strategy game so these platformer-tips
won't apply directly, but I hope it shows the right way of thought, that you
can translate to be relevant for you.

~~~
AndyNemmity
Helpful thoughts. Thank you for the considerate post. I will do as you say and
study the Gestalt Principles, thank you for linking them.

I find that ruthlessly simplifying is useful for the new player, but the
player base hates it. Perhaps it's the way I've been simplifying that is the
problem and less the simplification, but the user who already understands the
complexity doesn't want to relearn.

I think it's a solvable problem though, so clearly it's in the execution.
Thanks for the detail here.

------
eneifert
Top notch article thanks for posting. Thanks for pointing out those fonts, I
feel like finding good fonts is always a struggle for me. Anyone have any
other suggestions like these?

~~~
danenania
One way is getting a typekit subscription and checking out their font lists
[1]. Aside from providing many excellent fonts, there are good descriptions of
mood properties and historical context that can really help to choose
something appropriate.

1 - [https://typekit.com/lists](https://typekit.com/lists)

------
johnchristopher
> iOS 7 has really made background blurring a thing recently, though Vista
> used it to great effect too.

That's not how I remember `bloggers` talking about it when Vista came out.

~~~
ponyous
Haha I remember seeing comparison of how The Verge covered release of Samsung
Note 3 and iPhone 6 plus. This is what drives me mad nowdays.

Ok, I found a picture [http://www.oneclickroot.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/09/the-v...](http://www.oneclickroot.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/09/the-verge.jpg)

~~~
duiker101
was it the same reviewer?

~~~
jarek
What is the point of a review site if not to have an editor and some
consistency between reviews?

------
skrebbel
I'm absolutely not a designer, but I have serious issues with many tips in the
first half of this article and the design trends that they support. They're
all about putting text over images and keeping it readable.

So basically, you're first going to increase my cognitive load with a big
flashy unrelated photo, and then you're going to blur and dropshadow and
opacity-gradient it _just_ so much that I can kind of read the text again?
What for?

Fullscreen photos are nice, but they're _just a picture_. Very nice blurred
bridge there in the background, but how is that going to sell me a route
planning app? I feel like a lot of these examples are aesthetic-only designers
gone wild without any place for feedback from their peers.

Is it good when it's pretty and you can _just about_ read the text without
squinting your eyes? No! It's acceptable at best. But if you try, and I bet if
you actually do user tests, then you'll find that you want to ditch the image.
Or at least put a big black box around the text (admittedly, also listed as an
example).

Can we stop the cognitive overload already? Don't make me think! Don't make me
search past the blurs and the street lights and the flowers to find the text
I'm supposed to be reading.

(unless, of course, you sell a blur plugin, a street light or flowers)

~~~
resu_nimda
Most people aren't software developers (or similar types), their browsing
habits aren't grounded in their continually-honed digital search and retrieval
skills.

They like pretty pictures. They don't mind being distracted as much (all those
news websites we find god-awful, with tons of display ads and flashing colors
- do you assume those businesses don't know what they're doing?). They don't
always visit a website with a singular intent to extract the relevant data as
quickly as possible and move on.

There is so much UI/UX-related ranting on HN from the power user perspective;
a lot of people just can't believe how amazingly stupid these companies are,
how they haven't done any research or testing, how some exec just wanted to
fuck with the design for the hell of it. The reality is, they just aren't
optimizing for you, _especially_ if advertising is their main source of
revenue.

I do think it's important for them to make the power users happy enough,
because they are the influencers and early-adopters that the others will
follow, but they're going to have a hard time putting some nerd rage before
the piles of cash flowing in.

(This post wasn't specifically aimed at you, I do agree with much of your
argument, but we have to keep in mind that we aren't the only user class,
we're actually a relatively small one.)

~~~
skrebbel
Cool point, thanks.

------
gqvijay
For me, it's a great read. Yes, I cringed when I saw the word "Rules" when we
are talking about beautiful UI. However, after reading the article, he is just
using it as a framework to convey the message. And it works for him (and me)
who are not "designers" but still aspire to create great designs.

I say read it lightly. To me, an engineer realizing the importance of great
design is a huge thumbs up for me. I would hire him in a heartbeat.

~~~
erikdkennedy
Where do you work?

~~~
gqvijay
I recently made a decision to shutdown the startup I co-founded 3 years ago.
Brutal. Now, I am catching my breath to figure out what I want to do next.
You?

------
blaze33
Part 1 posted yesterday:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8629538](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8629538)

------
valevk
This is very interesting to read. Can somebody point me to other resources?
Especially for people who have not that much experience.

~~~
tripzilch
Gestalt principles of Design: [http://www.andyrutledge.com/gestalt-
principles-1-figure-grou...](http://www.andyrutledge.com/gestalt-
principles-1-figure-ground-relationship.php) bit more theoretical, but simple
and introductory, and interesting to read. IIRC (it's been a while) the five
articles in this series would take roughly the same amount of time as these
two big ones in the OP.

------
pistle
There's a lot of space dedicated to laying text over pictures proving that the
words are weak enough that a big image, possibly unrelated, is really
important to obscuring the message. Give me something to feel before I try to
think about the content.

Even when done well, words overlaying images means that neither is quite
important enough to stand on their own and the added complexity of dealing
with making it work and curating it, when the content manager doesn't know one
of the more technical 'rules', means constant intervention from technical or
design support.

Images, when not adding value are distractions from the lack of value in the
content and add to the download size and content handling complexity (slower,
less usable, higher dev costs).

Good design is hard enough vs. following Apple style guides for "light from
the sky."

------
rtkwe
Ironically for me right now the CSS completely fails to load due to massive
numbers of 403 errors (probably something on my side due to corporate
firewalls it works fine on my phone).

I think there needs to be a Rule Zero: Fail gracefully.

[http://imgur.com/I5H1yvk](http://imgur.com/I5H1yvk)

~~~
pault
It might have something to do with the HN effect and 12MB of uncompressed png
images. I know it's an article about design, but this seems excessive to me.

~~~
rtkwe
Medium usually works pretty well even under HN loads, at least I haven't seen
it behave quite like this before, maybe none of the one's I've seen have been
quite this image heavy. _shrug_

------
enjoy-your-stay
Very informative to someone who's not a designer. I found the part on text on
images especially interesting, and like the arrow in the FedEx logo, once you
know about white text on images, you'll probably start noticing it
everywhere...

------
l33tbro
Eww. Stop saying 'gorgeous'. That goes for 'bespoke' and 'beautiful' as well
when it comes to desicribing your design and UI.

Seriously, it's 2015 in a couple of months.

~~~
iamtew
What's wrong with those words?

~~~
johneth
They've been used so much in ways that they shouldn't have been over the last
year or two that they're starting to lose their meaning.

~~~
snlacks
7 Rules for making designs that adhere to principles that have recently hit
their peek of popularity.

Rule 4 - Apple's started blurring backgrounds. You should too.

I do agree with the spirit of the article, if you want text to be legible,
then you should make it legible.

------
clay_to_n
Small nitpicky point: For method 4 floor blur, the image caption says "Look
mom, no overlay!" But I think there is an overlay. The image looks quite
darkened. Putting white text on a blurred image doesn't work without making
sure the blurred image doesn't have too-light whites.

------
jcampbell1
One feature missing from every modern browser except _Internet Explorer_ is
text shadow size. Most browsers support x,y, spread, and color. IE has
x,y,spread, size, and color.

While I am not a huge fan of text overlays on images, it would be nice if
browser vendors gave us an easy way to scrim the text a bit.

~~~
bwindels
Don't know what spread does exactly in IE, but the blur-radius value in the
text-shadow property can achieve this to some extent as well.

------
TrinnyLopez
UI and UIX are never 'beautiful' or 'gorgeous' nor can you 'love them'.

Kids nowadays. So emo.

~~~
matthewmacleod
Yes you can. You know that feeling when you start using a tool, and it does
exactly what you want without and fuss? When it solves your pain points in an
elegant fashion?

That's what good UX is.

------
netstag
Neither of part 1 or 2 render on my iPad2... Just a blank white screen. I'm
gathering, from the conversation here, there's something more to see😕

------
codyb
Very enjoyable read. Enjoyed the tips. Laughed audibly a few times. I'll be
incorporating some of these tips in my future.

------
lhnz
This is a great series of articles but I couldn't help and think that if you
have to be so analytical about this, you will do better to trade with a
designer that gets it more intuitively.

A lot of these rules exist simply because something looks or feels better (or
is more readable, or simpler, or more historically consistent, etc.) Unless
you can empathise with the underlying reasons, you will be memorising and
misapplying a lot of rules.

~~~
tripzilch
I hope that you're saying this as a developer/engineer that is unaware of all
the theory behind design, not as a designer that believes what they do is all
intuition and there's no theory to learn that will make themselves (and their
intuition) better.

~~~
lhnz
I was saying that as a developer that has experience doing design.

For example, a lot of people in fashion and design are able to tell what
colours go together without analysing tables or systems of complementary
colours. I'm really not making this up - most great creative people understood
a lot of this instinctively (and a lot of it is a lot harder to systematise
than colour theories, for example.)

------
tormeh
I propose outlawing words like "gorgeous", "beautiful", "delightful" etc. when
talking about app UIs. Really. It's an app - it's not gorgeous and never will
be. It may be nice, pleasant or even look good, but an app is never gorgeous.

~~~
zodiakzz
So they should only be used to refer to someone you are sexually attracted to
or what?

~~~
tormeh
Those, yes, and babies, kitties, some art etc. Granted, an app can be a form
of art, but slapping some pastel colors and a nice font on your CRUD app is
not quite sufficient. If the main purpose of your app is to, by visual
experience, itself (not through user content), provoke a feeling in the user,
then we can talk.

------
mkramlich
The most gorgeous UI to me looks something like this:

    
    
      cmd arg1 arg2 ...
    

or

    
    
      shell> cmd
      response
      shell> cmd2
      response2
    

The simplicity, clarity and composability is hard to beat. And though you do
gain certain benefits when you present a GUI (esp with pointing device), of
course, you also lose a lot. Beauty is not just in the eye of the beholder,
it's also in your brain.

~~~
wodenokoto
I think you and many other are misunderstanding the point of these articles.

They are NOT about designing user interfaces. They are NOT about how to
architect some infrastructure.

They are about how to paint these things so they look pretty when you present
them to people.

------
diziet
Rule #8: Use Retina images whenever possible and your audience includes people
with rMBP computers!

~~~
lucaspiller
I don't think retina images are required for a 'gorgeous' UI, but I can see
how it can help. If you do, please make sure you aren't serving up 4MB images
to people over 3G. Not only is it slow, but a lot of people are still on
expensive limited data plans.

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zodiakzz
>If you do, please make sure you aren't serving up 4MB images to people over
3G

I wonder how many sites really accommodate for that.. very few in my
experience. There's always Opera Mini though.

