
Responsive Text - jasoncartwright
http://www.frankieroberto.com/responsive_text
======
ot
I may have a problem with OCD, but I would hate the idea that some content is
hidden to me just because I'm browsing with the wrong screen/window size.

Hiding redundant elements, navigational bars, maybe images, etc... is fine,
but I'm definitely not comfortable with the idea of hiding _content_ based on
context.

~~~
ImprovedSilence
Yeah, it's a very interesting idea, but I don't want half the article if I'm
browsing on a mobile device.

Besides, I thought the point of responsiveness was to REARRANGE data, not
completely eliminate it. styling, yeah, go ahead and get rid of elements and
color bars and what have you, shrink pictures, but please don't throw away
words!

~~~
lucb1e
This was indeed the idea of the W3C when they wrote this. The page he links to
even says that:

<http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-mediaqueries/> "Among the media features that can
be used in media queries are ‘width’, ‘height’, and ‘color’. By using media
queries, presentations can be tailored to a specific range of output devices
without changing the content itself."

The part "without changing the content itself" is pretty clearly not what he
is doing here. Like dozens of others have said, just an interesting idea but
not something that should be used like this in practice.

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simonw
We do something similar to this on Lanyrd - try shrinking the browser window
on <http://sxsw.lanyrd.com/> for example. The labels on the tabs change from
"your sessions, your contacts' sessions, all sessions (1114), attendees
(2594)" at the widest setting to "you, contacts, all, attendees" on narrower
screens.

It's implemented by wrapping a span with a class of "not-narrow-friendly"
around the words that should be hidden at narrow widths, then using media
queries to hide them.

~~~
Isofarro
How would you handle internationalisation with that approach?

~~~
simonw
Not something we're worrying about for the moment - the advice we got from
people who had done it was "don't do it until you have a much larger team".

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magicofpi
This reminds moe of Joe Davis' Telescopic Text:
<http://www.telescopictext.com/>. Assuming you see this on a desktop computer,
it's exactly the opposite of Frankie's responsive text: instead of gradually
reducing the amount of information, it gradually increases it.

~~~
joejohnson
That's really clever. I would like to read news articles written like this:
you just click on the parts you want elaborate on.

~~~
lsb
Not only would it be more convenient for you, to focus on bits of the story
you're actually interested in, the newspaper could collect analytics on what
parts of the story you're interested in, and suggest further articles, and
highly-targeted ads, based on that.

Imagine you see an article about Christopher Hitchens accusing Henry Kissinger
of war crimes, and Kissinger is wearing a smart suit, and you dive in to find
out more about his couturier. The click-through rates on high-end clothing ads
would be vastly more.

Though, to take the opposite tack: would this encourage newspapers to turn
into something like mesothelioma blogspam? Writing about something, only
because the ads associated with it are profitable, instead of because it's a
Fact Worth Knowing?

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alttag
After thinking about it for a moment, my response is this: if the same idea
can be delivered in fewer (words|paragraphs), then show the reduced form.

Tighter writing is clearer, and thus easier to read. If you can trim, you
should be doing it anyway; leaving the extra amounts to cruft in most cases.

~~~
the-cakeboss
While I think that is one response to this, you seem to be diminishing the
importance that extra cruft has upon the _effective message_ conveyed. Simpler
is more economic, but it also eliminates those ephemeral things communicated
implicitly. A TLDR is certainly an adequate substitute for those not
interested enough, but an abbreviation can never capture the full expressive
thought contained in a larger, well written text.

Effective visual communication, whether it be anything from body of text to an
icon, is not necessarily contingent upon its complexity.

~~~
user-id
This is why including a summary prefacing long-form writing is such a good
idea in general.

~~~
the-cakeboss
I suppose, depending upon your aim.

(And by long-form, I assume you are talking about an article or something
rather than a book.) If you aren't concerned with people actually reading your
text then yes, thats probably a good idea. But prefacing in this manner
generally tends to disuade meaningful consumption, "why read in 4 pages what
was summed up in 4 sentences", a reader might think. I think prefacing could
arguably contribute to effective communication, but it stifles engagement
significantly.

Just my 2 cents...

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uptown
A good implementation I've seen of something like this is a responsive version
of data tables. Essentially, the data in the table is prioritized, and shown
or hidden based on the available real-estate, along with the ability to
override the defaults.

Demo available here: <http://filamentgroup.com/examples/rwd-table-patterns/>

~~~
cobychapple
I think this is a much better use-case for this kind of idea. I especially
like that even if I shrink down my browser, I can still re-show the content
that got hidden using the dropdown at top-right.

Maybe people's concerns about not seeing the full content could be alleviated
by a similar solution for re-showing the text that got hidden in the OP's
example?

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nitrogen
Kudos. A similar idea I had but never implemented (no doubt I'm not the only
one), that would show/hide text based on user knowledge rather than screen
size:

    
    
      Mar. 21, 2010
      -------------
      
      Sometimes when writing a blog post, article, or other composition that will be
      read by more than one class of audience, one audience can become bored or upset
      by content that is needed to bring another audience up to speed.  For example, a
      blog written by a highly technical person both to educate other technical people
      and to keep less-technical family members in the loop may include lots of
      simplified definitions of technical terms that most technical people already
      know.  To prevent alienation of the technical group while still preserving the
      definitions and explanations for non-technical readers, definitions could be
      surrounded by a span or div of class "nontech_definition".  A simple script,
      client-side custom stylesheet, or alternate stylesheet could then allow
      technical readers to set those definitions to visibilty:hidden or even
      display:none, and continue on their way uninterrupted by repetitive and
      unnecessary (for them) clarifications.  To alert the technical readers of this
      possibility, a note or link could be provided by the first definition on each
      page (or last, or as a footnote or tooltip, etc.) explaining how to hide the
      definitions.
    

This idea occurred to me while reading an article about VCs and startups. The
article made repeated reference to BI businesses, but I had to look up the
relevant definition of BI (in this case, business intelligence).

P.S. I'm sure my variation of the idea was anticipated by the creators of CSS.

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wisty
Here's a much better idea for responsive text: put a bare bones summary at the
top, then expand the points below. This is useful for people on mobiles.

It's also useful for people with disabilities - blind people apparently like
summaries and links, because otherwise it's hard for them to scan.

It also helps people who just aren't great at reading (or reading English),
which is a huge deal these days. Almost half the web is below average
intelligence now, and over half the web doesn't speak English natively. And
_everyone_ is busy.

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djtriptych
This only makes sense to me in a progressive loading situation. That is, you
load the summaries first, then load additional detail later in the rendering
timeline. Fine; I'd get that.

But I don't like the idea of not getting the full story every time. Why not
think a couple years out and assume everyone's connection is fast enough to
handle text - LOTS of text - even over a mobile connection. It's _text_. Like
one-or-two-bytes-per-character stuff.

I suppose it's also interesting as a navigational scheme. To show summaries
automatically and expand on some user action, a la clear
(<http://www.realmacsoftware.com/clear/>).

~~~
waqf
The problem with wanting to get the full story every time is that you look
something up on Wikipedia and you end up reading the entire site.

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adamrmcd
A useful tool for examining responsive content across multiple displays, such
as is demonstrated by this post, is
<http://www.benjaminkeen.com/misc/bricss/>. It's a javascript bookmarklet
that'll dynamically create multiple iframes, each set to the dimensions of
popular device screens, and display them all on a single desktop browser
window.

Great for side-by-side comparison and validation of media queries.

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mmahemoff
A simple, standards-based way to implement this would be to use the HTML5
details and summary elements.

<http://html5doctor.com/the-details-and-summary-elements/>

You could make default the details to be "open" for big screens and closed,
showing the summary only, for small ones. Downside is that you only get two
levels if you stick to the spirit and letter of the standard.

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SWattam
This is essentially the output phase of something I'm working on for my PhD.
I've written a tool that can read salience-tagged CSV input and output a page
of responsive text:

<http://stephenwattam.com/projects/responsivetext/>

The example's a bit crummy, but with some better input it should provide a
useful base for visualising important text features.

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Gring
My problem with those responsive web sites is that they only react to changes
of the browser window width, but not the height.

For example, on this page, you can change the width so that we only see 3
short sentences. But if you change your browser height from 800x800 to
800x350, you still get the full, long text, but it's cut off in the middle,
and there is a scroll bar. If the author's intent was to try hard to show
those 3 short sentences without readers needing to scroll, then it fails here.

Responsive websites should be thinking "ok, I've got this amount of space
here, let's fill it in the best way possible", not "ok let's make 3 designs
based on browser width".

~~~
monsterix
Absolutely. Responsive design is simply shifting two-column into one-column
and getting away with it. That's not always a preferred way, I'd say.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3597932>

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mosfet9
I like this technique, and I think it would be appropriate to extend it other
hierarchical types of data besides just text. For example, a product page
might show a list of reviews, with each shown as x/5 stars, and zooming in on
the reviews would show the review text. Same with product info - zoomed out =
overview, zoomed in: more details appear. This would require zooming in on a
specific section of a page though, not just making the entire page bigger.
Imagine browsing an online store or search results by zooming in/out using a
touch interface, rather than clicking on links to details/reviews/photos

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kylemaxwell
I love the idea, but I suspect that most people writing the sorts of content
that could benefit from this wouldn't take the time to break down their work
in a way that would take advantage of the layout.

~~~
georgebashi
I agree, but I think this format could work well in certain situations where
it can be done automatically, like for comments with karma. You could vary the
threshold for hidden comments, so mobile users see less but overall higher
quality comments (with a link to show hidden ones), and desktop users see all
by default.

~~~
lazerwalker
Are you talking about (a) completely hiding low-karma posts, or (b)
"minimizing" the text of those low-karma posts in a way similar to how the
example works?

If it's (a), that's basically what sites like Slashdot and Reddit already do
for desktop users.

If it's (b), the obvious question is how you algorithmically filter text to
only include the pertinent information (the given example is almost certainly
hard-coded), which doesn't sound like a simple question to answer.

~~~
waqf
Maybe you could put unpopular posts in shades of grey? Or smaller fonts?

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ajhit406
Hiding text elements on simple, informational sites can work. On mobile
devices, the performance hit of loading additional elements is compounded
because of the slower connection.

The general rule of thumb is if you have a complicated application, consider
building a mobile optimized (*not responsive) site or a native application
(even better if you have time & money). If you have a simple informational
site, I think hiding elements can work though you have to question if you
needed the extra copy in the first place.

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DennisP
This could be automated by using text summarizing algorithms which pull out
key sentences. Then, when you come across a long article, just shrink the
screen to summarize.

OS X has a text summarizer, which my brother used to great effect in grad
school. Most of his readings were digital, and he just ran them all through
the summarizer. He had no trouble participating in class discussions, though
occasionally a professor would look at him oddly and say "Well, that wasn't
really the main point."

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jcampbell1
The author is a clever and talented guy, but this is _terrible_ idea. I
sincerely thank the author for expanding the way I think about content and
presentation.

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jacobwg
Excellent idea. I like the idea of different content (rather than only
different design) for mobile devices - only show what is absolutely necessary.
I also really like that this is done with CSS; much cleaner than a mobile-only
site, though you aren't saving any bandwidth here (it's just text, though).
Anyway, nice experiment.

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tumblestrap
I could see this as a useful tool to create "skim" and "full text" versions of
content, especially reference material.

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comex
There are situations in which I might want less textual detail, but they are
never indicated by browser window size. Indeed, my iPhone, which has the
smallest "window size", provides an excellent experience for reading large
amounts of text (especially due to the Retina Display).

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joedev
Excellent idea. Especially in regard to shortening the titles on navigation
elements, buttons, and links. Longer, more descriptive labels when screen
real-estate allows. Shorter, perhaps more cryptic but made-to-fit, labels when
screen real estate is limited.

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laktek
I had been using very similar technique in my blog (<http://laktek.com>), for
excerpts and posts lists.

Actually, I believe all contents in a site should have a ranking and loaded
depending on the context.

~~~
gurraman
In the end, we'll have so much extra markup and scripts to execute that the
users get annoyed by slow downloads and choppy performance, instead of having
to zoom interfaces :)

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tosh
Interesting approach, ultimately though we'll want to optimize for physical
device size and distance between user & device :)

I guess this will get easier once almost every display uses the ppi of the
iPhone 4.

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chrmaury
Brilliant!

Are you using the Summly API to condense the text?

Could be a good solution to @kyle's comment.

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koenigdavidmj
The Boston Globe's home page (<http://bostonglobe.com/>) does something
similar with columns.

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cbendeb
I would hate to have to resize my window every time I want to read a more
concise version of an article. Still, looks like a fun exercise.

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25thhour
Ugh, this strikes me as a terrible idea.

If it's not important enough to show on mobile it can probably be removed on
the desktop too.

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gue5t
After a significant amount of window-resizing this ended up throwing webkit
into an infinite loop. Impressive.

~~~
adamrmcd
Which browser/version/OS?

~~~
gue5t
WebkitGTK 1.6.3 on Linux. It's deep within a size recalculation callback, so
my guess is that scrollbars appearing/disappearing cause a "feedback" loop
where there is no stable size to choose for the given window size.

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indubitably
One problem is that you’re delivering all the content to the mobile device
anyway.

~~~
EnderMB
Isn't this a problem with responsive design as a whole any way?

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peterhajas
It's like the OS X Summarize service, but on a webpage :)

~~~
GuiA
Has anyone actually ever used this service to any productive end? I never saw
the appeal (and don't understand how it got there in the first place), but
maybe it's extremely useful to some niche category of users.

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bmuenzenmeyer
umm, <http://www.abookapart.com/products/responsive-web-design>

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monsterix
Somehow, I feel that even responsive web-design is a half-ass solution to
scaling a web-app from a mobile/hand-held to a LCD screen.

For example, right now I am watching your Responsive Text page on an 1920 x
1080 (49" LCD panel) and the text did not scale to a level to which it could.
Besides it's not just about font-size or image scaling. It's about managing
the size of each pixel too, so that things remain in proportion.

I know this is a hard problem, and there has been no acceptable/worthy answer
to this question on SOF either:
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8421533/how-to-obtain-
ctr...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8421533/how-to-obtain-ctrl-
behavior-on-a-browser-using-javascript)

