
Medium is Winning - lmm
http://m50d.github.io/2014/01/11/medium-is-winning.html
======
strict9
I wish I could read that article, but full-width sentences and tiny typeface
are painful. The beautiful large typography and layout of Medium is one reason
it's winning, despite its sometimes laughable content.

~~~
pavlov
In Chrome, the "Zoom In" command is in the View menu.

Zoomed in by two increments (125%), the font size and margins of the article
become reasonably close to the Medium gold standard. Hopefully this may help
you finish reading the article.</mildsarcasm>

~~~
strict9
I already browse at 125%. It takes 200% to get to a comfortable readable
level, and that doesn't address full width sentences. Too much effort for a
wall of text.

Typography matters.

~~~
lmm
If you don't like reading text at that width, why's your browser that width?
Surely you don't want to have 2/3 of your screen blank white.

~~~
mkr-hn
You can put a lot of stuff in the other 2/3\. Stuff that readers will enjoy. I
keep a top post widget on my own blog. People seem to like it, and I know I
like having easy access to more stuff from a writer whose words I didn't mind
reading. The aversion to criticism you've shown in this thread makes me think
I won't want to see anything else from you, so maybe it's for the better in
your case.

~~~
lmm
> You can put a lot of stuff in the other 2/3\. Stuff that readers will enjoy.
> I keep a top post widget on my own blog. People seem to like it, and I know
> I like having easy access to more stuff from a writer whose words I didn't
> mind reading

I found that kind of stuff offputting. It was one of the things I really
noticed when thinking about why I preferred to read on Medium: there are a few
social things at the end and those very subtle comment things, but for most of
the time while one's reading it really is 2/3 blank white. (I sometimes use
clearly to make medium wider - didn't want to complicate the post by
mentioning that).

> The aversion to criticism you've shown in this thread makes me think I won't
> want to see anything else from you, so maybe it's for the better in your
> case.

Sorry to hear that. I was pleasantly surprised the post made the front page,
pleased to see 7 comments... and then it turned out none of them were engaging
with my words, they were all just complaining about the presentation (and
worse, they're all the same complaints, and ones I've seen before. I don't
know what I'm supposed to do about this (given that I'm happy with the design
and disagree with those complaints) - I doubt people would read a FAQ).

Which I guess is what I get for writing a post on the subject of presentation,
but it was still pretty disappointing.

~~~
mkr-hn
Presentation is everything. It's not just a cliche they put in business books
and MBA lectures. Screen-width text is fine if you only want it read by people
with the patience to use third party tools for an unknown author.

~~~
lmm
I prefer full-width; I find it more readable, and I wish more sites would use
it. Given that, it would feel hypocritical to not use full-width text on my
own site.

------
Kluny
Hey imm, could you just really quickly replace your stylesheet with this?

header h1 { margin-bottom:3px; margin-top:3px; }

nav a { padding-top: 10px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-right: 10px; }

h1 a { text-decoration:none; color:black; }

h1 a:hover { font-weight:bold; font-size:105%; text-decoration:underline; }

body { padding:20px; font-size:120%; }

p, li { max-width:800px; }

li { margin-bottom:6px; }

small { font-size:75%; }

~~~
lmm
You misspell my name, you talk down to me, you didn't even take a superficial
look at my source or you'd realize the stylesheet is external, part of
strapdownjs. No.

~~~
markdown
Wow. Try this next time:

> Hey, thanks! I didn't write the css, and I can't change it, but I appreciate
> you trying to help :)

~~~
lmm
"could you just really quickly" is a long way from a sincere attempt to help.

~~~
mkr-hn
Only if you have an ego that shatters at the lightest feedback.

------
quadrangle
Your stupid website can't display plain old text in a reasonable format
without JavaScript. Go fix your stupid site.

~~~
prodigal_erik
[http://i.imgur.com/kc7IXPj.png](http://i.imgur.com/kc7IXPj.png)

Using a long-forgotten element to disable line breaking is pointlessly
painful, but isn't as bad as some people get when they think every text
processing tool runs javascript. The author sounded clued-in enough to know
CSS, I don't know why he would think that doing it all in javascript isn't
strictly worse.

------
coin
I dislike Medium disabling pinchzoom for mobile devices (user-scalable="no").
I have no idea why they think this is a good idea.

~~~
vshade
It is to avoid the 300 ms lag waiting for a second touch to zoom.

~~~
coin
Why would a text content site care about a 300 msec click delay?

------
vezzy-fnord
I'm not a big fan of Medium's hip UI, to be fair. I also find their options to
be awkwardly placed. It took me a while to figure out where the "sign out"
button was when I first used it, for instance.

------
ecesena
[Warn: a bit promotional]

I'd like to have your opinion on Theneeds [1]. It can't be compared to Medium
as we're not for blogging, but we do a lot of personalization/recommendation.

At signup you select your interests and we build personalized streams of
curated content mixed with user generated one. Then, we learn from your
activity to get smarted about what really matters to you.

Moreover, we have a newsletter (default daily, but you can change the
frequency) where we recommend you 8 news across your interests.

[1] [http://www.theneeds.com](http://www.theneeds.com)

~~~
sachleen
not sure if it's just me but clicking the windows store link opens the store
app's "home screen" instead of your app's download screen.

~~~
ecesena
Thanks a lot for the feedback.

I guess you mean for Windows 8? Which market are you in? As the app is only
available in the US + a few others (eng speaking).

------
abdophoto
[This is also a bit promotional]

Although I do think Medium is doing a great job of letting you discover some
good reading material, I often find it a bit confusing too.

Not too long I co-created [http://thetechblock.com](http://thetechblock.com)
out of similar frustration of not being able to find good tech-related
articles. Reddit often doesn't show the stuff we find, Techmeme is very
Silicon Valley oriented and HN can get a bit noisy. Feel free to let me know
what you guys think.

------
Ryel
Holy readability, batman.

------
andreaja
"So it's ironic that, despite all these established old-media recommendation
engines, there was nothing for one of my favourite media - online articles."

Prismatic[0] comes to mind.

[0]: [http://getprismatic.com](http://getprismatic.com)

