
3px of padding makes all the difference in the world - jjb123
http://blog.garrytan.com/rageskitching-facebook-2013-edition-3px-of-padding-makes-all-the-difference-in-the-world
======
lukeholder
Maybe the original design had the even padding but facebook A/B tested it and
found that people are more likely to read the comments below if there is less
padding on the bottom?

While I agree that is visually looks more balanced, it takes more than my
opinion to decide that facebook made a design mistake.

~~~
scrapcode
This is a perfectly reasonable explanation that is often overlooked by
designers. This also happens to be why I don't particularly love design
anymore. What looks right and what converts the best are two different
animals, and I don't like purposely creating ugly shit with my name on it.

~~~
eksith
This is often a result of designers failing to step outside their "designer
window", if you will, and step into the users' shoes. It's possible to make
something look right _and_ translate that into conversions if you have enough
of an outside perspective.

That said, it's pretty easy to get too involved in your own work to notice a
bigger picture so breaks to step back are highly recommended.

~~~
nikatwork
When I was a/b testing UI designs for a stable of eCommerce sites, quite often
the blatantly fugly design would convert much better. Especially for low-
price-driven sites. My personal theory was that people figure the unpolished,
crappy looking site is more bargain-driven (kinda like a dingy dollar store in
real life).

Sticking a giant firetruck-red "CONVERT" button surrounded by flames and
rainbows really does sell better. But boy does it look awful.

~~~
jonknee
This is also evidenced by Amazon.com still looking really crowded and ugly.
They test every last thing and if this is what they're using, it's because it
works.

~~~
scrapcode
This same concept goes for those horrendously ugly, cookie-cutter, inline
sales pages plastered with maroon Comic Sans headlines that have highlighter-
yellow backgrounds. I've been there and done that, and the facts prevail. As a
good/(as in one that creates aesthetically pleasing things) designer, you
actually suck conversion wise.

I haven't done much research behind it, but I believe this has to do with why
the flat UI is so pleasing. I can only imagine that it is easy for anyone to
notice that it's beautiful regardless of technological/design
experience/knowledge.

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inopinatus
He has a point that many interface designers will appreciate and others rankle
at as nit-picking.

But I was struck by the irony of this particular observation being made via a
blog that uses a body typeface with ever-so-slightly but definitely too-narrow
tracking (letter spacing). Or maybe the kerning data is off. I would have it
loosening by about 1/200em overall, with the most noticeable improvement
becoming apparent on adjacent vertical strokes.

EDIT: the samples of this face, "Oxygen", that I see at the creator's site
(Vernon Adams) don't suffer from the same issue so perhaps something has gone
awry in the conversion to WOFF.

~~~
ollysb
I've never found a way to fine tune the letter-spacing using css, the smallest
unit seems to be 0.07em which is usually too much. Would love to know how to
do it if it's possible.

~~~
alptrv
text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; may help in some cases

~~~
leephillips
Is this safe to use now? If I recall correctly this crashed some browsers not
too long ago, and could cause some extreme rendering glitches, such as text
disappearing.

~~~
alptrv
Uhm, didn't know about that it never happened to me

------
tealtan
A reminder that the imbalance of 3px may be intentional:

It means that the post is closer to the comments are closer than to the user,
and it pulls your eye more naturally to the comments than if they were
perfectly equal.

Sometimes asymmetry is a useful design element, too.

Edit: I noticed that lukeholder has said the same thing.

------
stared
For me, the current version is better. And in general, I don't get the
obsession of designers to have text padded as much as possible. I like low
padding and small fonts (unless it is put to extreme; but on good sites it
never happens, whereas "overpadding" is more than common).

Perhaps it is about density of information.

Perhaps it is that I like to have a very different spacing between two lines
of the same paragraphs and two lines with a paragraph break. (So my brain can
effortlessly divide it into parts.)

Perhaps... it is just a matter of taste. But I guess I am not the only one.

~~~
obstacle1
I think it's less about padding-for-padding's-sake and more about maintaining
symmetry in design. Notice that both the author's changes were fundamentally
just restoring symmetry to elements within a box layout.

~~~
stared
In this particular case the symmetry makes some sense. But I would rather cut
the top (which is wasting a lot of space) than padded the bottom to match the
top.

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hnriot
It must be a really quiet day for this to make the front page! I can't believe
I just wasted time reading that.

~~~
eksith
One single timesuck in a reservoir of timesucks? HN is hardly the place to
spend time if you actually have things to do.

~~~
bastag3
Well, that makes the article better, eh ..?

------
joshmlewis
A lot of people (have and will) scoff at the idea 3 whole pixels? And I agree
it does seem trivial, and will those 3 pixels really change the way users
interact and make users happier? Who knows. I know as a designer it does
indeed look better when it's visually balanced, but all that aside, I am a
huge fan of craftsmanship and attention to detail in ones craft. More so with
crafts made by hand (wood, metal, glass) but also it translates over into
design and programming.

As a designer I want to put love and attention into all my designs and I want
each one to be better than the last as to always be improving. Those three
pixels may not mean much to you, or most, but it's those types of things that
when you pull out the magnifying glass or really admire a piece of art, that
really matter. A lot of times I fail personally at making sure each detail is
right, but I would hope that someone could one day look at my work and say he
really paid attention to the details and he wasn't just rushing or not caring
about the projects he did.

So I think it's less of wow is this really worth all the fuss over 3 pixels
but more of a testament to how Facebook values the details in design. Sure
Facebook has design that's decently pleasing to the eyes, but you have to
wonder why this went unnoticed. If it was me coding the feed, I would've
caught it and fixed but I wonder whoever was doing the coding actually stopped
to think about it or tried to fix it and got shot down or whatever reason it
could have been. It could've been an honest mistake, or a purposeful one, or
just someone trying to meet a deadline.

To send a note out to everyone for a thought to think about, really try to put
some sort of personal attention to the details when you're working. Whether
it's programing or designing, you may not think opening up your code editor
and finding the right line in the CSS to fix those 3 pixels is worth it, but
someone one day might see that and have to wonder why and if you care about
the quality of your work and the image your putting on your brand, I would
take it personally to make sure it was perfect. I think this goes a long way
with moving up and getting noticed. Anyone could skip it and it's not the end
of the world, but finding people that care enough to put such attention and
detail in their work to make sure everything is perfect are the kinds of
people that are worth having on your team.

------
minimaxir
I've noticed Facebook has been doing a _lot_ of AB testing on me lately.
[Example: My Graph Search bar is now White-on-Blue instead of Blue-on-Blue.
Also, the sidebar with birthday notifications used to display Friend Requests
that told you who Friend Requested you; now it's gone.]

This spacing behavior is likely also a part of that. It just happened to me
very, very recently, and there used to be sufficient padding in that UI
location.

~~~
shritesh
It's happening to me too. Every day something looks broken (read _different_
). The Facebook logo was not centered before the graph search for a couple of
days, the height of the chat box was changed and same goes for the padding.
All I hope for them is to remove (or shift) the video chat button. I've had
lots of accidental clicks on it.

~~~
toong
If enough users have those accidental clicks, it might skew the a/b testing
results :-)

------
TheBiv
I have noticed that most flame wars happen over small things; not simply bc
they matter, but bc the opinions are so simple that everyone has one.

~~~
davidw
This is called 'bikeshedding': <http://bikeshed.com/> . How do you all like
_that_ design?

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fuddle
I don't think it makes any difference.

~~~
_a2_
I've spent about a minute on comparing both pictures to see "how much more
crowded the text is in the unfixed version"©

------
coldtea
Somebody should fix his OCD.

It's not a bug -- by any stretch of the imagination.

Unequal padding is a legitimate design decision as any other other.

But I see how it can annoy the hell out of compulsives.

~~~
Smudge
Good designers are often perfectionists. Calling them "compuslives" is
dismissive, and is also insulting to people who actually suffer from OCD.

~~~
coldtea
> _Good designers are often perfectionists._

Symmetry is not perfection. Plenty of unbeatable designs and works of art are
non symmetric.

And the poster of TFA is not a "good designer" IIRC, merely some annoyed
blogger. I was talking about HIS annoyance with an assymetry (that might very
well be intended) and not about some designer sweating the small details.

> _Calling them "compuslives" is dismissive, and is also insulting to people
> who actually suffer from OCD._

It might be dismissive, but it's also quite accurate. Could even be medically
accurate for a lot of them.

(Seems you cannot say anything in this day and age without "insulting"
someone. So be it. I have mild OCD too, and I could not care less about
someone calling me "compulsive").

~~~
Smudge
I guess you could call a YC partner "some annoyed blogger," since in this case
he seems annoyed about a 3px difference. But, hey, guess what? His annoyance
actually prompted an internal bug at Facebook. Somebody, at least, cared
enough to consider the difference.

> Symmetry is not perfection.

Being a "perfectionist" is not the same as actually producing "perfection."
It's about setting extremely high standards. I never said I agreed that the
extra 3px was better, but I understand the importance of the decision, however
minor.

I also understand that, in most cases, 3px won't actually make much of a
difference. But hundreds of pixel-level decisions over the course of an entire
project _will_ make a difference in the final presentation. I'm not saying all
of them are right or wrong, but unless you're going to A/B test every single
debatable bit of padding or margin, deferring to a designer who cares about
the presentation and aesthetics makes sense. It _is_ often subjective, but so
what? It's the designer's job to care about these things.

I still think that equating this to OCD is simply not accurate. As someone who
does _not_ suffer from the disorder, I guess I can't actually speak to whether
or not it's insulting, so that was poor word choice. But I do know that living
with OCD can be totally debilitating, and to say that it could be "medically
accurate for a lot of them" (designers? perfectionists?) is just plain wrong.
This is what OCD looks like:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrRqb5cvM5E>
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4sadYeLHKU>

------
gridmaths
<satire>

yeah, but over 1.8 billion page views.. thats 3px is a _lot_ of extra
bandwidth.

Not to mention all those screen pixels gone to waste.. thats 3 times the
screen width every time.. say 50x3x1280 px per page view.. jesus thats enough
to power a small village in the third world.

Not to mention the Carbon footprint...

</satire>

~~~
zimpenfish
Might I politely - as an Englishman - make the suggestion that if you feel the
need to wrap it with "<satire>" tags, you're doing it wrong?

------
recursive
> Can you see how much more crowded the text is in the unfixed version, and
> how much more balanced it could be?

No. I had to open the two images in separate tabs and rapidly toggle to even
see the difference.

------
tome
I'm glad I cannot tell the difference otherwise my web browsing experience
would be frustrating every day.

------
Kiro
How can you call something completely subjective a "bug"?

~~~
gridmaths
if you believe beauty [ or even readability ] is a feature

~~~
gridmaths
why downvote ? I hilite a logical inference :

If readability is a feature, then lack of readability is a lack of that
feature, which is a bug [ as measured against the goals of the product ]

~~~
Dylan16807
Readability is not subjective. You answered a question with a non sequitur.

~~~
gridmaths
Readability is not subjective ?

So you have a mathematical formula for Readability, excellent.

That would be simpler than adjusting things by 3px until they just look
spectacular and zing off the page.

~~~
Dylan16807
You can measure how fast people read. It varies per person but it's not an
opinion.

But this is not about readability. It's about what looks 'better', whether you
prefer balance vs. having the comments closer. The real debate is about a
subjective thing, and not about readability.

------
josteink
_Can you see how much more crowded the text is in the unfixed version, and how
much more balanced it could be?_

Not really. No.

------
calebio
I'm interested to see if this gets changed or if it becomes an inside joke at
Facebook.

~~~
garry
That would be awesome if it became an inside joke!

------
llort
Garry is wrong. What looks visually pleasing is not necessarily the right
layout. Historically, typesetters only had paragraphs to set in doing a book
layout. Now in the age of post DTP, layout can be more expressive. That is
exactly what the lesser margin of 8px does. In this case, it means that you
are liking the status message only 8px away, and not liking the author.

------
bbx
It's always tricky to adjust the padding/margin values because you need to
take into account each case in which these 3 added pixels will have an impact.
Maybe the style applied to this particular box is shared with other elements
or maybe this box is used in other contexts where 3 pixels more will look odd.
And I guess that for a website as dense as Facebook, it's easy to try to
adjust something while breaking something else.

On a side note, whenever I set the margins of adjacent elements, I take some
time to wonder if I'll put a margin-bottom on the 1st element or a margin-top
on the 2nd one, or put both margin-top and bottom on the middle element and
none on the 1st and 3rd. My rule of thumb ends up being the following one: use
only one margin (top or bottom) on all adjacent elements, because some of them
might disappear on some pages, so I need to provide some kind of flexibility
in order to maintain a decent spacing for each and every scenario.

~~~
wellsjohnston
Facebook is probably built in a much mote modular way. I doubt fixing it would
break anything else. Facebook engineers should be able to figure this out very
quickly.

------
matt-attack
This is beginning to remind me of the colorists in Hollywood who color-time
feature film. They will obsess day in and day out about the subtleties of a
particular hue of some background out-of-focus trinket. Complete and utter
minutiae.

I'm sorry, but as an average reader with decent visual tastes, I can safely
say that those 3 pixels are not relevant to me.

------
ruchirablog
I don't see how this is annoying and adding 3px is going to "make the
difference in the world" Look at the authors blog. see how much space between
the header and the "<Back to blog" and the content. Fix yours first. Its
actually annoying than this

------
pbreit
Padding is not always supposed to be "balanced". It makes we we for some
sections to be closer or further to other sections. In this case, he extra
padding probably looks very slightly better. But I don't think it's the way it
is from lack of love.

------
Sealy
This is the same obsessive minor attention to detail that turned Apple into a
multi BILLION dollar company.

... and well deserved at that.

I say good on you Gary, its people like you who push the world forward,
continually looking for ways to improve things no matter how minor.

------
grrrando
Two things -

First: Where on Facebook is this style? In my current layout (which is the
current "stable" layout - pre-graph-search), I don't see this anywhere. Not on
my feed, not on my timeline. It looks like a timeline post (feed posts don't
have a border around them like this does).

Second: What bugs me way more about the screenshots posted is that the left
side of all the info doesn't line up. The large profile picture and the body
text are (!) 3px more padded than the action bar, the "Like" list and the
comment area. But! It should be noted that, again, I don't see this anywhere
on FB, just the screens that Garry posted.

------
davidw
> Can you see how much more crowded the text is in the unfixed version, and
> how much more balanced it could be?

No way I would have seen that without it having been pointed out. I would have
been looking at the actual content.

------
examancer
This guy is clearly a moron! That spacing needs 5 extra pixels, not 3!

Seriously though, great blog post. He is exactly right about the need for more
spacing. I feel like he buries the lead... the last change he makes to the
bottom comment section is a night and day difference. Not only does the last
change produce an more significant improvement, it appears to make up at least
the number of pixels lost in the extra padding. That should take away any
possible objection someone might raise concerning a reduction in amount of
content that fits on the screen.

------
skitch
WTF is "rageskitching"? I Have searched google far and wide for both
"Rageskitch" and "Skitch" and as far as I can tell, it is hanging on to the
bumper of a car while skating.

------
skriticos2
In a time of display resolution variances between 96 and 250+ ppi (slowly
coming to big screen too), why are we still talking about fixed pixels instead
of relative units?

~~~
senorerik
The px unit in css is a bit misleading, the measurement doesn't always
correspond to the size of the device pixels. From the spec[1]:

"For a CSS device, these dimensions are either anchored by relating the
physical units to their physical measurements, or by relating the pixel unit
to the reference pixel. For print media and similar high-resolution devices,
the anchor unit should be one of the standard physical units (inches,
centimeters, etc). For lower-resolution devices, and devices with unusual
viewing distances, it is recommended instead that the anchor unit be the pixel
unit. For such devices it is recommended that the pixel unit refer to the
whole number of device pixels that best approximates the reference pixel."

[1] <http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-values/#absolute-lengths>

------
lnanek2
Seems fine to me. The content is all closely spaced and the header is set off
with a larger spacing. This helps keep the header separate from the content,
which in turn helps people skim past content they don't like. If they did this
change, next he'd be demanding each piece of content have the same large
spacing between it, they end up having a lot more spacing, showing less
content above the fold, and having reduced engagement metrics.

------
miga
If your really hate someone, teach them to recognize bad spacing and bad
kerning: <http://xkcd.com/1015/>

------
kybernetyk
I found this really annoying for some time now, too. I hope with someone like
Garry being vocal about this issue Facebook will act and fix it.

------
sytelus
I actually like the one more densely packed version. One of the core
difference in design of Hacker News and other sites is just density of
information. I prefer Hacker News densly packed layout a lot more than other
sparse. So I guess it's all matter of opinion rather than absolute truth or
one right way.

------
chaselectric
This is my observation: <http://imgur.com/zfxvWzV>

------
randartie
Isn't it possible that this is simply a bug? If you happen to have a location
when you post a status, it goes under the comment with a padding of 8px above
and below. If the location is missing then a default of 8px appear below the
status text.

I don't think it makes a difference

------
therealunreal
He's almost right. 8px is not enough but it should be at least 13px, not 11px.

------
aasarava
Facebook has since updated its design, and the padding is better balanced. My
account got upgraded to the new design a month or so back. I assume they are
rolling it out slowly.

------
jlward4th
Love the irony in this sentence: A site that fixes these problems is a site is
being taken care of with the loving attention to detail of someone who can see
the difference.

------
maximem
Even 1px matter ! With trained eyes you can see all the defaults on every
websites... Annoying!

------
causeisunknown
Pixel nazi

~~~
vtedesco
You said it before me !

------
guard-of-terra
vk.com seems to get both things right (judging paddings visually)

