[keithwarren]

His site definitely lacks style but I would argue the design is from that era as well. To be fair, I doubt he designed the look and feel of his site - and the truth is most great designers tend to have crappy sites because they are busy with real work and dont need to market themselves that heavily. I would guess he is probably in that boat, he doesnt really care about his web site because he has much more important things to do.

[slantyyz]

You have to remember that Tufte's area of specialty is in the area of visualizing quantitative information. He's not a designer (although he is a sculptor, apparently) or GUI guru even if he has opinions on them.

Clearly a "dated" design isn't enough to stop you from visiting a site. Hacker News definitely has a dated feel too.

[Kliment]

Does it? I think it's the wave of the future. Or at least I hope it is. It's as close to pure content and zero chrome as I've seen anywhere. Tufte's site may look old, but it's fairly information-dense, and the comment system is the best I've seen anywhere.

[slantyyz]

My comment was intended less as a critique of Tufte or HN than to point out that the parent post's criticism on Tufte's site is a little off base.

[oloolo]

Tufte's site is s piece of crap, completely ridiculous. Criticizing websites is easy, making websites is hard. You're not an expert in user interface design if you haven't done user interface design.

[slantyyz]

Your first sentence sort of illustrates your second sentence's point, no?

[oloolo]

Well, in contrast to Tufte, I actually have built a couple of Interfaces...

[kenjackson]

That's odd. Most great designers I've seen have pretty good sites. If not a bit gawdy, but certainly never this frumpy.