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by bearbin 2498 days ago
I had a short browse and I was really impressed by how much nicer to read you have managed to make wikipedia. Normally I much prefer static HTML to whatever mess the latest javascript framework manages to conjure up but what you've done really seems to work.

The text actually fills the screen rather than just hiding in the gutter on the left, and even though you've removed most styling cues around links and actions, it's done in a way that it's still obvious what everything does, so the main content can be clearer.

The dynamic sidebar table of contents is also particularly effective - on desktop, everybody has a widescreen monitor now and it's disappointing now few sites take advantage of it.

My only two critical points are your choice of typeface, which is awful and significantly degrades the experience (browsing with fonts turned off is a great improvement), and the speed - not only does clicking a link take several seconds to do something but there isn't really any indication whether things are happening or not.

1 comments

Thanks for the feedback. There will be a "font-switch" option and I may need to do some user testing for the best default font.

The speed issue is really a Wikipedia (and Archive.org) API fetching issue plus some parsing time. I am planning to make the data fetching parallel, but need to do some data-source-code refactoring first. A better loading indication UI will also help.