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by mst 1609 days ago
This might be great but the moving stars in the background meant I had to close the tab before I could find out.

I'm sure the developers just thought it was pretty but _argh_.

(note that I am judging myself for posting a comment complaining about a site design rather than anything meaningful but my visual processing is still screwed up several minutes later and I dearly hope somebody who reads this will avoid making the same mistake later as a result because -ow-)

5 comments

I'm astonished that a few moving dots could impair anyones vision.

I take it you totally avoid video games and film/tv? Because they are much more intense.

Just to be clear, "visual processing" being screwed up doesn't have to mean a vision impairment; The combination of dark background with bright moving dots can make certain people motion sick, especially when combined with static objects in the foreground that you need to focus on. The fun part is that these types of processing quirks usually do stick around for a bit and fade over time.

I guess I'd kind of compare sensitizing stimulus and subsequent removal to saturation in a solution where metered dilution was the only way to bring the saturation down to normal.

Speaking as somebody who likes to stand out on deck on a boat in a storm, I was extremely surprised to discover that the design triggered what I think should probably be described as a bug in my wetware.

No nausea or anything, just visceral discomfort that left me having trouble focusing my eyes right for several minutes.

I think on the whole I'm more annoyed at my brain than anything else, that was a -weird- experience.

That sounds unpleasant :( brains are weird!
every single post on hacker news has at least one comment that completely ignores website content and critiques css / web framework. it’s just a given.
Yes, but I'm still not at all happy that this time it was me.

Bloody malfunctioning wetware.

A good use for the prefers-reduced-motion media query in CSS.
Yes, I agree the page is less then good. We hope to get a new version out soon.

Great to see all feedback and we will update the page.

I wish you the best of luck and hopefully at a later date will be able to have a constructive technical opinion rather than whining because something in my brain was apparently incompatible with your pretty :D
I thought the same thing, it made me feel a tiny bit dizzy.
I still feel like kind of an ass but my guess there'd be other people out there with the same wetware bug as me meant it seemed worth posting anyway while also judging myself for being That Guy ;)
It could work if it was only on scroll,