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>bad formatting

If you can elaborate, I would very much appreciate it. I'm always interested in doing better.

Why use Puppeteer etc. when you don't have to? What is the argument for using these additional tools versus not using them?

You don't have max-width set on the text, so unless you have your browser window resized to very small size the paragraphs will span your whole screen.

pwg 628 days ago

Which places you, the reader, fully in control of the width of lines you prefer to see. Adjust your browser window width, or apply a user style sheet to tell your browser to format the text the way you want to see it formatted.

I knew this reply would come... How many people do you think use custom browser stylesheets? It's probably smaller than 0.1% of the internet population and everyone moved on to formatting text so everyone can enjoy good readability. Also not all devices have the luxury of supporting custom stylesheets.

Of course it's always up to the site owner, but most people want people to read what they share.

nsonha 628 days ago

> Adjust your browser window width, or apply a user style sheet

very funny, both jokes

I see. I don't have a wide-screen monitor (still using an old tube type until it finally expires but it's taking a few decades, lol). I've wondered whether people actually like reading websites on wide-screen. Some do and some don't. What would you suggest for a max width?

You could also try zooming in. My apps don't expand to full width because of the video box but you can zoom.

There's a lot of info about this but usually 500-700px or ~80 characters will be much easier to read: https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/108801/what-is-the-be...

bityard 628 days ago

I have the opposite problem. I typically have many browser windows open at the same time but only two screens, and many sites that I use are designed to assume that everyone has full-screen browsers.

micahdeath 628 days ago

Similar problem here. My resolution is 1440x900 (27in Monitor) paired w/ 1280x720 (32in TV) and I keep 3 Browsers Open (Edge, Opera, FireFox - each has intent). Each are at 3/4 width and 1/2 height and offset so I can see each partially.

With this setup, many sites work, but a few... a few have a top ad banner, a side banner and a footer of 'cookie acceptance'... then add in a 'subscribe to our email' and a google login prompt.... (Game Wiki's.. I game in smaller windows too -- what good is a multi tasking computer if you don't use it?)

gabrielsroka 628 days ago

The red text on a yellow background is not great. Neither is a serif font. Also it should be JavaScript with a capital S.

Red text on yellow - you mean the website? Would you like the text to be darker?

And Beautiful Soup should be BeautifulSoup. Who makes the rules?

gabrielsroka 628 days ago

Yes, the website. Better contrast is good. Black on white works great.

Margins would also be nice on the left and right.

Beautiful Soup is two words. Just look at their website.

bityard 628 days ago

Too much contrast makes it hard to read too. (With bonus eye strain.)

Is there a happy in-between? Maybe not. What looks perfect to one user might appear atrocious to another. What is a poor website operator to do???

I dislike black-on-white and don't understand gray-on-black which seems to be popular now due to gamma settings being cranked up to 11 or something. I try to use some color as an in-between but that may take some time to "perfect".

ricardo81 627 days ago

Cloudflare et al do a lot of fingerprinting of the user agent. Any website that has 'high' anti-bot settings will return a 403 with anything but a browser. source: I've scraped lots of things.

bdcravens 628 days ago

Solutions that want to automate in the context of their customers' browser. For example, ListPerfectly, a solution for cross-listing to eBay, Poshmark, etc, does this in their browser extension.

This is just regular browser extension behavior though, a bit different than the use case talked about in this post.