[DataDive]

Reply: things don't work well for the same reason this very post is so hard to read wall of text.

I find it deeply ironic that the author can't even produce readable text, while complaining about other, much more complex tasks not working.

The author refuses to take minimal, common-sense measures to make the text more readable.

[dasil003]

No, the reason is because there are different tradeoffs, and things that work well often trade off other things.

For instance, Dan is one of the best writers for illustrating a general point with dozens of rapid fire small examples. This gives the point credibility in a way that a writer who might craft an easier-to-digest narrative doesn't have, but can be tiresome for those don't like the style.

[f1shy]

On the other hand, you can set read mode, and because the page is so basic, it works perfectly...

[fuzzfactor]

Exactly.

It's not a wall of text, it's a line of text.

Although it is marked up according to HTML guidelines.

Technically speaking that's why it also qualifies as a single line of HTML.

Similar to a single line (per paragraph) of plain text which can then be pasted into any email window, for better right-nonjustification than average.

A single line of HTML will justify according to any user's browser default settings, so you always get what you want in that regard. And this one is so generic that it more closely resembles a clearly typewritten page or newspaper column, depending on how wide you size your browser combined with its default font size. Like it's supposed to do.

It's not "quite" a novel, but truly does fit the classic "short-story" layout.

Basically about as close as you get to the most readable professionally typeset classic literature. The only thing missing is the traditional indentation to start each paragraph, but it's worth it to retain universality on the web since tabs are so unreliable in browsers.

There's just a lot there, almost 52kb of useful text content which takes up the vast majority of this huge 58kb web page.

On this page I don't think he is trying to convince people that he is "a man of few words".

With the same readily-available one-line of content though, maybe there is a text connoisseur who is enough of an expert to get it down way below 58kb with far better readability on a wider variety of default browsers too. That's an example I'd like to see.