[4ndrewl]

> This is a beautifully designed and illustrated page.

Hard disagree. It's incredibly distracting and the constant movement of text, the introduction and disappearance of images within the medium makes it incredibly difficult to concentrate on the message.

It screams 'look at me, I'm really smart with all these neat effects'. But you know what interface for articles like this has served us pretty well for > 1000 years? Just the words. Please, just display the words rather than this conceit.

[nntwozz]

"A word is worth a thousand pictures".

— Apple HIG

In 1985, after a year of finding that pretty but unlabeled icons confused customers, the Apple human interface group took on the motto "A word is worth a thousand pictures.

https://www.asktog.com/columns/038MacUITrends.html

Linked from Daring Fireball back in the day.

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/05/12/tog-word

[gcau]

This is advice many modern designers need to know - I don't like seeing an icon and having no idea what it does without clicking it, and having to guess what the icon might mean, where a label could easily fit, or replace the icon, and be a vastly better UX, but "looking good" is more important to most designers.

[thfuran]

>I don't like seeing an icon and having no idea what it does without clicking it

And that's assuming you're lucky enough to be using a UI that clearly marks what's interactible instead of being maximally flat.

[nemomarx]

I always assumed it was to avoid translation work?

[zerocrates]

I've seen some contexts where this is what's happening. IKEA instructions would be one, or I've also seen it in some board games, where things like cards will use icons so only the instruction book needs to be translated.

But in UIs you usually have to have some text equivalent somewhere, on hover or long-press or in a menu or just as text for screenreader users, so you don't generally get to avoid translation even if you take visible labels away.

[gcau]

It's hard to believe this is the interface for a page titled "our interfaces have lost their senses", and the author not being aware of the irony.

[Wowfunhappy]

The author's thesis is that interfaces should activate your senses. That means movement and images and so on.

You don't have to agree with the author, but I don't see any irony here!

[wpm]

Interfaces should not hijack my scroll movements ever

[intrasight]

That struck me as well. Whatever interesting message the author may have been trying to convey was lost on me, and probably many others, because of the visual distractions. Visual distractions are precisely the problem that we're facing with modern interfaces.

[rpcope1]

The images are also irritating and jarring when you notice that the bokeh is fake and that they're all AI generated (and AI generated images have really headache inducing depth of field effects).

[rambambram]

Thanks for pointing this out. Never thought of it like that, but I guess you're right, I sensed something in those kind of images. Except for the sugar rush of saturated colors and overall soft blur of course, that always seems to be there with AI images.

[technol0gic]

"sugar rush of saturated colors" is a great way to put it

[nvllsvm]

Fully agreed.

I'm currently stuck on LTE due to a power outage. The page is horrible to try to read due to most of the images being either in the process of being loaded or not loaded at all.

[mystified5016]

I'm on gigabit fiber and I still had images scrolling in like I'm on dialup.

[Animats]

Some of those pictures look like Stable Diffusion output. Zoom in and see junk characters.

[teaearlgraycold]

I was pixel peeping as well. But as far as AI generated images go it seemed pretty good.

[tapland]

It mostly seems to be slop

[6510]

If it was a book I wouldn't buy it. The theme does seem to fit a kids book.

What I find hilarious is that I cant tell if this took years to draw and compose or if it was 5 minutes worth of prompts. Did they knit everything? I sometimes see my art on low effort articles, I'm 99% sure they think it's AI.

The only detail I really liked was how the arrow representing the computer communicating to the user has a ring on the back so that the user can be roped in like a whale.

[vvillena]

I have great news for you. The article is also perfectly structured, which means it shows flawlessly on reader mode.

Reader mode is a standard feature on all major browsers on both desktop and mobile. Given you're so vocal about how articles should work by just "displaying the words", I'd suggest that you acquaintance yourself with the one feature that does exactly that.

Thanks to reader mode, you get to concentrate on the message. And we get to keep our joy.

[4ndrewl]

I have bad news for you. This is cut-and-paste directly from reader mode in Firefox mobile.

"Then came terminals and command lines. Physical knobs turned into typed commands—more powerful, but our digital world became less embodied. Then came terminals and command lines. Physical knobs turned into typed commands—more powerful, but our digital world became less embodied. Then came terminals and command lines. Physical knobs turned into typed commands—more powerful, but our digital world became less embodied. Then came terminals and command lines. Physical knobs turned into typed commands—more powerful, but our digital world became less embodied. Then came terminals and command lines. Physical knobs turned into typed commands—more powerful, but our digital world became less embodied. Then came terminals and command lines. Physical knobs turned into typed commands—more powerful, but our digital world became less embodied."

I stopped reading after that. There are also missing full stops, which means it's difficult to understand what's happening.

[chazhaz]

Reader seems to be broken on iOS Safari—after the first few paragraphs sentences start repeating 8 or so times in a row

Plus the longer paragraphs, confined to the height of their parent image, are cut off on my iPhone mini, leading to sections reading e.g.:

> controls with GUIs—graphical user interfaces. We skeumorphed the heck out of our screens, with digital switches, flat sliders, and folder icons. But we kept some of the the functionality in the physical world, with slots to stick disks into and big

[jacobolus]

This complaint is like visiting a flower garden and complaining that it is an inefficient use of space because it doesn't grow enough root vegetables.

The style and emotional feeling of the page is the message. An article consisting of only words is not an "article like this", and if you are starting from that premise you already totally missed the author's point.

[bee_rider]

They might have gotten the point but disagreed. In particular, if the style and feeling of the page is the message, and they are saying they don’t like the message and page feels bad… then, it seems like the premise was understood and rejected.

[int_19h]

> The style and emotional feeling of the page is the message.

And for many people, that message is, "go away, this is not for you".

Which is a valid take if that's what the author intended, but generally speaking, when people take time to pen manifests, they expect them to be read and heeded.

[antonvs]

The question is whether the text on the page is supposed to match the message. If it’s purely an artwork, then perhaps the text doesn’t matter - but that’s a bit confusing. The problem with the site is that it’s making a claim in its text and, for many people, refuting that claim with its presentation.