[tvawnz]

Why does no one just put all the words in a row like a book or a newspaper or something anymore? Does anyone actually enjoy this "experience" where you have to wade through a maze of obnoxious pictures and logic puzzles and shit? Is the general assumption that, now that we've made it to the internet we can forget our big boy book-reading skills and go back to pop-up picture books?

Why is there all this ADHD frame-shifty-scripty "chapter-one" and "look-at-this-shitty-cover-page-where-you-can't-scroll-right-or-down-and-spacebar-isn't-taking-me-to-the-words-and-neither-is-reader-mode-so-now-you-get-to-play-"find-the-fucking-button"-which-is-camoflaged-next-to-the-social-media-faggotry-because-surprise-motherfucker-it's-a-slideshow-but-not-really"?

[rtpg]

There are a lot of broken articles in the universe, but is this one of them?

This article seems to just have chapter separation and a cover image on each chapter, as well as some video inserts.

Apart from the video, this is pretty much exactly how it would be formatted in a magazine. Do you think magazines are for chumps too, because they use too many pictures?

[fenomas]

Aside: it's hugely ironic how frequently commenters on HN, of all places, berate sites for being hard to read on mobile.

[tvawnz]

I think a magazine that intentionally spurns it's own inherent benefits in favor of pretending to be something else, like a movie or a symphony, would be for chumps, yes.

Websites offer infinite scroll, that's their medium, pretending to be a magazine is ridiculous and frustrating.

[Turing_Machine]

"this is pretty much exactly how it would be formatted in a magazine."

But the web isn't a magazine. It's like arguing that printing a book on five pound clay cuneiform tablets is a good idea, because that's how the Babylonians would have done it.

[rtpg]

I'm saying that because I found pretty much nothing offensive about this layout (compared to actually offensive things like scrolljacking and whatnot), and the only difference between this and an "ideal" webpage would be to have it all on one page.

Otherwise this is just a web page with some embedded images and some larger text (which is pretty common practice on any long-form story website).

[speeder]

For me it took minutes to load, then loaded some broken page with bright pink boxes over bright pink and I Camé here to sete if there was a transcription

[mdm_]

I'm on my phone and honestly at first thought the "cover" page was just broken on mobile. When I realized what it actually was, I backed out of it and will likely never go back. I do most of my browsing/reading on a mobile device, and pages like this are just brutal.

[egypturnash]

Because they're trying to put them in a niftily-illustrated package like a magazine instead.

Now that we've made it to the Internet, even the lowest of budgets can have full color illustrations if it's willing to pay for the artist's time. No worries about minimum print runs before it's affordable.

I mean, oh no, you had to snap out of your click-trance for five seconds to find a button to stop reading?

(I may be biased, I'm an artist who very occasionally takes illustration gigs from online publications.)

[tvawnz]

I'm fine with the illustrations, the layout is just annoying and counterintuitive. Why would you not just have a long-ass column with some images in it like basically every other article? That's what's awesome about webpages, infinite scroll, maybe some hyperlinked table of contents in a frame to the left, you know 1990s HTML stuff.

[fenomas]

> Does anyone actually enjoy this "experience" where you have to wade through a maze of obnoxious pictures and logic puzzles and shit?

Yes. I thought it was beautifully presented and nicely paced, and well worth my time.

Also: a single "Continue" button at the bottom of each page is "logic puzzles and shit"? Three tiny logos hidden in the title bar are "social media faggotry"? Seriously?

[tvawnz]

The opening page was my main frustration.

According to my internet experience: 1) scroll down - failure, maybe my scroll isn't strong enough to get past some weird header frame thing 2) space bar - failure, maybe it's a side to side thing 3) scroll right - failure 4) scroll left - go back a page, reload 5) look at bottom of page for navigation down - failure, only outside links 6) look to right - failure, no generic slideshow next button 7) scan top of page - immediately censor out what I assume is the menagerie of facespace, tweeter, clinked-in, youporn share links

The initial "READ ARTICLE" button is a tiny link, next to links you generally assume to be worthless, in the wrong part of the page. Yeah, I consider that a logic puzzle, not daunting, but yes.

And yes, any link to "please share me on the facespace and validate me with some twits" comes off as obnoxious begging.

[RGamma]

Try it with uMatrix and a policy like mine: https://i.imgur.com/TMzeWu2.png (and yes, these links actually do something)

The web becomes a lot calmer without scripts (and you start to notice how little regard many sites have for proper web markup).

[tvawnz]

Thanks for the tip.

[remarkEon]

Not going to lie, at first I thought "oh this is going to be a shitty reading experience because this is some meta statement about how awful EA is."

Not sure though.

[booruguru]

I'd like to read this article on my Kindle. Is there any way I can consolidate those pages?

[pje]

"Faggotry"? Really?

[tvawnz]

Is this about the vocabulary or the concept?

Yes, I despise when someone begs me to force their work into my friends faces. If I like it enough I am perfectly capable of copy-pasting the link myself.

[smeyer]

>Is this about the vocabulary or the concept?

It's almost certainly a complaint about the use of a slur, not about the underlying complaint about the buttons.

[angersock]

Slurs are generally less effective once they've become mainstream.

Go spend some time on 4chan, and this will become clear--'-fag' is used as a suffix/term-of-art, and basically doesn't even register on the radar anymore as being said with any seriousness.

"Goddamn" and "Christ" were once quite serious business as well.

[smeyer]

Of course they're less effective once they've become mainstream. As you mentioned, many slurs gradually lose any hateful meaning, and I'm sure the term "faggotry" might be becoming a bit less offensive over time, but seeing as how it's still used by many people in a hurtful way, it's not unreasonable to expect some people to be upset in situations where it's less clear. If someone disliked a comment using the term on 4chan, I wouldn't assume they disliked it for the term, but this isn't 4chan.

[angersock]

this isn't 4chan.

Quite right--4chan has a better sense of humor than HN, more original content, and is much more abrasive. :)

[tvawnz]

I guess we can replace it with "prostitution-parade" to be more PC. Sorry about that.

[benihana]

It feels like they saw the Bloomberg piece "What is code" then decided to do that but more that than that.