Blazing Truth — My Philosophy Blog

Nothing is more unprofessional to me than unjustified text.

I disagree – violently! ??

Justified text is far more difficult to read because of the variable word spacing. Given that reading from a screen is already more tiring than reading a printed page, are you sure that you want to force your visitors to work even harder? Additionally, justified text creates very real barriers for some disabled users – yet web accessibility for these users may be legislated in your country. So be very careful here.

Finally, do you really classify sites like https://www.alistapart.com/ as “unprofessional”? I wonder what Zeldman would think of that? ??

I super violently disagree back:)

The disability argument is so unjustified. It’s more of laziness than anything else. Gone are the days of “white rivers” and justifying text doesn’t necessarily mean to have uneven breaks in sentences. JavaScript can do miracles in soft hyphening paragraphs and almost all browsers support that. The magnification is completely irrelevant because it changes the hyphen placement on the fly.

Unjustified text in whatever form will hamper the design element and I’m strictly talking about implementation with graphics and borders. And it’s more so irritating in electronic documents where it resemble the hardcopy but it’s far away from it. With more and more of web-published content showing up on ipods, ipads and different icraps, it justifies the use of text justification even more so. One simple example is that you can fit more character in a given line and that goes a long way in reading accessibility on a 3 inch screen.

And the days of changing text size in IE are over, all decent browsers magnify their content not by text size but by relevancy. And when was the last time you used IE6 on your smart phone?

Take Kindle or any other text reader for example, it is designed to be used as a hardcopy book substitute but it fails miserably at that when the text abruptly ends at each line with saw tooth effect.

Text setting is an art and to take that lightly is an abomination to centuries of writing. When you write by hand, you most likely write to end of the page and hyphenate the last word if it doesn’t fit. It’s a natural process that human indentify with no matter how disable they are. what really helps the cognitive impaired is not leaving text hanging out at the end, it’s the separation of content into coherent segments and labeling the content like using bullet-points and bold text to emphasize the role.

And no i wouldn’t call ALP unprofessional, the same way i don’t consider NY Times to be that way, but sadly the web community is full of arcade practices that pushes even the best to fit-in rather than taking a creative and sometimes commonsense stand against idiocracy.

Here’s an article from the same site on justification.

Cheers,

Chris

I super violently disagree back:)

Oh :-p

The disability argument is so unjustified. It’s more of laziness than anything else.

Ok – hot button alert!

How many disabled users have you worked with? How many different kinds of disability? What do you know about the field? How many different user agents and pierces of assistive technology do you have experience with?

To answer my own questions… lots; full pan-disability range from physical/visual/motor impairments to cognitive disorders with a special interest in scoptic sentivity; 10 years experience specialising in professional accessible web design – also part of Team Access on https://accessites.org/ ; I teach others about AT.

Gone are the days of “white rivers” and justifying text doesn’t necessarily mean to have uneven breaks in sentences.

Cite! Preferably some empirical evidence from dyslexic users.

With more and more of web-published content showing up on ipods, ipads and different icraps, it justifies the use of text justification even more so.

Screen size has nothing to do it – unless you’re talking about line lengths in excess of 1000px when everyone’s ability to scan across the line start to fall dramatically.

Text setting is an art and to take that lightly is an abomination to centuries of writing.

Then stick to print. Web != Print. Additionally, look around and see how many organisations now offer printed material in multiple formats to accommodate different needs. If a site offers only one format, then it should be accessible to all. If that offends you, offer alternative stylesheets.

This isn’t idiocracy. I challenge you to spend one afternoon working with disabled web users in order to see just how creative they have to be and how much harder they have to work in order to enjoy the same access that you take for granted. Or go and do some historical research a major online shopping outlet like Tesco.com and find out just how much “normal” traffic they had on their early “accessible” site.

I’m sorry but until you’ve done some of these things, you really don’t know what you’re talking about. All you’re doing is painting pretty pictures with pixels rather than being truly involved in an electronic medium that is based on equal access to information for all.

</hot button>
<!– you were warned –>

@shirazdrum and esmi, I see that this is something which hasn’t been settled. I tend to agree with shirazdrum on the issue of justification. Perhaps I’m biased as I have the mind of a lawyer/engineer — justification is simply more professional, despite the arbitrary gaps in spaces. It’s a trade-off I’m willing to make, at the very least.

Also changed the background from a blacker shade to a whiter one, to give it a better contrast, and perhaps make it appear less gloomy and more user-friendly. Regarding the icons, they’re not necessary for basic navigation, so I don’t care much at the present about how simple that is. I think it’s more conducive to clicking just to figure out what it means, and clicking is good. I’ll keep an open mind, and may change it later.

I deleted the donate button, but will be keeping the ads. I need to pay for the server costs, as I am only a lowly college student. Perhaps I can make some spare change for books to aid my future writing as well. I don’t think I’m allowed to say why I have my ads there, as I am not allowed to encourage clicks on them. It’s a fine line, I do suppose.

I will reconsider the caption for the picture of my girlfriend and I, and perhaps make it more detailed in some fashion. Likewise I intend to fix the picture in the About page to put a greater focus on myself. Still looking for an appropriate header, looking to get it custom made from a web designer here on campus. For now, this will suffice.

Thanks for the input, and I’d love to hear the conversation continue. Considering my viewers, I do not believe justification will be a big hindrance to comprehension. A majority of my viewers will not be disabled or have difficulties reading as long as the text spacing is clear, and I don’t believe it will shoo away readers. If anything, the colors may.

Thank you both so far!

D

Who have I offended Esmi that I get a hot button alert? It’s really amusing that I get a lecture on a subject that I’ve been living with my entire life. I AM DYSLEXIC. To be more exact, I have a disorder called Irlen Syndrome.

If you think justified text is hard to read for a visually disabled person, try having them do technical drawings. Or perhaps have them read mathematical formulas. I did. I majored in electrical engineering and hacked at my fear until I could do it. I worked my whole life not to be DISABLE, excelling at things that normal people couldn’t do. And no I’m not a genius, I just don’t believe in pity disability mentality.

We are all disables. Some more so than others. I can’t do things that you can, and you can’t do things I can. My “ability” to see spaces and oddities more vividly enables me to see the design with so much more details that your normal eyes could ever do. True, it’s annoying, frustrating and downright hopeless at times, but to try and change the whole world because my peers account to 5% of the population is just ridiculous.

There are 36 million people die of hunger every year, a disorder that has a cure: food. But no one give a damn about that. But when it comes to my reading disability all of a sudden you are a bigger expert than the actual patient.

I thank you for all you are doing, I know you mean well but don’t mistake laziness and bad writing for a bad typesetting. As I said before, what most annoy people like me are not the blank spaces between words, it’s the grammar and typesetting mistakes that hang out. The word-processing engines and the web have changed dramatically from what it was 10 years ago. Thanks to people like you of course. They are now better, more functional and easier on my eyes. But please don’t murder a beautiful art because I can’t see it right. Writing is an art and justification is an important part of it.

And to remind you, this thread wasn’t about disability mentality. It was to give practical opinions about the visual and contextual aspects of a blog. If you wish to go more in depth, you can always call or email me and I would be glad to discuss it further. My contact information is on my profile.

dmastt,

It looks much better with lighter background. And remember that it is your site. You can do whatever you want with it. Nobody’s opinion matters except yours. If you think it looks good, then it does. Functionality and good content beats the design ten out of ten times. Take craigslist for example. The design is from 1999 but it has more traffic than Amazon and eBay. What matters is what you put in it. The rest is just to make it prettier. Nice choice on the hot girlfriend btw ? Good luck buddy.

Who have I offended Esmi that I get a hot button alert?

The alert was more a general warning for everyone who might have just wanted to scroll past my post. ??

@shirazdrum, it’s my soap-box, and I’m not taking one step back. Thanks for your constructive criticism, it’s put me a little bit more on the right track, and I’m growing and learning every day. And I got extremely lucky to have her, that is true.

@esmi, it’s really awesome to see both sides of the discussion, and I completely understand where you’re coming from. I’m trying to optimize my site to fit both perspectives, while still keeping myself sane.

Thank you for your input! Expect a new post later tonight.

Life as a Standard of Value: https://www.blazingtruth.com/?p=161

Read and enjoy, thank you! Sorry it was late.

Possibly consider enhancing the comments section since your posts will spark a lot of discussion. Customize it yourself or I would consider Disqus.

@teckn1cality, I’ll look into it. Thanks for the reference. Can you provide any further details on what exactly that would entail?

Thanks,
D

Disqus.com is a plugin that could easily be implemented with wordpress. It makes the discussion for topics much better by supplying threaded comments, user profiles (to an extent) and an overall more readable surface. Check it out.

Thanks, I’ll get using it ASAP.

New post on Kant’s Ethics and Metaphysics, take a look:
https://www.blazingtruth.com/?p=191

I’ve seen you implemented it. It looks great! Good luck with the site.

@teckn1cality, thank you for the reference! Any further suggestions?

Your site has a really great foundation. One thing I would look into is a new header. IMO, I find it hard to take a site with a text header seriously (sure, there are a few exceptions).

You can either make a simple one yourself or find a relatively inexpensive designer to make one for you (under ~$20).