Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Same here. The web of 1996 was very accommodating to people (like me) who can read from screens, but need or strongly prefer a larger-than-normal text size, the web of 2018 vastly less so. Some developments that made things harder for me were:

Mobile Safari's decision not to reflow the paragraphs when the user does the inverse of the pinch gesture ("zoom"?), which seems to have encouraged the makers of the other browsers to give less priority to reflow even though they did not completely give up on it; at large text sizes, that decision required the user to scroll horizontally left and right for every line of text;

Google's purchase of Blogger followed by its changing Blogger so it will not show the reader any text unless Javascript is enabled, which seems to have encouraged other sites to do the same; this made it impossible for me to continue to visit those sites in Lynx (a browser that ran inside a terminal window, but did not support Javascript);

HTML5 in general was a disaster for me. For example, at large text sizes, the elements that remain at a fixed position relative to the window regularly end up taking up most of the window's real estate, leaving little room for the text I want to read.

Clarification: those have been my frustrations when trying to read what is or easily could have been static content; this comment is not about web apps.




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2025 batch! Applications are open till Aug 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: