Hacker News Reader

Comment by arexxbifs | Hacker News Reader

The beauty of "plain text" web sites is that with any decent web browser you can either turn CSS off, load your own CSS or switch to reader mode.

View on HN

So, just make it the users’ problem?

You honestly think it's a problem to tap a single button on your phone or pressing Ctrl-Alt-R?

Of all the problems created by web and UI design, this isn't one of them.

You honestly think the users should load their own css?

I'm not the one you're asking, but... yes.

User stylesheets are even part of the standard. The fact that the most common (and maybe "oppressive") browser doesn't support them is itself a problem.

So when my mother wants to know how to do that, I can have her call you instead of me, right?

Doing that if one wants to is one thing. But to say we all "should" is another. Anyone who expects users to load their own css for every site they visit has lost his grip on reality.

If they want to, yes. That’s one of the points of CSS; someone might prefer certain fonts and/or colours for accessibility reasons, for example.

It’s a great way to empower users. A feature, not a ”problem”.

Yes, I sometimes do this with a lot of stuff. Also sometimes to get rid of animations, worthless popup messages, bugs in the CSS that the site provided, wasted space, too big fonts, etc. Sometimes just disabling CSS helps, but sometimes not. Even on here on Hacker News, I added CSS to make all comment texts black, and to add a dotted vertical line to the left of indented comments so that it is more easily to see which one belongs with which one.

Usually, if a web page doesn't already have a CSS though, then it is already good and I won't need to add one.

I actually want the ability to have "privileged" CSS commands which can only be specified by the end user, including meta-CSS.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com