What on EARTH is that mouse cursor thing all about? Why would you even bother writing this, then making it impossible to read properly?
Why would a frontend developer demonstrate their ability to do frontend programming on their personal, not altogether super-serious blog? I meant that rhetorically but it's a flex. I agree, not the best design in the world if you're catering for particular needs, but simple and fun enough. You should check out dark mode.
In that vein, I think it's okay if we let people have fun. That might not work for everyone, but why should we let perfect be the worst enemy of fun?
because it shows that they don't understand important design aspects
while it doesn't really show off their technical skills because it could be some plugin or copy pasted code, only someone who looks at the code would know better. But if someone care enough about you to look at your code you don't need to show of that skill on you normal web-site and can have some separate tech demo.
> okay if we let people have fun
yes people having fun is always fine especially if you don't care if anyone ever reads your blog or looks at it for whatever reason (e.g. hiring)
but the moment you want people to look at it for whatever reason then there is tension
i.e. people don't get hired to have fun
and if you want others to read you blog you probably shouldn't assault them with constant distractions
Living by that motto is hugely self-destructive.
Creative expression allows us to push ourselves, both in what we think we can do, and often the technical aspects about how we do it too. Even if the idea doesn't stick, you've tried something new.
In a world of Tailwinds and Bootstraps and the same five templates copied again and again and again, let's celebrate the people willing to push things and learn from their inevitable but ultimately valuable mistakes. And let's have some fun along the way.
It's revenge against anyone with certain kinds of visual impairments and/or concentration issues because the ex-spouse of the author which turned out to be a terrible person had such.
(sarcasm try 2)
It's revenge against anyone using JS on the net with the author trying to subtle hint that JS is bad.
(realistic)
It's probably on of:
- the website is a static view of some collaborative tool which has that functionality build in by default
- some form of well intended but not well working functionality add to the site as it was some form of school/study project, in that case I'm worried about the author suffering unexpected very much higher cost due to it ending up on HN ...
1. Fun. Modern internet is boring, most blog posts are just black text on white background. Hard to remember where you read what. And you can’t really have fun without breaking some expectations.
2. Sense of community. Internet is a lonely place, and I don’t necessarily like that. I like the feeling of “right now, someone else reading the same thing as I do”. It’s human presence transferred over the network.
I understand not everybody might like it. Some people just like when things are “normal” and everything is the same. Others might not like feeling of human presence. For those, I’m not hiding my content, reader mode is one click away, I make sure it works very well.
As for “unexpectedly ended up on HN”, it’s not at all unexpected. Practically every one of my general topic articles ends up here. It’s so predictable I rely on HN to be my comment section.
Then the second thought was: I should again start to block js by default as much as I can.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
The cursors will only be a problem during front page HN traffic. And the opt-out for people who care is reader mode / disable js / static mirror. Not sure if there's any better way to appease the fun-havers and the plain content preferrers at the same time. Maybe a "hide cursors" button on screen? I, for one, had a delightful moment poking other cursors.
Meanwhile, ironic irony is ironic: "Hey, idiots! Learn to use Unicode already! Usability and stuff! Oh, btw, here is some extremely annoying Javascript pollution on your screen because we are all still children, right? Har har! Pranks are so kewl!!!1!"