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Comment by GuiA | Hacker News Reader

> Good, generous whitespace can make some of the messiest interfaces look easy to use.

And they make them completely unusable to anyone with less than a 27" screen, but all the hip designers apparently don't care about users who have anything less than a 2560*1440 display just like them (1024x768 is still the norm for a lot of people outside of the Silicon Valley bubble).

I've seen so many web products that are less usable than 20 year old command line interfaces, notably because of this "you can never have too much whitespace!" mentality, it's appalling.

The first goal of an interface is to be used.

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Also people seem to think tiny text with medium gray on light gray is fashionable. If people can't read your content why bother.

And font-weight: 300, because text looks best when it's a wispy gray blob.

1366x768 overtook 1024x768 as the most popular in 2012.

But most tech startups here are targetting early adopters initially so that doesn't include all of those people in China or India running XP in cybercafes.

But perhaps it should include all of those people in coffee shops using Surfaces and ChromeBooks and MacBook Airs.

Is this really a problem? Responsive design is extremely popular among startups.

I highly doubt most modern websites don't support 1366x768. Every front-end team I've worked with tests on iPads and smaller screens. I have a feeling the OP speculating and making blanket stereotypes against designers. But these designers almost always work with front-end developers who take usability seriously and any good teams have feedback loops to correct these issues.

I've been running into it a fair bit lately. Good designers might get it, but apparently not all designers are equally thoughtful.

Yeah, definite problem. I ran 1280x1024 until last month when that monitor (lcd, from 1999) finally died. The web was a horrible place and made me angry at humanity. I've got 1920x1080 now, and I now have enough screen pixels to see what they were fucking up my 1280 for. Not worth it.

Most people don't run their web browser in full-screen mode.

People with 11" or 13" Macbooks inevitably do. Same thing for people with 13" PCs, the ones called ultrabooks. People start using non maximized windows at 15", more if on a Mac because the UI encourages full screen windows. The trend to large fonts means that PC users with 1366x768 screens don't see much of a page if they keep windows small. Combining all those factors, most laptops users browse the web with full screen browsers. Tablets are always run full screen. I'm on a full HD 15" laptop and very rarely maximize windows, but I see I'm an exception when I look at co-workers screens.

Oh, that surprises me. What are the figures on that?

I view whitespace as placing pressure on the rest of the UI - hopefully compressing unnecessary elements away. Of course if you dont bound the space, the pressure just expands everything like a balloon - like you describe.

I think the need for whitespace should be treated more like a constraint than a solution.

Yea, I've noticed that on my 1920x1200 monitors, not having my browser maximized (heresy!) won't get me the "native" resolution anymore, but some scaled down version. It's weird having a huge friggin' screen and getting a hamburger menu...

Guessing you're triggering the "tablet" responsive breakpoint. That's a hard one to fix though, media queries are a bit of a hack but it's certainly better than http://mobile.example.com/

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