Ask HN: Favorite text heavy blogs that are a joy to read?
So my question to you is: What are some of your favorite text heavy blogs that are a joy to read?
I don’t mean the content (though that helps too), but rather sites where the actual experience of reading is pleasant. Think: good fonts, sticky headers (or not), well formatted code snippets, and responsive images. Slide in navbars vs inline table of contents.
Thanks, - j
For interactive / code snippets Maxime Heckel: https://blog.maximeheckel.com/posts/the-study-of-shaders-wit...
Honorable mentions Maggie Applebaum https://maggieappleton.com/ai-enlightenment Marek Chotoborski https://zanlib.dev/blog/number-inputs-in-react/
Line width, sane fonts, avoiding clever shit unless very polished, gets you a long way.
Thank you
Though mainly I just like the general 50s aesthetics of it, rather than specific UI elements.
The simple layout/theme does not get in the way of the reading.
I have my own blog, but I'm unhappy with its design as well; therefore I'm not sharing it. Nevertheless, I find particularly challenging two things: 1. Make tables readable from a smartphone. There are a few tricks which allow you to make a responsive table. However, those tricks implies that you use <ul> or <div> instead of <table> which defeats the point of having a table. 2. I had an article where I needed to put a tiny mind map. Eventually I put it as a picture, because the solutions to draw a mind map with JavaScript made the page as twice as heavy.
Header, body, trailer panels with three complementary background shades that soften the large black sans-serif typography.
Explanation of Sudoku in APL. Lots of information, absolutely no clutter. Entire page is nothing but text in a single precise sans-serif typewriter font, the same size and strength for everything: headings, explanation, code, and tables. Typewriter font includes mathematical symbols.
Dramatic sepia photograph contrasts with understated gray text on light gray background with lots of empty space.
One of my favorites.
https://tailscale.com/blog (overall clean)
https://arun.is/blog (sidebar, colors)
https://www.vitsoe.com/us/voice (general feel)
https://github.com/TryGhost/Headline (interesting article header, open source)
https://practicaltypography.com/ - tons of practical advice on typefaces and text-based UX
https://harmful.cat-v.org/ - more of a "website-style" layout than the above two