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    Somewhat ironically, I found the text on this page impossible to read. The lines are too squished, a bit too long, and the font isn’t readable.

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      and the font isn’t readable.

      Do you not use monospaced fonts when you develop? I’d argue that font is readable to most people.

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        I do. But that doesn’t mean it’s the best choice for large blocks of text like this.

        I didn’t make this comment lightly. I actually played around in the inspector and changed things to see what would make it better for me. The result was:

        line-spacing: 1.6;
        width: 700px;
        color: #555;
        

        The biggest improvement for me was the line-spacing, followed by the change in width, which made it much easier to scan. The color change helped slightly (not as dramatically, for sure!), which I’ll say is likely a result of the background being white. The designer choose a non-black color for the text (which was good), but mixed with the really dense monospace, I preferred slightly less contrast. Alternatively, with the color as is, and the background as #fbfbfb it worked, too.

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          Fair enough, thanks for elaborating :)

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          I would argue that using a monospaced font for code is a compromise: Individual tokens would be more legible in a proportional font, but character column alignment is more important for code, so we tolerate monospaced fonts as the only practical way to reliably align things.

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        3.2. Every interaction is better with an animation

        You don’t need to be a motion designer to slap a transition: all 300ms ease into your stylesheet. A sharp transition is harsh and old. An animated transition is smooth and pleasant. These values work particularly well by default — any shorter, and the transition is not noticeable, any longer and the transition becomes annoying.

        If you develop for desktop, hover effects work nice. Hover styles by themselves have a reassuring effect on the user — the element is interactive, the mouse is in the right place. With a transition, it’s even better.

        I agree with most of the article but I disagree with this statement, especially the example. Animation makes a lot of things better, it does not make everything better. The unanimated button feels more responsive than the one with the animated hover. I do agree that removing elements should usually be animated though.

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          They’re fine if they’re fast. It’s less about making things feel responsive, and more about making the response visible. I’d argue that a 1-frame change is less noticeable than a 5-frame change.

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          not just for Programmers, actually for everyone not doing design everyday

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            Only for programmer you can use a fixed-width font like that.

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            Sidenote: I think it’s very unfortunate that we use the word design for almost exclusively for UX now rather than inclusively for UX, code, and architecture. I’m not sure how it happened.

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              What confuses me is at what point did we make the change from HCI to UX?