A motherfucking website.
November 25, 2013 12:54 PM   Subscribe

This is a motherfucking website. And it's fucking perfect. Seriously, what the fuck else do you want?
posted by Blasdelb (101 comments total) 59 users marked this as a favorite
 
Notably, metafilter's own blasdelf has mentioned elsewhere that,
"[D]amn he loses it by closing all his heading, p, and li tags — they can't be nested so leaving them open is entirely unambiguous

fuck off ex-xhtml-wanking semantic striver"
posted by Blasdelb at 12:56 PM on November 25, 2013 [3 favorites]


Would you just look at that fucking professional white background.
posted by turbid dahlia at 12:57 PM on November 25, 2013 [20 favorites]


Huh. He uses an excess of swear words. You don't see much of that.
posted by bondcliff at 12:59 PM on November 25, 2013 [18 favorites]


This is a website. Look at it. You've never seen one before.

I get the impression that whoever made this site is too young to have seen the web when there were plenty of websites like this...
posted by EndsOfInvention at 12:59 PM on November 25, 2013 [46 favorites]


I dunno, can we have some flashing animations and video that leads on a full sensory tour of the site? I know when I visits a restaurant's website, I'm not looking for a menu or opening hours, I'm looking for an immersive theatrical experience that will make me ask, what is art?
posted by The Whelk at 1:00 PM on November 25, 2013 [85 favorites]


Forget the tag closing wankery, the Google Analytics tag at the bottom is what gets me mad. You do that whole rant and then blow the whole thing with a hideous block of compressed js that loads a library that attaches event handles everywhere that makes AJAX calls that...??? Back in my day, we got our stats by running Analog on our Apache logfiles and liked it. And if we didn't like it, it was all we got, so we liked it all the same.
posted by zachlipton at 1:00 PM on November 25, 2013 [42 favorites]


I mean if you just tell me what I need to know without me having to discover the two pixel wide clickable area on your animated image map then it won't really feel earned, you know?
posted by The Whelk at 1:01 PM on November 25, 2013 [4 favorites]


Seriously, what the fuck else do you want?

I want a flash intro. Flash intros are cool.
posted by cosmic.osmo at 1:01 PM on November 25, 2013 [3 favorites]


And some "Under Construction" gifs.
posted by entropicamericana at 1:03 PM on November 25, 2013 [9 favorites]


This is a website. Look at it. You've never seen one before.

Apart from the academic websites I did in 1993. Mind you, they were different; no sweary words.
posted by Wordshore at 1:04 PM on November 25, 2013 [2 favorites]


MARQUEEEEEEEEE

I miss marquee.
posted by cavalier at 1:04 PM on November 25, 2013 [2 favorites]


Even the compressed Google Analytics block is a tremendous number of bytes, ratio wise.

Argument fucking RUINED!
posted by DigDoug at 1:04 PM on November 25, 2013 [1 favorite]


the web when there were plenty of websites like this...

You mean in the golden age before the fall?
posted by cosmic.osmo at 1:05 PM on November 25, 2013 [8 favorites]


I want less swearing.
posted by notyou at 1:06 PM on November 25, 2013 [6 favorites]


accessible to everyone?

Fucker didn't enable zoom.
posted by arcticseal at 1:07 PM on November 25, 2013


Swear words are like spices. Used properly, they can add flavor and accent, but nobody wants to eat a bowl of paprika.
posted by rocket88 at 1:11 PM on November 25, 2013 [16 favorites]


i want people to realize that rewriting everything as an edgy, in your face insult is not a substitute for a sense of humor.
posted by Quart at 1:13 PM on November 25, 2013 [24 favorites]


I have been putting my page on how to pressure can on the back burner so I can lay it out nice but now I think maybe I should just release it into the wild.
posted by Shepherd at 1:14 PM on November 25, 2013 [10 favorites]


This is that thing where you use a lot of swear words while talking about something technical, resulting in a wonderful frisson of the new or forbidden, circa 2006. Bitch.
posted by Mister_A at 1:14 PM on November 25, 2013 [5 favorites]


This motherfucking website looks exactly like the first motherfucking website I ever made in 1998. So, yeah, I've seen one before.

Nice use of that newfangled cite attribute, though.
posted by BlueJae at 1:15 PM on November 25, 2013 [1 favorite]


The point of the World Wide Web is to deliver hypertext. While it happens to be coded in HTML (hypertext markup language), the OP is not hypertext. Hypertext contains links to other text.
posted by graymouser at 1:15 PM on November 25, 2013 [6 favorites]


Swearing is so edgy!
posted by malocchio at 1:17 PM on November 25, 2013 [2 favorites]


graymouser, I would love to see a site that specializes in delivery of hypertext, with said text being generated by the userbase! Asshole.
posted by Mister_A at 1:17 PM on November 25, 2013 [4 favorites]


RIFLE IS FINE!
posted by Doublewhiskeycokenoice at 1:18 PM on November 25, 2013 [53 favorites]


  • The lang attribute would be useful for screenreaders.
  • "blockquote" risks not being communicated effectively. Consider using a simpler set of elements, like "q" and plain "a".
  • The line width and line spacing are poor for people with some print impairments. Narrower widths help people get from one line to the next. Greater line spacing helps people read along a line easily.
  • The black-on-white high-contrast causes some problems for people with print impairments.
  • Larger fonts are desirable for many people with sight impairment.

    Of course, the last two three can be ameliorated by the browser because of the plainness of the HTML, which is good. Sadly, no-one* knows how to do this.

    * Except UI and AT experts, such as those found at MetaFilter.**
    ** And anyone with a touchscreen, which will be everyone in a year or two. Hurrah!

  • posted by alasdair at 1:19 PM on November 25, 2013 [3 favorites]


    Seriously though. The point should be well taken. Restaurant websites, I'm looking at you.
    posted by Doublewhiskeycokenoice at 1:21 PM on November 25, 2013 [9 favorites]


    Because real web designers have actual clients who couldn't care less about your pretensions about design. Oddly enough they seem to have web sites so they can reach their business goals or some mundane shit like that. And then there are the infinity of stakeholders you have to please so you cobble together a front page slider that can handle everything from responsive images to raw fucking php because L̿̆eͮ͊̍͌ͣ̓g̐̂̅͋a͐ͤ̑l is running a black PSYOPS campaign or dabbling in necromancy. That's why.
    posted by Foci for Analysis at 1:22 PM on November 25, 2013 [4 favorites]


    i wonder if he used dreamweaver to make that?
    posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 1:23 PM on November 25, 2013 [1 favorite]


    Dreamweaver is the best, I do all my internets on it. Butt-nugget.
    posted by Mister_A at 1:24 PM on November 25, 2013


    Not sure I hold with newfangled stuff like header and aside.
    posted by Artw at 1:31 PM on November 25, 2013


    I get the impression that whoever made this site is too young to have seen the web when there were plenty of websites like this...

    I thought he was yelling at the trendy young upstarts who didn't remember like, fucking Lynx and shit?

    Seriously, though, I think this is great. Really all I want out of most websites is 1. to work on a variety of window and screen sizes, and 2. to load in a reasonable time on mobile. It's especially annoying when you're visiting a website whose entire purpose is to show you a freakin article, yet the text doesn't reflow automatically on a tiny screen because someone decided that it was important for the image of their company to be extremely specific about the pixel width of some div or whatever.
    posted by en forme de poire at 1:40 PM on November 25, 2013 [2 favorites]


    And some "Under Construction" gifs.

    Yeah. How the fuck am I supposed to know which parts of the website are complete and which are under fucking construction unless there is a blinkenfuckinglight or rotating workman with a fucking shovel to tell me what the fuck is up?

    Worse than Hitler.
    posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 1:44 PM on November 25, 2013 [4 favorites]


    What is it a satire of?
    posted by BWA at 1:44 PM on November 25, 2013 [1 favorite]


    What the fuck else do I want? You can't handle what I fucking want.
    posted by Segundus at 1:45 PM on November 25, 2013 [2 favorites]


    I wish there were some way to make the text blink...
    posted by one4themoment at 1:46 PM on November 25, 2013 [2 favorites]


    I want less swearing.

    What swearing? I think you need to remove this from your local user.css file:
    noun:before {
      content: "fucking ";
    }
    
    posted by George_Spiggott at 1:46 PM on November 25, 2013 [7 favorites]


    The ones I want to beat to death with a hammer are the folks who require I have Javascript turned on to read the FUCKING TEXT on their site. I mean, I get you want all your stupid, generally useless gadgets to do funky things, but if I'm not running JS at least show the fucking text. Assclowns.
    posted by kjs3 at 1:49 PM on November 25, 2013 [15 favorites]


    Oh...you idiots who think all monitors are landscape and all of them are at least 1280 pixels wide, fuck you too. Yes Yahoo, and anyone who uses your shittacular JS framework, you can fuck yourself most of all.
    posted by kjs3 at 1:52 PM on November 25, 2013 [3 favorites]


    I think this dipshit misses the fucking point that motherfuckers do all that fancy nested div and image rollover bullshit because they're trying to fucking make some fucking money by selling some fucking ads.
    posted by ob1quixote at 1:55 PM on November 25, 2013 [6 favorites]


    Well, thank goodness we finally got rid of all that bathwater that's been cluttering up the place, right, baby? Baby?
    posted by Sing Or Swim at 2:00 PM on November 25, 2013 [20 favorites]


    This is okay, but could you make it pop more? I really want it to stand out. You know, have that extra something. You're the designer, I'm sure you'll come up with something great.
    posted by Metroid Baby at 2:01 PM on November 25, 2013 [6 favorites]


    This is okay, but could you make it pop more? I really want it to stand out. You know, have that extra something. You're the designer, I'm sure you'll come up with something great.

    $("body").effect("shake");
    posted by Foci for Analysis at 2:06 PM on November 25, 2013 [11 favorites]


    Before clicking the link, I thought this must have something to do with Samuel Motherfuckin' Jackson.


    Funny, but still a little disappointed.
    posted by annsunny at 2:18 PM on November 25, 2013


    Blar blar blar.

    Lost me at "pansy-ass".

    At "bitch-ass", I turned back around and let the author know I wasn't joking AND that maybe their whole hangup has less to do with web design and more to do with all those Very Hot metrosexual-ass web designers with whom they themselves want to have some non-minimalist, good-ass butt loving.

    However, maybe I'm just reading into it too much. Maybe they're just a silly bigot.
    posted by Mike Mongo at 2:23 PM on November 25, 2013 [3 favorites]


    The background should have been grey and the font a lot more pixelly.
    posted by colie at 2:34 PM on November 25, 2013


    What would have made this really funny would be to view the source and find that it's this incredibly elaborate thing rendered with SVG and/or Canvas (gracefully degrading to Flash of course) and doesn't have a single word of ordinary text in it.
    posted by George_Spiggott at 2:42 PM on November 25, 2013 [22 favorites]


    Needs more animated flame GIFs
    posted by briank at 2:44 PM on November 25, 2013 [1 favorite]


    He added 12 percent to the file size with gratuitous code indenting that nobody will see.

    >:(

    but other than that, the javascript and the swearing, I completely agree.
    posted by EnterTheStory at 2:46 PM on November 25, 2013


    Surfing on "a motherfucking Tamagotchi"

    Hardcore
    posted by eviltwin at 2:46 PM on November 25, 2013


    I just looked at this in lynx and all I saw was
       [motherfuckingwebsite.gif]
    
    posted by George_Spiggott at 2:47 PM on November 25, 2013 [3 favorites]


    I would like some fucking margins, to start with. And some fucking colors that are not searing BLACK! ON! WHITE! into my goddamn retinas.

    Also as I am an artist I would like some fucking graphics in there. Some content is fucking pictures, asshole.

    But the real killer for me is this: I would like to generate five thousand fucking pages or so over the course of a few years. And I would like every single fucking one of them to be a visually pleasing experience to read. And I would like to concentrate on making my goddamn content instead of having to crack open the text editor and wrangle the raw fucking HTML, then go edit every other fucking file on the fucking site and put a fucking link to my new fucking page in where it's appropriate.

    That said, his central message of focusing on the fucking content instead of the fucking web design? Yeah, I agree. After a while web design stops looking like "framing content" and starts looking like "decorating". And then it starts to look like "wanking" and honestly nobody needs any more of that. Go to /r/webdesign and check out any "check out my portfolio" link and I can guarantee you'll see some fucking wanking, that and a fuckton of mindless trend-following, but I digress. Design your websites to be filled with content, and then fucking start fucking filling them.
    posted by egypturnash at 2:57 PM on November 25, 2013 [6 favorites]


    Can we make the logo bigger? I'd also like some kind of FAQ, and a contact form. Also, is it HTML5? I was told everything needs to be HTML5 now.
    posted by randomkeystrike at 2:58 PM on November 25, 2013 [3 favorites]


    And what in the fucking name of Godbuggering Hell was fucking well wrong with motherfucking Usenet anyway?
    posted by Segundus at 3:12 PM on November 25, 2013 [1 favorite]


    Now we know what Herb Kornfeld has been up to since leaving Mid-State Office Supply.
    posted by ShutterBun at 3:12 PM on November 25, 2013 [3 favorites]


    Also, is it HTML5? I was told everything needs to be HTML5 now.

    Sure.
    posted by Artw at 3:16 PM on November 25, 2013 [2 favorites]


    Seriously, though, there's more good about this web site than bad. Which is really fucking sad.

    (And don't hate on Dreamweaver. I've used it since Day 1; I've gotten it so loaded up with code snippets and customizations that using anything else is just crazy. Sure, it's like driving a nail with a building, but it's my<> building.)
    posted by Benny Andajetz at 3:31 PM on November 25, 2013


    Well, at least it's not Every Fucking Website. (previously)
    posted by fings at 3:33 PM on November 25, 2013 [5 favorites]


    Reminds me of Zed Shaw's foul-mouthed campaign for minimalism in software design called Programming, Motherfucker. Zed even backs up his philosophy by offering to rent a boxing ring and spar challengers.
    posted by AdamsBashforth at 3:38 PM on November 25, 2013 [1 favorite]


    You know what? If you gave people a choice between reading that page, or playing a Flash game where you shoot cannonballs at a little pig in a boat made out of cake, they would sit and shoot cannonballs at the pig for hours. And if you let them do it for free for a few hours and then turned it off, a lot of them would pay money to get it turned back on. "Perhaps you'd like to read some text instead?" "PUT THE FUCKING PIG BACK OR I'LL KILL YOU."

    I don't want to spoil anybody's fun, and I love a nice, standards-compliant block of text as much as the next guy, but let's be honest about who we are...
    posted by Sing Or Swim at 3:42 PM on November 25, 2013 [7 favorites]


    He added 12 percent to the file size with gratuitous code indenting that nobody will see.

    I fucking saw it. In fact what bothered me most is that two of the immediate children of <body> are indented 4 fucking spaces and the rest are fucking indented 8. Yet Fucker somehow still thinks he writes clean markup.

    I'm totally with you though on the indentation of the blank lines. Fucking useless.
    posted by 0 at 3:43 PM on November 25, 2013 [1 favorite]


    (And don't hate on Dreamweaver. I've used it since Day 1; I've gotten it so loaded up with code snippets and customizations that using anything else is just crazy. Sure, it's like driving a nail with a building, but it's my building.)

    $ cat > index.html

    Everything else is for cowards.
    posted by George_Spiggott at 3:43 PM on November 25, 2013 [2 favorites]


    Meh
    posted by flippant at 4:02 PM on November 25, 2013


    For sure, if Web 1.0 was about flaming, dancing, look-at-me-ma, tchotchke overkill, Web 2.0 only subverted the overkill with upscale sludge.

    It's not enough to have buttons (which may be disguised), they must POP when you roll over them. Not enough to have a gaggle of pictures, you must reload the whole page to view each one ... or else, Flickr-style, stuff as many as possible on a page that scrolls to infinity. Acres of whitespace, mono-color suavity, Sears-catalog ambience optional.

    We have style sheets ... oh do we. Seems to be time for substance sheets.
    posted by Twang at 4:38 PM on November 25, 2013 [4 favorites]


    I think one of the reasons I read MF is because it doesn’t have pictures or Flash or any other crap. That’s all it takes to make me love you.
    posted by bongo_x at 5:04 PM on November 25, 2013 [5 favorites]


    but nobody wants to eat a bowl of paprika.



    Hungary would beg to differ.
    posted by louche mustachio at 5:25 PM on November 25, 2013


    The guy has a point. If there was a Web protocol that was limited in functionality, basically a version of a text editing app, I'd totally use it.
    posted by carter at 5:26 PM on November 25, 2013 [1 favorite]


    Are you offering a bowl of paprika.

    I would eat a bowl of paprika.
    posted by The Whelk at 5:26 PM on November 25, 2013 [4 favorites]


    I was a bit disappointed when I got to "Yes, this is fucking satire", because I was so on-board with the cause. A couple of years ago I sunk hours—oh, who am I kidding, it was days, possibly weeks (I'm not a pro) into incorporating "texture" into the design of my genealogy website—nothing over-the-top, mostly layers of paper, extra attention to borders—because it was such and important part of website design. Smashing Magazine assured me it was "more than a trend".

    I recently learned that nothing says "Hello, 2011" like a website with textured backgrounds. These days is all about "flat" design, which the above mentioned site declares is "not merely a trend".

    I just want a motherfucking website that conveys information and is immune to the whims of designers. He had me at "Seriously, what the fuck else do you want?".
    posted by she's not there at 5:30 PM on November 25, 2013 [2 favorites]


    I would be all over the whole "bare HTML" thing if it didn't splay all over the width of your screen. Thin columns = readability.
    posted by edheil at 6:17 PM on November 25, 2013 [1 favorite]


    Thin columns = readability.

    That's true - maybe there's a flexible solution here. Back to tables, anyone?

    btw I thought of a name: "Web 0.5"
    posted by carter at 6:25 PM on November 25, 2013 [1 favorite]


    I looked at the source and approved (mostly) until I got to the bottom and saw the scripts to Google Analytics.

    It infuriates me the way some websites are smeared all over the web. I have discovered that it is pretty common for website components to be served from over 100 different IP addresses with separate web servers. Get your crap all under one roof and serve it yourself. I do not want your HTML to open hundreds of files at a time and show me Google Plus thumbnail photos of your 50 latest followers, your Meebo floating task bar, your three goddam thousand social media badges, etcetera etfuckingcetera.
    posted by charlie don't surf at 6:29 PM on November 25, 2013 [4 favorites]


    Barry Smith is a potty mouth.
    posted by unliteral at 6:40 PM on November 25, 2013


    Nothing new under the sun, I guess. Last time they weren't kidding, though.
    posted by 23 at 6:43 PM on November 25, 2013


    Barry Smith has a ton of inert JS on his own website. Of course, aMoFoWS is satire, because hypertext reality is cobbled together using JavaScript.

    Also (mainly because I can't help myself) Dreamweaver is built to hate on and I will honor what I perceive to be its intended purpose until Adobe is a distant memory.
    posted by mistersquid at 6:49 PM on November 25, 2013


    I would be all over the whole "bare HTML" thing if it didn't splay all over the width of your screen. Thin columns = readability. -edheil

    Good point. What would be really nice would be if there was a browser setting for this, rather then something locked into the website.
    posted by Canageek at 7:39 PM on November 25, 2013


    Back to tables, anyone?

    No. Tables are for displaying information that is meant to be read in rows and columns, with headers. If your table doesn't have a useful <th> tag, replace it with a series of divs. (This is an accessibility thing, doing layout with tables is hell on screen readers.)
    posted by graymouser at 7:56 PM on November 25, 2013 [3 favorites]


    Then use display: table-cell to format it.
    posted by Artw at 8:46 PM on November 25, 2013


    Then use display: table-cell to format it.

    Actually talking with a coworker recently about making a table display as divs so you can fine-tune cell widths. We've come out the other side.

    Good point. What would be really nice would be if there was a browser setting for this, rather then something locked into the website.

    This actually is a browser setting - user CSS or a number of different plugins. You can even save this as a bookmark to do it:


    javascript:(function(){document.body.style.width = '600px'}())

    posted by 23 at 9:27 PM on November 25, 2013 [4 favorites]


    23: Very useful, I'll keep that on hand, but that is still modifying the sites code, rather then asking the browser what it wants.
    posted by Canageek at 10:05 PM on November 25, 2013


    So no one else is going to remark that this is just a lazy copy of It's Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers for websites?

    (and the gourd guy was funnier)
    posted by emjaybee at 10:09 PM on November 25, 2013


    Where's this cannonball-pig game and how do I get to it
    posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 11:30 PM on November 25, 2013 [1 favorite]


    > > but nobody wants to eat a bowl of paprika.
    > Hungary would beg to differ.

    Yes, but if you are Hungary enough, you'll eat anything...
    posted by sodium lights the horizon at 12:38 AM on November 26, 2013


    I miss my Tamagotchi.
    posted by Quilford at 12:38 AM on November 26, 2013


    Cross-browser compatibility? Load this motherfucker in IE6. I fucking dare you.

    Close, close. The offices I'm working in have IE7 and I swear to god the next damn site that has a fucking huge pop-up that says "UR BROWSER IS OLD AND WE NO SUPPORT IT WHY U NO UPGRADE UR IE???" is going to get thirty years of Cobol shoved up its server. I'm working at a client that codes its app in Cobol, mkay. we can't install other browsers, can't even install drivers for USB sticks. just gimme the damned text. thank you, MeFi and this site do that.
    posted by fraula at 1:09 AM on November 26, 2013 [1 favorite]


    And what in the fucking name of Godbuggering Hell was fucking well wrong with motherfucking Usenet anyway?

    The people?
    posted by MartinWisse at 1:33 AM on November 26, 2013


    the major problem is that the browser wide single column is really hard to read between lines. If I run the site through the readability thing that centers a ncie width column its much more readable.
    posted by mary8nne at 2:25 AM on November 26, 2013


    I want less swearing.
    posted by notyou at 9:06 PM on November 25


    No you fucking don't.
    posted by Decani at 4:16 AM on November 26, 2013 [2 favorites]


    Who knew Jakob Nielsen would use such salty language.

    Although this website hits the exact feeling I'm feeling regarding an internal client and her suggestions on website design outside the template parameters. I'm expecting her next suggestion to be midi files and "under construction" animated gifs.
    posted by stormpooper at 6:58 AM on November 26, 2013 [2 favorites]


    that is still modifying the sites code, rather then asking the browser what it wants.

    You could try putting

    body { max-width: 50em !important }

    in your user stylesheet. It works well enough on plain sites like the linked one, but interacts badly with fancier sites (even Metafilter).
    posted by stebulus at 7:15 AM on November 26, 2013


    And what in the fucking name of Godbuggering Hell was fucking well wrong with motherfucking Usenet anyway?

    The people?


    There are no motherfucking people left on Usenet anymore. It's motherfucking spambots all the way down.
    posted by kjs3 at 7:31 AM on November 26, 2013


    And another thing, wankstains...if rendering your site in a remotely readable manner requires loading scripty shit from 10 third party sites and more than one CDN, you are FUCKING DOING IT WRONG.
    posted by kjs3 at 7:33 AM on November 26, 2013 [2 favorites]


    Really we need to band together, find out who makes that one JavaScript driven mobile template that just turns into a spinner every time - you know the one, it's everywhere and I'm pretty sure it's the same template - and beat them violently with sticks.
    posted by Artw at 7:39 AM on November 26, 2013 [2 favorites]


    I miss Usenet.
    posted by entropicamericana at 7:57 AM on November 26, 2013 [1 favorite]




    WTF? Strawberry PopTart blowtorches are 20 years old now? And I'm still reading that crap? My life has been wasted, and is now coming back to haunt me.
    posted by charlie don't surf at 9:20 PM on November 26, 2013


    stebulus: That is still a stylesheet. I'm talking about an actual honest to Gygax *setting*. Not running additional CSS garbage. As in HTML has an element where it asks the browser how wide the text column should be.
    posted by Canageek at 11:25 AM on November 27, 2013


    Heh, I actually thought that one of the nice things about this website is that you could very easily change its look and make it look cool and modern with the merest kilobyte of CSS, but if you didn't have it loaded or didn't choose to load it or viewed it on a legacy device/browser then it would gracefully degrade into its current state. Escalator temporarily stairs, sorry for the convenience.
    posted by en forme de poire at 11:45 AM on November 27, 2013


    Canageek: A user stylesheet is a kind of setting. It also has the advantage of being exactly the mechanism envisioned in the spec for users to specify (certain of) their preferences about how webpages are displayed. I suppose from the word "garbage" that you have some objection to it, but it's pretty hard to engage productively on that topic if you won't say what your objection is.
    posted by stebulus at 3:33 PM on November 27, 2013 [1 favorite]


    Canageek, like stebelus I'm not sure there's a meaningful difference between a user stylesheet and some other kind of "setting", but another option would be to fake your device metrics so your browser pretends to be a phone, thus using a narrow layout on sites that support it. Here are instructions for Chrome.
    posted by 23 at 5:34 PM on November 27, 2013


    stebulus and 23: A style-sheet is user-defined, and only works on websites that use CSS. Also they are hard to set up, and unreliable, as has been noted above. I think a much better design is to have a browser setting that provides a variable that can be called by HTML would be a lot better; I'm not imposing something on the web designer, but fiddling with things already set. Similar to how fonts work now, where I can set what font withing the very large font families I want to actually display.
    posted by Canageek at 10:57 PM on November 27, 2013


    This is an accessibility thing, doing layout with tables is hell on screen readers

    This is the received wisdom, but isn't generally true. First, because no sane screenreader would ever assume that a table is for anything other than layout, because they never are. Second, because often the semantics of the page match the table layout, so switching to "table navigation" can help to get around. One cell down, one in? And there's the content! I'm not saying tables are good, or bad: it's more that they don't matter that much for real accessibility for real screenreader users.

    Much more important: alt attributes, label elements, h1 elements, working if JavaScript is turned off (not because screenreader users don't have JavaScript turned on, but if your site works without JavaScript it probably works without a mouse).
    posted by alasdair at 6:18 AM on November 29, 2013


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