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Comment by syndicatedjelly

2 years ago

There is something to be learned from the simplicity and quaintness of this site - the information density is much higher than 90% of modern web sites. In a single page, by simply scrolling I learned so much about the communication infrastructure of a British island outpost.

There's nothing to be learned from the site's terrible organization, navigation, layout, or extreme density which makes it difficult to read. Density is not necessarily good; have you noticed that most hardcover and paperback books have pretty limited line length? Fairly generous inter-line spacing? Indented paragraphs?

There's so much "cruft" scattered around, too - tiny text "explaining" things. You shouldn't have to explain how to use your site's UI to visitors. And that UI incorporates incredibly tiny buttons that are impossible to use on mobile.

And then there's this absolute dumpster-fire: https://sainthelenaisland.info/communications.htm#q_navigati...

The author stopped learning about web design in the late 90's and seemingly doesn't give a damn about making his site actually useful and easy to navigate. It also doesn't come remotely close to passing HTML validation.

There's a meme-like website that demos this very concept. Then there's a v2.0 or some ++ type versioning where they use very minimal CSS to actually improve the readability. I'm a fan of the use of the minimal CSS to add margins and widths as it improves readability for me.

Searching for it with only the vagueness of what I can think of right now returns nothing useful, and that's with not using Google. Maybe my vague description will be enough with someone with better recall than I have.