Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

I still think it should be offered as a preference to people. Pages and content requiring high cognitive load is difficult for a lot of people, so packing information too densely can feel overwhelming, making people lose their place as they're browsing through content.

It's the same reason we have paragraphs in writing, rather than walls of text. We need tools that help us spatially recognize + remember content so we have a relative frame of reference to quickly get back to something we're looking for.

It's the same reason we have pages in a book -- not just that it's easier to carry a book versus a long scroll of paper, but it's objectively easier for our minds to handle the limited amount of content each page provides, as we get ready to flip to the next. The amount of pages we've read in a book also give us a natural indication of progress.

In a similar way, UIs that are split up a little better give those of us who do get overwhelmed a better way to organize the content we're looking for. This is why the majority of web apps have distinct views dealing with different content and reachable utility dealing with that content.




Paragraphs are a small split and 98% of dense web pages still have the equivalent. That's not a defense for sparse design trends.

And pages are pages because that's convenient to make.

And to bring up restaurant menus in another spot, look at that density! If twenty pages was better I feel like we would know.


"compact mode" is what JetBrains calls this option.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: