Controversial columns
Fabian A. Scherschel
Posted on February 21st, 2012
If my last article has taught me one thing, it’s the fact that a two column layout for blogs is highly controversial. While a lot of these comments are cheap shots at the first thing conveniently different about the forum my criticism was presented in, I do quite appreciate the irony of having accused the Canonical Design Team of a top-down model when it comes to designing Ubuntu and getting the same accusation thrown back in my face regarding my blog design — a design that I didn’t come up with, I would like to point out.
I do admit that I like this blog theme a lot and that I also do not see the problem in scanning one column down a page while ignoring the other (the other column is often filled with very annoying blinking ad banners in many other blogs, after all), then scrolling back up. I also don’t have a problem with stylistically imitating a classic book or print magazine on the web if it looks good, but I can understand how that would annoy some people, especially since aesthetics like that are highly subjective. I think it mostly annoys the purists though, the kind of people who code their own web pages in GNU Emacs (not that there is anything wrong with that, mind you). It is valid criticism. On this issue, I will however ignore all comments coming from the Canonical camp, as someone who is of the opinion that icons like these are fit to be released to the wider public, just isn’t my target audience.
One of my biggest goals in life is not being a hypocrite and I am very keen on listening to the readers of this site when it comes to the content of the blog and how it is presented. People accusing me of “not listening to the community” are, however, either being facetious or they aren’t aware of the fact that I have started this project less than a month ago. I am listening to your feedback, I’m just not acting on the criticism of the two column layout right away as I think this blog needs time to grow an actual community before I will start changing things. I will keep it very much in mind, though. Let’s wait until the firestorm that got started by daring to criticise the mighty empire of Ubuntu abates a bit, and then we can reconsider this issue more calmly from all sides.
My vote is that you keep the two-column layout, but make a “jump to top of article text” button at the bottom.
While I disagree with you about Ubuntu and Unity, I really love this blog theme. The two-column is pretty unique and suits your writing style well. It makes the website distinctive and memorable.
I vote to keep it
Thanks! Many people are complaining that my paragraphs in these things are way too long so I thought the two columns break that up nicely as well. It’s less daunting, visually.
From a comment on your Ubuntu post:
“I think I’ll print you article, and hand it out (…)”
That’s indeed what the theme seems to signal. Especially with longer posts. If you would print it, and remove parts of the header, it would look like a very classical flyer or pamphlet.
That is an interesting association considering the tone in “Welcome to Blurmany” and “Ubuntu, you’re doing it wrong”.
Association as in? Are you implying this is my version of the Kreuzzeitung?
66 characters per line is generally held to be the ideal number for maximum readability. Whether by intention or not (I suspect the former) you hit that on the nose.
Readable and beautiful!
Well done.
If you resize your browser to circa 550px wide, you will see only one column. The theme nicely reacts to media queries. This thing I like.
What I don’t like is:
- high contrast, text colour is #000 and background #fff. It burns my eyes, specialy at night
- font size, only 13px is way too small to comfortable read long paragraphs on screen which resolution is higher than 72 PPI.
I would also like to chime in about the paragraphs. Paragraphs help people to ‘chunk’ the discussion, so it would be good write in that way.
+1 for clhodapp’s suggestion.
Paul: Credit goes entirely to the Theme Foundry.
Michal: True. It’s coded with mobile in mind. Good point, I had forgotten that!
Donny: I am giving my best.
Well, the Kreuzzeitung, no. I thought of the pamphlet as a classical, general and proven way of spreading news, independent of the message.
One could argue that those two mentioned posts are political, reaching out to large groups (Germans and Ubuntu users). That is not bad in itself. It follows your quest for a fair debate.
The theme seems to accentuate that.
Very true. Unsurprising, I like politics. Otherwise I wouldn’t have studied it for years in uni.
I like it, it gives a feeling of a morning paper, something to sit down and read, a pause in life feeling.
It is easier to read in this 2-column way, maybe make the background less white (but still “white”).
Hello, minor typesetting nut here!
While the two-column layout is simply nostalgicly aping the layout of a magazine or flyer, it makes little sense on the web, breaking the flow of reading.
On paper? Sure, because it saves paper. You are not saving “webpage”.
A much bigger annoyance, however is the poor typesetting. You are using very long paragraphs, and have no inter paragraph spacing (you instead indent the first line). This creates a wall of text, which was a reasonable tradeoff when people had to save paper, but has no reason to be on a webpage.
Finally, serif fonts are (again!) more readable on paper, but less readable on screen.
All around, the design, typesetting and typography of the site seems to hark back to magazine design. That’s of course a perfectly reasonable design decision, however, it must be done consciously knowing you are trading off readability and appeal for nostalgic prettyness.
Oh, wait, I am a Canonical employee, (although I don’t do icons!) and missed the part where my comments are to be ignored by default. Sorry!
To me, this site is *gorgeous*. One of the most beautiful blogs I’ve seen.
The two-column layout doesn’t do that much to impede the site’s usability, though it doesn’t exactly help either. Either you have the second column on there or you waste 50% the vertical real estate with whitespace.
I agree with clhodapp that the link back to the top of the article would be great.
More importantly, the layout does respond to the screen size (single-column on my phone).
The borders to comment text fields are too light, though. I’ve had trouble figuring out where do I click to activate them.
As is the case with most pages on the web, the font is too small for me. I have Chromium zoom it up by two notches. The site responds reasonably well to that, though if I wanted to have it even bigger, the two columns layout would make it difficult to use.
Now, if I were able to read it comfortably on the default zoom, I’d mind the serif fonts because the screens generally don’t have high enough resolution for that (maybe with the exception of new iPhone). On my zoom level, though, serif does actually make more sense
.
The site’s not that difficult to use. A couple of tweaks would greatly improve it while preserving the aesthetics. And it’s still much more usable than a lot other sites out there (like anything Gawker, Techcrunch, most online newspapers etc.).
Also, your leading is too large. Ok, ok, I will stop.
Fab, I 100% agree with you about the icons, anyone who thinks those look passable for anything above pre-school is no longer allowed to talk about design, anywhere. Your response to the criticisms sounds balances, and well thought out. The two column layout looks excellent. Keep up all the good works
x1101
Kristoffer: That was very much the intent, actually.
Roberto: Actually, I value that feedback a lot. Sorry for the snark comment in the post.
Just for the record, BTW: I can switch this design to single column. It has that option. I just think it looks even more dauntingly wall-of-text.
The two-column design is nice and the font is nice. It’s definitely reminiscent of a book. The problem is the lines are too close and you’re not using enough white space and/or paragraphs. Otherwise it’s great.
I love the two column layout too. plus, imagine my pleasant surprise when I came over to visit from my phone!
anyway, what a previous commenter said about needing paragraph spacing is true, it would help alleviate the wall of text problem.
keep the serifs! they look fabulous with the two column design. yes, serifs and two column layouts were originally used for specific reasons in print, but they’ve become more than that by now. those that would design around mere utility have their point but shouldn’t be allowed to impose their views on the anachronistically inclined
Victor: Yes, I will look at line spacing more closely. And yes, I definitely picked this theme because of its great scaling from desktop to tablet to phone.
On this short post, the two columns format works very well for me, and it looks very nice and professional. On the previous longer ones… well, the short lines are still nice for ease of reading, but the scrolling way back up to get to the second column is a little annoying, IMO. A paper magazine page can get away with that because the eye can instantly flick from the end of one column to the beginning of the next, and because a paper page has a hard limit on how long the columns can be. But on a web page, it’s not as easy.
Keep the theme, Drop the haters
You’re not an open source project, it’s not fair to compare your criticism of Canonical to the criticism of this blog theme… Just doesn’t compare.
Well, if it would be comparable, I can sure as hell tell you that my one man empire would be very profitable with Canonical’s income.
THIS article works perfectly, and looks good, in two columns – because it all fits on one screen (in my browser). For all the others: View > Page Style > No Style – otherwise I cannot read the articles.
If the theme supports it, a good compromise would be section breaks (over and above paragraph breaks) with each section in two columns visible on screen without scrolling (500-1000 words I guess).
That would be professional-looking … and readable!
Let me go all Steve Jobs on you: you need a bigger screen.
Just make it infinite columns, only one screen high. And then scroll sideways. You can map scrollwheels to scroll sideways with Javascript.
I didn’t design this theme. I don’t have time to do so, otherwise I wouldn’t have payed good money for it. I also like the way this looks. Why do you think I deployed it in the first time?
Hi Fab,
I love the theme. When I opened it for the first time, I had forgotten that the site was associated with you. The impact that it made on me was, hold on this is going to be a serious piece of prose. Which I believe is exactly what you wanted to achieve. So much so that I downloaded it and did a text – to – speech on it so I could absorb the content correctly.
Keep up the good work and keep the theme.
Ken.
@Ken: Yeah, that’s pretty much exactly what I wanted. Thanks!
I find the half size columns you are using easier to read but I also second the call for a “jump to top of article text” button.
Thanks
Oh, I loved the two column layout as it makes me feel I am reading a book. I will be reading your blogs , whichever layout it is in.
Cheezespread: That is exactly what I thought too. It felt very Kindle-esque. And I love the way in which the Kindle presents text…
Keep the columns, keep the blog!