Readability Is King

written by Brian Knapp

The internet is an ugly place and I'm not just talking about MySpace or Geocities either. No, as a while the internet has become an entirely cluttered and unreadable place. Every site just seems to get messier and harder to read.

If you've noticed, on this site I have chosen to try and make it at readable as humanly possible. That is to say, I make sure that it is as close to reading a book as possible.

I am a big fan of both distraction free reading and writing. I try to keep my writing experience as uncluttered as possible and it really does help, but when I read all day long on the internet, I am forced to constantly adjust for fonts, ads, and other junk that just clutters up the page.

I suppose this all started long before the web and in magazines and newspapers where ad placement is paramount. That said, at least in a magazine or newspaper I don't have to have some obnoxious advertising block in the middle of the content.

Now, I know a thing or two about advertising on the internet and how it works, so I'll just go ahead and say that I think whoever makes a great content site that focuses on readability is going to win in spades.

You notice how I sad readability and not design? Those are two VERY different goals.

A pretty design is something that makes the designer and site owner feel good. It says something about who they are and what they are about. The problem is that it often gets in the way of a quality reading experience. I'm talking about tiny fonts, huge headers, and lots of sidebars and junk.

Even sites like Wikipedia's design can be obnoxious to read at times. If they pile on enough citations and cross-links your eyes have to constantly adjust to both the somewhat smallish text and the constant barrage of blue links.

I think what devices like the kindle or iPad have shown is that reading on a digital device doesn't have to suck. It can be good. Heck, it could be easily as good as a book.

Safari's reader mode gets this mostly right most of the time. It isn't perfect, but it does work pretty well.

Mostly, I look at what people are doing and how giant media conglomerates like AOL and Yahoo are making a huge mess out of their massive content plays and I realize... What if someone made a Huffington Post or Engadget or TechCrunch or Gawker or Kotaku that was actually readable?

I bet you people would flock to it and it would become one of the biggest networks in the world because it is the easiest to read.

Readability, not just content, is king.

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