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It's hard to justify snowflake animations on your website...
by throwaway_ab 9mo ago
It's hard to justify snowflake animations on your website...
- vegabook 9mo agoor changing my mouse pointer
- archerx 9mo agoYes can people stop doing this, it was cute 20 years ago now it’s just annoying and obnoxious.
- ChrisMarshallNY 9mo agoThat reminds me of this classic: https://www.angelfire.com/super/badwebs/ https://www.angelfire.com/super/badwebs/
- noduerme 9mo agoFWIW, while I'm complaining about this site I'm actually adding a nice easy-on-the eyes particle system in the background of a point-and-click online game. You don't put it in front of the content or behind text people are supposed to read. This is such a common failure mode with coders who do their own design. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- webdevver 9mo agoit is an interesting thought: run a vanity fluid sim on your website to filter out everyone without discrete GPUs...
- pixelesque 9mo agoIt's very annoying, but you can turn it off (snowflake icon, although then you get a yellow background), and IMO the article content is worth reading.
- xnorswap 9mo agoI tried that then discarded it, because it doesn't immediately hide the snowflakes that are already on screen. The article is good but the choice of distracting snowflakes or radioactive piss burning your retina is not a welcome one.
- gcanyon 9mo agoI literally didn't notice that the snowflake icon turned it off: 1. I scrolled through the article getting more and more frustrated with the snow 2. I scrolled all the way back to the top and saw the snowflake icon 3. I clicked the snowflake, saw the hideous yellow, said WTF and clicked again to go back to blue 4. **I never noticed** that the snowflake *does* stop the snow, but *only* stops *new* snow, so the existing snow continues to fall across the screen 5. I clicked several other things, then came here to complain and saw this thread
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- orphea 9mo ago> although then you get a yellow background Yes, and this is arguably worse. I ended up using Immersive Reader mode in Edge.
- nkrisc 9mo agoThe snowflake icon that disappears off-screen the instant you scroll down past the obnoxiously large header image to read the actual content?
- al_borland 9mo agoIt takes over 10 seconds to turn off fully. I had to go back and try it after your comment, because I thought that button just turned the page yellow, which was worse than the blue. I ended up using reader mode to read the page. The whole site design undermined the point being made. One of the first things mentioned is not to be distracting. Yet they went out of their way to make their own site distracting. "Do as I say, not as I do."
- tryauuum 9mo agoah this is why I heard my coolers spin up
- jgalt212 9mo agoScrooge
- NSPG911 9mo agoThe animation isn't even in the background...
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- skywhopper 9mo agoYeah, on an article ranting about clutter in the macOS UI, this is a mindboggling design choice.
- csin 9mo agoOnce you try the dark mode, you'll realize the irony is done on purpose. Edit: I'm not implying it's a good thing. It's a joke that did not drop. Given the audience is trying to read text. And he's making it annoying to read text. It's like a stand-up comedian telling a joke, in a wild accent; where the audience cannot discern what he's saying.
- Jeremy1026 9mo agoIt's a joke for this specific topic, that is on the entire website, and has been for almost a month prior[1] to this post being published? [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20251207071946/https://tonsky.me/ https://web.archive.org/web/20251207071946/https://tonsky.me...
- csin 9mo ago"I’m Niki. Here I write about programming and UI design" I'd imagine he thought the blog was mostly going to be about UI. "Haha, a blog talking about UI, with bad UI. Isn't that funny!" Like there's no way the flashlight UI was done for usability purposes. It has to be a joke.
- vardump 9mo agoThe site has also an amazing night mode. Everyone should try it!
- g947o 9mo agoWell, I guess you haven't tried its "dark mode" yet
- hagbard_c 9mo agoA hint to the site developer: add an option to purchase the Weather Control Pack Platinum Pro+ to get to choose your site weather any way you like. It would fity nicely next to that 'Personal Information' section. Who knows, someone might even 'purchase' it since that seems to the thing to do in the Cult of the Fruit.
- rcarmo 9mo agoThe detail on the animations is, as usual, top notch, including the way snow doesn't just immediately turn off but stops falling slowly. I love it.
- shawabawa3 9mo ago> including the way snow doesn't just immediately turn off but stops falling slowly. I love it. Funny, i disliked this exact detail. I thought turning it off hadn't worked for a few seconds and i retoggled it on and off a bunch of times before i got it
- reddalo 9mo agoI think OP was sarcastic. (I hope!)
- llm_nerd 9mo agoCan people actually read it with the snowflakes? The motion draws my eyes and makes it extremely unpleasant trying to read the underlying text. Very poorly thought out decoration. And yes, I did think "this is terrible, there must be a way to change it", clicking the snowflake icon. The colour changed to a new colour but otherwise it didn't seem to change, so I just clicked back. Because, as you noted, the snowflakes slowly end, which I didn't realize until seeing your comment. It's fun. Looks neat. It's an extremely poor idea for a site trying to convey textual information.
- necovek 9mo agoI did notice it, but had no trouble reading windowed on a large screen (43" 4K screen).
- robofanatic 9mo ago:-) and while doing this, the background turns yellow — why? how annoying it would be if something like this existed in real life - turning off the fan switches on the lights, and turning off the lights switches on the fan.
- tempodox 9mo agoCame here to say the same. Not only is it redundant and distracting, destroying the reading experience, it even makes the fucking fan turn on and make noise because apparently it’s a lot of work for the video card. A presentation of valid arguments destroyed by something completely superfluous and ironically the same kind of stupidity that’s the target of the criticism made.
- Maxion 9mo agoIt felt quite ironic reading a complaint about icons and UI consistency through a hail of snowflakes that made it hard to even see the icons.
- rob74 9mo agoSometimes you need an animation to turn your site into a special snowflake of a site, and what better way to do that than to use a snowflake animation? TBF, you can turn it off by clicking on the snowflake icon in the top right corner. But then the background turns from blue into an annoying shade of yellow. Ok, you can click on the sun icon to fix it by switching to night mode. But then... aaaaargh!
- tempodox 9mo agoIt seems like the author went out of their way to prove they can make an even worse UI than Apple. I suspect they succeeded.
- kenty 9mo agoThis is exactly my thoughts. If you are reading this, author, please either make the snowflakes less distracting or toggleable. They are a pain on mobile.
- oneeyedpigeon 9mo ago> author, please either make the snowflakes less distracting or toggleable They already did, as the grandparent comment already explained: >> TBF, you can turn it off by clicking on the snowflake icon in the top right corner.
- tempodox 9mo agoDid you see what happens when you do? I wouldn’t say it improves readability.
- oneeyedpigeon 9mo agoYup: all the animation stops, the overlaid snowflakes disappear, and the background changes from blue to yellow. I haven't bothered to check the foreground/background contrast of the two versions, but I suspect that, although the yellow version will have less contrast, the removal of the snowflakes will make for a net benefit to readability for the average person.
- fainpul 9mo agoIt's an annoying website, but luckily you can just enable reader view and all problems are fixed.
- nkrisc 9mo agoThe audacity to critique Apple's use of icons (which is objectively justified critique, IMO) while having animated snowflakes falling over the text and images on the site is something on an entirely different level. Thank goodness for Firefox reader mode. That animation is so incredibly distracting.
- emacdona 9mo agoYeah. I immediately went to the snowflake icon at the top of the page thinking it would turn the animation off. Instead, it changed the background color :-( I can't stand animations while I'm trying to read something, and this one is particularly egregious.
- oneeyedpigeon 9mo agoIt change the background color AND turns off the animation. (TBF, it slowly fades the animation out, probably for aesthetic reasons, to avoid a jarring sudden stop. I do agree, though, that a sudden stop would probably be more appropriate in this context)
- scythmic_waves 9mo agoOhhh thank you! I thought the same as the parent comment: I expected that button to turn off the animation immediately. I guess the author wanted the yellow background to "melt" the snowflakes?
- euroderf 9mo ago> I can't stand animations while I'm trying to read something, and this one is particularly egregious. Let me introduce you to "neko"...
- joombaga 9mo agoPlease do! You put an ellipsis where an interesting explanation could go.
- layer8 9mo agoAt least there’s a button to turn it off. But yes, I agree.
- dewey 9mo agoThe rage bait on HN works like clockwork. Usually it's the "dark mode" feature of that website that triggers this comment.
- protoster 9mo agotonsky.me is a troll site that should be banned from being posted on HN
- throwaway270925 9mo agoOr you could just lighten up and get a sense of humor...
- draven 9mo agoWhat's trollish about his blog ?
- protoster 9mo agoAuthor seems to enjoy writing posts that get lots of votes on site that I would describe as eye-rending, especially the "normal" yellow color scheme. It's aggressively unpleasant to read.
- maleldil 9mo agoHow is it trolling, though? Annoying, sure. But the content here is valid and worth reading, even if the medium is suboptimal.
- ziml77 9mo agoIt's easy to justify: it's cute. Just like the other options up at the top. If you click the sun it turns out the lights and turns your cursor into a flashlight. And it has an actual hamburger as the icon for the menu.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- dxdm 9mo agoCute AND annoying. Like a racoon. Please don't fling racoons at people, not even for christmas.
- ciabattabread 9mo agoNeeds some Alanis Morissette background music.
- oneeyedpigeon 9mo agoIt's Christmas, lighten up. I think the animation adds a glorious bit of irony: "look, here's a horribly distracting effect that is almost designed to make it difficult to read the article, and it's still not as egregious as Apple's Tahoe design!"
- zuhsetaqi 9mo agoThe animation is not only on the linked article so no, it's not about the irony.
- raldi 9mo agoDesign is about how it works (my phone went 100% —> 84% while reading this, almost certainly thanks to the snow)
- oneeyedpigeon 9mo agoIt's a shame the author didn't test on mobile, but I think we should cut them some slack. It would be understandable for this particular article's audience to mostly be viewing on desktop.
- ascendantlogic 9mo agoI couldn't tell if the author was being ironic or just breathtakingly hypocritical.
- AlexandrB 9mo agoThis is hypocrisy in the same way that a rock star complaining about construction noise outside his home is hypocrisy. Context is everything.
- oneeyedpigeon 9mo agoEven if they were being hypocritical, I think the impact of briefly-bad UI on someone's blog post pales in comparison with bad UI in a product of macOS scale.
- Waterluvian 9mo agoI found this kinda funny. The content of the page is something I strongly agree with. But then the page itself was just so distracting. I saw the snow flake icon so I tapped it but it just turned my snow into the dreaded yellow snow.
- raldi 9mo agoAnd now my phone is hot
- crazygringo 9mo agoI was wondering why my phone was turning hot in my hand...
- jajuuka 9mo agoThe irony of an article about design being on such a badly designed page is not lost on me.
- ineedasername 9mo agoIt also immediately eats 5% of the raw compute on my RTX 4080 Super, which is more than a dozen tabs in chrome and 3 active youtube videos running, run in each of Chrome, Firefox, Edge-- all combined, which was 3% before loading this page (which is 5% on its own) up to 9% total. That explains my other comment, which speculated the snow as the cause for my iPhone instantly overheating, followed by screen-dimming throttling. Also: this is not a plea to stop putting snow/etc on pages. I miss the days of such things in earlier internet. I'd trade back janky plugins and Flash player crashes for the humanizing & personalized touch many sites had back then.
- myguysi 9mo agoI was starting to wonder why my iPhone got crazy hot. I’m using reader mode and it appears to continue running the web page and animation in the background… crazy.
- ex-aws-dude 9mo agoWhy? Its just a silly personal website Do you not realize that the stakes are different between that and a whole OS?
- morshu9001 9mo agoIt'd be fine if it didn't lag horribly
- charles_f 9mo agoA very distracting one that masks text as well. But to be fair, there's a very explicit icon in the header to deactivate them
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- cush 9mo agoHot take: The snowflakes are fun and when blogs integrate fun things they make me feel joy like when I was throwing marquee elements all over my geocities site in grade school. In an era where most of the content I read is written by AI, the more personal a blog feels to me, the better.
- vpribish 9mo agoi thought it was very funny :) - try the dark mode
- ThouYS 9mo agolost 4% battery while reading the blog post
- FarmerPotato 9mo agoI decided to believe it was parody. Snowstorm ruining your visibility. Article on bad UX hamming up the bad UX. That snowflakes were the author’s preference? That’s too much madness for one day.