Design for Readability First
The Safari 5’s apparently harmless new Reader feature, which isolates the text on a webpage making it easier to read, has sparked a amazing amount of outrage from web publishers who think Apple is trying to mash online advertisements and attack their livelihood.
Similar tools have been around for eons, starting with the Print this page link of the last century, all the way up to tools like Readability, whose code Apple borrowed for its browser. But the advent of Safari Reader seems to have galvanized a point of view that’s been brewing for a while WebPages are too chaotic and difficult to read.
So publishers, listen up. Your readers, the people you depend on to reach your bottom line, have something to say. It’s a pretty simple message: Your web pages are aggressive to reading. It’s time to start paying much closer attention to the design of your pages not just to reduce clutter and make everything easier to read, but to make sure your text maintains that readability across the broad range of screen sizes, devices and browser configurations people are using today.
Tags:Readability, webpage tools
