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The Margin
The Case for Slower Software
9 min read · The Margin
There is a particular kind of quiet that good tools have. You notice it most clearly by its absence: in the half-second stutter before a window paints, in the spinner that appears for no reason you can name, in the way a page rearranges itself just as you begin to read.
We have learned to call this speed. It is not. Speed is the machine keeping up with the person. What we have built instead is haste: a great deal of motion, arranged so that the person keeps up with the machine.
The distinction matters because reading is not a task to be completed. It is a pace to be held. A tool that respects that pace does very little. It opens, it holds still, and it gets out of the way.
A reader should make collecting effortless and reading calm. Everything else is decoration.
None of this requires new technology. It requires deciding that the writing is the point, and then refusing to put anything in front of it.
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SerifSans Serif
System SerifCharterAthelasGeorgiaSystem SansAvenir
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Text size18
Line height1.70
Column width640
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How I Got My Attention Back
Craig Mod · standalone page
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The Margin
The Case for Slower Software
9 min read
There is a particular kind of quiet that good tools have. You notice it most clearly by its absence: in the half-second stutter before a window paints, in the spinner that appears for no reason you can name, in the way a page rearranges itself just as you begin to read.
We have learned to call this speed. It is not. Speed is the machine keeping up with the person. What we have built instead is haste.
Text size 15–23 · Line height 1.40–1.90 · Column width 500–780 px
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