I can see what you are getting at. Reminds me a bit of their GTK theme Nimbus for the Gnome based Java Desktop System but also Bluecurve of Gnome 2 with Bitstream Vera. Perhaps it just looks dated?
Yea maybe I asked AI and it said the reason why is both Sun’s design and the Nokia design are both “a neutral neo-grotesque foundation, refined contrast, and consistent spacing”
Does anyone know what's the rationale for doing this? It's annoying and defeats the very purpose of viewing an image or page. I consider it an anti-pattern.
You can also just click the thumbnails and it shows the full sized image in a modal. I assume everyone here blocks javascript by default and would never know that.
And now the thread will be entirely dominated by pedantic complaints about the site's implementation, per HN tradition.
It's not doing that for me on mobile, either, both Firefox and Chrome are giving me miniscule images when I tap on them. Switching to landscape didn't help either, where is usually might.
Sites just shouldn't disable zooming, it's one meta tag. The browsers shouldn't offer this option at all. There are no legitimate reasons to disable zooming.
I am sure there are legitimate reasons to disable zooming. I do not like it either, of course, but off the top of my head:
- Websites relying on pixel-perfect layouts that do not gracefully adapt when zoomed
- Input Errors on touch devices
- Branding and aesthetics
- Embedded devices where a site is running in a controlled environment where zooming serves no practical purposes and disabling zooming prevents tampering, misuse, accidental UI scaling that disrupts normal operations
- Fixed-scale graphics or games where zooming distorts aspect ratios, crop controls, or even break gameplay mechanics
Things like this and sites wanting microfonts make me glad that reader mode exists that can strip all the styling. Reader mode exposes the image as an inline element you can easily tap to expand, then pinch to zoom.
