Top all-time · #975
Frank Chimero
Personal blog · frankchimero.comdesignwriting
Frank Chimero's personal blog at frankchimero.com covers design and writing. Since 2010, 71 different Hacker News readers have linked it 87 times, most often “The Web's Grain”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-10-24, and you can follow it by feed.
Personal site of designer Frank Chimero
Most-linked posts?
- The Web's Grain5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2023-08-18
- Everything Easy is Hard Again (2018)5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-07-06
- Beyond the Machine4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-10-20
- The Web's Grain4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2017-12-16
- The Web's Grain4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2016-03-31
- How Limitations on the Net Create Big Companies3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2014-08-29
- What Screens Want (2013)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-09-11
- The Web’s Grain2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-06-24
- Selling Lemons2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-09-30
- The Web’s Grain (2015)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-11-23
What Hacker News says?
I think Times New Roman, if you just fix the line height and page width, can be beautiful, legible, and familiar. Random example: Frank Chimero's site renders with Times New Roman body text on my Mac, since I don't have Minion Pro or Calluna which are prioritized before Times in the stylesheet, and it looks lovely. http://www.frankchimero.com/writing/the-webs-grain/
Comment linking /writing/the-webs-grain/
on “Show HN: Web Design in 4 minutes”Submitted In web design, everything easy is hard again as a story · 459 points
HN discussionhttp://kellysutton.com Stumbled upon this one yesterday, it's from a paper, but well written: https://mzucker.github.io/2016/09/20/noteshrink.html A long time favorite writer: http://www.frankchimero.com/writing/the-webs-grain/
Comment linking /writing/the-webs-grain/
on “Ask HN: What are the best personal project websites you've seen?”Submitted Everything Easy is Hard Again (2018) as a story · 336 points
HN discussion>There is a difference between web design and web application development. His essay isn't really about documents vs apps. It's about documents vs documents. Or more accurately, he's lamenting about docs_simplesyntax vs docs_complicatedsyntax. He shows an example of easy HTML syntax[1] that harkens back to "simpler times" in the olden days: <html> <head> <title>My First Web Page</title> </head> <body> My First Web P…
Comment linking /writing/everything-easy-is-hard-again/images/notepad.gif
on “In web design, everything easy is hard again”Submitted Selling Lemons as a story · 213 points
HN discussionDid anybody notice that the 1997's Hello World example https://frankchimero.com/writing/everything-easy-is-hard-aga... still works? Open the most easy built-in text editor on your system (even on Android one should be able to do that, isn't it), save it, open it with your browser locally. In some aspects, the evolution of the web is similar to what the C language ecosystem experienced. It was dead simple in the begi…
Comment linking /writing/everything-easy-is-hard-again/images/notepad.gif
on “In web design, everything easy is hard again”Submitted Hi, I’d Like to Add Myself to the New Yorker (2016) as a story · 144 points
HN discussionAm I the only one who's intensely jealous of Linus? I'm 34, I've been coding prolifically since I was 9, and by 20 I was running on fumes. That was probably the last time it was any fun. By now it's very hard to sustain anything remotely resembling motivation, especially having been around long enough to have been around the block with a few technology waves. This article, circulated on HN a while back, resonated wi…
Comment linking /blog/2018/everything-easy/
on “Linus Torvalds: 'I Do No Coding Any More'”Submitted What Screens Want as a story · 44 points
HN discussionI agree with you -- I never use vulgar words, so I cannot use this word myself. That being said, maybe you saw this article being posted a few days ago: https://frankchimero.com/blog/2025/selling-lemons/ writing about the concept of "Market for Lemons". The last paragraph compares the two ideas: > What makes the Market for Lemons concept so appealing (and what differentiates it in my mind from ens**tification) is th…
Comment linking /blog/2025/selling-lemons/
on “Way past its prime: how did Amazon get so rubbish?”Submitted The Cloud is Heavy and Design Isn’t Invisible as a story · 36 points
HN discussion«In technology, I believe it comes down to the power dynamics of convenience. To create convenience—particularly the automated convenience technology trades in—someone else must make our choices for us. In other words: the less you have to do, the less say you have. » (From https://www.frankchimero.com/writing/the-webs-grain/ )
Comment linking /writing/the-webs-grain/
on “The GNUnet System”Submitted Two Sentences About Getting Older and Working on the Web as a story · 24 points
HN discussionEven with elaborate CSS in play, I think the web has deep characteristics that you can either lean into or struggle against. For example, there's the simple fact of scrolling; does your web page embrace that default behavior, or override it with fancy scroll effects, or replace it entirely with, say, some kind of horizontal page-flipping simulation? I think often of Frank Chimero's visual essay about this, titled "T…
Comment linking /writing/the-webs-grain/
on “Show HN: Brutal.js – a small framework for building brutalist web applications”Submitted The Web’s Grain (2015) as a story · 23 points
HN discussionGreat question. I created a series of UI frameworks and experiments starting around 2018 that evolved like: "react in 500 lines of JavaScript", Brutal.js, Vanillaview, Bang.html, Good.html. The ultimate one was a realization of a long held dream unifying web components with the JS tagged template literals and easy "drop in" event listeners and "granular DOM updates without 'shadow DOM'" of my previous creations in t…
Comment linking /writing/the-webs-grain/
on “Ask HN: Projects You Thought Were Cool but Failed Miserably – What Happened?”Submitted The Web's Grain as a story · 11 points
HN discussionThe two most important things to keep in mind for friends from the printed world: 1) Digital has its own aesthetic. 2) Forget everything about the canvas, the web is a fluid medium. There are tons of pratical resources about digital design. For a more theoretical perspective, take a look at Frank Chimero's writings, they are both inspiring and enlightening: 1) What screens want: https://frankchimero.com/writing/what…
Comment linking /writing/the-webs-grain/
on “Ask HN: Good Books or Resources for Web Design”Submitted How to Have an Idea as a story · 10 points
HN discussionThe Web's Grain. [1] [1] http://www.frankchimero.com/writing/the-webs-grain/
Comment linking /writing/the-webs-grain/
on “Every Modern Website”Submitted Generosity of Perspective (Re: iOS7 Design) as a story · 8 points
HN discussionI love Frank Chimero's website: http://frankchimero.com/
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on “Ash HN: What are the best designed personal web sites?”Submitted Web Tableaus as a story · 7 points
HN discussionSubmitted Independence is Lonely as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted Everything Easy is Hard Again (2018) as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted What Screens Want (2013) as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted Everything Easy Is Hard Again as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted Everything Easy Is Hard Again as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Boring Future, Volume 1 as a story · 4 points
HN discussion
