Arc90's lab blog showcased small web and usability experiments, most famously the Readability reader tool, plus password masking ideas.
Commenters repeatedly recommend Readability for reading hard-to-read pages without ugly fonts or colors, and use it as a workaround.
A few of the responses here and in the blog comments are up in arms about your suggestion to treat mobile and desktop users the same. The comments that intend to contrast the differences between processing power, dimensions, and available network resources of "desktop" versus "mobile" devices are predicated on the notion that users do want you to send gobs of data that consume more resources when they are on desktop machines. In general, however, they don't. Witness the comments in "Your social widgets are losing you visitors right now" (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1771607) and the popularity of Readability. (http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/)
Something I think (self-apologetic and self-described) Web "designers" and "UX experts" in the West don't realize is that bandwidth caps still exist even for home use, and in some places they are the norm.
Given the reactions, it seems when people read the suggestion "serve the same content to all browsers", they see "serve mobile users the same content that you serve on your created-with-the-desktop-in-mind ('full') Web site". Perhaps this should be reworded to explicitly say the inverted form: "serve the same content on your full Web site as you serve on your mobile Web site." Surprise! Mobile users aren't the only ones who like to view content created with ease-of-consumption in mind.
[Cue dissent pointing out that I did use the word "consumption", followed by some bullshit suggestion like "Mobile users…
This may be out of place, and I have no doubt that Douglas Crockford is a genius and an all-around excellent human being. Also, I am pretty firmly in the substance over style camp of web design.
Having said that, I find it pretty hard to accept webpages (in 2009!) that have this for design:
<body bgcolor=linen>
<h1 align=center><font size="+4">JavaScript:</font><br>
Thank god for Readability...
Updates: Yes, by Readability I mean http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/ It's an outstanding little mini-app. If you don't know it, try it.
Second, I want to clarify that what I quoted is literall the entire style for the whole page. I find that mind-boggling. (And, yes, I thought of PG's site.)
Finally, the page was written in 2001, so my crack about 2009 isn't quite fair. Still, many people do update their sites.
Irony yet again, the problem is with the font-stack. I guess you have a version of Helvetica that's not that readable. Only of they followed their own advice and tested it.Though this articles is nothing great and sorta ironic on this site but if you still want to read it - use Readability: http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/
This is how it looks: http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/8523/201012030938.png
That comment is incredible. Not only did Arment openly credit Readability for competitively spurring him, let's go back to the origin of the Readability bookmarklet (long before the app)-
http://lab.arc90.com/2009/03/02/readability/
Our latest experiment was partly inspired by Marco Arment’s awesome Instapaper application (and equally awesome Instapaper iPhone app).
nice idea and nice realization, too! it works pretty good! if you can't read the password after you've typed it in, try to mark it with SHIFT + LEFT-/RIGHT-ARROW or SHIFT + HOME/END :)
by the way: the guys from arc90.com cook up pretty cool things in their labs, like the greatly useful Readability bookmarklet http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/
Actually, it's why Readability (http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/) and Instapaper Text (http://www.instapaper.com/extras) bookmarklets exist. They blocks all the ads and non-essential content, ensures columns are wide enough, and standardizes the fonts.
They also work great for all those Typepad blogs with odd columns and tiny fonts.