I’ve been reading the Washington Post via their web site for almost as long as I’ve lived in DC. While the Post’s site has never been known for its beautiful design, the recent updates are nothing short of awful. In particular, the home page now consists almost entirely of bold-face text. To my eyes, all the bold just makes the whole thing look like a giant advertisement.
So, I finally broke down and decided to see what I could do about it. I wrote some CSS modifications that cleaned the front page up nicely. Observe:
Before
After
It’s not a huge change, but I find it much more readable. If you like the way it looks, please feel free to use the CSS yourself. I’m using a Safari extension called User CSS to apply the CSS to all pages on washingtonpost.com. I’m sure there are similar extensions available for Firefox and Chrome. I set the domain to: http://*.washingtonpost.com/*
Here’s the CSS:
body {background-color: #eee !important;}
h1, h2, a {font-weight: normal !important;}
#content a {color: #057EC2 !important;}
#content a:hover {color: #66aad1 !important;}
ul.normal li {margin-bottom: 4px !important;}
p.heading1, p.heading2 {font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif !important;}