Structure Legend Page Layout — Seriously Confusing

The page that’s supposed to clarify the Structure Legend, How to read Grammar Breakdowns, is almost comically difficult to read. Depending upon how you’ve sized your browser window, the English column break up in different ways, and it becomes difficult to see what corresponds to what across the Bunpro/English/Japanese/Example line. I finally figured out how this works, but it’s really messy, and the first time I looked at the page I couldn’t make any sense of it at all.

This is a pretty simple layout fix. You probably just want to make the text smaller, and ensure that nothing in the English column doubles up, even when you resize the window. Oh, and it wouldn’t hurt to have the “—” dividers become solid lines all the way across the page.

This may sound like a minor quibble, but it’s really not: that page is crucial, and it’s almost illegible.

In fact, it would also be helpful to cure that Structure pyramid on Meaning pages. Essentially: it shouldn’t be a pyramid. The verb roots should all line up in a straight column.

(Sorry if this sounds pedantic. But this stuff is confusing enough as it is, without throwing page layout problems into the mix.)

2 Likes

I use the site almost 100% on mobile, but I have similar complaints about the Meaning layout. It varies depending on the grammar point and amount of info to show, but on some cases it’s VERY confusing trying to follow all the information and definitions.

For mobile specifically, I think the biggest issue is having all text Center aligned. If things were Left aligned, maybe using bullets or some other structure, I think that would alleviate all my confusion. I’ve thought about writing a script to rework the view a little.

In any case, I really think the team should re-evaluate the readability of some of this content for different screen sizes.

2 Likes

Yes, the center alignment is a real issue throughout—not just with the pyramid.

As for the Structure Legend page, it should probably be redone entirely. Easy enough to do with a single page that doesn’t change. This kind of layout, for instance, is vastly more transparent, and the vertical form would probably work nicely on mobile: