I really like the content but the text blocks being justified makes it more difficult to read than it needs to be.
First time hearing this! I added a URL parameter `noJustify`, which removes text-justification. Eg.
https://blog.frost.kiwi/dual-kawase/?noJustifyI'm not sure either way, would you say this makes it easier to read and I should make it the default?
Justified, in general, looks neater, is more formal, but is a bit more harder to read as well. I personally have no issue with it either way, but to tell you the truth, from a quick check I could not find any website that uses justified text, not even the ones that I think are formal and professional. Reuters, APNews, Wikipedia, Wordpress, Medium, everything I checked is unjustified. So I think it's a conventional default, if nothing else.
If you take a typography class, they will drill it into you that unjustified is the norm (and you will spend some time learning how to make pleasant rags), and that you need a VERY GOOD reason to make text justified.
How much of it is convention vs based in measurable outcomes is up for debate (maybe), but at least that’s where most every formally trained designer/visual artist in the west comes from.
After the printing press, but before the Internet, justified text was actually the norm. Every book, newspaper and magazine had justified text. But after hundreds of years, text justification has finally fallen out of favor. We can only speculate about the reason.
I disagree. Fully justified text was the norm for narrow-column media such as newspapers and some magazines. Ragged-right was the norm for wider media such as printed books because, for physiological reasons discovered over centuries, it's easier to keep your place in long paragraphs. Most web media are narrow-column format, so tend to be fully justified. Whether that's good or not tends to be a matter of how one is consuming the matter: a high-pixel-density phone at 15 cm vs. a 1080p monitor at 45 cm call for different presentation for optimal readability.
My blog's style has Sakura.css [1] as its base, which keeps the paragraphs narrow on wide displays, limited 684 CSS pixels to aid readability. The justify text-style was a choice by me. Now I really wonder whether that hurt readability.
[1] https://github.com/oxalorg/sakura