His site definitely lacks style but I would argue the design is from that era as well. To be fair, I doubt he designed the look and feel of his site - and the truth is most great designers tend to have crappy sites because they are busy with real work and dont need to market themselves that heavily. I would guess he is probably in that boat, he doesnt really care about his web site because he has much more important things to do.

You have to remember that Tufte's area of specialty is in the area of visualizing quantitative information. He's not a designer (although he is a sculptor, apparently) or GUI guru even if he has opinions on them.

Clearly a "dated" design isn't enough to stop you from visiting a site. Hacker News definitely has a dated feel too.

Does it? I think it's the wave of the future. Or at least I hope it is. It's as close to pure content and zero chrome as I've seen anywhere. Tufte's site may look old, but it's fairly information-dense, and the comment system is the best I've seen anywhere.

My comment was intended less as a critique of Tufte or HN than to point out that the parent post's criticism on Tufte's site is a little off base.

Sure, but just because he hasn't designed an interface doesn't invalidate his opinion. His opinions are mostly from the perspective of his field, which in some ways influence user interface design.

Many user interfaces use elements (he did invent sparklines) and principles he has talked about in his books.

I mean seriously, if Joe User criticizes a user interface is he wrong because he hasn't designed an interface before?

The difference between an interface designer and a user is:

1. The designer knows many opinions (and due to being exposed to an avalanche of user feedback over the years you really see interfaces in a panopticum). But you never get enough. It's like a drug.

2. The user only knows his opinion. Every user opinion is important--to the designer.

Tufte is just an intelligent eloquent user. His interface design competence is as weak as his photography.

Without working in the field you don't get this perspective on interfaces. Tufte has an intelligent riff, but it's always the same professoral top-down "it-has-to-be-so-and-so", and sometimes he's just plain subjectively irrelevant.

Based on the tone of your commentary, I'm not convinced you believe the second part to #2.

That's odd. Most great designers I've seen have pretty good sites. If not a bit gawdy, but certainly never this frumpy.

I am hoping I am not the only one who is confused with his website - how to differentiate where the article ends and where comments begin. Also took a small while to figure out how to access his book list.

The comments are an integral part of the article, since his responses to them are valuable additions to the article text. Also his commenters are very well behaved.

Yeah, very confusing. I thought it was some sort of interview at the bottom at first.