alt Hacker NewsI prefer the Japanese style. Information dense, yet clean. It reminds me of the web before Apple-style minimalism took over.
To contrast with a superficially similar style, Chinese web stores are also maximalist, but they tend to assault you with popup coupons, confetti effects, and other such things. Japanese style feels very efficient and utilitarian by comparison.
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I think you made a good observation about what’s in essence different between the Chinese style and the Japanese style. The popup coupons and confetti effects are all animations. Personally I find these animations highly distracting. Whereas if something is information dense but static, I like it.
(There are also non-store Chinese designs; they are not trying to sell anything so they don’t need coupons and confettis. These are actually enjoyable to use. And they are more information dense than the English equivalent because the Chinese script packs more in a smaller space. This of course makes such designs i18n-hostile.)
They feel like paper catalogues!
It reminds me of the “portal” era of Netscape, Excite and Yahoo. Very information dense. Among others’, Google’s minimalism took over.
Yes, this was the portal style and I still adore it and use it myself, where I can. As long as the page has a scannable information hierarchy, information dense sites are better when you just want to get stuff done (/look stuff up), which for me is most of the time. I don't care about the fluff and "hero images" and the rest.