I think what you are seeing a lot of your examples is a faux minimalism. Basic color schemes, few buttons. But the purpose of a minimalist design is to give greater significance to the thing that matters. Your first link is a great example of faux minimalism[1]. It contains a lot of unnecessary information; 1/4 of the available screen is dedicated to "Top posts". What does "20 stunning pictures from Iran" have to do with the article I am reading? Why am I being directed there? About 2/3 of the scrollable area is comments. I don't understand the point in comments when things like HN and Reddit already exist. Try going back to blog posts from 5 years ago if you want to see how badly they age, mostly due to comment rot.
The page also contains a search (search what?), various "social" buttons (these rot horribly too), and tags (no one uses theses but the authors). It does have 100% font size and decent contrast, so I'll give it credit for not being unreadable like many blogs.
I personally want to see more minimalism on the web. Outlook.com is a good example of minimalism done right. If you pay the yearly subscription ads are removed and there is nothing in the application not about email; with the ads you have 1 annoying thing. Compare this with Gmail which contains:
1) A 30px tall fixed container -- which completely stands out from the rest of the app -- containing links to other Google services like YouTube (why I want to go from email to YouTube, I'm not sure) which aren't related to email.
2) Another persistent container for social networking notifications to a social network I don't use and isn't about email.
3) A chat window which luckily you can minimize (but loads nevertheless).
4) Useful stuff about your email like tags, draft and spam folders are hidden under a "More" submenu!
Comments
I think what you are seeing a lot of your examples is a faux minimalism. Basic color schemes, few buttons. But the purpose of a minimalist design is to give greater significance to the thing that matters. Your first link is a great example of faux minimalism[1]. It contains a lot of unnecessary information; 1/4 of the available screen is dedicated to "Top posts". What does "20 stunning pictures from Iran" have to do with the article I am reading? Why am I being directed there? About 2/3 of the scrollable area is comments. I don't understand the point in comments when things like HN and Reddit already exist. Try going back to blog posts from 5 years ago if you want to see how badly they age, mostly due to comment rot.
The page also contains a search (search what?), various "social" buttons (these rot horribly too), and tags (no one uses theses but the authors). It does have 100% font size and decent contrast, so I'll give it credit for not being unreadable like many blogs.
I personally want to see more minimalism on the web. Outlook.com is a good example of minimalism done right. If you pay the yearly subscription ads are removed and there is nothing in the application not about email; with the ads you have 1 annoying thing. Compare this with Gmail which contains:
1) A 30px tall fixed container -- which completely stands out from the rest of the app -- containing links to other Google services like YouTube (why I want to go from email to YouTube, I'm not sure) which aren't related to email.
2) Another persistent container for social networking notifications to a social network I don't use and isn't about email.
3) A chat window which luckily you can minimize (but loads nevertheless).
4) Useful stuff about your email like tags, draft and spam folders are hidden under a "More" submenu!
[1] http://mkronline.com/2012/10/30/you-arent-imagining-it-the-w...