Hacker News Reader

Comment by bartwe | Hacker News Reader

I've found this site as one of the easier to use ones on mobile?

Exactly. As far as I'm concerned, HN IS (!!!) mobile friendly. I'm so sick of the garbage mobile formatting that is ubiquitous these days. Give me a clean desktop version any day. Pinch to zoom FTW. 2009 was way easier to browse on the iPhone than 2015, what happened? Granted, there is an occasional gem but they are the rare exception. Perhaps bump the frontsize up a bit, but I don't see how HN could really be mobile 'optimized' in a good way.

Have my upvote for your opinion.

Problem is, that you're basically "forced" to produce a mobile site by Google, otherwise you'll be way down in the SERPs :(

I never understood the point of mobile sites - i'm perfectly capable of pinching my screen, in case something is unreadable (which isn't too much, given retina screens and all that...)

Just expounding... Take for example epicurious.com: super useful reference I've used for over a DECADE. I had no problems using it on my mobile/tablet devices, ever.. Until the mobile rewrite earlier this year. Rendered almost USELESS! If there was only an 'old version' button...

Sorry I just downvoted you by mistake because the controls are too damn small for touch, hope you don't mind.

It took 5 tries hitting the reply button, accidently giving you a down vote in the process...

The text having a fix width is a pain. On my screen and with my eyes, I have to zoom in and scroll each line back and forth. Makes it annoying to read.

Which browser are you using? On Android, both Firefox and Chrome have the option to increase the font size, allowing you to read comments without zooming in.

The lack of text reflow when zooming in is really annoying though.

My biggest gripe on mobile is that the controls are too small and too closely placed. Site itself is reasonably readable (could be better). But odds of upvotng, downvoting, or opening the author's user profile page are pretty much a crapshoot.

Hacker News does not have a responsive layout, which is generally what is considered "mobile friendly" in 2015.

Also sizes: fonts, controls. I don't understand how people can call "mobile-friendly" site with extra small font and horizontal scroll - maybe they hate own eyes or it's hidden form of masochism?

Agreed. It's laid out in such a simple way it's easy to navigate and read.

I can fit 25 posts on the screen on iPhone 6 which is nice for browsing - ihackernews makes everything bigger and drops me down to 4/5.

Keep it the way it is if we're voting on it ;-)

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