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Comment by colinbartlett | Hacker News Reader

I'm quite certain the world's optometrists are paying HN to keep that font tiny so my eyes are strained every time I use the site on mobile.

But seriously, I've heard in the past that they wish not to break the many apps that scrape HN, and therefore have hesitated to change the markup.

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That shouldn't be HN's problem, though. Apps that scrape the HTML of a site take it entirely upon themselves to keep up with changes in the markup.

The "break HTML scraping" reason makes zero sense when an HN API exists.

The API is available but not everyone has switched to it. There is a valid argument for backwards compatibility, like Linus refusing to break userspace even when it means rejecting some improvements. However, I'm in full agreement with you here. The benefit of usability improvements far outweighs the disadvantages of breaking screen scrapers, especially when so many of those scrapers exist solely to make HN more mobile friendly.

The HN API still has some important gaps. But you have to expect the HTML to change, so cautious scrapers never hardcode XPaths!

Not sure why the current markup couldn't support some responsive styling.

I'll look up the link, but previously dang (I think?) said that it will be slowly improved, in a minimal-impact sort of way.

Introduce the HN API gradually, get the scrapers to shift over to it, improve html generation and css used. Would be interesting to hear updates on that.

[edit]

Found the link! http://blog.ycombinator.com/hacker-news-api

Just increase the font size on the main page by a couple of sizes. On both Chrome and FF Mobile it have to zoom in like crazy just to click on the "# comments" link.

Can I ask why, when using FF on Android showing the mobile version of HN, replies appear using different font sizes? Some are tiny, some are actually readable.

I have to zoom/unzoom constantly to read just a thread, or switch to the desktop version, which doesn't have this issue.

It's so dumb, I feel dumber just asking.

all it takes is a separate mobile URL, or dynamic response to mobile user-agents.

What ungodly scraper would be broken by a change in the stylesheet?

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