Hacker News Reader

Comment by efiecho | Hacker News Reader

See, this is the problem with the mindset of many web developers. You point out several things that makes this website work well, so you actually answers your own question, but I read between the lines that you think HN has to be "modernized" and I have learned this usually means something with infinite scrolling, Javascript required for simple things like displaying text and pictures, lots of whitespace, bloat and many other things that would make me prefer leprosy over using the site.

The web world would be a much better place if you web developers would rather ask "Why are modern websites so shitty and bloated" instead of wondering why one of the few useable sites left have not yet been "modernized".

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Even a CSS change with better typography & legibility would go a long way. You wouldn't have to "modernize" the site.

Screen resolutions and pixel density have increased dramatically since HN was designed. It could at least use a fresh coat of paint :)

Exactly this. And People seems to want to Web "Apps" everything, but it turns out 90% of site are actually fine with Web "Pages" with a little interactively added on top.

> Even a CSS change with better typography & legibility would go a long way.

About 99.98% of HN readers are capable of writing custom CSS rules.

I'd be sympathetic if people were saying HN isn't accessible.

>but I read between the lines that you think HN has to be "modernized" and I have learned this usually means something with infinite scrolling, Javascript required for simple things like displaying text and pictures, lots of whitespace, bloat and many other things that would make me prefer leprosy over using the site.

Many here seem do read between those lines, but modernity and bloat are not synonymous, although for some reason Hacker News seems to believe so, despite knowing better.

This site does get updates, though, and many seem to lead people to clutch their pearls for fear that the staff changed one thing too many and the spell is broken and the slide towards Reddit is inevitable. Links used to break if they sat in your cache for too long - that was a bug, the staff admitted it was a bug, yet people here insisted it was necessary to maintain intellectual quality. This community fetishizes the layout of this web forum to a weird degree.

Yes, the site is minimalist and loads quickly. It would also be minimalist and would load quickly with modern HTML and a more readable stylesheet.

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