News.YC site advice - What do you think about the new Klipboardz look? | Hacker News Reader

News.YC site advice - What do you think about the new Klipboardz look?

klipboardz.com

3 pointsReadmore9 comments

1999 called. They want their design back.

But, I sympathize. Our site looks downright old-fashioned, too (I've spent the last month or so working on our new site, and though I think we'll be launching it this week it'll still probably take a few more weeks or work before I'll really be happy with it). Web design is strikingly hard for nerds who don't spend a lot of time doing it.

Suggestions:

Smaller link titles. I can't believe I'm saying this, because most sites have way too small fonts for everything and it's infuriating for those of us with squinty nerd eyes that have been staring at CRT screens since they were TVs.

It's hard to do the "multiple columns of wildly contrasting content" thing well. Most sites look jumbled up, and yours is no exception. Smaller thumbnails of the media links, particularly in the top section, would be a start. Probably dividing it 67/33 rather than 50/50. There's a reason newspapers do it, and a reason Yahoo's CSS bundles don't offer a 50/50 column layout at all--it's hard to figure out what's going on, as there's not immediate focus. It just feels confused.

I agree with the other poster who suggested same-size thumbs. Pick a couple of sizes and styles for everything (everything means: pics, fonts, headers, etc.) and stick to it. You're doing fine on minimizing extraneous color (which could be important with all of the crazy crap going on in the pictures).

I'm trying to position the site as a social news site where the submissions are more like actual news articles. They have a picture that draws in attention and then they reposition depending on how popular they are. What do you think?

On the graphical look: make sure there is some space of at least 5 pixels between the picture and the text on the right, via CSS probably.

The right column with 2 items hardly makes sense if those 2 items have the same priority as the others. Unless those 2 are special, you really don't need that extra column, I think.

In general, social news with pictures is great, but how about the legal side of it? I mean, pictures. Maybe it's not something to worry about - I don't know.

I wanted to put the four most popular stories 'above the fold' which is why there are two on the right. I had numbers showing their order before I might try to put those back in so it makes more sense.

The legal comment is interesting. I'm not sure of the legal aspects myself. Currently I'm linking to their picture instead of copying it and rehosting it. Maybe that gets me around the legal issue. I assume that is the same thing that Google news does.

I like this look better. One suggestion would be to make sure left column images are resized to the same dimensions. Your tabular layout will be much improved and much more readable. Other than that - I like it!

Thanks! I thought it was a good way to set the site apart from the text based social news sites out there

I tried to look, but the site must be overloaded - nothing displayed.

It seems to be working. Give it another try.

Links could be smaller for easier reading.

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