Comment by thekyle | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thekyle | Hacker News Reader

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Thanks for the feedback!

> 1. The UI is unappealing. I would prefer the default theme to be dark.

I'll see if I can add an optional dark mode.

> 2. Site layout resembles generic link aggregating sites with no real content, which discourages the viewer from exploring the site further.

I'm not really sure what changes could be made that would encourage users to explore. Could you elaborate?

> 3. The boxes with numbers stand out too much among the other content. Thanks to the fact that they take various amount of space depending on the number's length, it causes the entire list of articles to appear unaligned.

Yeah, this is a problem. I think maybe it can be partially solved by abbreviating 3,000 as 3k, etc.

> 4. I was not able to find a link from the main website to the credits link you have posted. Also, it is unclear how much the credits cost. The purchase page is only available once you register and log in. In my opinion that is not transparent at all.

Okay, this is something I hadn't even considered. Originally the entire credits pack actually required authentication to view but I changed that last minute. I'll see what I can do to make the pricing more transparent.

> In my opinion, the most reasonable way to cover your website's running costs is to ask for donations.

I have run websites in the past on the donation model. In my experience it hits a wall once you have more general web surfers on your site than power users. Reddit tried the donation model with a transparent meter that showed the sites costs each day but it eventually had to pivot to ads.

what changes could be made that would encourage users to explore

Microcontent, context.

News sites (though not HN) typically categorise stories topinally: local, regional, world (often forthrr by region), events, disasters, crime, politics, business, labour, science, technology, sport, culture, entertainment, health, real estate, transport, style (with varying overlap).

Jacob Nielsen on microcontent. I'd prefer a brief lede 'graf, say, 10-20 words (about a tweet), well chosen for framing item(s).

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/microcontent-how-to-write-h...

A dark mode would definitely be nice, but I think there are some larger UI improvements that can be done. Some basic ones would be better padding and spacing for legibility, and making use of the large empty spaces for additional content. And being able to see the number of comments a post has without clicking on it is a must.

I really like this project and the credits system in place. If you're open to the idea I'd be down to collaborate on some of the frontend / design work. Feel free to message me.

> If you're open to the idea I'd be down to collaborate on some of the frontend / design work. Feel free to message me.

Sure, I'd like to hear more if you had some ideas. It doesn't look like your profile has any contact info, but you can email me: contact@kylepiira.com

> I'm not really sure what changes could be made that would encourage users to explore. Could you elaborate?

Any good site needs to get the visitors' attention from the first moments after they open it. I do not mean to steal the users' attention by showing forms to agree with or blinking elements. I mean showing the most useful content, carefully organized so that it is simple and natural to work with.

Currently, hoxly news site looks like n-th iteration of a typical corporation site with content blocks in the middle replaced with a modified HN-style list of links. There is the top bar, some account-related stuff in the top right corner, the about and policy links at the bottom. Nothing really new, no interesting design elements.

To most visitors, such a site appears like they have already seen it and they may wonder what makes this one stand out. The content, obviously, could be the answer. But with the current generic look, some people may think that it is yet another link aggregation site which aims to artificially boost its PageRank score and simply leave.

I do not have any exact ideas for improvement, but in my opinion, the site should have a more unique look and be more practical to use. The main areas I would focus on are:

1. Bad usage of space. At a normal zoom level, on a typical 16:9 screen, the actual news content is restricted to a column whose width is about ~30% of the available display width. The rest is blank. When I zoom in so that almost all of the display width is utilized, then I see only ~7 news items with overly large font. In other words, there is no way to properly resize the website so that all the space is used efficiently.

I would change that e.g. by moving the top bar to the side or making it hidden until the mouse is moved near its edge. Also, I would use at least two column layout on wide screens.

2. The offered features (timestamp, user, upvotes, comments, etc.) are difficult to recognize for a new visitor, because they do not stand out. It is not clear that those phrases under the news items have some interesting meaning and that some of them are clickable. I would say that many first time visitors would simply overlook them.

3. As was already mentioned, it would help to provide even more information about the particular news item on the main page, so that visitors could decide with more confidence about whether it would be interesting to them or not. A link to the article from which most of the facts are taken, for instance, could be useful.

The boxes with numbers

Change the colour or remove it entirely.

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