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Comment by nl | Hacker News Reader

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It would involve a change to HN.

There's still no mobile friendly stylesheet. I wouldn't hold your breath.

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I mostly read HN on my phone and I think the experience is fine. So maybe there’s just not enough demand on that front.

> I think the experience is fine

How do you vote without zooming?

Ever tried to touch "comments" on headline and accidentally clicked "hide"?

Ever tried to touch the "Hacker News" menu item and gone to "new"?

Everyone is used to these things, but they are textbook examples of bad mobile design.

Number of times I’ve logged myself out...

> How do you vote without zooming?

I press the voting button. Most of the time I vote in the intended direction. I think. If I don't, well, there's no way to know.

The text next to the timestamp changes to unvote / undown depending on the direction of your vote

On my android device, it flashes a larger graphic briefly. I look for that to know my vote was the right direction.

You know, I just quickly zoom with a double tap and nail the UX element.

We have better elements to use, but I must also say those tend to come with costs.

Right now, HN is so lean, fast and clean, I will gladly work a little to vote or do some action in return for what is otherwise one of the best "just read the discussion" presentations on mobile. It's a pleasure.

People have been clamoring for mobile friendly blockquote for a while.

People abuse the code formatting for block quote. It looks bad on mobile, but it also looks bad on desktop because it's a fixed width Font, which is not what you want for a quote. The solution is not to change the style – it's for people to stop using code style for quotes! (The style does actually seem to have changed on mobile in the last year or so: I think it wraps now, whereas I think it used to have a horizontal scroll bar.)

To quote something else, manually insert a greater than symbol at the start of every quoted paragraph,

> Like this

Which obviously doesn't indent nicely but is perfectly clear, and works well with HN's low formatting style.

I personally really like the Android app -- it's an excellent reader, and is my preferred way to interact on mobile.

Think for a moment why an app should ever be considered necessary to render a web site. Especially one with little in the way of demanding UX requirements.

> There's still no mobile friendly stylesheet. I wouldn't hold your breath.

Beyond code blocks having line wrap, the HN mobile stylesheet seems fine to me. What issue do you take with it?

Well there isn't a mobile stylesheet. It's the same as the desktop styling (and that code block issue affects desktop too).

There are multiple issues with using the desktop styling, but most are related to Fitt's law[1].

The whole UI is terrible for finger interactions, but the best example is the tiny upvote/downvote buttons immediately above/below each other well within the diameter of a normal finger. It's literally impossible to use that without zooming, and if you try to then there is no way to know if you vote up or down. It should be used in textbooks for how not to do a mobile interaction.

[1] https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/fitts-...

I agree the touch targets are ridiculous, but there is feedback - upvotes make the "unvote" text appear and downvotes make the "undown" text appear.

Good point. I forgot the labels are different. They are in tiny grey text, the same length and require you to actually look hard to noticed though.

> It's literally impossible to use that without zooming

Let's keep the discussion honest. I have a high DPI phone screen, I'm at the normal text size for my device, and I regularly use those buttons without zooming with reasonable accuracy.

The hyperbole is not warranted here. While I agree touch targets could be bigger they are certainly not impossible to use reliably.

This is the best thing about HN. Stubborn for change.

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