Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by onion2k | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

onion2k

I loaded it on mobile too..

- Horizontal scrolling because it isn't properly responsive.

- it doesn't reflow when the device orientation changes

- no sound (there's an audio control so I guess there's meant to be..)

- the audio control sits over the flags

- wildly different text sizes everywhere

- so much layout shift

- from an error loading the Korean version I think it's running on a platform that tracks what users do (serverside tracking is mostly fine in my opinion, and unavoidable really, but it's still tracking).

It's fun, and oddly similar to my first website actually, but I'll take the modern Web over this sort of nostalgia every time.

View on HN

Upvote for serious criticism.

I still take this over:

- the noncompliant cookie warnings

- ... with >400 "partners" (yes, I have counted)

- works best in IE^HChrome

- 20 seconds loading

- written for Googlebot, instead of for a human like either the author or me. (Meaning it is bland, formula-driven.)

websites I often deal with as long as it provides the answers/entertainment I am looking for.

> with >400 "partners"

You can update the number to 500, as that's what Yahoo has (something like 530, but I don't remember for certain).

I was on a news site, might have been a newspaper site, and it had 640... beat that! :)

> - works best in IE^HChrome

There's a GIF at the bottom declaring "This page is best viewed with Netscape 3.0"

I'm chuckling silently over here. Well done whoever did it :-)

> - Horizontal scrolling because it isn't properly responsive.

It actually is properly responsive: it has horizontal scrolling on desktop too, and by just the exact amount, no matter what the window size is. (At least on FF.)

> it doesn't reflow when the device orientation changes

Does anyone design sites for landscape any more?

Who doesn't is the question? I view nearly everything on landscape mode, 'cause I don't like visiting websites with my phone.

> it doesn't reflow when the device orientation changes

When you lift a CRT and turn it sideways, it is usually done because it's placed incorrectly (no "reflow" wanted). It's also unusual to attempt to read a website on it at the same time you are risking injury.

Sound autoplay doesn't really work anymore in modern browsers.

And thank whatever deity you may or may not believe in that this changed. Yes, it sucks for these traditional websites, but advertisers abused it so much it hurt.

Indeed. The end of autoplay being on by default or not being a setting at all is a blessing far more than anyone worth their salt has even thought it could be a curse.

Shouldn't it be possible to still achieve auto-play using JavaScript? It's just a tiny bit more effort. :)

No, the browser checks the call stack of the javascript function. If the play() isn't a direct result of some kind of user interaction. It will just deny you from playing audio.

So play upon you open the page is no longer possible. You at least need to wait for the user to touch somewhere on the page.

Yeah there's all sorts of nonsense you can do to do autoplay. I kind of remember at one of my old jobs, to get autoplay working on some elearning courses, when the user clicked 'Start', we'd start the audio but not play anything, and then switch out the file that was played when required which would 'autoplay' as the user had already initiated the sound. At least that was the general idea afaik.

Only works well on single-page applications. A much more insidious strategy is to bind to the "Accept cookies" button.

and now all we need to do is the same for video...

Video does the same thing, except you can autoplay it if it's muted.

Oh man, you're right!

https://www.zombo.com/

(Defeats the whole purpose of the site hehe)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com