Read your Hacker News in Tile Style
apps.microsoft.com
apps.microsoft.com
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Yet, horizontal scroll plays a larger role in metro, so this might not be a bad idea. I'd love to hear from someone who knows anything about UX in regards to this sort of thing.
Maybe a single convention could emerge per mobile platform, but across the entire web, I doubt it, and honestly, my biggest problem with 2D grids is that scanning every item systematically feel very unnatural, and I doubt I will ever break that habit. Decades of reading has led me to see me to see Roman text as coherent, directed strings, and lists also naturally elicit in-order scanning behavior for me, but 2D grids of squares or rectangles are used for things that require different scanning behavior. When I look at maps, board games, and color or fabric samples, for example, I tend to hop around looking for patterns among groups of tiles, combined with occasional breadth-first scanning outward from points. My first reaction to a 2D grid is never to systematically scan all individual items but to start jumping around impressionistically, and then to switch to a systematic scan if the impressionistic method fails. Naturally, switching provokes irritation, both at myself and at the situation.
I wonder if the experience is different for people who grew up reading Chinese.
The other thing tiles do poorly is constrain the variances on line lengths by boxing them in. When you scan headlines, you naturally grip the page using the various headline lengths. Boxing them in and cutting them off makes every headline appear the same length and kills their distinguishability (and implied reading direction).
Ultimately, I believe its most comfortable read across the most narrow dimension of a screen -- depending on orientation -- then scroll the opposite of the reading direction.
That being said, users will also tend towards their native reading direction (Japanese users will read down, English, readers across from left to right, Arabic from the right to left)
Discloser: Im a UX and UI designer who has worked on Windows 8, iOS, Android, and about 10 other operation systems. I have also designed mixed language or language-free interfaces to varying success.
On a side note, I was dismayed to notice that the "App website" link led to Quixby's "coming soon" screen, which is probably not terribly helpful for users who might want to know more. However, this is fairly well mitigated by the excellent selection of screenshots showing different use cases. The only question I couldn't answer from reading the in-store details was whether it would allow me to log in and up-vote stories and comments, since I consider that an integral part of my usage of HN.
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Emphasizing the score, especially with the ranking algorithm being so time based is fairly confusing. It seems like the number should be in order, but they of course aren't.
A fix may be as simple as changing the two greys, having the darker grey behind the article title, and the lighter one behind the number. Also, increasing the contrast in the title text would be great.
You're drawn to 1. the contrast between the colors and 2. the visually-emphasized smaller box pulled 'on top' of the larger box of text.
Wwapping the greys would do nothing for the net contrast. If anything it'd exacerbate the effect by making the block of text darker and less noticeable. Lessening the difference between the two greys would cause them to blend more and take out some of the 'pop'.
But I think 2. is the bigger problem. You'd want to put the 'score' inside the larger box to de-emphasize that element.
Does anybody know if it handles opening links or comments?
This should be open source and free.
With a price on it, I suddenly have to go through the hassle of attaching a payment method to my Windows Store account (something which I've been EXTREMELY hesitant to do). It's enough of a barrier to entry that I am likely to fob it off as something to do Later (as I can read HN quite well in my browser), rather than go through that added hurdle.
If I already had payment info entered for my Store account, that barrier to me buying it would be much lower: rather than having to consider both the time and money investment, I'd only have to say "Eh, it's a buck fifty", and would be much more likely to buy it. As it is, my interest has waned from "I must install this yesterday" to "I'll have to think about it".
But nice troll.
Yes, it's okay for developers to invest their own time to develop something, and try to recover their costs by selling it. And it's also ok if they decide to keep it closed source, because probably no one would bother to help. Just vote with your money.
(posted using news:yc on iOS, that I paid $2.99. And it's open source btw).
I'd potentially notice security issues and inform the author, if there are any.
I might notice performance issues and point those out.
If really nobody is interested in helping develop for it, I doubt many people would be willing to go out of their way to compile it from source to avoid paying for it too.
As you yourself demonstrate, making money off of your development and making that same project open source aren't mutually exclusive - so why not make it open source?
Perhaps I misinterpreted yitchelle's comment, I read should in the absolute sense of 'it's morally correct', not in the jovial 'i'd like to chcek out the source!'. But i certainly wasn't baiting any flamewar.
This is something we will have in soon though!
1) You probably shouldn't use the same bar to split the article and comments that Windows uses to resize pinned applications. This makes it look resizable when it's not.
2) Sometimes my mouse's scroll wheel stops scrolling. I think this has something to do with the ad reloading. I don't know if you have any control over that, but I found it annoying. I think the ad is stealing focus.
3) The ad on the main page stays on top of the Settings flyout (Win+I -> Settings)
4) Right-clicking on the article side (the web control) causes the appbar to fly in and then immediately disappear. The article also flickers. This does not repro when right-clicking on the comment side.
Most of these are ad related, so maybe that's my cue to buy it... Otherwise, great app! I like it.
We have a few of these resolved in an update we are wrapping up today. However, #1 is a good catch, will be sure to fix that.
#2 is resolved in the next update, and #3 we will look into.
While I have not personally experienced #4, I will test this right now following your notes and add it to the list!
Really appreciate the detailed reports of the bugs.
Besides, I thought the whole point of the crappy site design was so that it would scare of people who either need eye can't or can't configure a browser to make it look different.
Seems like a fan of this Windows 8 app posted this.
What's wrong with that ?
Come on, give the guy a break and enjoy his good work.
EDIT: I don't know why I was thinking about windows mobile, my bad.