HN suggestion: A larger margin at the bottom of comment pages | Hacker News Reader

HN suggestion: A larger margin at the bottom of comment pages

76 pointsthristian17 comments

Hacker News tends to generate interesting, long discussions, which is great. I read the first screenful, glance at the bottom of the window and see that comments reach all the way to the bottom, so I hit the spacebar to bring up another page and keep reading, and the process repeats.

However, on the last page, the comments still reach all the way to the bottom of the screen, and I wind up hitting the spacebar a couple of times before I figure out I've actually come to the end of the page rather than my browser being sluggish or whatever.

If there were an inch or so of the white page background below the last comment, I think that would work wonderfully.

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I thought I was the only one.

A footer would do as well.

This has been brought up before and I happen to agree with you, but inevitably some of the purists will get mad at you for posting a meta-post and they will tell you to use the feature request section (at the bottom of the page) for this kind of things.

Just so you know.

I suppose purists should vote up these previous requests for a visual footer:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=250242

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=517280

Huh, I did not know that.

I'm a little sceptical that anyone would notice new replies added to a post made "835 days ago", but as you point out, that's where feature requests are supposed to go, so I guess I'll add my two cents there.

Thanks!

EDIT: Upon closer inspection, it seems the Feature Requests story is no longer accepting replies. However, it seems my suggestion was made nearly a year ago:

    http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=250242

...and again 82 days ago:

    http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=517280

Oh well.

I sparked a discussion about it somewhere in between those two:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=308047

:-)

Here, here! I notice it too. W3M does this, but since Firefox doesn't, this would be a cool feature.

I have also requested this change. I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one.

I agree.

Not only does it make it easier to tell when one has actually reached the bottom of the page, it gives more room for proofs, and who knows what could happen if we run out of room!

I created a fix for that some time ago. See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=357268

What does the spacebar do?

You're in a browser. Try it?

But it doesn't open a new window?

Edit: I seriously don't understand what the post is about.

On most pages, hitting spacebar scrolls down a page, and this user is complaining that he can't tell if he's at the bottom of a page.

So he is complaining that he might have to hit spacebar one time too often? I assume if you already are at the bottom of the page, spacebar does nothing?

Not sure what is more painful, having to process "white border - no spacebar" or "spacebar did nothing".

spacebar = pagedown

shift+spacebar = pageup

Am I seeing a footer here?

Wow, that was fast!

It's handy having a repl on the server.

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