Hacker News Reader

Comment by bbx | Hacker News Reader

I never feel like any HN redesign is actually needed [1]. Although well presented (as is usually the case for unsolicited redesigns), it fails at acknowledging the primary audience of the website (hackers), and disrupts the information hierarchy (emphasizing the score at the title's expense, harming the connection between an article and its comments…).

On a side note, I'm always concerned with self-proclaimed "UX experts" who, by using an ultra-thin font, make it really hard to access the core content of the Web: text.

[1] http://jgthms.com/why-hn-doesnt-need-a-redesign.html

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Ever used HN via mobile? It's an awful experience. I've accidentally flagged more than one article that I meant to click on instead, due to clumsy thumbs.

Why not just use one of the apps? I know we have half a dozen on Android, and I've seen at least one iOS one, and a couple mobile targeted web versions...

MiniHack for iOS is currently my favorite way to browse HN now.

>Why not just use one of the apps? //

Why use one of the apps though, isn't this a website, shouldn't it be made accessible through the common web browsers. Individual apps which just apply a style, sample and modify a website and pipe it through a hidden browser object seem strange - we don't need apps for every different bit of content, that's one of the great things about a properly standardised web and high quality browsers.

Different apps for every bit of web content seems perversely inefficient to me.

I've switched to http://hn.premii.com/ on mobile. Give it a try.

If HN is as technologically in-touch as we like to say we are, then the site itself should adhere to web standards. The current standard is responsive design that is device-independent. "Just use an app" is a terrible way to look at the mobile view problem.

> Why not just use one of the apps?

I have an app for accessing websites and webapps, it's called Firefox, and it even synchs my credentials and history between my various computing devices. Why would I want to use a different app?

I just got in the habit of "reverse pinching" before trying to click anything.

It's not just the impossible click targets, it's the layout, too. It's pretty much impossible to read, even in landscape mode, without constant horizontal scrolling.

I was going to make a comment about the text. I didn't even bother reading most of what was written because it was difficult to read on an iPhone. There's a very good reason people hated iOS 7's thin fonts and Apple reverted it back. And even their font had more contrast with their white backgrounds.

HN could easily be improved with a redesign, but an issue with many attempts is they take it too far trying to make a case.

I don't care about an article's upvotes so I'd put the comment count far left an in an orange shape whose intensity or size changed with the value. This would make it quicker to scan and find the big news stories. Then find a way to introduce a few stories from New into the main screen to get them started.

> On a side note, I'm always concerned with self-proclaimed "UX experts" who, by using an ultra-thin font, make it really hard to access the core content of the Web: text.

The low contrast doesn't help. I decided to just look at the photos because the text was way too difficult to read.

At the minimum, hacker news needs an HTML overhaul. How am I supposed to apply user styles to the crazyness that HN's servers are spitting at me?

Where does it proclaim "UX expert"?

The sidebar says "Hila Peleg is a UX expert and designer living in Israel" - it pops in if you click the tre striped icon in the top left corner of the page

If you click the hamburger button it opens up a sidebar that has a statement proclaiming expertise. http://i.imgur.com/X6msOCj.png

And this is why hamburger buttons are horrible UX

They really are. It doesn't matter if they're used on websites or in web browsers or in any other context. Time and time again it has been shown that they do nothing to help make functionality obvious and easily accessible, and instead actually make functionality much harder to discover and use.

I have seen various complaints and 'studies' about this, but I don't agree at all, as a user. Of course the functionality hidden away in menus is not 'obvious' or immediately accessible, that's the whole point. It's for stuff you don't use very often. With most apps I use, there's a handful of features I don't want to have on show all the time because it would be distracting, but I want to be able to find it when I go digging for it.

Of course lots of designers make the wrong decisions about which functionality they have openly on display vs. which functionality they hide away in menus. They often lazily shove a new feature in a menu, rather than find a way to properly integrate it with the design of the app. But that's not the same as saying "menus=bad".

Menus aren't merely about hiding functionality. They're about organizing oft-used functionality in a way that's easily and consistently accessible, while at the same time not consuming too much screen space.

The traditional horizontal menu bar with multiple consistently-titled menus is a system that has worked very well for decades. For developers and UI designers, it's generally quite obvious where menu items should go. For users, it's generally obvious where the developers would have put the menu items for some specific functionality.

The Chrome-style single-obscure-menu-with-everything-poorly-organized-inside-it approach throws all of this away. It results in the worst of all trade offs. It's harder to find, the menu itself is an inconsistent jumble, the amount of functionality within it is less, it's not worth gaining a small amount of screen space for the inefficiency such a broken menu system brings, and it's just plain harder to use. It really is bad in every way.

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