

Georgify: Make Hacker News More Readable - wyclif
http://tuhinkumar.com/georgify.html

======
ColinWright
I'm probably in a minority here, and I'm speaking purely for myself, and it's
a strictly personal view, but ...

I hate it.

I'm sure it's technically very clean, elegant, and "nice", but more and more
as I look at the "gorgeous" and "beautifully designed" sites pointed to from
HN, I just feel like my face is being pushed through mush.

I know that sounds entirely negative, and I'm sorry about that, but the
obsession with blended buttons and perfect pastels and crafted corners and so
on just makes the whole thing feel wishy washy.

Am I alone in this? I'm sure lots of people love it, and I hope you get lots
of great comments, but I just thought I'd mention that not everyone is the
same in their perceptions.

Please, can someone with design skills equal to the ones demonstrated here
have a go at something with a bit more "edge."

Oh, and here's the discussion from last time:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2410195>

It's great to see that many of the comments from that discussion were taken on
board and acted on.

 _Added in edit: I see that this is a controversial comment. It's getting both
upvotes and downvotes, so people clearly agree, and disagree. But I think this
comment is genuinely of value. If you create something and there were
dissenting opinions, would you not like to hear them? Do you only want "Yes
Men" in your entourage? Dissenting opinions can be hard to take, but if you
block them out you get an echo chamber. Please, if you think this comment is
of negative value and doesn't belong on HN, tell us why. For the downvoters,
that's certainly your right and privilege, but ask yourself: are you
downvoting because you think this comment doesn't belong on HN, or simply
because it's an opinion contrary to yours? FWIW, I've upvoted the submission._

~~~
lmm
I think your habit of complaining in the guise of asking for explanation
whenever you get downvoted constitutes gaming of the moderation system, which
presents a greater danger to HN than even outright trolling. I want to
discourage that behaviour, and will downvote it whenever I see it. I also find
it rather distasteful that you're so defensive about being downvoted given
that you of all users can clearly afford the karma.

~~~
ColinWright
I appreciate your candour - it's useful to see another point of view, and I
will take it into account.

Having said that, I usually don't see the reasons for the down-votes, and I
genuinely do want explanations. I don't mind the down-votes - whether or not I
can "afford the karma" is beside the point. Down-voting people is a part of
how the site works, causing comments and submissions to bubble up and/or down,
and I think that's a good thing. Not being given the chance to learn something
or to see an alternate point of view is disappointing.

But when someone disagrees with a comment and just performs a "drive-by down-
vote" I think it's of negative value to the site, and I'd like to discourage
that. Sadly, I suspect that ship has sailed.

So again, thank you for the feedback. If we're ever co-located, and you think
you can stand my company, I owe you a coffee. FWIW, I've upvoted your comment,
even though I (obviously) don't agree with it.

~~~
lmm
I think everyone wants to know the reason when they're downvoted - I certainly
do. So asking for it isn't really adding new information to the conversation.
I do wish there were a way to downvote and provide explanation (even a
slashdot-style "select reason from a small dropdown"), but I can only trust
there are good reasons for the absence of such a thing.

Not to mention that AIUI replying to a post you downvoted negates the effect
of the downvote? Which makes the request for explanation doubly suspect.

I'd be very happy to meet when you're next in London (well, not in the next
couple of weeks as I'm busy moving house, but in general). md401@srcf.ucam.org

------
stevoski
The only thing I want changed in the way Hacker News rendered is this: make it
easier to use on my iPhone. It is difficult to touch the right link on a small
screen, and I often go to the wrong page.

The voting buttons are just not possible to use on my iPhone - the chance of
accidentally voting down when I want to vote up is too high.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
This problem is significant enough on the ipad, so I dread to think what the
iphone experience is like. I've gotten used to holding down links rather than
tapping them, so it's easy to cancel a mispress. Certainly less arduous than
constantly zooming in/out.

------
Samuel_Michon
An article about readability on a page that has gray text on a gray
background? This guy must be trolling.

------
jgrahamc
As a high karma user I get the opportunity to change the color of the top bar.
It would be cool if PG allowed me instead to insert some arbitrary CSS then I
would make small style changes myself.

~~~
shanelja
What counts as high karma? As far as I can remember, I've always been able to
change the colour of the top bar, although it may just be my lapsing memory.

~~~
crm416
I only have ~300 and I can do this. IIRC, I've always been able to.

------
davidjohnstone
I like it, but I agree with the complaints here that it causes a large loss of
information density because it's so spaced out.

So, I had a play around in Chrome Dev Tools and came up with this:
[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/41899939/georgified-
hack...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/41899939/georgified-hacker-
news.png)

This involved making it wider and reducing a lot of padding, and it increases
the number of visible items on the front page by 50%. (Rough numbers: in the
same space, mine shows 14 items, original Georgify shows 9, default HN shows
23.)

I think comments pages would be better if they were wider, but had a max-width
applied to comments, so nested comments aren't squeezed so quickly.

Side note: Whenever I look at HN's HTML, I am horrified. Today's revelation:
The first paragraph in comments are wrapped in a <font color="#000000">, the
rest are <p>s.

Edit: There appears to be a bug that's causing comments that should be
horizontally aligned to not be. The top and bottom comment here are responding
to the same parent, but aren't indented equally:
[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/41899939/georgify-
commen...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/41899939/georgify-comment-
alignment-bug.png) (I drew the vertical line).

Edit 2: 32 points in one hour, yet this story is off the front page — this
must be getting a lot of flagging.

------
ZenoArrow
It looks nice, but I kind of feel it misses the point (at least for people
like me). I like the information-dense nature of HN, adding in a bunch more
whitespace reduces this advantage. There are improvements that can be made to
HN (such as being able to collapse comment trees that are obviously descending
into pointless bikeshedding), but improving HN by reducing one of it's key
advantages is not what I'd be looking for. Just my opinion of course, other
people here have responded to it positively.

------
arbus
I would also like to point out another alternative that does something similar
that is just a pleasure to use: <https://github.com/tommoor/HackerNew>

------
gordaco
I feel that this new design makes HN lose its personality and look more like
some random, more generic page or blog following pervasive trends of design.
Maybe it's the font or the spacing, I'm not sure.

I'd stick with the current design.

EDIT: as others have pointed out, there's also a significant loss of
information density, and that can be quite annoying for the average HN reader.

------
johnchristopher
This is indeed more elegant than the original HN style.

But:

Installing stylish wasn't straightforward. It didn't tell me if I had to
restart firefox or not. I restarted firefox and it had lost my opened tabs.
This is stylish's fault.

I also noticed that firefox navigation toolbar is twice as big as before and
it uses Georgia to render text inside the url and search fields. Weird and
stylish's fault.

Ah, it turns out every site is using the new CSS. That won't do it :(

One thing that could be improved: the text field I am typing this text in
can't be resized :( and its borders don't match the rest of the theme.

But it's indeed an elegant and readable theme. I like the 50-60 character
limit for each line.

Good job, but I won't use it because of stylish disruptive effects on my
browsing experience. I remember that before stylish I would drop css in the
firefox profile and it would just apply to a specific domain. Is that still
possible ?

~~~
mhd
Read my other comment in this thread, the stylish file has a bad domain
restriction, enclose everything after it in a set of braces ({}), and it's
fine.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
Still didn't work for me in Chrome. I wasn't sure how that conflicted with the
'applies to' config setting in the UI, and I tried various combinations before
giving up. A shame, but it seems that Stylish just isn't production-ready.

~~~
mhd
Stylish does very little (and you don't need it at all in Chrome), if there's
anything wrong with the matching/styling, that's a fault of the
userstyle/userscript, which have been around since, well, forever.

The chrome extensions pointed to by the OP link has a long list of domains it
matches against in its manifest.json file. Looks alright to me.

------
jurassic
I think the default HN theme could be improved with tasteful typography, but
this alternative offering sacrifices too much information density. Dropping
from 21 to 8 items above the fold on my MacBook isn't acceptable to me.
Without the gratuitous padding I think this would be much better.

------
lotsofcows
Yay, let's all use light grey text on a black background!

~~~
adwf
Yeah I sometimes think there must be a kind of Muphry's Law for designers: "If
you complain about a design, your own design will have numerous flaws"?

Half the time when I follow these design blog links I find a website with nigh
on unreadable text. Usually it's down to a tiny font-size, this time it's down
to grey text on dark grey background combined with fairly cramped looking
text.

------
jrnkntl
I am using the HackerNew Chrome extension, more spacing seems to be the
consensus;

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hackernew/lgoghlnd...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hackernew/lgoghlndihpmbbgmbpjohilcphbfhddd)

------
oskarth
I think it's interesting how many people make "better" versions of HN. Without
exception none of these get to heart of the problems with HN (middlebrow
dismissals getting upvoted, mob mentality, etc), something that pg has alluded
to several times.

As an exercise in design, great, knock yourself out. As an attempt to make HN
better? I think less action and more reflection on what _really_ would make HN
better would be appropriate.

This is just a general feeling I get from seeing these meta-HN things over and
over again. I lump them all together in my mind, perhaps unfairly so, because
they all seem to be solving the easy - but ultimately the wrong - problem.

------
blowski
Looks lovely, but I feel uncomfortable weakening my security just for a bit of
sugar.

I use ihackernews.com/ for reading on mobile, and log in at
news.ycombinator.com itself for posting or upvoting.

It takes longer, but I feel safer.

~~~
markild
I'm sorry if this comes off as uneducated, but why exactly would this be
weakening your security?

When installing the Chrome plugin, Chrome clearly states which domain(s) it
will allow the plugin to interact with.

I would see your point if this was for a banking site, or any other site where
you would want to keep some information private, but I don't really see how
this applies in this context.

~~~
blowski
Possible attack vector here? Developer is malicious (or their machine is
compromised), plugin is updated to include naughty JavaScript on Hacker News.
Or already does something malicious.

Running any executable code on my machine is a risk, and should involve a
cost-benefit analysis.

In this case? Benefit - makes Hacker News look a bit nicer. Cost - I have no
idea, without spending a time looking at the source code and Chrome's security
policy.

So my analysis makes me think it's just not worth installing.

------
mhd
Some nice elements, although for something as dense as HN, I still prefer if
it uses more of the screen estate. But it's a good starting point to fiddle
with.

One note: At least with my firefox/stylish setup, it seems that the domain
restriction was wrong.

    
    
           @-moz-document domain('http://news.ycombinator.com/'), url-prefix('http://news.ycombinator.com/')
    

should be followed by an set of parens encompassing the rest of the file, or
else it gets universally applied (also I think that "@-moz-document
domain('news.ycombinator.com')" is sufficient).

------
tuhin
Hey all. I created this over two years ago.

I created this for myself, which means it is highly opinionated. Some will
love it and others will hate it and that's ok. I have been using it for the
last two years and there is no way I can go back to the old HN. That said it
is equally possible that most of you do not like it as much. And really that
is fine. There are more important things for us to argue about. :)

Feel free to reach out at tuhin @ me.com or ping @tuhin on twitter in case you
guys have more constructive feedback.

------
shanelja
This is fantastic. Just installed it and I love it already. I would however
make the links slightly darker.

What I liked most about this, as a Chrome user, was one click installation
through an add-on. It was as simple as clicking a link and pow! It's in. This
is both a testament to yourself and the Chrome team themselves.

Now... All we need is an iPhone app and my HN reading experience will be
complete...

------
Semaphor
I love it. Most other extensions either annoy me or leave the text too small.
This is great.

And from the last thread for it, here is a great dual column chrome extension
that works perfectly with Georgify:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chngbdmhgakoomomnn...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chngbdmhgakoomomnnhfapkpbalpmhid)

------
otsdr
I suppose it _is_ gorgeous, but I can't really read anything without having to
scroll every 3 seconds. Uninstalled.

------
vbrendel
Chrome users, no need to look further than HipsterNews:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hipsternews/midncc...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hipsternews/midnccdcbhikpniledkdhojbhdnkkkdb?hl=en)

------
greyman
Honest question: Why larger space between lines should make the HN more
readable? I don't get it. Sorry to sound negative, but I feel it is less
readable, because I need to scroll more and see a less text on a screen.

------
Kiro
It's interesting that all these Hacker News makeovers always look the same.

------
mikecane
Pretty. But if the goal is to make the text larger, I can just do CTL-+ in
Firefox (which I seem to use a lot these days, but not at HN) to make the text
bigger without inflicting it on everyone else.

------
pstadler
The version for Stylish was broken. Fixed here:
<https://gist.github.com/pstadler/5684154>

------
dsowers
I've been using this theme for a year now and can't live without it. The
density is too high with the regular hacker news and it's hard to read.

------
kungpoo
The text on that site is annoyingly difficult to read

------
maximem
2 minutes later: It's installed ;)

But the menu a little bit small and this light grey is hard to read but the
rest is really good ;).

------
RustyBus
"I always had to hunch forward to be able to read through the micro sized
type."

Press CTRL and +. No more hunching required.

------
elktea
It's working on all sites, as well as the address bar?

Firefox on Linux with Stylish.

------
mtgx
Can you at least reduce the space between the headlines? It may look nice, but
I don't want to scroll 3x as much as before.

------
drcongo
I'd be happy to port this to Safari once it's up on GitHub. I like it.

------
hardwaresofton
why is there not a open-source hacker news enhancement suite? I kinda wanted
to make one but am so swamped I never get the chance -- someone do it, and
make it an extension or something

------
jituiitm
installed..... one minute.....removed. Old view still better

------
flix
Gorgeous indeed!

------
adventured
I like the improved spacing between text objects and I like the font sizing,
but I really don't like the Georgia font. I can't stand the way some numbers
line up next to each other, eg 38 or 63. I don't like the tail on the f (eg in
flag). I don't like the kerning or letter spacing, I think the design of the
letters lends poorly to packing them very closely together.

It's my opinion that Georgia has a mediocre readability value to it.

