

Hacker News Redesign - samholmes
http://jsbin.com/icopaz/2

======
inetsee
One of the things I like about the existing Hacker News design is that it's
simple and very easy to read. Your redesign uses smaller fonts, which, in my
opinion, is definitely not an improvement.

~~~
a235
Support this statement! Design that sacrifices content for sake of nice
looking white-spaces can be used only on personal pages that nobody reads.

~~~
veeti
Whitespace doesn't exist just for the sake of being pretty. At least to me I
find this mockup much more readable than the current design, as the space
between links clearly separates them. This makes it much easier to read their
titles.

~~~
samholmes
I agree. My intention is to use white space to separate things, vs lines or
other graphical distractions. Having said that, I still need to work on the
list part of the design.

------
lignuist
Any redesign should make the voting buttons significantly larger. It is really
hard to hit them on a tablet.

~~~
james-skemp
Agreed. Having feedback that the vote counted would be helpful as well. When I
was getting used to my new tablet I'd select them, so they'd vanish, but
moving or touching elsewhere would show the buttons again. Odd.

------
zalew
hard to call it a redesign when it doesn't solve any problems.

~~~
cake
It does by making important elements stand out (such as author, comments...).
Bigger arrow which is sometimes tricky to hit.

The colors kinda kills the eyes though.

~~~
rmrfrmrf
Author (submitter, really) and comments are the last two things I care about.

~~~
danso
Yes, the nice thing about HN is the de-emphasis of the submitter...the content
should stand on its own, not on the authority of whoever submitted it.

Number of upvotes is also irrelevant to emphasize. This attribute is
inherently reflected in the vertical position of the item.

Edit: oops, OP did not emphasize upvotes. I'm ambivalent about holding number
of comments...again, the number of them can mean several conflicting things

------
javipas
I usually visit <http://hckrnews.com>, I like the clean design there... But
yours is a nice effort

~~~
xemoka
My favourite too, simple, clean, and shows everything in an order that makes
more sense. The latest changes to the site were excellent improvements as
well!

------
growt
I use this chrome extension:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hackernew/lgoghlnd...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hackernew/lgoghlndihpmbbgmbpjohilcphbfhddd)

It's probably not the prettiest but I like it.

~~~
jaredmcateer
What I like about this extension over the OPs proposal is that it gives
emphasis to the title, not the metadata like author and comments. The font
family and size choices are much better as well.

------
danielhughes
For those on a wide-screen monitor, it would be nice if you used all of the
empty real estate on the right. Move everything up to a single line and take
what is currently your second-line content (comments, vote count, etc) and
push it all the way to the right. It'll make it a lot easier to scan the
headlines. For mobile devices you could always revert back to the stacked
approach.

<http://i.imgur.com/in4x0Im.png>

~~~
Beekon
While this might look nicer, it's solving one problem by creating another, and
in my opinion larger, problem.

The problem when it comes to listings is that information needs to be easily
scannable. The information to be scanned usually has a certain hierarchy, so
there has to be a separation that reflects this hierarchy. If you use your
solution, you favour optimal separation while sacrificing scanability.

This is not exactly a straight-forward problem to solve because the hierarchy
is different for everyone. But one thing we can all agree on is that the title
is at the very top of it. So, having the title in a bigger font-size, maybe
bold, but definitely more contrasted as the stuff around it goes without
saying. So the current HN style is not that far off the mark, though I think
it could do with less data and/or more whitespace, to counter the "gray haze
syndrome".

A straightforward fix for this meta-data clutter would be to make it
collapsable, you could then show it in a tooltip on hover for example. Or make
it collapsable on a per story basis to cater for tablet/phone users.

------
jimsteinhart
Why did you use Arial narrow in the Header and Footer? In my opinion this
looks a bit crammed.

------
chollida1
This fixes things that really aren't' broken and doesn't even attempt to fix
the one big problem hacker news UI has.

The voting buttons are still too small.

------
samholmes
Wow! I really didn't expect this much attention and feedback! First, I want to
say thanks for all the comments!

I designed this last, late California night. So the design isn't finished;
this is a first draft.

Obviously the posts themselves are an issue. I didn't put much attention to
the posts. I'll do that. Some of the feedback I got on it were: 1. Larger vote
buttons. 2. Less contrast (too hard on the eyes). 3. Too much white space, a
little too small of text. 4. Focus on title, not author.

Some other feedback I got was on the orange color. I pulled this straight from
HN's header bar. I guess because the bar is taller that the color is brighter.
I need to think about if it's the color or the surrounding elements that make
it feel this way.

Keep up the commenting and feedback. I'm not finished here yet. I really liked
the HackerWeb design, but it's too narrow; it feels like a mobile app. I'll
pull some inspiration from there, but I really want to bring the design back
to a "hacker" feel. So stay tooned!

------
Semaphor
Personally I prefer the HackerNew Chrome extension. Really big links on the
frontpage and collapsible comments:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hackernew/lgoghlnd...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hackernew/lgoghlndihpmbbgmbpjohilcphbfhddd)

~~~
alecbenzer
Oh wow, I'd always found myself wanting collapsable comments, this is nice.

Only thing is now for some reason chrome isn't displaying urls at the bottom
of the page when I hover over links?

~~~
Semaphor
> Only thing is now for some reason chrome isn't displaying urls at the bottom
> of the page when I hover over links?

That's weird, probably on your end as it works fine for me.

------
hipsters_unite
The problem is that if you go for a clean (read: white-heavy) design, then you
end up with black text on white background. I prefer the classic HN purely
because it is (to me) a bit milder on the eye. Kudos for trying though.

------
samholmes
I designed a slightly new Hacker News. Comment and let me know what you think.

------
starikovs
I love the classic design :)

~~~
rocky1138
Me, too. I hope it never goes away in favour of flavour-of-the-month web
design.

There's just enough space between articles and a ton of stuff fits on the
screen at once. If it's not to your liking, there's a ton of alternative HN
design services out there you can use.

------
bbx
There have been and will be many redesigns attempts of HN, when it actually
doesn't need one. I wrote about it [1]. HN's design isn't neutral. It carries
a message that is bigger than purely graphical appeal. Some UI elements could
possibly be improved but these issues are probably too insignificant to spawn
a whole redesign process that would impair HN's great usability.

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

------
amanvir_sangha
This is how I use HN: <http://i.imgur.com/IRzF5LQ.png>

Browser: Chromium, Extension: "HipsterNews" ->
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hipsternews/midncc...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hipsternews/midnccdcbhikpniledkdhojbhdnkkkdb)

It's a copy of news.layervault.com, which copied news.yc in the first place.
I'm sure there is some sort of joke in there somewhere.

------
alexyoung
I think larger fonts with more spacing in the list would be more readable:

<http://jsbin.com/ucupox/1/>

------
zybler
I kinda prefer <http://cheeaun.github.com/hackerweb/#/> though.

------
cbg0
The orange at the top seems way too bright and the fonts are a tad small in my
opinion.

I switched to Hacker News Enhancement Suite
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-
enhanc...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-
enhancement-s/bappiabcodbpphnojdiaddhnilfnjmpm)

------
bjourne
This is my hn: <http://jsbin.com/aronar/1>. It uses my stylesheet from:
[https://raw.github.com/bjourne/readable-
userstyles/master/ha...](https://raw.github.com/bjourne/readable-
userstyles/master/hackernews.css)

------
DanBC
I prefer bigger fonts. I also prefer off-white backgrounds and dark fonts, but
still keeping high contrast. High contrast is good, but this is a bit much.

I really like the way it fits in my narrow browser window! Many redesigns
don't.

And I like the bigger upvote button.

------
Splendor
I prefer <http://lessmeme.com/less.html>

------
oskob
Same but different. And ugly?!

------
critiq
Looks good, I think fonts are too narrow. author name can be greyed out.

------
rtexal
HN has a really nice hacker-ish design feel to it already so it's great. Just
that it is not very tablet and mobile friendly with the really small buttons.

------
samholmes
I'm going to design this thing into a Github page, but I need to get HN feed
data. Could someone comment on where I could get HN data through an API?

------
upnorthkid
A bit too much spacing for my liking, though maybe I am just pissed that
google chrome new design has everything very separated at the moment.

------
holgersindbaek
Really like it visually, but I don't think there's enough attention on the
actual titles. The eye doesn't catch the titles enough.

------
instakill
This is how I use it: <http://i.imgur.com/uwKcrn5.png>

~~~
rikacomet
This one is better. But still two things remain: 1\. the font is a little tad
too big by my preference. 2\. The orange is a little too bright.

It seems this is editable, I will check back later to add my perception of HN.

------
denysonique
Zooming in breaks the layout.

~~~
james-skemp
Perhaps related, on a Nexus 7 titles that wrap cause the comments line to lose
their indentation.

------
chandru89new
pretty slick and nice! like it very much. it would be awesome if PG or someone
takes time to get your design ported to the real HN :D

------
mrtobo
The the post title type is still too small.

------
JimWestergren
Why the obsession with tiny fonts?

------
benhebert
New version is hard on the eyes.

------
rashthedude
NOOO, it's too bright.

