

 Who else prefers minimalist UIs like HN and (linked) the original Digg? - wlfsbrg
http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20041209040106/http://digg.com/

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wlfsbrg
I've always loved content for content's sake, and seen design as a nice to
have rather than an absolute necessity. HN is one of my favorite sites because
it has highly targeted content, a large pool of contributors, and a wonderful
forum of discussion.

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ComputerGuru
Is it enough to upvote this post if we agree, or must we comment and make our
voices heard?

I love minimalist designs. And <you'll all kill me and downvote me for this
one __cringe __> I hate javascript, most of the time. 99 times out of a
hundred, javascript is used to make things "pretty" or "neat" or "flashy" or
"cool" when all it does is make things slow and add bloat. I'm not saying it
doesn't have its uses, but you REALLY DON'T need that 500kb library to move
text around the screen or change an icon. But I'm a systems developer and I
code in C and ASM, so what do I know about web development..

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cryptoz
> I hate javascript, most of the time.

Yeah, I hate how easy and fast upvoting is on HN. It's almost...too fast.

~~~
ComputerGuru
Like I said, most of the time. No one is complaining that replies on HN aren't
AJAX'd :)

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sghael
While the examples (HN and old Digg) are minimal, I also find them "un-
refined". I prefer minimal and refined.

Like Delicious. Simple color palette, lots of white space, and no extraneous
stuff like gradients, rounded corners, drop shadows, etc.

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roc
I'm a fan of minimalism, but I'd tend toward something of a middle ground.

e.g. in the case of old digg, I'd go for something that added color to
headlines to more clearly separate articles, de-emphasized the
category/posted-by line, and narrowed the summary column.

too-wide blocks of text, too-close bunches of paragraphs and too-strict hit-
boxes for buttons are pretty common on 'minimalist' sites and those drive me
absolutely crazy anymore.

Too-small fonts also used to bother me, but browsers have largely resolved
that. So long as minimalist design plays well with dynamic font scaling, that
doesn't bother me anymore.

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radicaldreamer
A lot of technical people love these kinds of UIs, but they can be unwelcoming
to the average user on the web who might not be as technical or might be
intimidated by the amount and presentation of the content, especially if it's
mostly text.

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corysama
Mods: Please make sure that posts like this don't become common. Reddit has
tons of "Does Anybody Else?" posts. They are a thinly veiled "Upvote if you
like <some popular thing>". I'd hate to see the practice creep into HN...

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Tycho
HN is a good example of how doing one thing very right (no clutter) can
overshadow doing many things wrong/unsatisfactorily (no built in search, no
instructions on how to use certain features...). Also Applies to a lot of
Apple products

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marssaxman
This site's UI is basically perfect for my taste.

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rst
Arguably anyone who uses Craigslist.

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andrenotgiant
Not really a choice there - people use craigslist because that's where the
people are.

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aDemoUzer
I don't prefer it all. I find the current digg UI to be most appealing.

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sielskr
I like the UIs of HN and Craigslist much better than most sites.

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SeanDav
min deftnly

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u48998
It's not about minimal, it's about scope. I see HN as content-based system,
where as, Digg and rest of the others went the route of social-based. The site
where the content is the king, is still valuable versus the site where people
are the king. There is a trade off with reputation of course, one has to first
build the reputation and credibility before one can claim a solid content-
based system.

If you recall, the problem started with Digg when people started gaming it.
There were stories after stories of how people are gaming the system. This is
when they first lost their credibility.

There is a fine line.

