

Ask HN: I realigned HN a bit, what do you think? - MrAlmostWrong

I've always wanted to tweak the look of HN a bit without straying too far from the site we are all familiar with.<p>http://drawar.com/projects/hackernews/<p>http://drawar.com/projects/hackernews/single.php<p>As you can see I tried to keep it virtually the same, but with some enhancements to make it easier to scan and read. This was a quick 2 hour exercise (redoing the markup took the longest amount of time...no more tables) so there are a still a number of improvements that I think could be made, but overall I'm pretty pleased with the results.<p>What do you think?
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devmonk
I'm somewhat new to HN, but I don't like the new look. The existing one is
much easier on the eyes.

A good UI should not introduce new colors or visual elements that are
unnecessary. Zebra coloring of rows has its place, but not here. Don't need
the lines between posts (lines are for grids, and this doesn't need one).
Additional box around arrows unnecessary. Text too small. Contrast of white on
black at top draws eyes too much to title and menu.

Basically, please leave things as they are or ditch this design. I know you've
spent a lot of time on it, but you will not gain users at as high of a rate
with the new design.

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MrAlmostWrong
Whoops, the boxes around arrows wasn't supposed to be there. The colors are
arbitrary and could be changed to remain consistent with HN. As for the
alternating row colors they help me (obviously we differ) in scanning the
site.

~~~
devmonk
I'm having trouble finding a link, but there have been user experience studies
involving heat maps, etc. showing that any unnecessary visual elements
distract the user.

I'm with you that I like the idea of having a strong visual indicator to
differentiate different posts, but studies in UE have proven that the age-old
"use zebra coloring to differentiate rows" that was used in accounting
notebooks and perforated printer paper in the mid-20th century up until the
80s draws users' eyes away from the content in order to differentiate.
Basically it is annoying to our brains and slows us down, but programmers like
straight lines and making things neat, so the aesthetic nature of the
differentiation in color and its assumed practical purpose makes us
erroneously choose it over the visually simpler option.

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dpapathanasiou
TL;DR: improve the accessibility of the best comments

I've always thought the real value of this site was in the comments.

Sometimes a thoughtful comment gets lost because it has no replies, while a
less substantive thread might be dominating the discussion.

The voting system doesn't always help either, since the fanboy (and pariah)
effect causes some comments to be inflated (or rejected) based on who said
them, not their significance or merits.

So if you can think of a good way to present the best comments for a given
link or topic, that would be a useful improvement.

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yoasif_
I suspect that most HNers don't really think that the current site has many
issues.

The lack of contrast between text and background _is_ an obvious problem
though, and one that the redesign linked here doesn't really help too much,
imo. Also, the alternating rows are actually kinda distracting.

However, if you are looking for more style (I suspect that most users are
NOT), you can check out my project: <http://quippd.com>

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wccrawford
Makes it look more like Reddit, which is a site so hard on the eyes that I
just don't care if it has anything worthwhile to say.

~~~
MrAlmostWrong
Heh, didn't expect that comparison.

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MrAlmostWrong
And I did this earlier in the week before the "redesign HN" trend started to
appear on the site. Now I feel like a total bandwagoner, heh.

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wooptoo
It looks great, but I don't think it will be adopted. The alternatively
colored rows should be implemented, they help a lot.

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lrm242
Not my favorite. The current design, IMO, suites the audience and content
perfectly.

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sewerhorse
HN isn't broken. So please, don't try to fix it.

~~~
MrAlmostWrong
Curious to know if you think it isn't broken because you are used to it or if
it isn't broken because when you first came across it you thought everything
was perfect?

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tuacker
Can't talk for sewerhorse, but I think the HN design is quite good. Following
is my opinion I'm by no means a designer.

Right now there is no distraction anywhere. It's straight to the point: Here
are your headlines. Read first post title, if you're interested read/open,
else proceed to next headline. The meta info (points, comments,...) in lighter
grey colour serves as element to visually separate the individual posts making
them easier to parse.

Your design I find busier. Name of the poster and amount of comments are
unimportant while parsing headlines (for me?) and thus are in the way. The
light colour on #other is barely noticeable on my uncalibrated TN panel TFT
and doesn't help at all. For individual post/how comments are displayed I'd
say the same thing. Username/points are way to prominent vs. the actual
comment itself (and the up/down vote arrows are still on the same spot :D
instead of downvote to the right of the meta information)

Aside from that, your design only has different colours with a fugly orange
"more" button at the bottom.

Neither your design nor the current would be more or less 'perfect' when I'd
first see it but in hindsight I prefer the current one; I am better at parsing
it than yours for the reasons stated above.

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Andrenid
This pretty much says word-for-word what I wanted to post. I find the existing
HN design to be one of the easiest-to-read news sites around. There's
absolutely no clutter, no "design getting in the way of content", and the way
the meta data (post author, date posted, etc) is small and grayed out, makes
it a lot easier to just skim through the post titles. Same goes once you're in
the comment section.

Rather than a new design, I think HN could more benefit from new (and
optional) ways to order and present the posts and comments. I'd like to read
comments in their chronological order, for example, to get a better feel of
the progression of the conversation.

