

New Hacker News - samholmes
http://samholmes.github.io/NHN/

======
weego
My initial impressions are:

1) it's harder to visually skim down the page looking for interesting links
because the row spacing is too high. The background being white and the text
black also doesn't help this. Softening either the font color or the
background is a common trick to making things feel more comfortable.

2) clicking into the comments being way over the right is something of an
anti-pattern, infact all the information placed to the right of the post
title/link is far less useful than the link to the comments to the point where
the user that posted it and when it was posted is entirely irrelevant to me
yet logically due to the position has higher priority.

3) points should be on the left as the up arrow and points are implicitly
linked in a functionality -> data relationship.

4) the margin between the left border and the index number and the other
margins is jarringly inequal. I'm guessing it's double due to the way you've
specified margins.

Similarly the margins that create the leading between the rows on the first
(and bottom margin on the last) and subsequent rows has an unpleasant
inequality.

5) the uneven baseline (the HN in the logotype and the K) in the header over-
emphasises the height of the font used for the title and links in the header
and gives the impression that it might not all quite line up when it does.

6) also in the heading the kerning is too tight for the size and color choices
of the font which makes it feel more blurry and rough than needed/intended.

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softbuilder
Biggest problem that I wish someone would address is usability for mobile.
About 1/3 of my time on the site is with my phone. Trying to select the
Comments link instead of the article link is like playing Operation. Same for
upvoting.

~~~
drpancake
I've used this site for years: <http://ihackernews.com>

~~~
neeee
OPs site seems to it's API.

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rdl
I'd like the following in HN: 1) Keep not requiring JS 2) White background;
the low-contrast design of HN is one of the things I hate secondmost 3) Move
upvote/downvote arrows, article title, submitter, flag, etc. apart, so someone
using an iPhone/iPad never hits the wrong thing.

 _Ideally_ , also make actions like voting revocable, and show my current vote
for confirmation (e.g. if I've upvoted something show me a highlighted upvote
arrow which I can select again to remove; don't just disappear the arrow.

You also would ideally support the "special" HN functions -- e.g. when YC
sends out questions to an applicant, it might not be seen if you never use the
"real" hn site, so a reskin might be an issue.

~~~
lucb1e
There is a Feature Requests thread

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orta
The mouse distance to go from the link's text to the comments seems really
far, IMO that's the most important link per row. I thought the points section
was the comments.

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andrewingram
A few criticisms:

\- Zero-indexing the post list is cute, but I don't think it helps with
clarity.

\- On a similar note, you've made the ranking a lot more visible, whereas
before it was information I largely ignored. I'm not convinced it's actually
important information

\- I prefer chunky triangles to thin arrows to signify upvotes.

\- By moving the secondary post information (points, author) to the side, it's
become less clear that it's not part of the title. I'd increase the
typographic contrast here.

\- Number of comments is probably the 2nd thing I look at after the title,
having it over on the right makes it harder to visually associate the comments
count + link with its submission. Zebra-striping could help, but I'm not
convinced having it on the right is a good choice.

\- You've dropped the ability to flag posts, is this deliberate or an
oversight?

Overall I like what you're trying to do here, but obviously any changes to the
design are going to be a hard sell.

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k-mcgrady
I've never been too fond of how HN looks, but the more attempts I see to
improve it the more I realise how good the current design is. It may not look
pretty but it works very, very well.

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glomph
No one has beaten <http://hckrnews.com/> in my mind.

~~~
etcet
It got updated maybe a few weeks ago. The style was tweaked and I think there
were some changes to fix how the 'Last Visit' break is shown. When I go to
read HN I type hckrnews.com.

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mynameisvlad
I hate hate hate the Arial Narrow. It's too jarring of a difference between
the header and the content. I'd keep it at non-narrow.

~~~
Blahah
Completely agree - it looks cramped and distracting.

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crucialfelix
I think the non flashy design of HN is a feature. eg. hilariously unstyled
login page. It means people need to use their brains to realize why all these
people congregate here : for the content and discussion.

If the site is altered to make it easier to post and comment faster then I am
guessing the quality of conversation would go down. Currently you are aware
that the comment needs to be well written and not frivolous. Anything about
the interface that makes it faster to read and comment will move the usage in
the direction of frivolity.

~~~
yashodhan
It's very reminiscent of early reddit, with its ugly interface. The ugly
interface was actually a feature and a usability bonus. It kept out a lot of
riff raff that tried to migrate to reddit from Digg (which at the time had a
larger community).

I think HN should have an element of difficulty to its UX, because that keeps
the user standard high.

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samholmes
I've updated some things to this design.

* I made the background not white, which seemed to be hard on the eyes; I decided to keep the color scheme from orignal HN.

* Changed vote button icon; moved point count together with the button.

* Moved comments from the right to the left, closer to the link and vote button. Reason: it's too important of an element to have it be all on the very far right.

* Moved less important content (time and poster) to the far right.

* Internal stuff: I'm using localStorage APIs to cache the data I'm scrapping from a third party hackernews API source. This is because the source kept getting hiccups.

Here are my questions to the rest of those who are still interested in this
endeavor:

Should I go with grey text on white, or black text on tanish grey (like it is
now)?

Are the icons too distracting? Are they good, or would you suggest I do
something else? Maybe I should ditch the orange background on these icons, and
go with orange text when mousing over the buttons?

Some idea I have planned:

* Search field in header * Automatic next page loading with ---page n--- separators (if I can get this to work with the API I'm using) * Replace submit button with a visually persistent composer item.

Let me know what you think of these ideas too.

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samholmes
This is a continuation of a post I made a couple days ago, title "Hacker News
Redesign". It was a link to a jsbin. This time, it's a Github Page, which
means it can update, so check back often.

I plan on accepting feedback on this redesign. I already took some feedback
from the last post. This time, I can update the project upon feedback, and
keep a dialog about the design.

Hope you enjoy it! :)

~~~
fabriceleal
Some straight-to-the-point feedback on the design:

The font could be bigger/wider; the white on orange on the "top-bar" (what do
you call this?) looks weird.

Also, on a wide screen and with the browser window maximized, the number of
comments information is very far apart from the title-author-time. I have to
move by eyes from the left to the right part of the screen to see this
information. I noticed that that distance is adjusted by the browser window
width; I would recommend to set a cap on this distance.

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sthkr
I've been using the Hipster News chrome extension to make it look different
and it's been quite good so far.
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hipsternews/midncc...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hipsternews/midnccdcbhikpniledkdhojbhdnkkkdb)
It looks similar to the DesignerNews website,

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xwowsersx
I dunno why, but that font seriously hurts my eyes.

~~~
mynameisvlad
Header? It's because it's Arial Narrow. It's one of those differences that's
fairly subtle (like not a completely different font family) but different
enough that it completely stands out, so obviously, the worst.

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rurounijones
Requires JavaScript while the current site doesn't which is an automatic black
mark in my book.

Also having the comments link on the exact opposite side to the story link is
annoying for me since I usually middle click the link and the comments link in
succession

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nightson
Anyone using this css? [http://userstyles.org/styles/46270/georgify-for-
hacker-news-...](http://userstyles.org/styles/46270/georgify-for-hacker-news-
solarized)

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aaronpk
Why did you remove the domain? It's super useful to see the domain the article
is on because it gives a little more information about what the link might be.

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vansteen
First impression:

1/ You cannot visualize which link has been previously visited. Important for
me!

2/ It's harder to read. Too much white spaces maybe.

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jpswade
Comments don't load.

~~~
pestaa
This is a redesign of the front page, not a functional clone.

~~~
samholmes
True. I need a good API to hook into in order for it to be functional. Maybe
that could be another project, if anyone wants to help with that. :)

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mike_g
on the ipad text that is too long for one line is displayed partly in the next
line, intercepting with new line text, and it is making me sad

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mtgx
Too bright?

A little off-topic, but I've just discovered Hacker News 2 [1] for Android,
and I _love_ pretty much everything about it (except its icon perhaps). I love
its sidebar menu, that some of Google's apps use, too, and I hope it becomes a
default way to do menus in Android. And I also prefer its "greyish"
background, which I think is much better for the eyes than simply a white
background. I strongly recommend everyone with Android tries it. It even has a
"night mode":

[1]
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.airlocksof...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.airlocksoftware.hackernews&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEsImNvbS5haXJsb2Nrc29mdHdhcmUuaGFja2VybmV3cyJd)

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webreac
no, thanks. Too much wasted space. Too much contrast (white background). Too
much effort to associate the right column with the title on the left (lack of
zebra). Tabular form is something of the past ;-) The single improvement I see
for HN would be to remove the number at the left of the titles.

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dariot
On small pc screens the number of comments for long rows overlaps the number
of comments in the following row.

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EugeneOZ
Not faster than old. At least less ugly.

~~~
samholmes
It's slower because it hooks into an unofficial API. YCHN has no API I can
use, so I had to use what some other sites were able to scrap.

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conradfr
I don't really care about a redesign, but my god I'd like collapsible
comments.

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spajus
Why?

