
Ask HN: Why is the design of hackernews that terrible? - nikobellic
Seriously, why is the design of the hn page that shitty?<p>I mean, if you open up a page with lots of comments and replies, you can&#x27;t see the forest for the trees.<p>And on the other hand, it wouldn&#x27;t be too difficult to design a page with better UX.
======
ocdtrekkie
I love the hacker news design. It loads fast even when the internet connection
is awful, and since it's pretty much plain text, I am free to resize my text
window to the extent of my needs.

~~~
nikobellic
Fair point, but there are very lightweight css frameworks out there that are
well suited for mobile.

------
exolymph
I have a similar complaint -- I think narrower columns would do a lot to help
the reading experience. It is better on mobile, though!

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Why artificially restrict my reading area? If you want a smaller reading area,
use a narrower browser window. The width is particularly valuable/important
because of the tiered comment structure.

~~~
nikobellic
That the problem, if you have no nested replies, you need small browser
window. But if the next comment has lots of replied, you need to resize the
windows, again. Moreover, I may not want to make my browser window smaller
because other tabs run fine with my current width.

------
DrScump
Within the first 30 days, dang will give you a full refund on request.

------
krapp
for one thing, because pg doesn't consider UX to be relevant.[0] This site is
meant to appeal to the sort of programmer who is comfortable working in a
terminal, after all, so it shouldn't matter to a "good hacker."

[0][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5025176](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5025176)

that said, apparently collapsible comments at least are on the way...
eventually[1].

[1][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8297695](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8297695)

