
Ask HN: Is it me or HackerNews needs a better UI? - echan00
I really enjoy the content posted on HN. But I frequently find myself skimming through the (often) insightful comments&#x2F;discussion. Am I the only one who thinks the comments UX makes it difficult to read&#x2F;participate?
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dontJudge
HN is my favorite UI. I guess what makes some people happy makes others
unhappy. For me personally "mobile" UI's suck on mobile. HN works great on
mobile, for me at least. HN works great on a desktop too.

One vote for the UI being great just as it is. Mobile and desktop.

~~~
whostolemyhat
The voting and hide/comment age buttons are terrible on mobile - they're far
too small and close together so it's easy to accidentally press the wrong
button. Nested comments are bad on mobile too, since they end up being in a
column two words wide.

~~~
nikhilsaraf9
The nesting of comments really bothers me too, the deeper you go into a
thread, the narrower the columns.

If you're looking for an app that has solved the nested comments issue, check
this out: [https://shn.app.link/HN-ask2](https://shn.app.link/HN-ask2)

Disclaimer: I made it, it's open source, and contributions are welcome! (Built
in react native)

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gt565k
I actually really enjoy the layout.

I think changing the color scheme to make it a bit easier on the eyes would
certainly be an improvement.

~~~
echan00
I'm not a designer, but one possible improvement would be to cap the width of
the text regardless of browser width.

~~~
dmlittle
While I agree, to a certain point (depends on the width), not everyone likes
this.

~~~
krapp
Which is why the styles should be something users can adjust when logged in.

It's very weird that the only real customizable part of this site is the
background color of the topbar, and _that 's_ a perk that requires karma.

~~~
tedmiston
You can do this already with Chrome extensions on desktop.

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relaunched
Ugly UI doesn't mean a bad UX. I always point people towards craigslist and
ebay.

I can get my news and put in my .02, when compelled to do so. Also, the
community is authoritative and inviting.

What could you want from a new design that would add value to the community?

~~~
chuck32
I think Hacker News has perfectly fine UI but horrible UX. Sorry if i got
those definitions wrong. I think the colour scheme etc is perfectly fine but
the actual functionality of this site is horrendous.

\- There is no search function anywhere

\- Go back far enough in the news listings and it just stops. No explanation.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/news?p=15](https://news.ycombinator.com/news?p=15)

\- To find the formatting guide for posting comments you have to go through
the FAQs?!

\- Update a comment and you get redirected to the same form with no message.

I really don't get why a site who's target audiance is web developers and
hackers has such terrible functionality on their site. Is it because we are
really meant to be reading our news through a REST interface?

~~~
DanBC
> \- There is no search function anywhere

The bottom.of most pages has a search box.

Most people here will be able.to use DDG or Bing or Google to search the site.

~~~
chuck32
I stand corrected.

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cm2012
Hacker news is the best mobile performing website I use. Would rather it not
change.

~~~
tedmiston
Yes but for deeply nested comments, Reddit's interface (with Reddit
Enhancement Suite) is so much better. You can reasonably navigate a multi
thousand comment thread. On HN, that's difficult / impossible, especially on
mobile.

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jraph
One small thing that bothers me is the upvote button that looks too much like
a button to (un)fold comments, especially when you can't downvote and
therefore don't have any downvote button.

I just discovered that there is a [-] to (un)fold comments by the way. I would
probably just have swapped the positions and use less confusing icons.

Another thing is the occasional blocks of code that are too wide and not
wrapped, this requires horizontal scrolling which I find a bit annoying,
especially on phones. And the text-reflow Firefox extension does not handle
this, otherwise it would be a non-issue for me.

At the beginning, the appearance of HN seemed raw to me, but I got used to it
and like it.

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tomascot
I like the "brutalism". The only thing i would add is a night mode.

~~~
kylegalbraith
+1 for a dark mode!

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jetrois
YAS! I personally use the PWA to view HN as i find it more responsive and more
visually pleasing.

[https://angular2-hn.firebaseapp.com/](https://angular2-hn.firebaseapp.com/)

~~~
system_32
Apart from different colors (which can be achieved by changing the CSS here)
and using 17x more data on initial load, what does this accomplish?

~~~
echan00
Not that I am supporting this other UI here. But there is something to say
about using different fonts, spacing, colors, etc.. You might not agree but it
makes a difference to many people.

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fabrice_d
What I miss in the HN UI is a way to check what are the new comments when I
revisit a discussion thread.

~~~
echan00
another great example of how it can be "better"..

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j_s
Anyone willing to list the rest of the currently maintained alternative web
UIs for HN?

[http://hackernewsgrid.com](http://hackernewsgrid.com) |
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15078605](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15078605)
(2017)

[https://vue-hn.now.sh/](https://vue-hn.now.sh/) &
[https://hnews.xyz](https://hnews.xyz) |
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=hnews.xy](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=hnews.xy)
(2017-ish; 3 discussions)

[http://tophn.info/](http://tophn.info/) |
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13782574](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13782574)
(2017; 1 comment)

[https://hn.algolia.com](https://hn.algolia.com) |
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8874801](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8874801)
(2015)

[http://ihackernews.com](http://ihackernews.com) |
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1694049](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1694049)
-ish (2010)

[https://hckrnews.com](https://hckrnews.com) |
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14962820](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14962820)
&
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1722914](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1722914)
(2010)

App recommendations would also be appreciated (if you created or regularly use
the app yourself).

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godelmachine
I once attended a seminar by Balaji Vishwanathan. He said in that seminar that
once he had the opportunity to meet founder of HackerNews, and he asked him
why he doesn't do anything about the look and feel of the site? The founder
replied,"I want the site to be as ugly as possible". He implied real hackers
like things ugly.

~~~
krapp
>He implied real hackers like things ugly.

Maybe be likes things ugly, and believes real hackers should be like him.
Either way, I think he's incorrect.

Or else the people who have been complaining about the design and layout here
for years aren't "real hackers."

~~~
jacobedawson
It might be implying that "real hackers" end up doing things their own way if
they want to e.g. style overrides / pwas / 3 million different hacker news
feeds, etc

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oblib
There's a lot to be said for the simple UI here.

As a developer I'm not looking for anything more here than the "News", "Show",
"Ask", "Jobs" features and the insight via the comments.

The UX is the content. Anything more would be fluff. That's not to say that's
bad, but on this site it's unnecessary.

When you look at the source of this it'd be pretty easy to build an app that
grabs it and rewraps it and that could be a fun project.

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creatornator
I think the simplicity and lack of bloat make it more refreshing than "modern"
UI's, if a little more dated. Also as others have mentioned, there are plenty
of wrappers that add more "material design"-esque skins (I have used
[http://hckrnews.com](http://hckrnews.com))

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nikhilsaraf9
The commenting experience on mobile left me in pain. That's why I created an
open-source HN app using ReactNative: [https://shn.app.link/HN-
ask1](https://shn.app.link/HN-ask1)

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humbleMouse
What it really needs is a floating button thing like the reddit app has that
moves the screen to the top of each comment tree.

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chamoda
I mostly use safari mobile to access HN and I've nothing to complain about.
Links on mobile may not satisfy touch interface standards but oddly I get what
I want most of the time when I hopelessly click.

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michalpt
HN layout is great. Much easier to navigate than Reddit for example. I
wouldn’t change a thing.

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synapse0
HN redesign is a recurring theme but I like it how it is now! (even though 99%
of my HN consumption (I'd say an average 12 hours/week) is from Premii's
android app)

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muzani
I actually like it this way. I think nested comments are hard to read, but
that's the only problem.

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romanovcode
No. I think the UI here is good.

