

Ask PG: Why not use the ▲ unicode character instead of a gif on HN? - thomasfl


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onion2k
When you get to 500 karma, you get a ▼ immediately below the up arrow. Making
a decent layout for both, even using the small arrow equivalents (▴ and ▾)
would be pretty tricky in text as it'd need to be a block element rather than
the specifically sized div with background image trick that's used now.

Interestingly (if you're a massive web nerd) is that the image asset request
sets a no-cache header. Almost certainly just a default setting that's been
overlooked _but it could be a tracking image in disguise!_ :)

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thomasfl
Yes, but the gif looks awful if you zoom in.

I didn't know about the downvote arrow. Makes me sad to see that even if my
Hacker News account is almost 7 year old, I only got 312 karma points. :-(

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RollAHardSix
That's ok, you make me feel better for when my account gets to almost 7 years
old =)

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DanBC
I wish theu up and down were not so close together.

Fear of accidental downvoting prevents some people from upvoting. That's sub
optimal.

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dictum
This has gotten worse for me with Safari on OS X Mavericks. Sometimes I click
on the up arrow and OS X decides to scroll some 15px down, leaving me to
wonder if I actually hit up or down.

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daGrevis
PG doesn't have time. Others do, so I introduce to you HN Special.
[http://gabrielecirulli.github.io/hn-
special/](http://gabrielecirulli.github.io/hn-special/)

P.S. It has unicode arrows.

~~~
thomasfl
Beautiful! I've started using it now to post comments.

Wonderful unicode arrows!

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captainmuon
I'm more wondering why they use css* to rotate the image, instead of just
using a sprite with both triangles and clipping.

Granted, on a site as simple as HN this makes no difference at all. But I
think there is an overall trend to push more work onto the client, which kinda
makes sense since they have more and more CPU and RAM over time. OTOH, its bad
because I can throw away my old "office" desktop and my "netbook" (it has net
in the name!) because they can't browse the average webpage anymore!

~~~
gus_massa
In IE10 the css trick doesn’t work and you get two ▲’s, one for upvoting and
one for downvoting. See an IE10/Chrome comparison:
[http://imgur.com/Pe2yKe6](http://imgur.com/Pe2yKe6)

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pdenya
Still likely makes no difference on this site. The percent of people on here
on IE10 has got to be almost 0.

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_RPM
Interestingly, you can style it however you want as well. Check this out
[http://jsfiddle.net/ePA3L/](http://jsfiddle.net/ePA3L/)

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bleke
Probably one of reasons (I hope) :
[http://imgur.com/xnHmnap](http://imgur.com/xnHmnap)

~~~
mooism2
Why aren't you using a terminal that can handle UTF-8? Alternatively, why
aren't you using a web browser that can handle UTF-8?

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dded
> Why aren't you using a terminal that can handle UTF-8?

Perhaps they're still on RHEL5. Many of us are.

