
New Y Combinator Website - kevin
http://blog.ycombinator.com/new-y-combinator-website
======
minimaxir
If you've ever wondered what Hacker News looks like to a moderator, now's your
chance.

[http://www.ycombinator.com/images/home/HackerNews.png](http://www.ycombinator.com/images/home/HackerNews.png)

~~~
nostromo
Are all YC founders' usernames orange?

Wouldn't that have the same effect as a voting ring?

~~~
tptacek
I don't know if it's all YC founders or all YC employees, but at least at one
point it was public knowledge (as in, Paul Graham repeatedly posted about it)
that everyone in YC had an orange username.

~~~
DanielRibeiro
It was at least leaked 1 year ago by Techcrunch[1,2]. The search string is: _"
If you are a YC founder, your username will show up in orange to other YC"_[3]

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5730720](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5730720)

[2] [http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/18/the-evolution-of-hacker-
new...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/18/the-evolution-of-hacker-news/)

[3]
[https://hn.algolia.com/?q=If+you+are+a+YC+founder%2C+your+us...](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=If+you+are+a+YC+founder%2C+your+username+will+show+up+in+orange+to+other+YC#!/comment/forever/0/If%20you%20are%20a%20YC%20founder%2C%20your%20username%20will%20show%20up%20in%20orange%20to%20other%20YC)

~~~
dang
I don't think you can call that "leaked"—it was an interview with PG!

Also, the orange name thing had been discussed on HN long before then. More
than once, IIRC. (Sorry, I don't have citations—too tired to dig them up.)

~~~
DanielRibeiro
Thanks for the clarification! I agree, _leaked_ was not a proper way of
describing it.

------
zmitri
Do I get to be as brutal as Kevin giving design feedback on the new site? :)

The JS affix doesn't trigger off at the bottom so the sticky nav stays fixed
[http://i.imgur.com/YAqGVoL.png](http://i.imgur.com/YAqGVoL.png)

Mixpanel's logo is forced display:none; on the homepage so it offsets the grid
[http://i.imgur.com/SV2dLq8.png](http://i.imgur.com/SV2dLq8.png)

Overall this redesign is absolutely fantastic.

PS. Did the valuation required to get on the homepage go up a bit?

~~~
jychang
Also, Dropbox's image is using the old logo. Not sure if that was intentional
or not.

~~~
mamatta
same with the PagerDuty one

------
lacus
Am I really the only one who noticed that there are now women in some of the
photos, as well as someone who is non-white/Asian? The design changes are
great, too, but this seems a little more significant in terms of messaging. YC
has been making more of an effort recently but it was always difficult for me
to get past the fact that, according to their own photos, JL is the only woman
there, or the only one worth showing in a photo. (This is coming from someone
who was wanting to be able to like YC whole-heartedly, not someone looking for
controversy.)

I do actually think it's something that gets noticed, just maybe not always on
a conscious level, so this is a great and welcomed (and more welcoming)
change. Well done, y'all.

------
talles
"If what you see makes you worried for Hacker News, I want you to know that I
have very different design goals for HN
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7960105)"](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7960105\)")

~~~
read
I am worried for Hacker News.

    
    
      One of my mottoes is that if you want to get unusual
      results, work fast and work cheap, because there's more
      of a chance that you'll get somewhere that nobody else
      did.
    
      Nearly always, the effect of spending a lot of money is
      to make things more normal.
    
      - Brian Eno

------
sama
kevin is basically just unbelievably good at everything.

~~~
larrys
The "partners" page doesn't mention the founders of YC or differentiate them
from the other partners. Obviously there was a reason for this. Can you
elaborate?

[http://www.ycombinator.com/partners/](http://www.ycombinator.com/partners/)

~~~
amirmc
Probably because it shouldn't matter. Labelling some of the Partners as
'Founders' would be akin to saying they're 'more equal' than the others.
Besides that, everyone here probably knows who they are anyway (or can
trivially find out).

------
webwright
Love it! So much awesome design thinking packed into this.

This feels odd:
[http://monosnap.com/image/koDS9m3j3pz43AQVb2nHpuWwp4CGaq](http://monosnap.com/image/koDS9m3j3pz43AQVb2nHpuWwp4CGaq)

Seems odd to say "application period is over! Here's an APPLY button!"

Also, S14 seems like an abbreviation that wouldn't be meaningful to non-YC-
faithful. Curse of knowledge?

Suggest something like: "Applications open for Winter '15 soon. <link>Get
notified</link>" (allowing people to get an email ping when it opens up?) You
could have a link to the (non-useful but still educational) "apply" link in
the FAQ? Or better yet, if they choose to get notified, say "great, we'll let
you know. In the meantime, check out <link>last session's application</link>."

~~~
kevin
Right now, it doesn't make sense. You're right. Hover over the S14 text and
you should get a tooltip.

~~~
mikeg8
no tool tip for me in chrome.

------
jeswin
Minor nitpick. I didn't like the alignment of the YC logos on the top and
bottom. They look a little misaligned. Maybe something like this is better ?:
[http://i.imgur.com/J1mzwJk.png](http://i.imgur.com/J1mzwJk.png) (Removed all
content except top and bottom)

~~~
kevin
The site is designed on a 9 column grid. The YC logo gets its own column. I
also use that column for side notes on the left side.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
But the logo at the top of the page looks left-aligned in the column, while
the logo at the bottom of the page looks right-aligned (honestly, I wouldn't
have noticed if my GP hadn't brought it up :).

The one thing I did notice, though, is there are no titles on the anchor tags
for the YC funded companies' icons. Some of them don't have their company
names in the icons, and needing to enable the status bar to look at the URLs
to get the names via the URLs is more work than a lazy person like myself
likes to do.

Seriously, though, great work. Looks really good!

~~~
kevin
The alignment I should fix. Thanks for catching that.

------
colinramsay
Looks like the images only get loaded as you scroll down, which is a good
feature that more sites should do. Seems like there's a fair amount of
JavaScript being loaded here, I wonder what non-obvious stuff is happening?

~~~
mercer
Yeah, I've started using the 'load on demand' approach by default, unless the
images are important. It can drastically improve load speed in a very simple
way.

~~~
mikeg8
Do you have any resources you'd recommend to get started learning this? It's a
nice feature and I noticed it when the new YC page first loaded but have never
investigated it myself.

~~~
mercer
There are probably jQuery plugins for 'lazy loading' images, but if you're
familiar with javascript, and especially if you're using jQuery too, it's not
too difficult to write a bit of code that takes care of this.

The nice thing is that you can then combine this with responsive image loading
(i.e. big images for desktop, small for mobile). I've agonized over the
different solutions and concluded that, in most cases, a js-based solution to
the image loading problem is the best (although I'm open to other opinions!).

What it boils down to is this: \- use markup that are either just divs with
data-attributes, or image tags with the low-res images (if images are
important for SEO or whatnot). \- detect the device type or screen size \- use
javascript to calculate if the element is in view (usually calculating the
image's offset from the top of the page is enough, since most sites are, uh,
vertically-inclined) \- load the appropriate image from the data-attribute
with javascript if the image is visible.

If you use placeholder images initially, I've noticed that the effect can
actually look better than just showing the images right away. There's
something about the images popping into view that makes the page feel more
alive.

For specific resources, I'd search 'check if image is visible' (with or
without jQuery). You'll probably find some plugins _or_ some code that might
show how to do this. Feel free to approach me if you can't work it out.

------
dm2
Where can I view a list of all of the past and current startups, their
funding, their performance, their current status/worth, current employees, and
links to their website in a nice sortable table?

Also, what would it take to get a page of old articles that I didn't view that
might be interesting to me based on my previous article upvotes? That would be
valuable.

The admin screenshot had several articles from a few months ago that I never
saw and the only way for me to see them would be to manually search.

------
aikah
Nice, in my opinion,Sans is better for Titles,and a serif font is better for
the body of an article.

Also either push the header to the left,or align the left column with the top
of the header,because right now the layout looks unbalanced.

EDIT :

In my opinion the left column is unnecessary.The site could work with 1
column,and the content of the left column could either be push in the header
or a footer.

Just my 2 cents ;) Nice Job again,it's responsive !

~~~
kevin
Are you seeing Serifs for Titles? Should be all san-serif. If so, can you send
me a screenshot and browser you're using?

~~~
RussianCow
Here's how it looks for me:
[http://cl.ly/image/1M04253f2w2n](http://cl.ly/image/1M04253f2w2n)

~~~
kevin
Oh, you're referring to Posthaven's styles.

~~~
001sky
The fonts spacing on posthaven (eg 'facelift') seems a bit unique/interesting.
Its not the serifs itself, IMHO.

------
curiouslurker
Looks good. I was half expecting to see the hipster design that everyone and
their cousin seems to be using! I'm glad they chose better!

~~~
fdej
I was fully expecting the infinitely annoying background-photo-that-changes-
when-you-scroll gimmick. Such a pleasant surprise.

------
jason_slack
What's the tech stack for the new website?

~~~
kevin
I use [http://middlemanapp.com](http://middlemanapp.com) to generate the
static site.

~~~
kogir
And it's hosted from an S3 bucket with CloudFront.

------
freshyill
Looks great. Meanwhile I'd sell my first born for a few media queries and a
max-width over here at Hacker News.

------
sixQuarks
I love the new site design (on a macbook), but on windows, the font is not as
crisp. I love that font on mac though. Which font should developers use if
they want crispness in both mac and windows?

------
marmarlade
Looks great!

HTTPS giving me troubles, e.g. clicking through on footer links from HN:
[http://imgur.com/59cQ7G3](http://imgur.com/59cQ7G3)

On an unrelated note (careful, Inception-style sentence coming up, and
apologies if this has been mentioned before/isn't helpful), most of the footer
links in the footer of the pages linked to in the footer of
news.ycombinator.com lead to 404. Id est, click on a link in the footer, then
click on a link in the footer of the page you just clicked to, 404 hey presto.

------
skizm
Solid redesign. Can't wait for a responsive version on hacker news. I use
ihackernews.com now but I occasionally have trouble upvoting or commenting due
to api rate limits.

------
r_singh
The new design is good, but thanks for keeping the old one up too.

The old design gave YC an identity in my mind, and differentiated it from the
rest of the web.

It conveyed to me that YC didn't have to follow web trends to get people on
their website. I visited the website for its superb content.

Rather than making text harder to "digest", the simple display of useful
information appealed to me, and was a refresher.

Perhaps, this may not be the preference of many other users.

------
WadeF
That big "Apply" button screams Wufoo. :-)

------
chacham15
Am I the only one who sat there and watched the entire slideshow thinking: "I
wish there were captions to all these pictures"?

~~~
kevin
No. Kat and I working to add captions to them. We'll probably add them to the
gallery page:
[http://www.ycombinator.com/gallery/](http://www.ycombinator.com/gallery/)

------
goblin89
The choice of a geometric Futura-like font as primary face for body text
always surprises me. Seems like it's just me, though.

------
jasonlfunk
How about a mobile friendly version of HN? :)

~~~
kevin
We're working on it.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7960105](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7960105)

~~~
X4
Is there a reason, why you didn't start with mobile first?

~~~
kogir
Hacker News predates reasonable web browsers on phones by a few years.

------
Aaronn
The white on the left side is a bug right?

[http://inft.ly/WZPr4sk](http://inft.ly/WZPr4sk)

~~~
dm2
That's a feature!

Probably so that there can be a 13px right border when there is no scrollbar
and the left border makes it not look weird. The right border would be to
prevent the page from "jumping" when the scrollbar goes from visible to not
visible.

~~~
Tarang
Its actually a deliberate 13px border, I initially thought it was a margin
caused by a chrome extension. I guess it makes it feel a bit more like the
news page

------
usaphp
Looks really nice and clean. The only issue I have is - the margin on the
image which makes it look not in line with a set of images from the block
above: [http://bit.ly/1qh58NC](http://bit.ly/1qh58NC)

------
ivv
Why have the "Apply" button link to the expired "Apply to Y Combinator" page?
Maybe show it only during the application period, or have the applications
submitted after the deadline go to the next funding cycle?

------
misslivirose
Great refresh - clean and crisp. The 'Blog' section looks a bit out of place
on the home page with the white background and blue text, but other than that
I think the new design suits YC well.

------
return0
> Since 2005, we've funded over 700 startups

I sometimes wonder how many of these startups made it, and if the success rate
inside YC is larger than outside of it (i.e. self funding, crowdfunding etc).

~~~
joeblau
This helps shed some light on some of that information:
[http://yclist.com/](http://yclist.com/)

~~~
001sky
Useful website, but only 6.57% of YC companies have "died" according to that
data. Even for a (beyond) successful fund, that number/dataset seems a bit
contrived, and it should perhaps be taken with a grain of salt.

------
infinitebattery
I love the new look! A much better, refreshed design that was needed.

------
mrmondo
Really does look great, very clean well done. Is there any plan to update
hacker news? While it's minimal design has some appeal I think the UI really
is in need of a makeover.

------
jwblackwell
Looks great! Good work.

~~~
cpach
Very nice! It has a modern feel and stands out from the average.

------
grinich
who wrote the copy for the new site? (it's great!)

------
Angostura
Am I the only one who feels lost without proper navigation options above the
fold? The nav menu is right at the bottom. Feels very odd to me.

------
waitingkuo
Looks really clean and nice. And ... It's responsive!! Awesome!

------
11thEarlOfMar
Photo gallery, near the bottom, first YC Class.

Sam standing next to Paul.

------
harryzhang
Looks great Kevin!

------
capex
That 1px dark border around the photo slider...

------
aestetix
Damn it now xycombinator.com is out of date.

------
Applico
Looks great, well done to your team!

------
evertonfuller
Looks great, super clean and crisp.

------
par
connection is timing out for me.

------
pyfish
Super clean, Super cool, super intuitive.

Thanks!

------
tuhaihe
Great.

------
benguild
Finally

------
pdeuchler
Cue patio11 bitching about the call to action and tptacek explaining how the
site fails crypto commandments x, y, and z, followed by grellas writing a 750
word essay on the intricacies of the design from an impassioned and impartial
point of view.

It matters in high performance Python.

------
varkson
So Y Combinator has gone from 1995 to 2007, wow so amazing guiz. Maybe try
again and we might get to 2012. Does HN even use CSS? Probably try that next.

