
Is there a justification as to why Hacker News is without responsive design? - andrewbaron
Strangely, I&#x27;ve come to like the fact that the site does not resize by device and wondered if this was intentional.
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kevin
I wrote a bit about it here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7960105](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7960105)

Here's the appropriate excerpt:

"When the new team took over development on HN, we decided that before we
implement any new frontend features for the site we needed to update the
markup HN uses to make it easier to implement such features in the future
(just the markup, not the aesthetics).

Creating a visually identical version of HN with CSS3/HTML5 was easy (we also
made it responsive to work on mobile devices)--implementing it was another
matter. HN's presentation layer is heavily intertwined with the
application/server logic, which meant it was going to be a bit tricky to
separate the two. The reason it was tricky is because the entire code base up
to a few months ago was optimized to be worked on by one person, pg. For
example, we didn't even have docs on how to setup / run the arc code on local
/ development machines when we first got started.

Eventually we did get a version of HN working that's separated the
presentation logic, but we realized that MANY of you out there have built apps
that rely on scraping HN's outdated table markup. Because we decided that it
would be bad to break all of your apps overnight, we've now started working on
an API for HN to launch it in tandem with the new markup changes. We'd then
give you all some time to update your projects.

Please try to keep in mind that new features for HN have to be done alongside
a lot of other responsibilities. The software team that works on HN is also
spending time moderating it and rewriting software that runs YC. Some members
like Garry and myself divide our time between developing for HN and our duties
as partners helping YC's startups.

This is a long-winded way of saying, please be patient. We are working on many
shiny new things for you and can't wait to show you what we've been building
behind the scenes."

~~~
lstamour
While I see the appeal, every time I have to zoom in, a part of me wishes
there was a nicer stylesheet for mobile, HTML-be-damned. I suppose tables
really were anti-responsive: before them text naturally flowed, after them,
text generally flowed again. Of course... Design could still mess things up
;-)

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timrosenblatt
Run a view source. The code isn't what most of us consider to be best
practices (table layouts and font tags all over). It could be difficult to
add. But the site still works, which says something about the difference
between great code and a great product.

Still -- I'm with you. I wish there were a better mobile experience.

~~~
krapp
I wouldn't call Hacker News a great product, as regards the UX and layout
(which is probably the worst possible way to implement a nested list in HTML.)
I would call it a great community and an acceptable product. It's basically a
toy that got popular because it was attached to YCombinator, and remained
popular because programmers have a higher tolerance for UX pain than mere
mortals.

~~~
marssaxman
HN's ux is a sweet, painless relief compared to most of the web. It is
unpretentious and functional. I would be disappointed if it were "improved".

~~~
krapp
Not every possible 'improvement' needs to slide down the slippery slope of
pretentious frippery, though.

Being able to use the site more easily in mobile is would be an actual
improvement. I would also argue that collapsible comments would also serve the
site without degrading it. Some typographic tweaks, such as increasing the
line-height, would make large text boxes easier to read. And I doubt anyone
who has lost a post due to a dead link would consider Hacker News entirely
painless.

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sliverstorm
I personally figure the answer is something along the lines of, responsive
design takes effort to add, and nobody on the development team thought it was
valuable enough to go to the trouble.

I'm not a web developer, but to my memory responsive design isn't something
that just comes by default.

~~~
andrewbaron
I think you are right that it does take a lot of effort for to do it right,
one needs to design a whole new compatible experience. On the other hand, this
interface and dataset here is fairly raw already, so a lot of the form would
follow naturally.

~~~
sliverstorm
I'm not saying it would be hard. I'm just observing that the default state is
not responsive design.

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lowlevel
Most of us would rather telnet in.

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robocat
Workaround: I added the following bookmarklet and called it hh on Android (on
iOS bookmark anything, then edit to insert link)

javascript:document.body.style.width='200px', void 0

To use, enter hh in address, and tap to run.

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woogle
I often use elinks to browse HN, and the comment feed neither is well
displayed..

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pizza
HN's keepers aren't trendy

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swalsh
To reinforce this idea. The database is a bunch of flat files.

~~~
kogir
The filesystem is the original NoSQL store. We're hip again!

