
Ask HN: Why is HN not mobile friendly yet? - AliAdams
I know this gets asked all the time, but to me, the more the question is asked, the more meaningful the lack of response is.<p>Why isn&#x27;t HN updated for viewing on a mobile?<p>- I would wager a vast number of users use their mobile to view the site (or at least want to)
- The change required is tiny; I&#x27;m sure even I&#x27;m this thread someone will be able to propose the optimal change to make.
- Varied screen sizes are not going to go away so the change needs to be made at some point
- It seems fundamentally against the ethos of a company like YC to not adapt to the changing needs of their user base<p>I&#x27;m sure there are more, but I think that is enough.<p>Can someome explain to me (and the others asking) why this hasn&#x27;t already been done and, more importantly if this will ever happen?
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dang
Yes, it will happen. Yes, we're working on it. The reasons it's taking so long
are: (1) the change required is not tiny; and (2) everyone working on it has
many other things to do, most of which are more pressing.

That doesn't make it a low priority (it's a high priority), but it means we
have to do it as a background process.

~~~
AliAdams
I know that you must be sick writing that response, and I'm sure I'm missing
the complexity somewhere, but it's been put off for years now.

Maybe the conflict is that you want to do everything in a big step; making
vote buttons etc more accessible, but there are some quick changes (I mean
maybe 2 lines added to the style sheet which surely is one file?) that would
make a vast improvement at least to our ability to use HN on our phones.

If you guys are lacking time, I'm sure that there are some companies out there
who would love the kudos of some pro bono work.

~~~
krapp
If only there were some way to make source code accessible to the general
public, and to allow people to... i don't know, "request" various changes
be... "pulled" into the codebase?

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minimaxir
> _The change required is tiny; I 'm sure even I'm this thread someone will be
> able to propose the optimal change to make. _

Apparently, it's not tiny, which was the response that came up the last time.

...the last time was about two years ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7330107](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7330107)

They did roll out a tiny mobile fix in March:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9206427](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9206427)

~~~
bjterry
The site would be dramatically more mobile friendly with the addition of 2 css
rules: textarea { width: 100%; } table { width: 100%; }

So it doesn't seem like the problem is completely insoluble.

------
d--b
Maybe, YC is trying to teach you something about product building. Something
like: "we don't make our site mobile friendly because the content is so good
that people still use it on their phone even if they have to zoom in a little.
The day when people stop coming to hacker news or apply to YC because it's not
mobile friendly, then we might do something about it. Otherwise it's just a
waste of time and money for us." In other words: don't rush into building
everything people ask you to do, they might not really need it.

It's probably not what they intend to do... But still worth thinking about ;)

~~~
LBarret
In general, this is a very valuable lesson in software. it's easy to wish but
often a wish is very different than a need. with limited resource, each move
much gain you some real advantage, like in chess.

In this particular case, I am bit more reserved : why not ask a (well-known)
contractor ? I am pretty sure pg just have to ask to get tens of high caliber
lisp hacker proposals.

------
bartwe
I've found this site as one of the easier to use ones on mobile?

~~~
fishanz
Exactly. As far as I'm concerned, HN IS (!!!) mobile friendly. I'm so sick of
the garbage mobile formatting that is ubiquitous these days. Give me a clean
desktop version any day. Pinch to zoom FTW. 2009 was way easier to browse on
the iPhone than 2015, what happened? Granted, there is an occasional gem but
they are the rare exception. Perhaps bump the frontsize up a bit, but I don't
see how HN could really be mobile 'optimized' in a good way.

~~~
moepstar
Have my upvote for your opinion.

Problem is, that you're basically "forced" to produce a mobile site by Google,
otherwise you'll be way down in the SERPs :(

I never understood the point of mobile sites - i'm perfectly capable of
pinching my screen, in case something is unreadable (which isn't too much,
given retina screens and all that...)

~~~
fishanz
Just expounding... Take for example epicurious.com: super useful reference
I've used for over a DECADE. I had no problems using it on my mobile/tablet
devices, ever.. Until the mobile rewrite earlier this year. Rendered almost
USELESS! If there was only an 'old version' button...

------
alpb
In the meanwhile, this is super mobile and tablet-friendly:
[http://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/](http://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/)
I've been using it for more than a year now and I nearly never visit it Hacker
News directly on mobile.

~~~
pixelHD
Have a look at this too - [http://hn.premii.com/](http://hn.premii.com/)

~~~
aorth
There is also an Android app by this premii person, and it re-directs all
links through its own domain. Very annoying and actually borderline malicious.

~~~
adrianblp
Speaking of Android, after looking through the available apps I decided to
release my own as open source. It's lightweight and has a focus on usability,
check it out :)

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.adrianblan....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.adrianblan.cheddar)

~~~
epsylon
I'm counting at least 12 HN apps on Google Play. What does your own has that
the others don't?

~~~
adrianblp
Trust me I've tried them all, and I still felt that I needed to develop my own
out of necessity. I'm studying interaction design, so something which is
usable is really important to me.

I would argue that every app I used had minor issues which evolved into major
issues over time. Poor visual design, visibility and readabilty, too cluttered
or unintuitive, etc. I set out for the app to do one thing, and excel at it
without issues.

------
teekert
I use
[http://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/](http://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/)

Some time ago Hackernews was mobile ready for a short time, there were a lot
of complaints (I can't find the thread at the moment). I guess the HN
philosophy is to keep it as basic and simple as possible and leave the rest to
3rd parties.

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kanche
I miss easy navigation features of a desktop browser when opening HN website
in mobile browsers.

My flow is - I go through the submissions in a page, and when I like one, most
of the time I open the story and its comments page both - in separate tabs. I
read the story first and the switch to the next tab to read the comments. When
I have completed all the tabs, I go to the next HN page. In mobile it's pretty
cumbersome to navigate among tabs.

I seldom use the mobile site, I find the HN reader app by premii[1] the best
suited for me.

[1]
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.premii.hn](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.premii.hn)

------
ipsum2
[http://ihackernews.com/](http://ihackernews.com/) is a suitable alternative
that's mobile friendly.

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dawkins
with a few css media query rules it would be usable. I always wonder the same.

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DanBC
Anytime they try to make changes there are hundreds of complaints about those
changes.

Many people on mobile only want a bit more separation between the vote
buttons. That would make accidental downvotes harder, and would encourage
upvoting.

Personally, I'd like text that was a bit larger and text that reflowed, but I
know other people might hate that.

------
threatofrain
I wonder if mobile web is really ready. I think on mobile, people prefer the
fullness that comes with native apps, including UI features like back/undo on
Android, which is maybe why 37 Signals, once a staunch advocate of mobile web
apps, decided to release native versions of their app after a few years. In
default mobile browsers, the back button is not the same thing as "undo" in
Android.

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RickS
I'd be happy to help with this, and I'm surely not the only one. Then again,
I'm sure that lack of bandwidth isn't the reason.

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DanBC
One change that could be made is to wrap very long unbroken lines.

Visiting /comments when someone has left a post with a very long unbroken line
will break the site.

Browsers are oddly broken for mobile. Here's what text entry looks like on
Chrome for iOS - [http://imgur.com/gjLdS6A](http://imgur.com/gjLdS6A)

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MichaelGG
The change should be done in the browser. It's just dumb that we don't have
reflow in Firefox mobile. Chrome seems to do it fine (but lack of adblock
makes it my non default browser).

News.yc is a simple, easy site. Browsers should just work on it.

~~~
raquo
Making a one-column text-only website work on mobile is trivial with a meta
tag and a few lines of CSS.

~~~
DanBC
There are two columns: one for the text and one for the vote buttons. Does
that affect your version?

(What are those few lines of CSS btw?)

~~~
raquo
On such a simple site it's enough to set max-width on the whole body and maybe
adjust a few elements such as the comment input box.

These max-widths etc. can be different based on available screen width:
[https://css-tricks.com/css-media-queries/](https://css-tricks.com/css-media-
queries/)

The meta tag can be used to set viewport width to device screen width. Without
it, the mobile browser doesn't know what minimum screen width the webpage
requires, so it assumes 800px (or 1024px), because rendering a random website
with viewport width of 240px is not a good idea even in 2015.

My point is, browsers should be doing what the website code tells them to do.
Websites that display nicely on desktop computers usually display fairly
nicely on mobile as well. But HN shows 20-30 words per line on desktop, which
is... suboptimal for readability, so it's only expected that mobile browsers
produce similar results.

------
teaneedz
I'm not sure about HN's reason, but I've found the Boreal app for iOS to be a
great responsive solution for reading HN. The dev's are responsive and their
app has me here more often now because of it.

------
ajonit
Hacker News(YC) is a fully featured free app for iOS. It allows for
commenting, upvoting and submitting news. Not sure about Android though. Not
sure what %age of junta use the web version on mobile?

------
brad0
If you're on iOS and want an app I would suggest Akepa. Amazing app.

------
DiabloD3
There is a ton of HN apps on Android, but all I want is the ability to post
comments, post stories, and possibly support the Android share API so I can
just send URLs to HN directly from Chrome.

~~~
ynak
"Yarn for Hacker News" can both comment and post from Android devices. And
using the browser share bottun, you can post stories to HN. Also can open
comment links from other apps. It's very useful, but only hope it would be
able to change font size.
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=au.com.timmutt...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=au.com.timmutton.yarn)

------
zha
I have installed UC Browser on my android just for HN. Double tap for zoom and
the text adjusts to the width.

Older versions of android stock browser used to act this way, but latest
chrome on android does not.

------
jonasvp
There's a few mobile-friendly versions of Hacker News, using the API. I prefer
[http://hn.premii.com](http://hn.premii.com)

------
bastijn
Thanks for the boreal reference. Finally an app that can actually login an
post comments. Beautiful app so far. Though I can't find the reply to comment
option.

~~~
bastijn
My bad, found it. Swipe left on a comment to reply. Nice.

------
kevinSuttle
I asked a long time ago about open-sourcing the front-end, and was brushed
off. It'd get done a lot faster if you allowed experienced users to help.

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RivieraKid
HN is written in an obscure variant of Lisp, perhaps that is the problem?
There's been practically zero development since the site was created.

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neelkadia
Because its not made for mobile? It demands we sit at our Desktops and Start
workstation and explore!

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Squir-Rel
Responsive design to adjust column width might be useful.

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aharonovich
there's (at least one) great app.

