
Is this a better Hacknews UI? - ausjke
http://hn.premii.com
======
wlkr
No, at least not for me. The HN website as is loads very quickly as it's
extremely lightweight. Although it doesn't have the greatest mobile UI, the
website is at least functional on mobile thanks to a minimalist interface. On
my phone, the linked UI took a few seconds to load the articles and scrolling
was so jerky I quickly clicked back to here. I'm on a budget smartphone using
(fast) Wi-Fi.

~~~
_RPM
Try to do a search via the Mobile implementation. It's almost completely
unusable.

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nickpsecurity
No. The strengths of this UI is simple, good-looking organization that loads
lightening-fast. Even works with NoScript easily while yours was a pile of
links. If you want to benefit HN users, I'd suggest toying with variations of
this exact design that try to solve problems people here gripe about.

Here's two with the first one probably very easy:

1\. People accidentally downvote comments trying to upvote them. I can imagine
no technical or UX excuse for this problem still existing. It's _sooo easy_ to
solve. Somewhere, someone is giving an order to keep it a problem probably for
aesthetic reasons.

2\. Comment nesting. A tricky problem in general for so many reasons. People
gripe about this version of it sometimes. My only gripe is some way to
restructure the presentation so deep nesting doesn't just push further and
further to the right. Can be optional.

3\. One of biggest complaints is how a tangent unrelated to OP takes up the
whole screen and it's hard to find next reply to OP. This is actually two
different problems: can't easily see how conversations are connected without
parent links and them taking up the whole screen. The screen issue might be
helped with little plus or minus symbols to hide a whole thread. The other one
I leave to UX designers as it's trickier to balance form and function. A
simple method might be an optional link on site top-level or comment that
turns on some kind of highlighting putting different color, labeled boxes
around grouped comments. Maybe limit groups to just first replies to OP &
anything nested in them rather than everyones replies to everyone.

I think solving these three issues would be helpful. And notifications of
replies, too. There's already a service for that but it's a nice feature to
have in any HN client. Hope this helps you on next round. :)

~~~
bobwaycott
If all 3 of these were solved, I'd be at risk of never growing tired of using
HN on mobile and closing it to get other things done.

~~~
nickpsecurity
Appreciate the feedback as I put mental effort into that list. :) Anything
else that should be on there that gets _lots_ of gripes rather than one or two
people's preferences?

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dkersten
I've yet to find a _better_ HN UI. All the ones I've tried so far (including
this one and the one reustle mentioned) don't add any benefit to me over just
using vanilla HN. They are also, in my experience, much slower than HN.

This one makes bad use of space IMHO and, much more importantly, has terrible
contrast on basically all elements. Makes it incredibly hard to read for me.

~~~
DigitalJack
This (1) is my goto alternative. Mostly because it's easier to go through
comments. The author has a react native app in the iOS store.

(1)
[https://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/](https://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/)

~~~
dkersten
Thanks for sharing, that is actually not at all bad. At least on mobile,
that's more pleasant than HN for me!

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tehno
At least on iPad this one is pretty good, nice size font and toggleable
comment threads –
[https://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/](https://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/)

Looks like this – [http://imgur.com/SdIaLGD](http://imgur.com/SdIaLGD)

~~~
jaredcwhite
I second that -- use that UI all the time.

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rburhum
Nope: [https://imgur.com/a/t9mUG](https://imgur.com/a/t9mUG)

~~~
ausjke
I agree, the front page should be filled up by the top post by default without
a first click, but then that page might be a 404 under HN which is even
uglier?

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phireal
Heavily downvoted comments in the right pane aren't faded as they are on the
main HN site. I find that surprisingly annoying.

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js8
No, I am having my browser using only half the screen, because today's
monitors are too wide. And you put a wide sidebar there that takes half of
that estate.

Quite a lot of sites today cannot adapt to screen resolutions smaller than
about 1000 pixels horizontal (half HD resolution, on my work browser) or about
600 pixels vertical (resolution on my netbook). And don't let me start about
Acroread..

I am also happy to report that HN works with Netsurf, your site probably
doesn't.

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LyndsySimon
The best I've found is hckrnews.com

~~~
nickpsecurity
Bookmarked that. It's has some neat features albeit uglier, front page.
Curious, does it fix the age old problem of up and downvote being too close
together?

~~~
LyndsySimon
I don't know, I can't downvote :)

~~~
nickpsecurity
Fair enough haha.

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muffe
It would have been if it wasn't mobile-only :b

~~~
reustle
Not really, it only fills a tiny portion of my screen. I'll stick to
[http://hckrnews.com](http://hckrnews.com)

~~~
twistedanimator
Agreed. I've been using [http://hckrnews.com](http://hckrnews.com) for over a
year now and I wouldn't ever go back to the normal HN site. I love the feature
that shows you all the new submitted links since you last visited. No longer
do I have to scan up and down the list and see the same links over and over
again looking for new ones.

~~~
oarsinsync
Thank you, this is beautiful and has caused me to finally sign up for an
account after years of lurking.

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thekingshorses
Thats my app.

* you can change the accent color and there is a night theme

* Web version doesn't have a login option

* You can download iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows mobile and desktop version from [https://hn.premii.com/about/](https://hn.premii.com/about/) . You can login, upvote, downvote, reply etc.

Web version uses YC firebase api, and it is usually slow.

Downloadable version scraps YC site, and its generally faster.

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cbeach
Renders nicely in desktop browsers and I'm a big fan of the mobile app.

Am I missing the login option?

Minor suggestion - I'd like to see more items on a single page. Could I have
the option to condense the item UI vertically? Perhaps put the age, author and
comment count in another column?

~~~
thekingshorses
Its build for mobile.

No login option as there is no API. But you can download from the app store
(ios, android, mac, windows), and it has login option.
[https://hn.premii.com/about/](https://hn.premii.com/about/)

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keyneus
I prefer it because it means less fiddling with tabs/the back button. Plus you
can collapse comments.

But by default it's very difficult on my eyes due to the low contrast, so to
make it at all usable I make use of a Stylish script to fix the text color.

~~~
thekingshorses
I am the author of the this. Would you mind sharing a stylish script or
screenshot. Love to see how it looks after your changes.

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mtrn
I don't think so. HN frontpage HTML is about 31201 bytes at the moment.
Techcrunch 249162, Google 64871. Here, less is more.

~~~
usingpond
Not that I think OP is very good, but '31201 bytes' has little to do with UI,
unless you are talking about the specific use case of a slow connection.

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cline6
Why do we all think that a simple list can be made simpler? What is it about
the normal layout that doesn't work?

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iKlsR
[http://hckrnews.com/](http://hckrnews.com/)

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nojvek
I really enjoy hn.algolia.com for desktop. I also use the "Hacker News" app on
iOS on mobile.

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gkbrk
The UI loads quickly for me but the posts take a lot longer to load compared
to Hacker News.

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BryanMMMM
That's nice for me. It would be better if the font size of article is one size
larger.

~~~
thekingshorses
Settings > options > appearance > change font size and family and colors.

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ausjke
Just told the author to hopefully make this better for an easier daily read
experience.

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dangerboysteve
No.

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froh42
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

~~~
wlkr
Thank you for linking, I had come across this before but couldn't recall the
name.

