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[flagged] Ask HN: Why does HN require tiny baby fingers to operate on a phone?
96 points by sgbeal on June 24, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 100 comments
A full 3rd or more of the time when i try to tap on the "new" link at the top of HN, i accidentally tap the "jobs" link with my average-sized fingers because my phone wraps HN such that "jobs" is directly below "new", with like 3 pixels of gap between them.

Similarly, the links across each post in the list, along with the near-microscopic "up" arrow, require teeny tiny baby fingers to tap reliably.

Certainly no tiny babies are using HN, so... please, HN, fontSize+=2 for the links! :-D




Ya, it's been said that "it is part of the issues to be fixed in the next UI update" for like 10 years now.

To me, the most annoying part of using HN w/o other clients on mobile is not this, which can be addressed with extra care or zoom in. It's the idiotic decision to somehow think the post text is less important than comments and so the font color must be set to be lower. It's so low that it's unreadable in mobile. For long posts like many show-HNs, I have to just skip reading it until I get back to desktop, which isn't only not ideal, but also defeats the purpose of show-HNs since the ones that doesn't stay at top are the ones needed all the attention and HN is not helping by making it unreadable.

Ya, a simple css color change to match comments' color need to be part of the fixes to be addressed when there's a blue moon.


January 2007. Steve Jobs introduces the iPhone web browser. “And to zoom in on any page, you just drag with two fingers… like this.” The crowd goes wild. Nobody has ever seen multitouch gestures before.

Still works!


is this a serious answer or trolling? how would web experience on mobile be if i have to manually zoom everything all of the time?

fact is NH on mobile web is not optimized for unknown reasons. its not a big challenge to do it either. I have a userscript that makes everything bigger and removes junk out.


HN is not designed well for desktop either. The voting buttons are too small and close to each other. I’m sure every HN user on every platform has clicked wrongly many a times.


And that is (thankfully) solved by the undown/unvote buttons


Is there any evidence that discourse here would be improved by encouraging mobile users to slam out mobile-sized comments?


Not sure but I comment from both my phone and desktop.


Did you "slam out" that comment on your phone? I'm only asking because its shorter than most of the comments I post, here; comments I post almost exclusively from my phone because nine times out of ten that's where I'm browsing HN.


While I understand the sentiment, I think people here can discern between an iMessage and an hn comment. I would be curious to know the percentage of people commenting on mobile devices. I’d guess it’s a lot. I prefer the ui the way it is, I don’t mind the old school feel. I’m sure I could go get an App to make it better. But I don’t think mobile vs desktop necessarily correlates well to quality of hn comment. I could be wrong tho.

Sent from my iphone


Is there evidence to the contrary?


there's an interesting discussion to be had here around desktop vs mobile applications/UIs. Despite the promise of the existence of a unifying paradigm I find that often technology providers pick a preference or a preference bleeds through culture (more of our QAs use this device) or by pandering to the majority user (typically phones today). In our case I imagine the culture of traditionally accessing HN through an IDE-capable device results in the default being optimised for desktop use.

Spotify recently (well over a year ago now) merged its two clients with the mobile UI being the winner. Its interesting how as a desktop user you notice all these imperfections where you are now the loser. The search is top(ish) left instead of top right and various UI elements work now _so_ much better when you are able to swipe right (to easily navigate albums in a scrollable carousel) or swiftly swipe downwards (where on desktop one must find and drag a scrollbar).

I imagine we've all experienced some of the more irksome manifestations that have already transpired due to this schism such as: websites that tell you to download an application, a support call for a broken web function that results in "use the mobile app, it works there" and isn't fixed for weeks or months, or the horrific pop-ups that encourage the use of one or the other application as dev teams hint at their disinclination to continue minority support.


>Despite the promise of the existence of a unifying paradigm I find that often technology providers pick a preference or a preference bleeds through culture

that promise was a myth. The closest we got to it was responsive design and flex boxes, which are less there because there's "one size fits all" and more because it's trying to make it less painful to tweak your page for desktop vs. mobile. Many companies fall towards the latter, so a ood 95% of the time there will be a "base design", with other platforms simply being "ports".

At the end of the day, they are two different problems, so they will have two different solutions (you know, unless we enter some Cyberpunk rennassaince where humans can grow precise stylus-like appendages). The above solutions were made because it wasn't cost effective to run two different websites perfectly optimized for their respective medium.


Out of curiosity, what parts of the UI do you screen out?


lots of small links i don't care about (like flagging things, parent, ...) + dates and such. i focused the experience on reading, so i also make all comments collapsed by default so i can first read the top level ones. also have parts that were in viewport have style of 'visited' so I can ignore it next time.

in other words, lots of changes to make the experience easier (to me)


> fact is NH on mobile web is not optimized for unknown reasons

It’s literally the only site I use zoomed-in on desktop as well, 150%.


You know you can just go adjust the zoom on most browsers & it'll stick for the site, yes? On Chrome there's a "zoom" option in the drop down.

HN is well optimized on mobile. It's great as is. Lot of people just bullying their opinions.


>bullying their opinions

well that's a turn of phrase I have yet to hear until this point.


This means two actions (zoom+click) when one would be enough. Efficiency first!


Efficiency for whom? This works great for me. You'd make my experience awful by making things bigger, reducing information density.


Surely CSS can detect and cope with screen sizes.


The issue here isn’t screen size.

  @media (pointer: coarse) {
   /* UI for fingers */
  }
I frequently use small viewports on my laptop and the pervasiveness of this misconception drives me mad. I try to fit more information on the screen and websites respond by spatially bloating as if designed to impede.


Then when you go to zoom, it registers a click first, and you hit some random link instead.


That turn of events always struck me as funny too.

Ironically (re. the title), I believe he even referred to the preceding standard of mobile browsing as the “baby web”.

But now “responsive design” has taken over instead. Still no multitouch.


It's a shame because there very much are parts of the web that would benefit from proper multitouch support. But it's clear at some point that bespoke websites were abandoned (from a marketing and technical standpoint) by large companies in lieu of native mobile apps.

Tangent aside, HN is a site purely focused on text with no dynamic content. It really doesn't benefit from needing to zoom in and out on your phone. It's just unnecessary friction.


Yeah, but it's annoying! It "should" "just work." This is the 21st century, for Pete's sake!

PS: you lost me at "Steve Jobs".


I prefer it to most sites, it leaves more room for text. HN feels much more information dense than similar websites like reddit.


On a desktop it's fine. For fingers on a phone screen it's... well, it's less than fine.


On my sort of large phone all the links and buttons are just big enough that I can press on the right things consistently without zoom. My issue is that I accidentally hit them when scrolling sometimes.


Take a look at tildes’s website. It’s orders of magnitude better, while still showing more content.


I gladly suffer the ux for the information density. I occasionally favorite comments that I meant to flag, or vote the wrong way, but these actions are all undoable. I've never deleted a comment by mistake; there's a confirmation prompt for that.


Ha. Just tried to upvote your comment and opened your profile instead. Still appreciate the information density, but I can see how it’s a pain for people who are more active here than I.


Why not both? I don't think HN uses its space on mobile that well to begin with. You can make small tweaks to improve readability while simultaneously leaving more space to add in properly sized actions on comments.


Your web browser is broken. Well, they all are. Browsers on small screens should be built to browse web pages on small screens. There are seemingly obvious things to do like increasing font sizes[0] and margins -- the browser decides what to do with the content, after all. But such things aren't true solutions when the page is designed for a different device / resolution / form factor[1]. Your problem is with input though -- making elements bigger is a hacky solution at best.

Browsers on touch screens should be built to browse web pages on touch screens. Touch input events are a particularly poor representation of the operator's intent -- compared to keys, pointing device with cursor, etc. -- yet a lot of software built for touch seems to assume the opposite. The software decides that the user definitely wants to click on something and it just needs to find which thing.

As all good web browsers know, the extremely precise touch event position corresponds exactly to the (region of the) element that the user wants to click on. This is a certainty[2]. So what if the user tapped precisely on a background element for no reason at all? So what if there are multiple clickable things nearby? The user would have sent different coordinates if they wanted to click somewhere else.

[0] you generally do get some control over this, in lieu of a solution to the problem

[1] and the browser must, as much as possible, style the content in the way (not-) specified, even at the cost of the user experience / accessibility

[2] It is, by definition, without doubt. A fact. A universal truth. A ---


Web browsers (and the whole touch input stack really) are already fully aware of touch precision and do very clever things to infer what you're actually trying to touch. In my experience it's already surprisingly accurate, too.

Saying that making things bigger isn't a solution is nonsense. Shifting blames to browser makers is even less of a solution.

Making HN 200% bigger if it detect a small screen would fix most issues and it's 3 lines of CSS. But sure, let's wait until that magical browser you describe arrives to fix everything instead. Any day now.


The whole stack is undoubtedly doing a heap of clever things, they are very impressive devices. I'm not sure what "fully aware of touch precision" means exactly. I mentioned precision a few times to hint at the common misunderstandings about precision and the irony of interpreting subpixel touch coordinates as literal point/s that the user touched, deliberately and specifically, when they were generated from someone smooshing a number of body parts against a small touch screen display.

Simply making things bigger isn't a comprehensive solution (to what is a difficult user input problem, as you know), but it is something that can help, and crucially can be implemented in web browsers. I want web browsers to be less cowed by web designers/developers, to empower the users.

I'm not trying to change your mind/experience. I know that a lot of people must be similarly unaffected by such issues. Not everyone is in that privileged group, however.


I have wondered if the very minimal changes have been as there's some anticipation that the easier HN becomes on mobile the more likely users would comment while on the go, which may be considered a negative if it affects comment quality (eg: generally shorter time windows to read/parse content and therefore make thoughtful comments about, more challenging on phone OS UIs to write and edit longer form comments).

I'd be curious what the internal stats are for comments made on mobile since I wonder if the stats are already high and whether they show any trend of less highly rated comments.


HN is not backed by a large organization/company and does not have money to employ a few people to redesign the site and make some long desired and badly needed improvements. /s

While you’re complaining about link sizes, did you notice how tiny and close the voting buttons are and how bad the general accessibility of HN is?

In a way, I think all this bad design prevents people from using it too much…and that may actually be a good thing.

If this answer seemed pointless, that’s because nobody can answer this question properly on an Ask HN post. Emailing hn@ycombinator.com may probably get a more appropriate answer.


I'd rather take speculation than a lack of an answer or the umpteenth "we hear you and we are working on it" answer only to wait years for nothing.

I wish Stylish worked on Firefox mobile. These are issues I can solve myself if the right tools existed (at least, the ones that exist on desktop).


Well, I use Stylus, and it works fine on Android (but you need to use a "custom addon collection" to add it, which is only available on Beta and Nightly). I see no reason why Stylish wouldn't also work.

https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extensio...


Well that's very out of the way, can't believe that existed for 2 and a half years. I'll look into it.


They're encouraging you to think like a hacker and fix it yourself with either a user stylesheet or an app.


Sure, I appreciate it's "old school" - though the markup, nested tables, embedded formatting, spacer gifs, etc make this rather hard.


I use a third party app to get around this. Makes the mobile experience infinitely better in my opinion.


Hacki is the most featureful HN browsing app I've ever used, it's open source too. It really enhances the HN mobile experience.


Any specific app you would recommend?


I use Octal on iOS/iPhone

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/octal-for-hacker-news/id130888...


+1 to Octal being fantastic


On iOS, HACK is my favorite of the several I've tried: https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/hack-for-hacker-news-reader/id...

There's an Android version as well: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pranapps.h...


The pain point for me with Hack is that the vibrations need the pro version to close (or literally anything in the settings).


Thank you — I knew it was free but didn't recall that I'd done the in-app "Premium" purchase. I'd still recommend it for anyone open to non-free (as in beer and/or freedom) apps.


I would recommend Hacki: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jiaqifeng....

It's the most featureful FOSS Android app for HN, it's UI is a breeze to navigate too (if you enable swipe gestures from the tiny settings!).


I'm using Harmonic for Android. Not sure if it's available for iOS. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.simon.harm...


I'm trying Harmonic right now and it is really lacking in features, sure, the Material You is great but I can't edit my comments or see how many votes a comment/post has (and there is no Inbox?!).

Love the browser concept in it though, never seen anything like it before.


Just installed, thank you.


if you're on android materialistic is p good.


Harmonic on Android is pretty good


Not available on Github or Fdroid.


I would recommend taking a look for yourself. If I search the App Store for “Hacker News” I see no less than a dozen options. Shouldn’t take more than a minute to look at them and evaluate which one would be best for your needs.


I trust people here more than I trust the App Store algos though.


Link please?


Glider on Android is okay.


I love using Glider. What pains me however is how scuffed the commenting feels, and the UI jumps around a lot when opening a post with lots of comments...


Why not simply inject a tiny bit of client side CSS and fix it yourself? True to the hacker spirit.


> Why not simply inject a tiny bit of client side CSS and fix it yourself? True to the hacker spirit.

Because, as the OP states, i'm on a phone.


What a sad state of affairs that this is a successful counter argument.

There no technical reason that pocket computers should be incapable of applying user styles. Alas, we allowed the advent of a new technology ratchet tighter the grasp of commercial interests over society.


Likewise, what a sad state of affairs that mobile-device users should have to add custom CSS to a given page to use it properly.


Indeed, imagine a world in which something much closer to bare, structured content was delivered and the user agent decided how to present it.


You can do this on iPhone so I strongly assume you can on android too. For iOS you can use Userscripts or Stay or other apps/extensions and they can import greasemonkey scripts to auto load on specific domains. I never thought about fixing hackernews... have to look for some good scripts now


>There no technical reason that pocket computers should be incapable of applying user styles.

There were in the beginning of Smartphones. We grew past them, but the paradigms and mentalities of smartphones were well cemented by then.


You should be able to do that on iOS with an extension like Hyperweb


hopefully someone can create a script for phones since Firefox Nightly in Android got Tampermonkey add on


Tampermonkey is available in the stable Firefox app too, btw.

Though I wish Stylus supported Firefox mobile, it's better for CSS as it only does CSS.


With Nightly and an addon collection on addons.mozilla.org, you can install Stylus too.


You don't even need Nightly since February, version 110 added it :)


In that case you can use Firefox Mobile and Tampermonkey addon to inject custom CSS.


Well you just changed my life. I've used Firefox Mobile for years but never considered that Tampermonkey might have been among the supported add-ons...


Lol. That post made me laugh. One of the main reasons I never up/down a comment is because the arrows are too easy to misfire.


Mine doesn't have a downvote button. How can I fix this? I kind of like only being able to upvote, but I want to know what is wrong to be missing it


Accounts with low karma are limited.

Ideally this should solve the "mass downvoting to impose your pet echo chamber" problem that can happen in other online communities.

With the ongoing fall of reddit if I were an admin i would propose a limit based on account age, in order to not shift the common etiquette suddenly.


Yep, it's tiny. On my iPad mini it's still enough of a pain that sometimes reach for the pencil. On my Android phone, I've noticed that sometimes the text size switches between tiny and not-quite-tiny when I refresh when I'm visiting new.

The accessibility on mobile devices leaves much to be desired.

Even on desktop the text is small, down to 7pt, which leads me to have Chrome show HN at 125%.


When I see both an up and a down arrow next to a comment and I zoom in so that I can touch just one of them it seems the other one lights up as well. At least that is my impression on the iPhone.

So do these little tiny arrows really vote up and down or are they just a neutral engagement signal?

I always intended to look in the code but as it fits this topic, I guess I can just as well ask here.


I don't know. I was over 40 when I purchased my first touchscreen device, a 10" tablet, and I was definitely worried that it would be as the OP described, and I would barely be able to control the thing with my fat greasy fingers. But it worked like a dream, and I was amazed at how accurate and sensitive it was.

I would definitely not enjoy working on a very small screen. I did have some feature phones with screens about 2x3", but those were not touch-enabled.

I currently have a phablet of sorts, a Moto g Play phone, and so it's got a relatively large screen. I have no problems navigating HN on the phone, which I do every day, usually while I eat.

I have learned that touchscreen operation does take a delicate touch, of course. The slightest feather brush of the tip of my finger is enough to activate any link, and no more is used, lest the tap mash three other links nearby.

And I agree with the poster upthread who recommends zooming. Phones have tons of accessibility tools; use 'em!


Smartphones and touchscreens in general have a UX issue: the surface you read gets interacted with directly. So attempting to create a content rich reading surface has this problem. With smartphones it is compounded by the small size of the screen.

You'll see this with all sorts of other mobile UIs that are web based. Honestly, as much of a pain in the ass as it can be, I prefer it to existing mobile UX "solutions" out there, it might suck to pinch zoom on links before I touch them, but it sucks even worse to interact with the majority of mobile web interfaces.


This reminded me of the Game Boy magnifying glass. I might have to dig it out.


I use Kiwi Browser on Android. It's a custom build of Chromium with extension support. I install Stylus and write some CSS to fix anything that bothers me.


Op clearly hasn't seen a 2 years old trying to press anything on a phone. Their fingers might be tiny, but they manage to press the whole screen.

Lol


This is a site where I have seen people say that light grey text on a tan-grey(?) background is actually a good thing, which reminds me of two relevant bits of history.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norrmalmstorg_robbery

and

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_von_Sacher-Masoch


Try using a mobile browser, like Opera, that supports text rewrap on zoom. It is a revelation.


I only browse HN on my phone, and don't login to comment / submit URLs. I've bookmarked /newest so I go there straight away and don't have to hunt it down every-time and squint to see it. I would recommend using a desktop workstation for interacting with HN for submitting, commenting, upvoting, etc


i'm currently living on a boat (since a month) and don't have that luxury. It's a phone or nothing. #TheAddictionIsReal


Nothing that can be done about it now, but for the future you might want to look into getting a smart phone keyboard. I presume that tabbing through the links would work even on a smart phone browser.


> Nothing that can be done about it now, but for the future you might want to look into getting a smart phone keyboard.

i've tried 3 of them over the past 10+ years and hated every one of them. The fact is that Android apps are simply not designed with physical keyboards in mind. They're designed for touchscreens, with keyboards being (if anything) third-rate citizens.


There’s a good HN client on iPhone called Hack that’s roughly modeled after Apollo


If you are on android, try glider, a 3rd party client from the Play store.


There are a couple addons/extensions that gussy it up.


Materialistic is a good android app for HN


lmao yes this has been an issue for years, hn discriminates against my fat fingers! haha.


Skill issue


> Skill issue

Presumably you're talking about the HN developers' skills?


I think it’s intended. It keeps ”casual” users from joining. And if it bothers you there are ways to solve it.




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