I updated my work laptop last year to the 2017 model and I immediately determined that I would wait for a better keyboard design before updating my personal laptop. Preferably one without the touchbar, or at the very least with a physical escape key.
The problem is designers and their bosses/clients. They equate design with looks. As a result, they see design as solving the problem of aesthetic. They fail to realize this is a problem which very few people care about on the web. So long as it passes the smell test of credibility, no one cares. (Excluding a handful of cases.)
That‘s true only for (some) tech-literate people. Everyday users will quickly think something looks ugly/old/cluttered when compared to the other apps/sites they use.
I‘m an outlier on this site because I generally like redesigns and all that comes with modern web stuff (white space, rounded corners, flat, light drop shadow, generally clean and option for dark mode).
I find it‘s easy to test. Take a redesign you didn‘t think was necessary and then look at it 3 years later. Design changes over time. It‘s just life.
HN for some reason did age decently because it‘s very spartan and minimal. I like it. Even mobile is fine for reading. Not so much for contributing though.
Edit: Actually, everyday users might not care much either way. UNTIL some other site with similar functionality comes along but looks much more modern. Or if the site is trying to get new users.
"I like" is precisely the mistake I am addressing.
Design is not about what one likes. It is about what helps one solve a problem.
Web designers and their bosses/clients reduce "design" to the creation of the look-and-feel of websites. For them, design is all about how something looks. This is something which is highly subjective.
The flaw in this is that it's not how users think. Users have a job-to-be-done. A good design is one that helps them accomplish that job. A better design is one that helps them accomplish that job better, faster, or easier. A bad design is one which doesn't help them or makes it worse.
Consider a monolingual English speaker using an ATM in China. You will never hear them say, "Well, I can't get my money because I don't understand Chinese. However, this ATM looks so nice I'm going to try to use it again."
It doesn't matter how great that ATM looks if the user cannot accomplish their task.
Yes, aesthetics have a place, but it's a very diminished place of importance. Aesthetics is much less important than most web designers and bosses/clients think.
It's time they get over themselves and start thinking about users.
Early to mid 2000s was the best time in web design. Everything before that was "omg, i can put animated images and color on the web, LETS PUT ALL OF THEM IN THERE!" (aka the Geocities School of Style) and after after that was "OMG iPhone is kewl, lets make everything 20x sized so that people can rub their screens with ease (desktop? what desktop? that is sooo yesterday, and dying, get with the times grampah, today real programmers make web applications in their iPads while drinking latte soda cappuccinos and eating gluten free croissants at plate free coffee shops with hand demoisturized tables)".
I mean, early/mid 2000s design was still bad (especially when people learned about the gradient tool and drop shadow filter), but at least browsers were limited enough to mostly contain the damage.
I tend to agree, there is no reason to change the hn look and feel. If it were a corporate product it would have had a dozen product managers trying to make a name for themselves in redesigning it ad nauseum, just for the sake of change and advancing their own careers. Also see: Wikipedia (more or less), Craigslist, DuckDuckGo (I’ll defend that one), and scant few others. News sites like newspapers and large blogs are particularly egregious imo (but I think much of that is driven by demands for revenue by selling more ads and tracking).
It doesn't have any specialist mobile UX, but it also doesn't have any need for specialized mobile UX. It has pretty nearly the best mobile discussion UX I've seen simply by not trying too hard.
HN works really well on mobile. The only issue is that the voting arrows are a bit small but otherwise it is one of the mobile sites I use with the best UX experience.
The only other way to handle <pre> tags is to wrap these long lines, but i do not see how that is not fundamentally broken considering that the entire purpose of the <pre> tag is to show preformatted text.
I disagree. I browse hn almost exclusively on mobile and I think it is fantastic. Compared to other sites, many of which won’t even load when my connection is shoddy, jump around as they’re loaded, require me to turn off my ad blocker just to render properly, etc., and I’ll take hn’s mobile UX any day. Two examples of terrible “modern” mobile UX are (new) reddit and LinkedIn.
Yea but I'm not asking for a react rewrite I'm asking for fonts and UI elements to not by microscopic or disappear on me when I misclick on the wrong microscopic thing.
Linux for everyone will happen when I no longer need to explain what a "package manager" or "dependency" is to my retired mother. So, never, basically.
Drawing viewers' eyes to lucrative television timeslots for advertisers, selling tickets to local stadiums, and selling merchandise such as jerseys and figures.
Those are all wealth transfers, though, not really value creation. The only value creation by the baseball players is the entertainment provided (which is definitely not nothing).
Society operates on credit and you're only hurting yourself by not engaging in the benefits of having a credit card. Use it like a debit card and you'll earn cash back and you will build your credit.
Putting exactly the same spend on a credit card rather than a debit one does not conflict with living within your means. Making use of credit facilities does not mean being in debt or doing anything wrong.
It's the same in the UK - there's a world of benefit in showing that you're able to use credit products responsibly and there is no risk or any cost if you just treat a credit card like it's a debit card.
There is a risk that you can't pay the bill. Losing your job may still mean you can at least pay the minimum but it can sometimes be the start of a slippery slope.
Anyone who says 'it can't happen to me' either has very rich parents or is a fool.
Responsibly using CC isn't about "relying on future income to pay off present debt". If you have 5k in the bank, don't spend more than that, and pay it off at the end of the month (or if you're paranoid like I was right out of school, pay it off every week)
If you can't trust yourself, sure. But most people do have the ability to simply not spend more than they have in their bank account and then pay off in full even before they receive a statement. Even if you lost your job, you'd still be fine.
Most people don't use credit cards to borrow. The point of the credit is just to hold until the end of the next month and then pay off in one go. The point of doing that is to allow a period of time to resolve any disputes for example.
Credit cards give you extra consumer power - actual extra laws backing you up (at least where I am).
I can't understand people who don't like credit cards if they say it's not living within your means.
With a credit card, you've introduced a new failure mode where you can end up in debt. If you do it right, you won't, but the cc companies know that a lot of people will mess it up--that's their business model.
It's a bit like with alcohol. If you never drink, you can be 100% confident you'll never become an alcoholic. If you do drink, even a little bit, that chance goes up. Plenty of people are able to drink responsibly, sure, but I can understand wanting to avoid the possibility entirely.
Say you're self-employed and your best client suddenly stops paying. They have a good track record and assure you it's just a technical blip or something. You have bills to pay so request an increase in credit limit. Then your client's blip turns into something much worse, and on it goes...
That's how people become unstuck. Very few people start off with bad intentions.
Because a lot of people don't seem to follow that. You get paid X on the 1st, as long as you spend X-1 within the month you have no need for a credit card.
Other than showing some opaque credit agency that your ok for more credit.
What about the consumer protection aspects? You don't get that with a debit card. I suppose you don't need it in the same way you don't need lots of things, but it's ignoring legal protection you could have for free? Plus every single time you buy on credit you are subsidising my credit card rewards.
In the UK it's Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act, 1974.
> Under Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974, the credit card company is jointly and severally liable for any breach of contract or misrepresentation by the retailer or trader.
> You don't have to reach a stalemate with the retailer or trader before you can contact your credit card provider - you can make a claim to both the retailer and credit card provider simultaneously, although you can't recover your losses from both.
> This right is particularly useful if the retailer or trader has gone bust, or it doesn't respond to your letters or phone calls.
> Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act also applies to foreign transactions as well as goods bought online, by telephone or mail order for delivery to the UK from overseas.
>Which ones specifically? If they are truly for free then I don't need to pay for them by virtue of having a credit card.
Chargebacks, protection against a stolen card, no real money being tied up during a dispute, etc.
>If they are truly for free then I don't need to pay for them by virtue of having a credit card.
Every consumer is already paying for them because business price in the credit card fees into their retail prices. If you don't get a discount for using cash/debit, you are already paying for this protection.
In the US, by not using a card, you are still paying for the benefits without getting them.
all merchants who accept credit cards incur fees for doing so and pass that cost on to consumers. Not using credits cards is giving up the opportunity to recapture some of that cost in the form of rewards. There is not a good reason to not use a credit card as a debit card.
It's the discovery mechanism that's unique to Facebook.
Other messaging services: tell someone your username on it (when you ever happen to run into them again, I guess.)
Facebook Messenger: search for their name on Facebook, find the one with the right profile picture, hit "send message."
Facebook is the modern-day White Pages, except for the entire planet.
And that's the part that makes it so hard to "quit Facebook": you're essentially erasing your entry from said White Pages, so people that want to connect to you by name can no longer do so (unless you're famous enough for Google to pull up your Twitter when people search your name; or you know enough about SEO for people to find your personal-brand website/blog when people search your name.)
Heh, you've given me a great idea for a weekend project (a free directory where you can put your info in, and you'll show up in Google search results). Think Gravatar, but for all of your contact info.
What would you call it? Imagine it's not just a publisher to Google, but you could land on the directory through a domain. Something about being a planetary directory.
The parent was probably being facetious (they're saying that you're sort of Greenspunning Facebook.)
Nevertheless, services like this already exist. https://about.me, for example. "Vanity website" is the generic term, I think. It's essentially a one-page business card that you can register a domain for.
The difference between these services, and Facebook, is that people sign up for Facebook and fill out their contact details as a necessary step in the process of doing something else they wanted/needed to do. People don't seek out Facebook, they just... end up there. Like your name ends up in the White Pages.
Whereas, these "business-card website" services, you have to explicitly seek out and register with, just for the purpose of having that information out there. Less like the White Pages, more like the Yellow Pages. People that want to be reached out to (i.e. people with "personal brands"—marketers) are willing to go to this effort, but regular people aren't.
It's very unlikely that, if you're looking to connect with someone (who is not the type to create a big public presence for themselves), that they'll have registered with one of these services. Why would they have?
If it's successful it will be bought and become evil. Gavatar tracks its users. It's blocked in my browser. If it's federated then maybe it won't become another Facebook.
