5 ms·

Oh, god yes. If you need a special, mobile only site, you're doing it wrong. HN is living proof.

cocotino 10y ago
That's correct for many websites, but others such as Facebook have such a complicated but still correct UI on a desktop that it's appropriate to have two different websites.
- babuskov 10y ago
  > correct UI on a desktop Nope. That was true about a year ago, but not anymore. Facebook UI on a desktop is horrible. Try using it with 1024px wide screen - most apps/games aren't fully visible because they give 760px to the canvas and the rest of their UI is not responsive - so either the ad space on the right or the content (app/game) has to suffer.
  - Bahamut 10y ago
    It certainly needs more love - another problematic part is when you have messages open but you want to see stuff on the column to the right of the newsfeed. Its design leaves some to be desired.
    - babuskov 10y ago
      I just discovered another problem today. You cannot paste text into chat (using latest Firefox stable on Mac OSX).
kristianc 10y ago
HN has a mobile-only site, it was updated quite recently. It's been quite subtly done, but it's made upvoting and accessing comments a lot easier.
- lorenzhs 10y ago
  No, HN has a responsive layout - it works well on any screen size. (Well, hitting the correct arrow on mobile is still hard, but at least there's an undo button now).
  - collyw 10y ago
    Well it doesn't work very well on my phone. By the time I zoom enough to be able to read the text, its usually going way past the right hand side.
    - mynewtb 10y ago
      Use a browser that reflows text then and complain to the creators of your current browser that they don't support the integral feature for small screen web enjoyment.
  - ebbv 10y ago
    HN is terrible on my iPhone 5S. Everything is way too small, it's extremely hard to tap on names, arrows or anything else except headlines.
    - mynewtb 10y ago
      It is great on my Samsung Galaxy S. If I zoom in, long lines simply reflow to fit the screen. It means that I can dynamically adjust the font size to suit any accessibility needs or situation.
      - Flockster 10y ago
        That's a pretty nice feature. Is there a browser on iOS which supports that? Safari and Chrome do not seem to reflow.
        mynewtb 10y ago
        As far as I know Apple forbids people from using their own rendering engines so all you can get on ios are UI/UX differences.
leeoniya 10y ago
> HN is living proof. of what? that you don't need a separate mobile site (or js) to show a most basic wall of text? open up amazon.com or walmart.com and see how your justification holds up. certainly, there are simple layouts with sparse content that can be made responsive easily (blogs, image portfolios, etc) but this is a far cry from proof that a broad statement is at all applicable.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  Fair enough. But how many sites on the internet that have special mobile sites are, at the end of the day, just showing walls of text?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- coldtea 10y ago
  >of what? that you don't need a separate mobile site (or js) to show a most basic wall of text? Most sites only need to show just that. And fail miserably at it. >open up amazon.com or walmart.com and see how your justification holds up. 90% of sites are content based, not Amazon or Walmart. And even then could do with a much simpler layout.
  - paulddraper 10y ago
    Those are a pretty important 10%.
awesomerobot 10y ago
There are plenty of ecommerce sites doing the mobile/desktop split generally well (and making millions of sales in the process). HN is literally text-only.
mintplant 10y ago
I find this funny now because HN used to be awful on mobile, due to an inflexible tables-for-layout design. One that couldn't easily be changed, either, because everyone's clients relied on the exact structure of the markup for screen scraping.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  Thankfully, this has been fixed.
- derefr 10y ago
  I know it's a solved problem now, but: > One that couldn't easily be changed, either, because everyone's clients relied on the exact structure of the markup for screen scraping. This doesn't seem like that hard a problem. Presumably the robots all sent their own distinct UA strings (as scrapers only get written to imitate browser UA strings if you ban non-browser UA strings.) So why not just filter your logs to find all the known scrapers, serve anything with those exact UA strings "legacy" table-based responses, and serve everyone else the new layout?
  - chasingtheflow 10y ago
    Then you have to maintain two layouts in perpetuity.
odbol_ 10y ago
HN is terrible on mobile. Their column sizes are just slightly too big for my screen (not adaptive), so I have to scroll to read the last word of every line. And on desktop, it just expands to the whole page width, even through everyone knows you should never have a line of text that's longer than 600px. Hackers they may be, web developers they are not.

That's correct for many websites, but others such as Facebook have such a complicated but still correct UI on a desktop that it's appropriate to have two different websites.

babuskov 10y ago
> correct UI on a desktop Nope. That was true about a year ago, but not anymore. Facebook UI on a desktop is horrible. Try using it with 1024px wide screen - most apps/games aren't fully visible because they give 760px to the canvas and the rest of their UI is not responsive - so either the ad space on the right or the content (app/game) has to suffer.
- Bahamut 10y ago
  It certainly needs more love - another problematic part is when you have messages open but you want to see stuff on the column to the right of the newsfeed. Its design leaves some to be desired.
  - babuskov 10y ago
    I just discovered another problem today. You cannot paste text into chat (using latest Firefox stable on Mac OSX).

kristianc 10y ago

HN has a mobile-only site, it was updated quite recently. It's been quite subtly done, but it's made upvoting and accessing comments a lot easier.

lorenzhs 10y ago
No, HN has a responsive layout - it works well on any screen size. (Well, hitting the correct arrow on mobile is still hard, but at least there's an undo button now).
- collyw 10y ago
  Well it doesn't work very well on my phone. By the time I zoom enough to be able to read the text, its usually going way past the right hand side.
  - mynewtb 10y ago
    Use a browser that reflows text then and complain to the creators of your current browser that they don't support the integral feature for small screen web enjoyment.
- ebbv 10y ago
  HN is terrible on my iPhone 5S. Everything is way too small, it's extremely hard to tap on names, arrows or anything else except headlines.
  - mynewtb 10y ago
    It is great on my Samsung Galaxy S. If I zoom in, long lines simply reflow to fit the screen. It means that I can dynamically adjust the font size to suit any accessibility needs or situation.
    - Flockster 10y ago
      That's a pretty nice feature. Is there a browser on iOS which supports that? Safari and Chrome do not seem to reflow.
      - mynewtb 10y ago
        As far as I know Apple forbids people from using their own rendering engines so all you can get on ios are UI/UX differences.

leeoniya 10y ago

> HN is living proof. of what? that you don't need a separate mobile site (or js) to show a most basic wall of text? open up amazon.com or walmart.com and see how your justification holds up. certainly, there are simple layouts with sparse content that can be made responsive easily (blogs, image portfolios, etc) but this is a far cry from proof that a broad statement is at all applicable.

qwertyuiop924 10y ago
Fair enough. But how many sites on the internet that have special mobile sites are, at the end of the day, just showing walls of text?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
coldtea 10y ago
>of what? that you don't need a separate mobile site (or js) to show a most basic wall of text? Most sites only need to show just that. And fail miserably at it. >open up amazon.com or walmart.com and see how your justification holds up. 90% of sites are content based, not Amazon or Walmart. And even then could do with a much simpler layout.
- paulddraper 10y ago
  Those are a pretty important 10%.

awesomerobot 10y ago

There are plenty of ecommerce sites doing the mobile/desktop split generally well (and making millions of sales in the process). HN is literally text-only.

mintplant 10y ago

I find this funny now because HN used to be awful on mobile, due to an inflexible tables-for-layout design. One that couldn't easily be changed, either, because everyone's clients relied on the exact structure of the markup for screen scraping.

qwertyuiop924 10y ago
Thankfully, this has been fixed.
derefr 10y ago
I know it's a solved problem now, but: > One that couldn't easily be changed, either, because everyone's clients relied on the exact structure of the markup for screen scraping. This doesn't seem like that hard a problem. Presumably the robots all sent their own distinct UA strings (as scrapers only get written to imitate browser UA strings if you ban non-browser UA strings.) So why not just filter your logs to find all the known scrapers, serve anything with those exact UA strings "legacy" table-based responses, and serve everyone else the new layout?
- chasingtheflow 10y ago
  Then you have to maintain two layouts in perpetuity.

odbol_ 10y ago

HN is terrible on mobile. Their column sizes are just slightly too big for my screen (not adaptive), so I have to scroll to read the last word of every line. And on desktop, it just expands to the whole page width, even through everyone knows you should never have a line of text that's longer than 600px. Hackers they may be, web developers they are not.