4 ms·

Does anyone prefer the large (contextless) images that consume majority of screen real estate to text-based HN UI? IMO this approach has harmed the UX of twitt

Does anyone prefer the large (contextless) images that consume majority of screen real estate to text-based HN UI? IMO this approach has harmed the UX of twitter.com tremendously and is done mostly to facilitate ad integration. Dark patterns for the lose.

fny 9y ago
I feel like there are trade offs. With the image approach, I can tell what I'm engaging with at a glance instead of a few clicks and page loads. I know whether a link is a blog post, repo, promotion, article, tweet without having to decipher the domain, and I can even tell whether a site will accost me for my email address. On the other hand, one could argue a lot of what the images tell can be inferred from looking at the title and metadata alone, but this has definitely reduced my "false positive" clicks. Vanilla HN wins hands down for information density.
- piotrkubisa 9y ago
  I totally agree with you. I have positive experience to see preview of the website, because now I could recognize what is behind the link. Personally, I really like "native" HN which is just simple, fast and straightforward to use, and I definitely wouldn't be satisfied to use the Vue-version on daily basis. I think website preview (history-less, pre-rendered and cached) might be a possible field for interest for startups (pocket, raindrop etc.) and their browser extensions to manage bookmarks in browser, because they currently generate (and cache) image previews on their own so they can offer website preview as feature. This feature also reminds me Force Touch [1]. [1]: http://osxdaily.com/2016/02/23/preview-web-page-links-safari-mac-multitouch/ http://osxdaily.com/2016/02/23/preview-web-page-links-safari...
user5994461 9y ago
HN and twitter are text only sites. Not everything is a text only site.
coldtea 9y ago
>Does anyone prefer the large (contextless) images that consume majority of screen real estate to text-based HN UI? Yes, me.
- rocky1138 9y ago
  Perhaps you can elaborate as to why you prefer that method.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    Because I get additional feedback for what I'm going to read (which often includes images within a post too, the formatting of the post, etc) than just the domain name and title?
andresmaiden 9y ago
Me too, I love text based things, but the context that the image gives me is better to know if I want to throw the link to Pocket or not.
Can_Not 9y ago
I prefer the list format without the images. Can you elaborate on what the specific dark pattern is in the Twitter case? I'm not a Twitter user.
- DeBraid 9y ago
  Twitter was designed to be text-based and was beloved during this phase of its existence. Around ~2013/2014 Twitter Cards were introduced. Cards are text (the tweet) + a large image (2-4 tweets in size). This was marketed to users as a preview of the URL/article content, but it was really about making the ads less obtrusive. It failed and, IMO, had massively negative impacts on the UX.

fny 9y ago

I feel like there are trade offs. With the image approach, I can tell what I'm engaging with at a glance instead of a few clicks and page loads. I know whether a link is a blog post, repo, promotion, article, tweet without having to decipher the domain, and I can even tell whether a site will accost me for my email address. On the other hand, one could argue a lot of what the images tell can be inferred from looking at the title and metadata alone, but this has definitely reduced my "false positive" clicks. Vanilla HN wins hands down for information density.

piotrkubisa 9y ago
I totally agree with you. I have positive experience to see preview of the website, because now I could recognize what is behind the link. Personally, I really like "native" HN which is just simple, fast and straightforward to use, and I definitely wouldn't be satisfied to use the Vue-version on daily basis. I think website preview (history-less, pre-rendered and cached) might be a possible field for interest for startups (pocket, raindrop etc.) and their browser extensions to manage bookmarks in browser, because they currently generate (and cache) image previews on their own so they can offer website preview as feature. This feature also reminds me Force Touch [1]. [1]: http://osxdaily.com/2016/02/23/preview-web-page-links-safari-mac-multitouch/ http://osxdaily.com/2016/02/23/preview-web-page-links-safari...

user5994461 9y ago

HN and twitter are text only sites. Not everything is a text only site.

coldtea 9y ago

>Does anyone prefer the large (contextless) images that consume majority of screen real estate to text-based HN UI? Yes, me.

rocky1138 9y ago
Perhaps you can elaborate as to why you prefer that method.
- coldtea 9y ago
  Because I get additional feedback for what I'm going to read (which often includes images within a post too, the formatting of the post, etc) than just the domain name and title?

andresmaiden 9y ago

Me too, I love text based things, but the context that the image gives me is better to know if I want to throw the link to Pocket or not.

Can_Not 9y ago

I prefer the list format without the images. Can you elaborate on what the specific dark pattern is in the Twitter case? I'm not a Twitter user.

DeBraid 9y ago
Twitter was designed to be text-based and was beloved during this phase of its existence. Around ~2013/2014 Twitter Cards were introduced. Cards are text (the tweet) + a large image (2-4 tweets in size). This was marketed to users as a preview of the URL/article content, but it was really about making the ads less obtrusive. It failed and, IMO, had massively negative impacts on the UX.