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Suggest HN: what do you think about the UX of HN

7 points by gsivil 16y ago

I have joined Hacker News only a few months ago, but I am already totally addicted to it. I find the minimalistic layout really great. The priority that is given to text over images and video is remarkable. I have even noticed that some posts linked to videos do not attract any attention. There are some minor suggestions that I would like to share with you: - The orange asterisk is of the same color as the headline box and some times my eyes are making it unconsciously difficult to locate my post(not many) - I usually have the site minimized all the time but I want to check (I told you that I am getting addicted to it) if somebody has replied to my posts. It would be interesting if the minimized tab was showing the karma number and refresh itself once in a while. - I find the background having a very close color to the text and it makes reading a bit problematic - The down-voted comments literally cannot be distinguished from the background. I understand that this is a choice of the administrators, but what do you think? With respect, gsivil

J3L2404 16y ago
I agree on the minimal layout being great, and on your points 1. You can change the color of the title bar with enough karma (50 I think) 2. Notifo will send you an email alert when a response to your comment is posted http://notifo.com/hackernews http://notifo.com/hackernews 3/4. If you highlight the text as if to copy, then you can read it
- corin_ 16y ago
  Interestingly, certain pages (such as the reply page I'm writing this from) don't pay attention to the title bar colour you've set.
- gsivil 16y ago
  1. I like the orange for the title bar. But I still think that the orange asterisk is not so easy to spot. 2. Receiving emails for the responses it a bit annoying. (We have Facebook playing the "Big Notifier" role in our inboxes I am afraid so as to have patience for another one :)) 3/4: You are right and this is exactly what I do sometimes. But marking text so as to read it is still a bit inconvenient
lukifer 16y ago
I love HN's less-is-more interface, but there are a couple things I would like, in a perfect world: - There's no way to change a vote on an article or comment. (Misclicks happen.) - I would love love love a way to flag an article or comment for later review (similar to reddit's "saved" feature).
- _delirium 16y ago
  Articles you upvote get automatically "saved" under news.ycombinator.com/saved?id=your_uid_here (there's a link from your profile page). I think not separating "upvote" and "save" is on purpose, to try to encourage people to only upvote stuff they'd actually want to save also, but I may be reading too much into that.
corin_ 16y ago
The topic you're looking for is http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=363 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=363
devmonk 16y ago
"The orange asterisk is of the same color as the headline box" This annoys me at times, too. Maybe grey would be better. "and refresh itself once in a while" Only if it did it without meta-refresh. Meta-refresh would be evil. "I find the background having a very close color to the text and it makes reading a bit problematic" Only for the OP's post, for me. The rest is fine. I think the OP's post is a little harder to read, but I don't mind much, as it is like that to distinguish it from the comments. The OP's post is typically not as interesting to most as the comments, which is why it is grey. "The down-voted comments literally cannot be distinguished from the background." If you want to read it, highlight it. I don't mind this one. Basically, I like it the way it is for the most part. I really dislike what others have tried to do with it, which I think is a good sign.
cheald 16y ago
I love how HN feels, for the most part. The only issues I have are that the nav is a little opaque (I only recently discovered that "threads" is my recent conversations) and the edit profile is hard to understand in places (what is "showdead"?). I like that the UI doesn't get in the way of the actual meat-and-potatoes, though.
guynamedloren 16y ago
I believe goal with the down-voting and shade adjustments is to "shun" the down-voted comments, such that they are given much less visibility, thus much less priority, over comments that offer value to the community. Brilliant, if you ask me.
templaedhel 16y ago
Perhaps instead of an astrix color change, highlight your comments with a slighly different background color. For me it's not the color, but the size of the astrix.
s_m 16y ago
My one UX qualm is that the "Sign in with OpenID" button is the last thing to load on the login/create-an-account page, and there's no alt text so you don't know it's coming until it's there. I doubt I'm the only person who was frustrated at the prospect of having to create yet another u/p, even if a few seconds' wait dispelled that frustration.
malandrew 16y ago
I love the less is more interface as well, but recently it's come to the point where there are too many stories and I need to start filtering out those that I shouldn't be spending time reading but make for guilty pleasures. The tech crunch gossip articles while interesting and a quick read I know I should go without. I think anyone actually working on a startup on here would agree that it'd be beneficial to just see those articles that are useful for founders (user acquisition, lifestyle management, scaling, user experience, etc.) I also think it would be great for each user to set their own from page threshold. Someone who is mildly busy may want to see the top 100 articles per day while someone who is very busy may only want to see the top 20 per day. I think the ability to follow topics and people like Quora does is also very valuable.
crasshopper 16y ago
I don't like the lack of down-voting. If you're afraid of good things being down-voted too soon, why don't you do a nonlinear transformation from the number of down-voters to the negative score? * example: until the 10th downvote, none of the downvotes count * example: based upon a similarity score of people's upvotes, look for broad-based support for downvotes Prospect Theory implies we need downvotes.

7 points by gsivil 16y ago

J3L2404 16y ago

I agree on the minimal layout being great, and on your points 1. You can change the color of the title bar with enough karma (50 I think) 2. Notifo will send you an email alert when a response to your comment is posted http://notifo.com/hackernews http://notifo.com/hackernews 3/4. If you highlight the text as if to copy, then you can read it

corin_ 16y ago
Interestingly, certain pages (such as the reply page I'm writing this from) don't pay attention to the title bar colour you've set.
gsivil 16y ago
1. I like the orange for the title bar. But I still think that the orange asterisk is not so easy to spot. 2. Receiving emails for the responses it a bit annoying. (We have Facebook playing the "Big Notifier" role in our inboxes I am afraid so as to have patience for another one :)) 3/4: You are right and this is exactly what I do sometimes. But marking text so as to read it is still a bit inconvenient

lukifer 16y ago

I love HN's less-is-more interface, but there are a couple things I would like, in a perfect world: - There's no way to change a vote on an article or comment. (Misclicks happen.) - I would love love love a way to flag an article or comment for later review (similar to reddit's "saved" feature).

_delirium 16y ago
Articles you upvote get automatically "saved" under news.ycombinator.com/saved?id=your_uid_here (there's a link from your profile page). I think not separating "upvote" and "save" is on purpose, to try to encourage people to only upvote stuff they'd actually want to save also, but I may be reading too much into that.

corin_ 16y ago

The topic you're looking for is http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=363 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=363

devmonk 16y ago

"The orange asterisk is of the same color as the headline box" This annoys me at times, too. Maybe grey would be better. "and refresh itself once in a while" Only if it did it without meta-refresh. Meta-refresh would be evil. "I find the background having a very close color to the text and it makes reading a bit problematic" Only for the OP's post, for me. The rest is fine. I think the OP's post is a little harder to read, but I don't mind much, as it is like that to distinguish it from the comments. The OP's post is typically not as interesting to most as the comments, which is why it is grey. "The down-voted comments literally cannot be distinguished from the background." If you want to read it, highlight it. I don't mind this one. Basically, I like it the way it is for the most part. I really dislike what others have tried to do with it, which I think is a good sign.

cheald 16y ago

I love how HN feels, for the most part. The only issues I have are that the nav is a little opaque (I only recently discovered that "threads" is my recent conversations) and the edit profile is hard to understand in places (what is "showdead"?). I like that the UI doesn't get in the way of the actual meat-and-potatoes, though.

guynamedloren 16y ago

I believe goal with the down-voting and shade adjustments is to "shun" the down-voted comments, such that they are given much less visibility, thus much less priority, over comments that offer value to the community. Brilliant, if you ask me.

templaedhel 16y ago

Perhaps instead of an astrix color change, highlight your comments with a slighly different background color. For me it's not the color, but the size of the astrix.

s_m 16y ago

My one UX qualm is that the "Sign in with OpenID" button is the last thing to load on the login/create-an-account page, and there's no alt text so you don't know it's coming until it's there. I doubt I'm the only person who was frustrated at the prospect of having to create yet another u/p, even if a few seconds' wait dispelled that frustration.

malandrew 16y ago

I love the less is more interface as well, but recently it's come to the point where there are too many stories and I need to start filtering out those that I shouldn't be spending time reading but make for guilty pleasures. The tech crunch gossip articles while interesting and a quick read I know I should go without. I think anyone actually working on a startup on here would agree that it'd be beneficial to just see those articles that are useful for founders (user acquisition, lifestyle management, scaling, user experience, etc.) I also think it would be great for each user to set their own from page threshold. Someone who is mildly busy may want to see the top 100 articles per day while someone who is very busy may only want to see the top 20 per day. I think the ability to follow topics and people like Quora does is also very valuable.

crasshopper 16y ago

I don't like the lack of down-voting. If you're afraid of good things being down-voted too soon, why don't you do a nonlinear transformation from the number of down-voters to the negative score? * example: until the 10th downvote, none of the downvotes count * example: based upon a similarity score of people's upvotes, look for broad-based support for downvotes Prospect Theory implies we need downvotes.