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Not that this type of experiment is bad, but why is the UI so completely neglected? Is this a matter of thinking it's not important, because it's not fun work,

Not that this type of experiment is bad, but why is the UI so completely neglected? Is this a matter of thinking it's not important, because it's not fun work, or because it can all be customized with grease monkeys? Or what? I think the quality of stories on HN is pretty good. What I'd much prefer to see any amount of attention given to is things like: 1) Let me take back a vote. Particularly on mobile, I misclick those tiny arrows a lot. 2) Let me comment inline. Having other comments, besides the parent around for examination while commenting would probably help overall comment quality. 3) Fix the mobile interface. It's impossible to use HN on mobile iPhone and Android handhelds. Making a slightly modified styled sheet with JavaScript is trivial. 4) Support someone making an app, or commission one. As far as I can tell, the current HN apps are all kind of buggy and have little updating. There are lots of young neophytes who'd love to work on this, particularly if sanctioned, and a funded effort would lead to a better product. These basic UI improvements don't even seem to be on the radar. Also, I'll add, the story-killing on this site is pretty heavy-handed, yet capricious. Same with the title-editing. What constitutes a "hacker-centric" story changes with the mood of the moderators, and the tendency to just change each title to the original headline is misguided. I also think that the special privileges given to YC companies corrupts the whole system. If there were any other community like this, people would be driven away by the neglected UI and the Star Chamber that governs the content. But there isn't, so there's no pressure to do anything but midnight HN science experiments. I should just pray for some competition I guess...

silvestrov 16y ago
A GlimmerBlocker filter which improves the layout for mobile: http://glimmerblocker.org/site/filters/mobile-optimized.xml http://glimmerblocker.org/site/filters/mobile-optimized.xml Pastebin version. css: http://pastebin.com/AE1UzYvU http://pastebin.com/AE1UzYvU js transform of html source: http://pastebin.com/9069JULs http://pastebin.com/9069JULs Most of the improvements could be made by a seperate mobile stylesheet if more classNames were added to the generated html.
da5e 16y ago
The simplicity of the design is one of the main things I like about this site. It's like the things I make for myself: a handy tool.
pg 16y ago
why is the UI so completely neglected? Because when I spend time on HN my top priority is features that will make the content better. I believe that matches the priorities of the users-- that users would rather use a site with good stories and comments and a primitive UI than one with a slick UI and worse stories and comments. And time is a zero-sum game. Spending more time on UI = spending less on quality. The focus on content quality above all is the reason you find yourself saying later "If there were any other community like this..." You're simply wrong about the moderation. Nearly every story that gets killed is either autokilled, or a dup, or flagged to death by users. I would guess moderators manually kill less than 10 non-dup stories a day. You're also wrong that YC cos get special privileges.
- andrewljohnson 16y ago
  1) I could accept I'm wrong about stories being killed by humans, but I know the titles get edited by humans. I remember one story I posted about some really ancient, accurate maps, and I made the title something like "Accurate maps from the 1500s unearthed." And then some moderator made it the story headline instead "Named building in DC hosts map show" or something equally uninformative. 2) I'm positive YC companies get at least one special privilege - the ability to post jobs. 3) I've been told YC accounts are excluded from anti-spam measures, but I can't prove it. EDIT: Also, regarding the zero-sum-game argument. All of us developers know we have limited time to spend on things. But a HUGE change to a non-priority that takes almost no time (for example improving the CSS on mobile) should be squeezed in between these experiments that may or may not make the content better, and take hours.
  - pg 16y ago
    I assume you're talking about this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1390895 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1390895 I don't know what title you used when submitting it, but the current title wasn't written by a moderator. It's the original article title. It's true that YC founders' accounts have a field set saying so, but the only code that looks at this field is the code for posting jobs. None of the anti-abuse code does. And the jobs page has been around for years.
bbuffone 16y ago
#1 - I have this happen 80% of the time on my iphone, now I just don't vote because I was always down voting people. #4 - Is a great idea. It would be good to have "licensed" apps for NH. Not sure if I am like a large group of people but I like to use "official" apps.
grinich 16y ago
I've fixed a few of these in the iPhone app I built. It's a native Cocoa app that lets you browse, vote, and comment on HN. Here's what the home screen looks like: http://michaelgrinich.com/hackernews/media/screenshot-1.png http://michaelgrinich.com/hackernews/media/screenshot-1.png I separated the voting arrows and reply button, which helps with accidental taps. Here's a comments page: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4595/hn-vote.png http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4595/hn-vote.png There's also a few nice features, like an in-app browser with Readability and send to Instapaper/Twitter/etc. You can see a demo of the app here: http://michaelgrinich.com/hackernews/ http://michaelgrinich.com/hackernews/ The app doesn't sell enough to be a full-time project, so I push updates when I have time. Currently I'm working on an update with full iPad support. (All of this works via HTML scraping since there's no API.)
- ElliotH 16y ago
  I used this before I switched to an Android phone, highly recommend it.
nuclear_eclipse 16y ago
> It's impossible to use HN on mobile iPhone and Android handhelds. I actually find it quite the opposite. I've downloaded multiple Android apps that try to improve the HN reading interface, and I still find myself using browser instead. The closest thing that I would describe as being "bad" on my phone is that the arrows are small enough that I sometimes misvote on comments. Otherwise, I think it works really well: * Each comment is the width of the screen, so there's not much vertical scrolling needed * Comments are still well-indented so that I can easily follow a thread by scrolling right or left. * I greatly enjoy being able to long-press comment links from the main page to open them in a new window, and then long-press the OP link to open that in a second window, and be able to use the back button to return to comments when I'm done reading, or even switch back and forth like I can in Chrome at home.
- chc 16y ago
  The fact that the text is essentially in a 4pt font doesn't bother you? Or is that an iPhone-only misfeature? Because on my iPhone 3GS, the page is wide enough that I either have to have unreadably small text or I have to zoom in and repeatedly pan from left to right in order to read a comment.
  - thwarted 16y ago
    That sounds like an iPhone-only misfeature. On Android, you can turn on "auto-fit pages" and your chosen font size is locked and the width of elements is horizontally limited with no panning left-to-right to read a single comment (unless they contain unwrappable pre-text, which I find the hacker news text formatter to be kind of bogus on (indenting always makes preformatted text))
RyanMcGreal 16y ago
>Fix the mobile interface. It's impossible to use HN on mobile iPhone and Android handhelds. That's funny; the default HN interface is very much like the mobile interface of other sites, i.e. everything extraneous has been removed. Otherwise, +1 for the ability to change a vote. I can't for the life of me understand the reasoning behind the current setup.
frio 16y ago
I can't see it having been mentioned anywhere else, but HNdroid on Android is fantastic. It'd be nice if the site itself had a decent mobile stylesheet, but in the absence of one, HNdroid does a great job.
matwood 16y ago
Someone posted this awhile back and it works great on the iPhone: http://ihackernews.com/ http://ihackernews.com/
Kaizyn 16y ago
It should be pointed out here that 1) the code base for the site is available for download and 2) you can not only inspect it but set up your own 'competing website' with a better UI.
Kilimanjaro 16y ago
I propose a contest to redesign HN, no code just visuals. The winner gets, umm, well, instant recognition as the 'best designer of the wolf pack', or BDWP in short.
yters 16y ago
One more feature request: upvote comments saves comments.

silvestrov 16y ago

A GlimmerBlocker filter which improves the layout for mobile: http://glimmerblocker.org/site/filters/mobile-optimized.xml http://glimmerblocker.org/site/filters/mobile-optimized.xml Pastebin version. css: http://pastebin.com/AE1UzYvU http://pastebin.com/AE1UzYvU js transform of html source: http://pastebin.com/9069JULs http://pastebin.com/9069JULs Most of the improvements could be made by a seperate mobile stylesheet if more classNames were added to the generated html.

da5e 16y ago

The simplicity of the design is one of the main things I like about this site. It's like the things I make for myself: a handy tool.

pg 16y ago

why is the UI so completely neglected? Because when I spend time on HN my top priority is features that will make the content better. I believe that matches the priorities of the users-- that users would rather use a site with good stories and comments and a primitive UI than one with a slick UI and worse stories and comments. And time is a zero-sum game. Spending more time on UI = spending less on quality. The focus on content quality above all is the reason you find yourself saying later "If there were any other community like this..." You're simply wrong about the moderation. Nearly every story that gets killed is either autokilled, or a dup, or flagged to death by users. I would guess moderators manually kill less than 10 non-dup stories a day. You're also wrong that YC cos get special privileges.

andrewljohnson 16y ago
1) I could accept I'm wrong about stories being killed by humans, but I know the titles get edited by humans. I remember one story I posted about some really ancient, accurate maps, and I made the title something like "Accurate maps from the 1500s unearthed." And then some moderator made it the story headline instead "Named building in DC hosts map show" or something equally uninformative. 2) I'm positive YC companies get at least one special privilege - the ability to post jobs. 3) I've been told YC accounts are excluded from anti-spam measures, but I can't prove it. EDIT: Also, regarding the zero-sum-game argument. All of us developers know we have limited time to spend on things. But a HUGE change to a non-priority that takes almost no time (for example improving the CSS on mobile) should be squeezed in between these experiments that may or may not make the content better, and take hours.
- pg 16y ago
  I assume you're talking about this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1390895 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1390895 I don't know what title you used when submitting it, but the current title wasn't written by a moderator. It's the original article title. It's true that YC founders' accounts have a field set saying so, but the only code that looks at this field is the code for posting jobs. None of the anti-abuse code does. And the jobs page has been around for years.

bbuffone 16y ago

#1 - I have this happen 80% of the time on my iphone, now I just don't vote because I was always down voting people. #4 - Is a great idea. It would be good to have "licensed" apps for NH. Not sure if I am like a large group of people but I like to use "official" apps.

grinich 16y ago

I've fixed a few of these in the iPhone app I built. It's a native Cocoa app that lets you browse, vote, and comment on HN. Here's what the home screen looks like: http://michaelgrinich.com/hackernews/media/screenshot-1.png http://michaelgrinich.com/hackernews/media/screenshot-1.png I separated the voting arrows and reply button, which helps with accidental taps. Here's a comments page: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4595/hn-vote.png http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4595/hn-vote.png There's also a few nice features, like an in-app browser with Readability and send to Instapaper/Twitter/etc. You can see a demo of the app here: http://michaelgrinich.com/hackernews/ http://michaelgrinich.com/hackernews/ The app doesn't sell enough to be a full-time project, so I push updates when I have time. Currently I'm working on an update with full iPad support. (All of this works via HTML scraping since there's no API.)

ElliotH 16y ago
I used this before I switched to an Android phone, highly recommend it.

nuclear_eclipse 16y ago

> It's impossible to use HN on mobile iPhone and Android handhelds. I actually find it quite the opposite. I've downloaded multiple Android apps that try to improve the HN reading interface, and I still find myself using browser instead. The closest thing that I would describe as being "bad" on my phone is that the arrows are small enough that I sometimes misvote on comments. Otherwise, I think it works really well: * Each comment is the width of the screen, so there's not much vertical scrolling needed * Comments are still well-indented so that I can easily follow a thread by scrolling right or left. * I greatly enjoy being able to long-press comment links from the main page to open them in a new window, and then long-press the OP link to open that in a second window, and be able to use the back button to return to comments when I'm done reading, or even switch back and forth like I can in Chrome at home.

chc 16y ago
The fact that the text is essentially in a 4pt font doesn't bother you? Or is that an iPhone-only misfeature? Because on my iPhone 3GS, the page is wide enough that I either have to have unreadably small text or I have to zoom in and repeatedly pan from left to right in order to read a comment.
- thwarted 16y ago
  That sounds like an iPhone-only misfeature. On Android, you can turn on "auto-fit pages" and your chosen font size is locked and the width of elements is horizontally limited with no panning left-to-right to read a single comment (unless they contain unwrappable pre-text, which I find the hacker news text formatter to be kind of bogus on (indenting always makes preformatted text))

RyanMcGreal 16y ago

>Fix the mobile interface. It's impossible to use HN on mobile iPhone and Android handhelds. That's funny; the default HN interface is very much like the mobile interface of other sites, i.e. everything extraneous has been removed. Otherwise, +1 for the ability to change a vote. I can't for the life of me understand the reasoning behind the current setup.

frio 16y ago

I can't see it having been mentioned anywhere else, but HNdroid on Android is fantastic. It'd be nice if the site itself had a decent mobile stylesheet, but in the absence of one, HNdroid does a great job.

matwood 16y ago

Someone posted this awhile back and it works great on the iPhone: http://ihackernews.com/ http://ihackernews.com/

Kaizyn 16y ago

It should be pointed out here that 1) the code base for the site is available for download and 2) you can not only inspect it but set up your own 'competing website' with a better UI.

Kilimanjaro 16y ago

I propose a contest to redesign HN, no code just visuals. The winner gets, umm, well, instant recognition as the 'best designer of the wolf pack', or BDWP in short.

yters 16y ago

One more feature request: upvote comments saves comments.