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Tell HN: Thank you for not redesigning Hacker News
I’m currently in a country with low speed internet and the entire ‘modern’ web is basically unusable except HN, which still loads instantly. Reddit, Twitter, news and banking sites are all painfully slow or simply time out altogether.
To PG, the mods and whoever else is responsible: thank you for not trying to ‘fix’ what isn’t broken.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- cameronbrown 7y agoold.reddit.com is still usable if it helps!
- mrweasel 7y agoI still can't use the redesigned Reddit, I not even sure that I would, if I could. It's still way to slow to be something I'd use on a regular basis. If they kill of the old.reddit.com, I don't think I'd continue to visit Reddit. Imgur for instance isn't a site that I visit daily or even weekly any more. I really enjoyed the site, but after a redesign it just stopped being enjoyable. It's way to slow, to much Javascript. It's the only thing that will reliably force my MacBook to ramp up it's fans. How is it possible for a website to make a laptop heat up more than doing development work?
- adamkittelson 7y agoThe most frustrating thing to me about imgur is they way over-compress images on the mobile site. I always have to request the desktop site to get the original quality image. It's bad to the point that text on an image is often unreadable on the mobile site.
- cameronbrown 7y agoOther than poor performance, the thing I'm most upset about is how each subreddit has lost its personality, and the fact they've closed the source. Being open is what made Reddit special, considering who founded it, it should never have gone closed source.
- crusader1099 7y ago> Other than poor performance, the thing I'm most upset about is how each subreddit has lost its personality What makes you say this?
- cameronbrown 7y agoThey axed custom subreddit CSS stylesheets. It was very much like unstyled Reddit was a base to build upon.
- mooreds 7y agoI like https://text.npr.org/ https://text.npr.org/ for this as well.
- judge2020 7y agohttps://lite.cnn.com/ https://lite.cnn.com/ as well - 107 KB
- dredmorbius 7y agohttps://duckduckgo.com/tty/ https://duckduckgo.com/tty/ Well, OK, that's actually NOT lightweight. But this is: https://duckduckgo.com/lite https://duckduckgo.com/lite
- isodude 7y agoSweet, now I can visit duckduckgo lite in firefox lite. Thanks!
- zzo38computer 7y agoI think Gopher could be good for some text-only versions stuff like that.
- colmvp 7y agoIs PG even involved with HN anymore? He hasn't posted on his account in four years.
- dangom 7y agoI'd suppose he'd use a throwaway if he'd want to post anything. Otherwise it'd draw too much attention and get too many upvotes and replies, essentially killing the small amount of neutrality we get here.
- noident 7y agoI've seen posts by PG in some recent threads out in the wild, they don't show up in his post history. I would imagine this is intentional to prevent old comments being dredged up and used against him, much like Zuckerberg's old FB messages were automatically deleted from the recipients inbox. Fine by me, but I wish HN would offer the same privilege to its users and allow us to delete our old posts
- jddj 7y agoI believe Dang has said once or twice that this is something that can be achieved if you email them.
- tim333 7y ago>At the end of March 2014, Graham stepped away from his leadership role at Y Combinator, leaving Hacker News administration in the hands of other staff members Though he's still a major shareholder of YC which owns it. He tweets quite a lot these days.
- B_Throwaway 7y agoFor twitter you can disable JS and it will fallback to a ""degraded"" (a.k.a. Much faster & usable) experience.
- burk96 7y agoIt seems to fall back to the old mobile website for me? This is after clicking the fallback prompt.
- boring_twenties 7y agoYes, but you have to click past an annoying prompt[1] every time. Does that not happen for you? [1]: https://i.postimg.cc/jjBSVmCX/Screenshot-at-2019-09-01-15-23-37.png https://i.postimg.cc/jjBSVmCX/Screenshot-at-2019-09-01-15-23...
- dredmorbius 7y agoOnce the cookie's set, I tend to go straight through. That annoyance is considerably less than all the others a full-JS Twitter imposes. Including the motherlovin' account-creation nag that shows up all the motherlovin' time. One click through at entry rather than random annoyance in the midst of reading? A net win. And an incredibly sad commentary on the state of the Web.
- emersonrsantos 7y agoAmen. It’s the most pleasant site I use every day. Even Google search is beginning to slow down to a crawl in some hours (and Google used to be blazing fast).
- LarryDarrell 7y agoThere is lite.cnn.io as well. I wish there were more.
- overcast 7y agoI wish they would update the line-height to something more reasonable. ~1.5x font size would be go a long way in paragraph readability. Other than that, it's fast and stable. About all I require from a forum. Edit: All my lovely responders, I appreciate the feedback, but I don't want to install addons/mods/hacks to fix line-height.
- targonca 7y agoIn Safari: View → Zoom In It's smart enough to remember the zoom level the next time you open HN too.
- overcast 7y agoThat's not increasing line-height. I don't have a problem with my eyesight, I have a problem with poor typography.
- CamperBob2 7y agoAnd I have a problem with acres of whitespace. Here's one vote for HN to leave the line height right where it is.
- overcast 7y agoHow do you live with a centered fixed-width table that is wasting 15% of the browser window with nothing but hectares of white space then? Bumping the line-height to 1.5ish the font size has minimal impact to space efficiency, and add tons to readability.
- CamperBob2 7y agoI get by
- tripzilch 7y ago> And I have a problem with acres of whitespace. We're talking about just 1.5x line height. Which is a perfectly reasonable default for nice reading. The browsers have a lower default line height because of historical reasons, doesn't mean it's the right one. People don't use the Times font very often either.
- vermontdevil 7y agoFor FB https://mbasic.facebook.com/home.php https://mbasic.facebook.com/home.php
- llacb47 7y agoIt still loads tracking (of course), but it is a vast improvement over their mobile site, and doesn't need JS.
- vermontdevil 7y agoAnd you can use messenger without having to use the app or go to desktop
- arbuge 7y agoWe have an ecommerce website in straight php we haven't redesigned since 2011. Works fine, very fast, and capable of handling very large traffic spikes without missing a beat.
- exabrial 7y agoI loathe the modern web. Speed is a secondary to "hey look what we're doing with our frameworks".
- dmix 7y agoModern front-end toolsets are finally starting to address this by using automated critical css, SSR + "hydrating" on load for interactive elements, webpack treeshaking + chunking of assets into tiny js/css files and only loading code based on what the page/routes asks for, PurgeCSS to get rid of unused css, cssnano/uglify/htmlmin/imagemin, etc. Webpack and these various popular tools has done a lot to make the web better and are default in many starter kits. But we're just beginning to see it go mainstream. The basic shift back to pre-rendering + delivering only what's needed on the actual page is a big deal which hasn't got enough attention yet IMO. We went completely in the other direction for over a decade because we thought networks and browsers could handle it, but it was too easy to abuse and mobile took over. There's no reason even very advanced websites can't load quickly, without having to fully compromise back to the 90s non-interactive websites. News sites and marketing teams still ruin it regardless with all the crap they add on top. But it's far far better than loading a giant blob of 20 jquery libraries plus a big old angular.js or backbonejs app (sometimes both at the same time) encompassing a whole site in one file, even though you just wanted to visit the contact page. I also blame Themeforest type developers because they're still stuck in the "let's add a hundred JS files so I can parallax and animate two divs" mindset.
- wolco 7y agoA modern css framework would increase the font size change the font type make the reply link a fat button. It would put a card around each parent reply thread. Getting rid of unused css helps but the additional markup would make the page 4 or 5 times larger.
- scrollaway 7y agoA "framework" doesn't do that. A designer does. Or whoever decides to implement it.
- meowface 7y ago100% agreed. A dark mode option would be cool, but it's very easy to get one with user themes and alternative UIs. I bet HN will look almost identical 10 years from now, too. I wonder how many popular websites can boast such a consistent design from their beginning?
- youeseh 7y agoHere you go! =) https://github.com/vishaldpatel/HNDarkMode https://github.com/vishaldpatel/HNDarkMode
- 1_player 7y agoI hacked a quick dark mode userscript for HN that respects your OS choice of dark/light colour scheme (using the prefers-color-scheme media query) https://gist.github.com/1player/85d146a4aa0c2afc78bab63582f518aa https://gist.github.com/1player/85d146a4aa0c2afc78bab63582f5... Some things like the login page are not styled correctly, but works good enough to browse and post comments.
- turrini 7y agoThere should be an extension that automatically redirects common websites to their lite versions. reddit.com -> old.reddit.com facebook.com -> mbasic.facebook.com cnn.com -> lite.cnn.com npr.org -> text.npr.org twitter.com -> twitter.com (with JS disabled) gmail.com -> gmail.com (HTML version)
- wasdfff 7y agoThere’s a couple for reddit at least. For some of the others you can get by with a bookmark, so typing facebook would take you to your mobile site bookmark.
- NullPrefix 7y ago>gmail.com -> gmail.com (HTML version) gmail used to have an option to set HTML as default, but it seems like it's gone. Only way to get HTML is to click on a link that's available during loading, nothing in the settings to make it permanent.
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoYou can definitely make it permanent, it's permanent on my account. Can't remember what I did now...
- NullPrefix 7y agoGenerate enough outcry on social media?
- forsakenharmony 7y agoAfter you've clicked on it, there's a bar at the top with an option to "Set basic HTML as default view"
- NullPrefix 7y agos/there's/there was/ It's gone. That's why I'm posting about it.
- momokoko 7y agoI personally believe this is one of the couple reason why HN's demographic is significantly on the older side, in Tech terms. I personally wish HN attracted a bit of a fresher, younger crowd as the conversation here has become more stale over the last few years.
- wolco 7y agoI wish there were more preteens and teens on the site. By the time someone reaches 20 their ideas are a little stale shaped by the harsh realities of life.
- inetknght 7y agoOn the other hand, such demographic often comes with a lot of drama
- capitalsigma 7y agoI think that comment was sarcasm.
- thekyle 7y agoThink so? I didn't get that feel, but it can be tough to tell sometimes.
- saagarjha 7y agoI have found that many people online are not necessarily forthcoming with their age. Hacker News might have more people of that demographic than you think it does.
- test1235 7y agoit is possible to redesign something without adding tons of useless guff - stuff does need updating eventually, even if it isn't technically broken e.g. inline styles and spacer gifs. I'd argue that having simpler markup and some sane, well-designed css would enhance performance further.
- Deimorz 7y agoThis is a good post about how bad the modern web is getting for people with slow/unreliable connections: https://danluu.com/web-bloat/ https://danluu.com/web-bloat/ That was written two and a half years ago now, and things have only continued to get worse since then.
- ganonm 7y agoOne issue I find on mobile with HN is accidentaly hiding or flagging articles. It's very easy to do considering how close together flag, hide and comments are.
- guelo 7y agoMy only request would be better comment formatting options, the code block thing is used wrong all the time.
- gomox 7y agoCame in to find the obligatory blockquote markup request.
- rahidz 7y agoOn the other hand voting is a pain on mobile, even with a large screen I often misclick.
- psteinweber 7y agoLeave alone collapsing comment threads. I end up on the commenters profile 50% of the time.
- rossdavidh 7y agoI'm currently living in a country and city with high speed internet, and I would also like to thank all who are responsible, for not trying to 'fix' what isn't broken.
- buboard 7y agoi love how tables are now more responsive than responsive. HN skipped an entire generation of jumpy websites and is now comfortably readable in every screen
- wffurr 7y agoI love how fast and simple HN is. I wish the touch targets were bigger on mobile. Shouldn't be too hard with just a little CSS
- lousken 7y agoI had to use 64kbps internet on vacation for last couple of years, it's rough but it's possible. RSS everything and then use Inoreader mobile and read it there. Unfortunately more and more websites use javascript for content and that breaks the mobile version loader (it can parse text from mobile version and show it to you). But stupid webdevs make even even blogs and galleries via javascript so it often says that it cannot render mobile version. I hope google will eventaully return to non-js content and pagerank of those sites will fall down significantly.
- meerita 7y agoYou still can improve HN performance a lot and get better results on low connections.
- garysahota93 7y agoI've thought about making my own extension to make HN more "modern" but when I sat down to make it better, turns out I was really happy with how it is. Agree with what you're saying!
- Deimorz 7y agoHN is lightweight in some ways, but also quite bad in others. For example, every single time you vote on anything, the site sends back a 302 redirect and then a copy of the entire page's HTML in response. This means that every vote results in a response that's usually around 10KB gzipped. As of right now, for me, voting on any comment in this thread currently causes a 14KB response and takes about 1.3 seconds to finish.
- Eric_WVGG 7y agoWhen reading on an iPad, tapping on links is nearly impossible. A better responsive CSS file wouldn't make the site any slower or degrade the experience for laptop users.
- graeme 7y agoWhat do you mean? Haven't had that issue. Am on desktop version, unsure if mobile exists
- zoul 7y agoThe tap targets are minuscule and close to each other.
- tobinfricke 7y agoI had to pinch-to-zoom to upvote this comment. :-)
- zaroth 7y agoThat's a feature IMO -- HN could even make them even smaller. It should take conscious effort to vote, and the small target size mentally reinforces this model; that it's not supposed to be the most common action. EDIT: See, clearly the vote targets simply aren't small enough! </s>
- 7y ago
- eternalny1 7y agoI use Stylus with "Hacker News Readable Dark" and it works fantastic. It doesn't constantly break, because the site is simple and unchanging. Thanks to HN for that.
- tobr 7y agoSure, but the mobile layout could do with some concrete improvements. Specifically, the up/down arrows are too small to hit, and the comment text area should fit a few more lines of text. I feel like Bambi on ice when I scroll around in it on my phone.
- kgraves 7y agoIt is this that I cringe hard whenever a developer mentions 'the modern web' or 'the free and open web'. I wish websites were as simple as HN. + Lightweight. + No ads. + Works without (or little to no) JS. + Does not make me download MB's of data. It seems 98% of the websites I visit cannot pass the first two.
- augstein 7y agoIt’s lightweight and feels snappy. Fonts and upvote buttons could be a bit larger on mobile though imho (my hands are of average size).
- OMGWTF 7y agoIn terms of new websites/services, https://sourcehut.org/ https://sourcehut.org/ is a nice exception to current trends.
- Semiapies 7y agoBut this site has been redesigned. It used to be unusable on mobile and is now just poor.
- noisem4ker 7y agoIt used to be better with mobile browsers that knew how to properly reflow text (Opera Mobile), so that comments didn't get progressively narrower down the reply chain. Dumber browsers have since taken over as the whole "responsive" thing became a responsibility of the website itself, instead of being taken care of by the user agent, with inconsistent and ultimately worse results.
- k__ 7y agoWhile I like the light-weight design, I would prefer some bigger hit-boxes for the links on mobile. Also, the vote-buttons are very tiny. And I would prefer if "hiding" would be near the voting buttons.
- jon889 7y agoYou can zoom in to hit them. Personally I much prefer being able to see a tonne more content on the screen, then zooming in to interact with it. Then having a mobile site in which you see like 1 post per screen and the buttons are large.
- k__ 7y agoI like the middle way. See a few posts less but don't have to fiddle around with buttons.
- markus_zhang 7y agoI wish HN had a "search" button but it's OK to search through Google. I hope they will never change the design forever. It reminds me of the BBS which I still logs on through Cterm these days.
- johnsoft 7y agoDown in the footer, there's an Algolia search box that works pretty well.
- markus_zhang 7y agoAh thanks man, didn't know about this...
- dredmorbius 7y agoFooter. Also DDG !hn <terms> If DDG is your default browser, you can run that in the navbar. Which I do all the damned time.
- markus_zhang 7y agoThanks man, I'm using Chrome but will try DDG. It's gaining popularity these days.
- AlexDragusin 7y agoUsing that takes me to "This page will only work with JavaScript enabled" https://hn.algolia.com/?q=thinkpad https://hn.algolia.com/?q=thinkpad So not nice!
- dredmorbius 7y agoTrue, though if you enable JS, you'll have a good HN search tool. I'm a fan of basic functionality w/o JS in most cases myself. I make exceptions for useful and non-annoying sites. Algolia meets both criteria.
- cryptozeus 7y agoToo many negative views against new web. Imo these apps are built for both faster and slower connection with lite version. Sites can support slower network areas but why should that go against new web stack. I absolutely love the experience of spa, progressive webs and heavy client aide apps which do not post entire html every time you click on something. I do agree with op that HN is built for sharing news and links and it is great that they have not tried to update it with new style and heavy experience.
- CalChris 7y agoI'd really like to disagree but I have to agree. I can think of so many ways that HN could be improved but then to what purpose.
- boring_twenties 7y agoFor reddit, try old.reddit.com, or you can set your account to always use old in preferences. It's not as clean as hn, but way better than "new" reddit. (I use it even on my fast connection.)
- dredmorbius 7y agohttps://i.reddit.com https://i.reddit.com is also simple and AFAIU more lightweight. Tends to work better than either www or old for console browsers (lynx, w3m, etc.) Some features, notably search, are broken, however.
- boring_twenties 7y agoreddit search is broken no matter how you look at it, it's been an ongoing meme since the beginning. One always uses google to search reddit.
- dredmorbius 7y agoReddit search is limited in several ways, most especially in that comments aren't indexed. I actually find it useful though. It's among the features that kept me using Reddit as a blogging engine for as long as I did, though accumulating annoyances have since driven me from that.
- superkuh 7y agoIt's not worth it given the censorship but if you encounter some answer on reddit via a search and want to access it the best way is through http://ceddit.com/r/whateverurlpath http://ceddit.com/r/whateverurlpath . It's even more javascript but it's the only interface left that both looks and acts like the original.
- dmarlow 7y agoI love hearing stories about people choosing to forego large frontend frameworks, or even not using JS altogether. Is there a community or name for this? If not, I'm going to call it #neverscript. I find the web works far better, more often, for me when SPAs and JS aren't used. There's something about minimalistic sites that's very appealing to me. I know it doesn't work for all sites, but a lot of the web could be improved by reducing the frontend bloat.
- deftturtle 7y agoI use barba.js to make my site load faster, but at the initial expense of a JavaScript payload to enable the XHR page delivery. It would be cool if browsers offered an experimental flag, allowing the page to be fetched with XHR by default when possible. Then static sites could be even faster, no Javascript download required, because of a little browser magic
- ollerac 7y ago> The web is a bloated, over-engineered mess. The Lean Web is a set of principles for a simpler, faster world-wide web. https://leanweb.dev/ https://leanweb.dev/
- ngold 7y agoI have a hobby webcomic, and it made me realize how little code you need for any website. Works great on any device and it is 2mb. That 2mb is the actual comic page. It has every navigation and contact button you could want. And I believe it is about 80 lines of html total. Boggles my mind how bloated and down right creepy the modern web is today. A webcomic is a far cry from some main stream site, but it served as a good window into how others abuse their viewers with bloat and surveillance.
- ASCII-only 7y agodoesn't have a way to interact with the server (e.g. chat/feeds etc.) - which most sites need to have
- JaRail 7y ago
- level09 7y agoYou can redesign the website using modern technology and still make it insanely fast, probably even faster than its current state.
- diminoten 7y agoThis, and you can get a much better mobile experience to boot, not to mention fixing dozens of errors that crop up with prolonged use of this site. Literally to post this comment, I got a, "We cannot serve requests that quickly please try again in a moment" message. Completely unnecessary in 2019, given how simple this site (as a concept) is. "I hate change" <- basically the summary of this submission, and kind of sad.
- Aeolun 7y agoHave you ever seen a SPA redesign that actually improved the usability of the site for you?
- adtac 7y agoNo one said anything about SPAs. You can keep the site modern whilst still serving content in separate pages with a little JavaScript here and there. Being ideologically against any and every form of JavaScript is being pretentious and holier-than-thou. As for concrete examples of the above, see lobste.rs for an excellent interface that's still minimal and responsive. Typing this comment on HN took me to a separate HTML page for absolutely no reason; Lobsters doesn't do that and allows you to write inline, preserving the context above. Old Reddit (the only acceptable way to use Reddit) is another example of good JavaScript. Fuck the new redesign, but there are countless subtle and useful features in the old design that are only possible because of a tasteful use of JavaScript.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago> No one said anything about SPAs. You can keep the site modern whilst still serving content in separate pages with a little JavaScript here and there. But that's not modern web development, that's jQuery-style coding. Modern web development is about heavyweight SPA frameworks like React or Angular.
- mrjasongorman 7y agoProgressive enhancement all the way, HN is a great example of this, focuses on its core functionality and slightly enhances things with JS. There's the argument for modern web not having to reload a page, but we were reloading pages on 56kb dial up.
- scarface74 7y agoJust for grins and giggles, I bought a 30 pin iPod chord to charge my first gen iPod Touch from 2007. HN and Daring Fireball are two of the only sites that actually still render.
- aasasd 7y agoI want to add particular thanks for: - Keeping the ‘[-]’ comment collapse button minuscule on the mobile site, so that hitting it is a game of chance. - Abstaining from adding semantic CSS class names to page elements—such that CSS selectors amount to “a table cell on the third level under this table cell.” These two features steadily keep me from spending even more time on the site than I already do.
- Aeolun 7y agoI don’t understand. The collapse comment button is plenty big enough to consistently hit it every time I try. Even if I only touch in it’s general direction my phone compensates for my fat fingers and collapses anyway. Does this not work on other devices?
- buybackoff 7y agoRight now I'm traveling in a train somewhere in Smolensk region in Russia and HN is the only site I could use normally with sporadic Edge/3G. Had exactly the same thought as in the title. Thanks HN! +1 for a dark theme though, reading from a bright screen in midnight darkness hurts eyes. Another frequent thought I have during such trips is why so few sites have any basic offline support? E.g. while writing this I moved to offline zone and if I press 'add comment' now then most likely I will lose it. So I have to copy it and save temporarily in a GMail draft. But it would be nice if all drafts are stored in LocalStorage/IndexedDB as I type until posting is acknowledged. Actually it is much easier to lose written text on mobile. I've just opened 5 apps that took all Android memory, which kicked Chrome from RAM and forced page reload when I returned to Chrome. The page reloaded from cache instantly, but the comment draft was lost (continuing this from GMail draft, waiting for a stable 4G at the next train station near a mid-size town). GitHub issues comment form keeps the content if I accidentally click on a link (e.g. Pull Requests) and then return to the issue page (not just by going back, but jumping over several GH pages, e.g. Home->Repo->Issues->#issue) and such behavior is much better than an alert on tab close about unsaved content. Probably in GH case this is an accidental side effect from SPA state storage, but at least once it saved me from losing a large complex comment with links and markdown, that is how I noticed the behavior. GH still loses content on page close, but keeps it after page reload.
- AlexDragusin 7y agoI turn HN into dark mode instantly by applying the negative color filter built in on Android (I assume iOS has something similar as well). On Android the option can be found under accessibility and can also be assigned to a combination of hardware keys for quick switching.
- yahnu 7y agoJust looked into setting in my phone and doesn't have Dark Mode but I tried the Color Inversion. It's enough!
- mpak_ 7y agoPrivet :)
- divbzero 7y agoBesides the excellent minimal UI changes [1] [2], the HN leads have focused on the difficult core challenge of moderating the forum [3] [4]. Thank you. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10489499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10489499 "mobile markup" [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12073675 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12073675 "collapse comments" [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang [4]: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=sctb https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=sctb
- retpirato 7y agoOne thing I found recently That would help with data usage, as well as preventing tracking (like facebook) is uMatrix:https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix. It allows you to selectively block ads, cookies, frames, scripts, xhr etc; from each individual source sending data on a particular site. You can even block individual sources across the board & they will be prevented from sending data on any site, as long as uMatrix is enabled. The link is the official github & contains links to the chrome, firefox, & opera versions.
- Tade0 7y agoA while ago I managed to open HN on a Nokia 3310 classic. It crashed eventually (not surprising given the minuscule amount of RAM this device has), but the front page was visible long enough for me to read some of the titles.
- saagarjha 7y agoFun fact: you can use Hacker News on an Apple Watch, and it’s not even that horrible. - Sent from my Apple Watch
- daveheq 7y agoWebsite bloat is why my laptop now runs slow when the browser is open. It's why I had to upgrade last time. Modern websites will just continue to get more bloated for every magpie developer who wants to thrust their version of "better" on everybody.
- Jorsiem 7y agoWhenever I use up too much data on mobile and get throttled hacker news becomes the only site I can still use since every other website takes 5+ minutes to load a single page. Please never do a redesign. Don't ruin a good thing.
- pncnmnp 7y agoI recently created a Text-Only news site: https://textnews.pythonanywhere.com/english https://textnews.pythonanywhere.com/english for Indian readers. The goal was to provide multilingual news in places with slow-internet connectivity. I would appreciate any feedback.
- dwt204 7y agoHN is great just the way it is. I have access to reasonably fast internet service, but the speed and reliability trumps whatever "advantages" that are proposed to be found in modernizing the site. Like Stallman's site, HN is a paradoxically enjoyable destination, that I look forward to browsing and learning from every day. THANK YOU.
- chamini2 7y agoMobile could really use some work. Otherwise, HN is awesome.
- m-p-3 7y agoThe only thing I'd like to see is a native dark mode, but everything else is perfect. It even works well on my Kobo eReader.
- teej 7y agoI noticed that a CSS fix I gave to pg for Hacker News over 10 years ago is still in place today. I’m proud to have a single brick in the foundation of a site that has lasted this long.
- jjakque 7y agoI'm curious, in practical term (not throttle emulator via browser's developer tool), does single page app 'works' in location of low speed internet? By 'works', I mean not just content been served, but overall usages not making you wanting to abandon this site.
- Havoc 7y agoAgreed. Though a Reddit style red envelope would make me respond to people faster that interact with me
- Foober223 7y agoditto. Hacker news also works great on mobile devices. While every other so-called mobile app/website is a pain in the butt.
- lugg 7y agoThe only thing that needs fixing is the link font size on mobile. Bumping it by 20% would fix things.
- logotype 7y ago+1 I’d also like to express my sincerest THANKS for keeping it simple. Visiting HN every day is pure joy, and reminds me of the old days of the web with less distractions.
- 3xblah 7y agoWhat is the country?
- soheil 7y agoYou can always use a terminal based browser like lynx, it’s also a way for me to often bypass some stupidly implemented paywalls. The elegance and speed of those browsers cannot be overstated in the world of unwanted garbage (embedded videos, 9 billion auto-refreshed ads, etc) on sites like CNN or most news sites.
- jdnenej 7y agoTrust me, it's not just developing countries having an issue. Even on a super fast internet connection these modern web crApps will make your phone chug while they load 100 different ad and analytics libraries.
- joeevans1000 7y agoYes. I agree. HN speed and simplicity is probably a big reason it's one of the sites I go to first when procrastinating.
- penmanglewood 7y agoI agree with this, though less for its usability and more for its aesthetic. I wouldn’t complain, though, if dark mode and a mobile-friendly font size were introduced.
- systematical 7y agoYes please do not every redesign this. I am still on old.reddit.com, new reddit sucks.
- _emacsomancer_ 7y agoThank you also for not changing the back-end. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc_(programming_language)
- baby 7y agoSeriously? The website could be lighter, more responsive, and better designed (minify comments on the left?) while being as or even faster to load...
- nojvek 7y agoI use hn.algolia.com and it’s fantastic. With HN as is, I think plenty can be done to make it light weight and make it even more performant. E.g HN isn’t a progressive web app. So you’re loading the same things over and over again. With a service worker HN could teach even more people around the world with a spotty connection. May be I should prototype and build it.
- csande17 7y ago> E.g HN isn’t a progressive web app. So you’re loading the same things over and over again. With a service worker HN could teach even more people around the world with a spotty connection. Hacker News uses standard HTTP headers to cache all its CSS, JavaScript, and images. The only thing that gets re-downloaded when you click a link is the actual text content on the page -- usually about ten kilobytes. And isn't that almost always what you want, to make sure you see the latest posts, comments, and vote counts? Because it's standard HTML, Hacker News also works with existing features like Chrome for Android's "download page when back online" button.
- redis_mlc 7y agoI'd also like to thank HN. It still works on my Blackberry 8700 under Opera Mini, and is the only site that I commonly use that I can say that about. So HN performs fine using GPRS/EDGE!
- ddingus 7y agoThanks. This is nice. Useful. Could be a bit more flexible on some regions of discussion, but take that as a quibble, and recognition to many personas here. (You are good people, I do not imply otherwise) Those personas combine in what I find to be lucid, and high value. And the full thanks go to those who recognize that and work to nurture it all along.
- kamaal 7y agoOne of the biggest edge emacs and vi have held over other editors over the years. Consistent user interface. Learn once, use for a lifetime.
- stakhanov 7y agoIn that case, if you're looking for a great search engine, try duckduckgo.com/lite
- xtat 7y agothis x 1 mil
- montychain 7y agoAMEN! Please keep Hacker News as it is forever!
- aloer 7y agoThe number one request I would have is that they support previews in messengers. When I share an hn link on iMessage or telegram it should at least show the hn title text
- a_imho 7y agoHearing the internet is not feasible without ads can't help but wonder what is the economics of running HN?
- tzfld 7y agomay be indirect benefits
- captain_murdock 7y agoI had never heard of Y Combinator until Hacker News. As far as brand building goes, most investment companies could only dream of Hacker News.
- soulchild37 7y agoThe HN jobs section attracts candidates (visitors of HN mostly are devs) for startup funded by Y combinator, I guess this is a win-win
- thekyle 7y agoI think a lot of Y Combinator companies get preferential treatment for posts (especially job listings). So in that sense HN does have ads.
- ulisesrmzroche 7y agoHN really needs a dark mode. Anyone mentioned it yet? Also: yall ever hear about that syndrome that originated in Stockholm? This site obviously needs a lot of work
- Plancke 7y agoDark mode would be pretty nice, negative colors on my phone works I guess but it'd be nice to have real support.
- perilunar 7y agoHN is pretty snappy and lightweight, but there's still quite a bit of HTML bloat that could be removed. e.g. all the nested tables, divs, classnames and padding gifs are completely unnecessary, and could be replaced by a single nested list.
- tripzilch 7y agoIf I'm interpreting this whole discussion properly, it seems that the fact that "modern web development" is bloated as hell, means that the messy table-based layout on HN is a-okay, because you really can't expect people to learn from history more than a single step back, or something. Yes indeed, the shit that web developers were trying to get rid of around 2005-ish, is actually better than we have today on many pages. Who are all these programmers that like bloat so much??
- pure-awesome 7y agoI quite like the blog https://qntm.org/ https://qntm.org/ which has a minimalist design in this sense.
- Carnageous 7y agoIf you want to keep that performance but still want HN to be a bit more "appealing", try a browser extension. This way it looks nicer but the styles are stored locally.
- viach 7y agoAgree with everything, but there is a small UI thing that could be improved - it is very easy to occasionally press "flag" instead of "hide" on mobile. This improvement could be very beneficial for users with fat fingers. Well, HN is inclusive platform, right?
- ProZsolt 7y agoYou can use https://old.reddit.com/ https://old.reddit.com/ till it lasts.
- psteinweber 7y agoI generally agree, but what a few lines of CSS would make it much more pleasant to read IMO: - limit container width so lines don't get too long - larger text and more line height And not really CSS but: - Making it easier to collapse comments on mobile I know some of those changes would potentially destroy the look & feel that some seem to enjoy around here. However on mobile currently it's only possible to enjoy HN via a third party app though.
- cherrypepsi 7y agoI actually put together a userCSS to fix the two first points. I made it last year, haven't updated it recently but it's still up in my repo: https://github.com/gonzalocesar/sightsafe-hn https://github.com/gonzalocesar/sightsafe-hn
- KajMagnus 7y agoWhat about this forum software I'm developing? I'm trying to keep down the amount of Javascript — 150 kb currently. https://www.talkyard.io/forum/latest https://www.talkyard.io/forum/latest Long term, I'd like to make this work on slow connections, Offline-First, in e.g. rural villages in Africa :- ) on a Raspberry Pi, local wifi, unaffected by a "global Internet outage". Can I ask, which part of the world are you in? (which country?)
- zzo38computer 7y agoYes, it is good that you did not "fix" Hacker News wrong. Still, I think it should be "fixed" by adding a NNTP interface to it (so that offline mode and so on is possible; and all sort of usability features you get "for free").
- Razengan 7y agoIf there's one change they should make, it's a dark mode.
- qazqwert 7y agopeople if you have such slow connections have can u even read the articals and.... it's a simple design and... but still u neeed to follow the links for more info.... also btw i used have having a horrible internet recently upgraded and it's pretty fast first world standart but still i like the clasic look
- HNLurker2 7y agoLaughs in Romanian 5g mobile data unlimited plan