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Ask HN: Why so hard to read HN on mobile

5 points by jzombie 4y ago

The really tiny font and not great contrast ratio make Hacker News a bummer to read on mobile. I have a slight suspicion it will never improve and these words are going into the void, but the site has not improved for years and neither has my vision.

jerpint 4y ago
Reading from my phone right now can confirm
figure8 4y ago
I agree. This is why I use Opera's mobile browser which defaults to zoom with dynamic text wrapping to fit the screen width.
josephcsible 4y ago
Aside from heavily downvoted and dead comments, where is the contrast ratio poor?
- p-e-w 4y ago
  Everywhere. The text is black on grey. Of all the sites I visit regularly, HN has the worst reading contrast. And that's not even mentioning the ridiculously small font size of 10pt, and the hardcoded font families (Verdana, Geneva) that can cause poor text rendering (should be "system-ui" instead for best display quality on all platforms).
- jzombie 4y ago
  Comment headings. I feel the text in the orange header could be included just because of how ridiculously tiny it is.
ftxbro 4y ago
Probably it was made for web 1 and maybe we are at like web 4 or 5 by now. Also the one who made it paul graham was last seen on twitter flexing on elon musk and showing human mortality actuary curves so idk if he's thinking to upgrade his news site. Maybe bringing any attention to the website's implementation wouldn't be a good look because I think it was supposed to be the flagship or demo for arc his boutique programming language which is having a ... slow takeoff or at least not a fast takeoff.
- jzombie 4y ago
  I bet the code is nearly unmaintainable too.
starbase 4y ago
When HN was born, it was for browsing on a laptop while your compiler runs in a different window. Little known fact: There's no embedded audio or video because nobody could hear it over the howl of the cooling fans.
ofalkaed 4y ago
Never had an issue with HN on my phone, wish more sites had its nice simple layout which is the same on desktop and mobile.

5 points by jzombie 4y ago

jerpint 4y ago

Reading from my phone right now can confirm

figure8 4y ago

I agree. This is why I use Opera's mobile browser which defaults to zoom with dynamic text wrapping to fit the screen width.

josephcsible 4y ago

Aside from heavily downvoted and dead comments, where is the contrast ratio poor?

p-e-w 4y ago
Everywhere. The text is black on grey. Of all the sites I visit regularly, HN has the worst reading contrast. And that's not even mentioning the ridiculously small font size of 10pt, and the hardcoded font families (Verdana, Geneva) that can cause poor text rendering (should be "system-ui" instead for best display quality on all platforms).
jzombie 4y ago
Comment headings. I feel the text in the orange header could be included just because of how ridiculously tiny it is.

ftxbro 4y ago

Probably it was made for web 1 and maybe we are at like web 4 or 5 by now. Also the one who made it paul graham was last seen on twitter flexing on elon musk and showing human mortality actuary curves so idk if he's thinking to upgrade his news site. Maybe bringing any attention to the website's implementation wouldn't be a good look because I think it was supposed to be the flagship or demo for arc his boutique programming language which is having a ... slow takeoff or at least not a fast takeoff.

jzombie 4y ago
I bet the code is nearly unmaintainable too.

starbase 4y ago

When HN was born, it was for browsing on a laptop while your compiler runs in a different window. Little known fact: There's no embedded audio or video because nobody could hear it over the howl of the cooling fans.

ofalkaed 4y ago

Never had an issue with HN on my phone, wish more sites had its nice simple layout which is the same on desktop and mobile.