6 ms·

The bad case of Hacker News authentication usability design

64 points by punjsingh 14y ago

citricsquid 14y ago
> Before I unintentionally start a flame war This statement would be needed if anyone thought HN was an example of good design and usability, I don't think I've ever seen a comment here claim that, it seems everyone acknowledges that HN was built to work (as in, do the very minimum it can to exist) and nothing more. The lack of polish with HN is part of the charm really.
- nsmartt 14y ago
  >The lack of polish with HN is part of the charm really. I do agree with that. However, there's a big difference between polish and usability. The lack of polish may be charming, but usability flaws are anything but charming.
  - masklinn 14y ago
    > The lack of polish may be charming I don't think so, personally: the common redirection to pages which don't exist is bothering, and so is the overall slowness of the posting and (especially) edition. Oh, and the completely fucked up comment formatting (or lack thereof) markup.
    - nsmartt 14y ago
      I don't think there's anything to debate there. It's just a matter of personal taste. I find the whole minimalist thing to be very "hacker-esque" (if that's the right way to say that).
      - masklinn 14y ago
        I don't think something which does not actually work is hacker-esque. Minimalistic and half-baked are not the same thing, and hn is the latter more than the former.
        nsmartt 14y ago
        I was commenting on the specifics things you mentioned (sans redirection to pages that don't exist). Slowness, lack of good formatting. That sort of thing. I'm certainly not saying that half-baked is the same as minimalist, and I'm also not saying I wouldn't make some changes given the chance.
- pooriaazimi 14y ago
  I like HN the way it is, only if I could vote on iPad (or worse, on iPhone) without having to zoom 600% in first. Those up/down arrows being so close to each other drives me crazy.
  - d0mine 14y ago
    news:yc [1] allows you to vote without a problem on iPad [1] http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/news-yc/id434787119?mt=8&uo=4 http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/news-yc/id434787119?mt=8&...
    - pooriaazimi 14y ago
      Yes, I have it and it's very good and pretty. But I just can't possibly live without a chronological list of submissions (like http://hckrnews.com/ http://hckrnews.com/) so right now that app just sits in my first home screen and I never use it!
  - mambodog 14y ago
    Have you tried http://ihackernews.com/ http://ihackernews.com/ ?
    - pooriaazimi 14y ago
      No, I have no knowledge of its existence. It looks good - I'll try it for a few days. It might be good to submit it as a new link... I'm sure it's been posted before (though I'd never seen it), I'm sure there are many HNers who don't know about it and it might be useful for them (for iOS, there are a few nice applications; but on other platforms, I think there might be none and this web app could be a life-saver for many!)
- Sukotto 14y ago
  The lack of polish with HN is part of the charm really Not for me. I come here in spite of the barely tolerable site UX.
willvarfar 14y ago
Hmm, posting on a Saturday is not the best tactical time to get someone at HN to read this post... it'll have disappeared off the front-page long before Monday
- MehdiEG 14y ago
  In fairness, I would assume that pg and al. are clued in enough to know that HN's login and registration system is complete bollocks. They just don't care about it (presumably, they consider that there are more important things to work on than fixing this, which I'd say is probably true).
- citricsquid 14y ago
  If he replies to this post (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=363 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=363) with it then it should get noticed, that post seems to be checked every now and again.
  - punjsingh 14y ago
    Thanks for pointing that out. Cross-posted the link to the url in your post. Thanks
- abcd_f 14y ago
  It wouldn't have a chance to hit the front page if it were submitted on Monday. Slow news day is exactly the time for submitting this sort of fluff.
  - willvarfar 14y ago
    There's nothing communities like better than meta-discussion. I've seen it myself - my post comparing HN traffic to my blog on technical vs fluffy posts actually got further longer than any of the posts it was comparing.
recoiledsnake 14y ago
Why not just create a new account and move on? Unless I am missing something.
- punjsingh 14y ago
  Because I have an invitation associated with the old account that I needed to RSVP.
  - tuananh 14y ago
    While I agree with your post, you definitely need a password manager app.
    - kmfrk 14y ago
      I use LastPass, I've still managed to lose a HN password. Shit happens now and then, and it's silly that you'd lose your account over it.
kingkawn 14y ago
call?
tptacek 14y ago
"Support staff". Heh.
temphn 14y ago
The other thing is that the login page is http rather than https.
- ohgodthecat 14y ago
  It does support https, such as if you use https-everywhere which now works on chrome.
  - k33l0r 14y ago
    If you don't want to install a third party extension, you can also manually add domains to the HSTS* set via chrome://net-internals/#hsts * HTTPS Strict Transport Security http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Strict_Transport_Security http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Strict_Transport_Security
MaxGabriel 14y ago
By the way, you cannot zoom in or out on your website using an iPhone. This makes it very hard to read.
mratzloff 14y ago
Speaking of usability... your site doesn't scale on my iPhone, so I only see about 30% of the screen width and have to do a lot of scrolling to read anything.
- punjsingh 14y ago
  Thanks for pointing that out. Responsive CSS pending.
  - Sidnicious 14y ago
    It would be OK without responsive CSS as long as you didn't include that <meta name="viewport" …> tag to disable scaling.
    - punjsingh 14y ago
      Thanks Sidnicious. Fixed now.
raldi 14y ago
Mmm, a lecture on usability from a site that can't be read on an iPhone.
- MaxGabriel 14y ago
  I have the same problem, but just a tip, you can use the 'reader' feature to format it in an iPhone-friendly way.
- elteto 14y ago
  And that is relevant because ...? Sorry if I am not too hip for you, but readability on an iPhone screen is far from being the ultimate usability test, especially if the site is not a mobile site.
j45 14y ago
I don't really come to hacker news for usability or design. Mainly for content.
rmATinnovafy 14y ago
I can zoom in fine in android 2.2. Why don't the YC people open up the site code and put it on github so we can contribute into making a better site?
- peterhajas 14y ago
  And solve that expired link bug!
  - rmATinnovafy 14y ago
    In LISP!
- dwynings 14y ago
  Little known fact: the source code is available. http://arclanguage.org/install http://arclanguage.org/install
  - rmATinnovafy 14y ago
    I did not know that. Thanks for the link. I shall go and dust off my LISP. Now, if any fix is written, where is it to be submitted?
    - dwynings 14y ago
      I'm not sure... you may have to email pg
      - rmATinnovafy 14y ago
        That's the reason to have the code up on github. I don't want to bother PG over this stuff.
  - kens 14y ago
    Note that the released source code is pretty different from the actual running site. In particular, all the rsvp code that caused the problem is not in the released source. The HN source code is in the Arc language. See my site http://files.arcfn.com/doc/index.html http://files.arcfn.com/doc/index.html for Arc documentation, specifically http://files.arcfn.com/doc/srv.html http://files.arcfn.com/doc/srv.html for the web server internals (including why links expire). Also see the App Server page which explains account management. If you want to hack on this, there's a small but enthusiastic Arc community at http://arclanguage.org/forum http://arclanguage.org/forum
eps 14y ago
Ironically, the linked site is unusable on iPhone. The page width is twice the size of the screen AND it cannot be zoomed out. Lovely stuff, can't wait to read what the author has to say on usability of other's people work.
- NathanKP 14y ago
  I came here to say exactly this. The site design is horrible on iPhone. I had to use the Mobile Safari reader to even be able to read the content.
  - punjsingh 14y ago
    And I started seem to have the flame war! Here are my two cents if they make anyone feel better: First it is a recommendation from a user not lecture from a UI expert. Second as a developer I'm flattered that compared my crappy blog whose audience is me and probably one other person- its usability expectations with HN. Third your point well taken, I need to work on responsive CSS when I get to my machine later in the day. Thanks to your comments, I just fixed viewport scaling issues. But my post is not about me. It is about an issue in HN which I thought others would be facing too.
punjsingh 14y ago
And I started seem to have the flame war! Here are my two cents if they make anyone feel better: First it is a recommendation from a user not lecture from a UI expert. Second as a developer i'm flattered that compared my crappy blog which mostly I read to boost my alter ego ;)- its usability expectations with HN. Third your point well taken, I need to work on responsive CSS when I get to my machine later in the day. In the meantime you can use Safari reader if you really want to read the article on iPhone. Sorry for the inconvenience to iPhone users. Thanks.
batista 14y ago
>The bad case of Hacker News authentication usability design What design? It was just thrown together.
sparknlaunch12 14y ago
I don't like the user management functionality on HN. It is a little basic for what it could be. One issue... For some strange reason I cannot login through my Android browser but can through Opera. I am sure username and password are correct.

64 points by punjsingh 14y ago

> Before I unintentionally start a flame war This statement would be needed if anyone thought HN was an example of good design and usability, I don't think I've ever seen a comment here claim that, it seems everyone acknowledges that HN was built to work (as in, do the very minimum it can to exist) and nothing more. The lack of polish with HN is part of the charm really.

nsmartt 14y ago
>The lack of polish with HN is part of the charm really. I do agree with that. However, there's a big difference between polish and usability. The lack of polish may be charming, but usability flaws are anything but charming.
- masklinn 14y ago
  > The lack of polish may be charming I don't think so, personally: the common redirection to pages which don't exist is bothering, and so is the overall slowness of the posting and (especially) edition. Oh, and the completely fucked up comment formatting (or lack thereof) markup.
  - nsmartt 14y ago
    I don't think there's anything to debate there. It's just a matter of personal taste. I find the whole minimalist thing to be very "hacker-esque" (if that's the right way to say that).
    - masklinn 14y ago
      I don't think something which does not actually work is hacker-esque. Minimalistic and half-baked are not the same thing, and hn is the latter more than the former.
      - nsmartt 14y ago
        I was commenting on the specifics things you mentioned (sans redirection to pages that don't exist). Slowness, lack of good formatting. That sort of thing. I'm certainly not saying that half-baked is the same as minimalist, and I'm also not saying I wouldn't make some changes given the chance.
pooriaazimi 14y ago
I like HN the way it is, only if I could vote on iPad (or worse, on iPhone) without having to zoom 600% in first. Those up/down arrows being so close to each other drives me crazy.
- d0mine 14y ago
  news:yc [1] allows you to vote without a problem on iPad [1] http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/news-yc/id434787119?mt=8&uo=4 http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/news-yc/id434787119?mt=8&...
  - pooriaazimi 14y ago
    Yes, I have it and it's very good and pretty. But I just can't possibly live without a chronological list of submissions (like http://hckrnews.com/ http://hckrnews.com/) so right now that app just sits in my first home screen and I never use it!
- mambodog 14y ago
  Have you tried http://ihackernews.com/ http://ihackernews.com/ ?
  - pooriaazimi 14y ago
    No, I have no knowledge of its existence. It looks good - I'll try it for a few days. It might be good to submit it as a new link... I'm sure it's been posted before (though I'd never seen it), I'm sure there are many HNers who don't know about it and it might be useful for them (for iOS, there are a few nice applications; but on other platforms, I think there might be none and this web app could be a life-saver for many!)
Sukotto 14y ago
The lack of polish with HN is part of the charm really Not for me. I come here in spite of the barely tolerable site UX.

willvarfar 14y ago

Hmm, posting on a Saturday is not the best tactical time to get someone at HN to read this post... it'll have disappeared off the front-page long before Monday

MehdiEG 14y ago
In fairness, I would assume that pg and al. are clued in enough to know that HN's login and registration system is complete bollocks. They just don't care about it (presumably, they consider that there are more important things to work on than fixing this, which I'd say is probably true).
citricsquid 14y ago
If he replies to this post (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=363 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=363) with it then it should get noticed, that post seems to be checked every now and again.
- punjsingh 14y ago
  Thanks for pointing that out. Cross-posted the link to the url in your post. Thanks
abcd_f 14y ago
It wouldn't have a chance to hit the front page if it were submitted on Monday. Slow news day is exactly the time for submitting this sort of fluff.
- willvarfar 14y ago
  There's nothing communities like better than meta-discussion. I've seen it myself - my post comparing HN traffic to my blog on technical vs fluffy posts actually got further longer than any of the posts it was comparing.

recoiledsnake 14y ago

Why not just create a new account and move on? Unless I am missing something.

punjsingh 14y ago
Because I have an invitation associated with the old account that I needed to RSVP.
- tuananh 14y ago
  While I agree with your post, you definitely need a password manager app.
  - kmfrk 14y ago
    I use LastPass, I've still managed to lose a HN password. Shit happens now and then, and it's silly that you'd lose your account over it.

kingkawn 14y ago

call?

tptacek 14y ago

"Support staff". Heh.

temphn 14y ago

The other thing is that the login page is http rather than https.

ohgodthecat 14y ago
It does support https, such as if you use https-everywhere which now works on chrome.
- k33l0r 14y ago
  If you don't want to install a third party extension, you can also manually add domains to the HSTS* set via chrome://net-internals/#hsts * HTTPS Strict Transport Security http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Strict_Transport_Security http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Strict_Transport_Security

MaxGabriel 14y ago

By the way, you cannot zoom in or out on your website using an iPhone. This makes it very hard to read.

mratzloff 14y ago

Speaking of usability... your site doesn't scale on my iPhone, so I only see about 30% of the screen width and have to do a lot of scrolling to read anything.

punjsingh 14y ago
Thanks for pointing that out. Responsive CSS pending.
- Sidnicious 14y ago
  It would be OK without responsive CSS as long as you didn't include that <meta name="viewport" …> tag to disable scaling.
  - punjsingh 14y ago
    Thanks Sidnicious. Fixed now.

raldi 14y ago

Mmm, a lecture on usability from a site that can't be read on an iPhone.

MaxGabriel 14y ago
I have the same problem, but just a tip, you can use the 'reader' feature to format it in an iPhone-friendly way.
elteto 14y ago
And that is relevant because ...? Sorry if I am not too hip for you, but readability on an iPhone screen is far from being the ultimate usability test, especially if the site is not a mobile site.

j45 14y ago

I don't really come to hacker news for usability or design. Mainly for content.

rmATinnovafy 14y ago

I can zoom in fine in android 2.2. Why don't the YC people open up the site code and put it on github so we can contribute into making a better site?

peterhajas 14y ago
And solve that expired link bug!
- rmATinnovafy 14y ago
  In LISP!
dwynings 14y ago
Little known fact: the source code is available. http://arclanguage.org/install http://arclanguage.org/install
- rmATinnovafy 14y ago
  I did not know that. Thanks for the link. I shall go and dust off my LISP. Now, if any fix is written, where is it to be submitted?
  - dwynings 14y ago
    I'm not sure... you may have to email pg
    - rmATinnovafy 14y ago
      That's the reason to have the code up on github. I don't want to bother PG over this stuff.
- kens 14y ago
  Note that the released source code is pretty different from the actual running site. In particular, all the rsvp code that caused the problem is not in the released source. The HN source code is in the Arc language. See my site http://files.arcfn.com/doc/index.html http://files.arcfn.com/doc/index.html for Arc documentation, specifically http://files.arcfn.com/doc/srv.html http://files.arcfn.com/doc/srv.html for the web server internals (including why links expire). Also see the App Server page which explains account management. If you want to hack on this, there's a small but enthusiastic Arc community at http://arclanguage.org/forum http://arclanguage.org/forum

eps 14y ago

Ironically, the linked site is unusable on iPhone. The page width is twice the size of the screen AND it cannot be zoomed out. Lovely stuff, can't wait to read what the author has to say on usability of other's people work.

NathanKP 14y ago
I came here to say exactly this. The site design is horrible on iPhone. I had to use the Mobile Safari reader to even be able to read the content.
- punjsingh 14y ago
  And I started seem to have the flame war! Here are my two cents if they make anyone feel better: First it is a recommendation from a user not lecture from a UI expert. Second as a developer I'm flattered that compared my crappy blog whose audience is me and probably one other person- its usability expectations with HN. Third your point well taken, I need to work on responsive CSS when I get to my machine later in the day. Thanks to your comments, I just fixed viewport scaling issues. But my post is not about me. It is about an issue in HN which I thought others would be facing too.

punjsingh 14y ago

And I started seem to have the flame war! Here are my two cents if they make anyone feel better: First it is a recommendation from a user not lecture from a UI expert. Second as a developer i'm flattered that compared my crappy blog which mostly I read to boost my alter ego ;)- its usability expectations with HN. Third your point well taken, I need to work on responsive CSS when I get to my machine later in the day. In the meantime you can use Safari reader if you really want to read the article on iPhone. Sorry for the inconvenience to iPhone users. Thanks.

batista 14y ago

>The bad case of Hacker News authentication usability design What design? It was just thrown together.

sparknlaunch12 14y ago

I don't like the user management functionality on HN. It is a little basic for what it could be. One issue... For some strange reason I cannot login through my Android browser but can through Opera. I am sure username and password are correct.