4 ms·

Information density and ease of identification is the antithesis of "engagement" which often has some time on site metric they're hunting. If you can find what

Information density and ease of identification is the antithesis of "engagement" which often has some time on site metric they're hunting. If you can find what you want and read it you might not spend 5 extra seconds lost on their page and thus they can pad their stats for advertisers. Bonus points if the stupid page loads in such a way you accidentally click on something and give them a "conversion". Sadly financial incentive is almost always towards tricking people into doing something they don't want to do instead of just actually giving them what they fucking want.

KPGv2 1y ago
The one and only thing I'd do is make the font bigger and increase padding. There's overwhelming consensus that you should have (for English) about 50–70 characters per line of text for the best, fastest, most accurate readability. That's why newspapers pair a small font with multiple columns: to limit number of characters per line of text. HN might have over 100 chars per line of text. It could be better. I know I could do it myself, and I do. But "I fixed it for me" doesn't fix it for anyone else.
- stevage 1y ago
  Increased padding comes at the cost of information density. I think low density UIs are more beginner friendly but power users want high density.
  - jorvi 1y ago
    High information density, not high UI density. Having 50 buttons and 10 tabs shoved in your face just makes for opaqueness, power user or not.
- portaouflop 1y ago
  There are dozens of alternative HN front ends that would satisfy your needs
- NobodyNada 1y ago
  A narrow column of text can make it easier to read individual sentences, but it does so by sacrificing vertical space, which makes it harder to skim a page for relevant content and makes it easier for me to lose track of my place since I can't see as much context, images, and headings on screen all at once. I also find it much harder to read text when the paragraphs form monotonous blocks spanning 10 lines of text rather than being irregularly shaped and covering 3-5 lines. I find Wikipedia articles much harder to read in "standard" mode compared to "wide" mode for this reason. Different people process visual information differently, and people reading articles have different goals, different eyesight, and different hardware setups. And we already have a way for users to tell a website how wide they want its content to be: resizing their browser window. I set the width of my browser window based on how wide I want pages to be; and web designers who ignore this preference and impose unreadable narrow columns because they read about the "optimal" column width in some study or another infuriate me to no end. Optimal is not the same for everyone, and pretending otherwise is the antithesis of accessibility.
  - accoil 1y ago
    Why would shorter lines be regular? I use hn with `max-width: 60rem;`, and I get a ragged right (which I very much prefer over justification), while also getting a line length easier for my eyes to follow.
    - NobodyNada 1y ago
      My eyes seem to navigate by paragraph more so than by line. It's hard to try to overanalyze how I read, but I think "corners" of a paragraph are landmarks that I latch onto, and when I reach the end of a line of text I don't scan back along the the line horizontally back to the left, I "jump" back, using the boundaries of the paragraph to estimate the start of the next line, and continue reading from there. This means that I have a difficult time reading text with very large paragraphs. If a paragraph goes on for 10+ lines, I'll start to lose my place at the end of most lines. This is infuriating and drastically impairs my ability to read and comprehend the text. It's interesting to me that you mention preferring a ragged right over justification, because I literally do not notice the difference. This suggests to me that we read in different ways -- perhaps you focus on the shape and boundaries of a line more than the shape of a paragraph. This makes intuitive sense to me as to why you would prefer narrower columns. I don't think that I'm "right" for preferring wider columns or that you or anyone else are "wrong" for preferring narrower columns. I think it's just how my brain learned to process text. I have pretty strong opinions on what's too wide of a column and what's too narrow of a column, so I won't fullscreen a browser window on anything larger than a laptop. Rather, I'll set it for a size that's comfortable for me. If some web designer decides "actually, your preferred text width is wrong, use mine instead" then I'm gonna be pretty annoyed, and I think rightfully so, because what those studies say is "optimal" for the average person is nigh unreadable for me. (Daring Fireball is the worst offender I can think of off the top of my head. I also find desktop Wikipedia's default view pretty hard to read, but the toggleable "wide" mode is excellent).
- amiga-workbench 1y ago
  I use HN zoomed in at 133%. Its a lot more comfortable even when I'm wearing my glasses.
- AnonC 1y ago
  I agree. In my experience, the default HN is terrible for accessibility (in many ways). I’ve just been waiting for dang and tomhow to get a lot older so that they face the issues themselves enough times to care.
- KronisLV 1y ago
  I’d very much prefer more padding between the clickable UI elements on mobile in particular, because the zoom in -> click upvote -> zoom out, or the click downvote by accident -> try to unvote -> try to upvote again, well, it gets pretty old pretty fast. The text density, however, I rather like.
andsoitis 1y ago
> Sadly financial incentive is almost always towards tricking people into doing something they don't want to do instead of just actually giving them what they fucking want. Northstar should be user satisfaction. For some products that might be engagement (eg entertainment service) while for others it is accomplishing a task as quickly as possible and exiting the app.

KPGv2 1y ago

The one and only thing I'd do is make the font bigger and increase padding. There's overwhelming consensus that you should have (for English) about 50–70 characters per line of text for the best, fastest, most accurate readability. That's why newspapers pair a small font with multiple columns: to limit number of characters per line of text. HN might have over 100 chars per line of text. It could be better. I know I could do it myself, and I do. But "I fixed it for me" doesn't fix it for anyone else.

stevage 1y ago
Increased padding comes at the cost of information density. I think low density UIs are more beginner friendly but power users want high density.
- jorvi 1y ago
  High information density, not high UI density. Having 50 buttons and 10 tabs shoved in your face just makes for opaqueness, power user or not.
portaouflop 1y ago
There are dozens of alternative HN front ends that would satisfy your needs
NobodyNada 1y ago
A narrow column of text can make it easier to read individual sentences, but it does so by sacrificing vertical space, which makes it harder to skim a page for relevant content and makes it easier for me to lose track of my place since I can't see as much context, images, and headings on screen all at once. I also find it much harder to read text when the paragraphs form monotonous blocks spanning 10 lines of text rather than being irregularly shaped and covering 3-5 lines. I find Wikipedia articles much harder to read in "standard" mode compared to "wide" mode for this reason. Different people process visual information differently, and people reading articles have different goals, different eyesight, and different hardware setups. And we already have a way for users to tell a website how wide they want its content to be: resizing their browser window. I set the width of my browser window based on how wide I want pages to be; and web designers who ignore this preference and impose unreadable narrow columns because they read about the "optimal" column width in some study or another infuriate me to no end. Optimal is not the same for everyone, and pretending otherwise is the antithesis of accessibility.
- accoil 1y ago
  Why would shorter lines be regular? I use hn with `max-width: 60rem;`, and I get a ragged right (which I very much prefer over justification), while also getting a line length easier for my eyes to follow.
  - NobodyNada 1y ago
    My eyes seem to navigate by paragraph more so than by line. It's hard to try to overanalyze how I read, but I think "corners" of a paragraph are landmarks that I latch onto, and when I reach the end of a line of text I don't scan back along the the line horizontally back to the left, I "jump" back, using the boundaries of the paragraph to estimate the start of the next line, and continue reading from there. This means that I have a difficult time reading text with very large paragraphs. If a paragraph goes on for 10+ lines, I'll start to lose my place at the end of most lines. This is infuriating and drastically impairs my ability to read and comprehend the text. It's interesting to me that you mention preferring a ragged right over justification, because I literally do not notice the difference. This suggests to me that we read in different ways -- perhaps you focus on the shape and boundaries of a line more than the shape of a paragraph. This makes intuitive sense to me as to why you would prefer narrower columns. I don't think that I'm "right" for preferring wider columns or that you or anyone else are "wrong" for preferring narrower columns. I think it's just how my brain learned to process text. I have pretty strong opinions on what's too wide of a column and what's too narrow of a column, so I won't fullscreen a browser window on anything larger than a laptop. Rather, I'll set it for a size that's comfortable for me. If some web designer decides "actually, your preferred text width is wrong, use mine instead" then I'm gonna be pretty annoyed, and I think rightfully so, because what those studies say is "optimal" for the average person is nigh unreadable for me. (Daring Fireball is the worst offender I can think of off the top of my head. I also find desktop Wikipedia's default view pretty hard to read, but the toggleable "wide" mode is excellent).
amiga-workbench 1y ago
I use HN zoomed in at 133%. Its a lot more comfortable even when I'm wearing my glasses.
AnonC 1y ago
I agree. In my experience, the default HN is terrible for accessibility (in many ways). I’ve just been waiting for dang and tomhow to get a lot older so that they face the issues themselves enough times to care.
KronisLV 1y ago
I’d very much prefer more padding between the clickable UI elements on mobile in particular, because the zoom in -> click upvote -> zoom out, or the click downvote by accident -> try to unvote -> try to upvote again, well, it gets pretty old pretty fast. The text density, however, I rather like.

andsoitis 1y ago

> Sadly financial incentive is almost always towards tricking people into doing something they don't want to do instead of just actually giving them what they fucking want. Northstar should be user satisfaction. For some products that might be engagement (eg entertainment service) while for others it is accomplishing a task as quickly as possible and exiting the app.