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I am not a css hacker but please HN change your css. smartphone experience suck
- orenbarzilai 13y agoYou can use http://hackernews-mobile.tomodo.me/ http://hackernews-mobile.tomodo.me/ It's similar to the css you offered.
- sid- 13y agoTry ihackernews.com
- ekianjo 13y agoNo it doesnt. You cant zoom in and scroll on your phone? Do you have broken fingers? Btw there are hn apps in different stores.
- marknutter 13y agoZooming and scrolling left-to-right to read every link is a broken experience.
- Wilya 13y agoI much prefer the current HN smartphone experience to some stupid thing that displays one comment at a time in a huge font and is missing half the options. It does suck on non-smartphones phones, but nobody cares about that anyway.
- topac 13y agoI just want to remove the need to zoom, and make it a little more readable
- thedrbrian 13y agoIt looks fine on the iPhone 5 http://imgur.com/i3fEdol http://imgur.com/i3fEdol No massive text size , more than 5 words per line ,etc
- nailer 13y agozooms till the image's 3.5 inches Personally I couldn't read that at all at smartphone size from 1.5 feet away (distance to hand).
- rwg 13y agoThe default HN experience isn't so great on Android's browser... http://i.imgur.com/TEUoGrT.jpg http://i.imgur.com/TEUoGrT.jpg
- hnha 13y agodouble-tap to zoom and all is good.
- thedrbrian 13y agoAnd now something has changed which makes the text massive.
- 300bps 13y agoMy Windows Phone 8 (Lumia 928) shows HN perfectly.
- at-fates-hands 13y agoHa! Mine too. Although I'm running on the Nokia 822. I actually just run the RSS through NextGen reader and the layout is super clean and has easy navigation for the comments.
- ciucanu 13y agoHave you tried any mobile app? There are a lot of great apps for HackerNews. I use HackerNews2 for my Android device and HackerNode for my iPhone.
- topac 13y agoThat's the point, a whole app (maybe useless) because of the lack of 10 css lines.
- ciucanu 13y agoFor me is cooler this way, because it offers visibility on app list and when I have a few free moments, I look at my phone apps and I say "Great, let's see what's new on HN" :D .
- masklinn 13y agoYour phone is not able to put page shortcuts on the homescreen or whatever?
- ciucanu 13y agoThat's not the point :D. It works better than a simple bookmark, with slide to change from page to comments, etc.
- masklinn 13y ago> That's not the point I fail to see how it could be anything else. You previously stated: > it offers visibility on app list and when I have a few free moments, I look at my phone apps and I say "Great, let's see what's new on HN" I do not know about you — hence the interrogative — but I can (and do) put bookmarks on my home screens, right next to applications and thus with the exact same visibility.
- linker3000 13y agoDear me no! http://idontwantyourfuckingapp.tumblr.com/ http://idontwantyourfuckingapp.tumblr.com/ All of my news and info gathering, from about 20 sources, comes in to one place (RSSDemon) on my Android Phone and tablet, and then if I click on a subject to read more or see the comments thread my (boat) browser takes over - simple! Two apps for everything.
- spion 13y agoActually, changing the CSS is not necessary. All that is needed are a couple of meta tags (viewport) in the head and switching textareas to css-based relative width instead of using cols...
- topac 13y agoyeah
- digitalengineer 13y agoUse the Mobile Github page: http://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/ http://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/
- bearwithclaws 13y agoAnother vote to HackerWeb, which makes the smartphone experience better than desktop.
- hnha 13y agoIt's a blank white page in opera mobile whereas the normal hn style works pretty.
- digitalengineer 13y agoWorks fine on Mobile Safari. Have not used Opera...
- cheeaun 13y agoThat's weird. I'll be looking into it.
- hnha 13y agobefore you waste time with some "software that does exist, just like there never was a matrix sequel", I use opera mobile classic or what's it called.
- nightwolf 13y agoAnd cue the comments where it says HN is just fine and nothing about it never ever needs to be changed and every change you could possibly make to it would just make it worse and you just don't know how to use your phone and so on... FWIW, I'm partial to HackerWeb (http://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/ http://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/) on the iPhone and http://hckrnews.com/ http://hckrnews.com/ on the desktop myself.
- wvl 13y agoNote that you can use HackerWeb for the comments on hckrnews.com by going to settings.
- JonnieCache 13y agoI'm pretty sure at this point that HN's markup is the way it is out of sheer bloody-mindedness :)
- hyperventilator 13y agoOr pg is trying to slow the site down to delay Eternal September. Keeping it painful to use on mobile would seem to accomplish that.
- cinitriqs 13y agoguess smart-phones aren't that smart after all...
- Trezoid 13y agoWhile it doesn't really help mobile users much, I have a rather buggy userscript that converts the horrible HN markup to something actually workable. If anyone where interested, I could finish it relatively quickly...
- iaskwhy 13y agoBest mobile HN, by far: http://hn.premii.com/ http://hn.premii.com/
- joeblau 13y agoThis is the best answer by far because it's snappy and clean. You can't comment or vote, but reading is great.
- lukeholder 13y agoi agree, it has replaced native HN apps on my iphone.
- dueyfinster 13y agoagree here too, love the distraction free mode
- pimeys 13y agoMe too. Replaced all native Android HN apps for me.
- bjrnjs 13y agoThere is a native Android app from premii as well, it's really nice! https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.premii.hn https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.premii.hn
- jonhmchan 13y agoSame here.
- Ives 13y agoDoesn't appear to work on my lumia 800. Just says "Loading..." infinitely.
- message 13y agoSame on HTC Sensation with 4.0.3 on board
- csbartus 13y agoHacker News redesigns and mobile apps are popping up almost weekly here at HN .... I'm trying all them out. Yet still using the original. Being a designer I was always thinking what makes this ugly design so time resistant. One single answer comes to my mind: the character of its creator.
- pkorzeniewski 13y agoI would say it's more a matter of habit, if you've used the original for such a long time you feel so familiar with it that any other way of using HN just seems "unnatural". I too have tried many alternatives, yet still coming back to the original ;)
- c2prods 13y agoI think this "ugly design" as you say is resistant because it is a good design. It's functionnal and as such, I don't see any reason why it should change. A good design is a design we can read easily and use easily. For instance, I find Designer News far less easy to read than HN. HN's design might be ugly but it's convenient and it's all what matters. I agree that HN could have a better mobile experience. But the current design works particularly well on desktop.
- marknutter 13y agoThen you must not be using HN on a mobile device, because it is pretty much unusable.. that is, unless you like panning left and right incessantly as you read titles.
- robotys 13y agoworking just fine on Windows Phone 7[1] Internet Explorer. Even better i think. It automatically make the text bigger, thus easier to read within the small screen size. [1] Nokia Lumia 900
- VMG 13y agoHacker News should be an API.
- msoad 13y agoapi.ihackernews.com/
- edandersen 13y agoThe joke is that max-scale and initial-scale set to 1.0 in the viewport meta tag would probably be all that's needed to make HN better on mobile.
- 6cxs2hd6 13y agoYes, but unfortunately that would be a quick, effective solution. In no way does it entail startups being accelerated into making mobile apps that disrupt some trivial aspect of daily life. As "Ricardo Montalban" used to say on SNL, it is better to look good than to feel good. Likewise it is better to reinvent the wheel than to fix it.
- bliker 13y agoI suggest to do what 4chan has done some time ago. Rewrite the css & html in modern fashion optimized for all devices but keep the style the same.
- topac 13y agoI'm checking the mobile version right now. The "4chan-feeling" is conserved and the site is simple and readable without the need to zoom or scroll r/l
- homosaur 13y agoI'm resigned to the fact this website will never improve at all.
- icefox 13y agoNot only will they not make the website better they are incentivised to not make it better. With the current look/feel/behavior be it good or bad they have grown because of it. Any change they make is likely to make the number of users go down. And as much as the users care about quality the owners metric is always number of users so why change it if it is "working". I am on the watch for a new social tech news site that is optimized first for mobile to replace HN which I am 100% sure will be made and I will switch to at some point in the future.
- topac 13y agoThat's strange for hn because it's known that in a vast and rich sea such as the IT world, stability leads to a slow/fast failure or disappearing. They'll have to innovate, for their business and for the users.
- Amadou 13y agoAnd yet the reverse is true too. Over-innovating which I see as almost universally putting form ahead of function kills web enterprises dead too. I think craigslist is a great example of success going with the most minimal "innovation" - in the last ten years I can think of two changes there, and one wasn't even voluntary. First, the map-view for housing listings and second the giving up of sex services to other sites like backpage under threat from a bunch of point-scoring district attorneys.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- jcutrell 13y agoI disagree with this, for one reason alone. Just because you have grown in the past with a certain tactic does not make that tactic the most effective choice. And, certainly, if the industry changes so much that mobile does indeed take over the personal device market, having a subpar experience on mobile phones could then have an effect that previously wasn't apparent. "We make the best candles in all of the world!" didn't allow the candle company to compete with the lightbulb maker. (Albeit a less than accurate comparison, it illustrates my point I think.)
- claudius 13y agoHrm, maybe you need a better smartphone? It works really well on Opera Mobile on my N9…
- twistedpair 13y agoIf only there was a HN app...
- freshyill 13y agoThe saddest part is that if you resize a desktop browser to be narrow, it's a better experience than you actually get on a phone.
- dredmorbius 13y agoMy commentary on this matter: http://stylebot.me/styles/2945 http://stylebot.me/styles/2945 (Mostly only of use to desktop users, but it's quite an improvement IME).
- paulsutter 13y agoI love using HN on my iPhone. It loads quickly even when the signal is weak and scrolls super nicely because of the simplicity. On mobile, I'm much more likely to read the comments before the articles because I know the comments will load super fast and the article will load super slow and be difficult to stretch into the screen. EDIT: Go ahead and set up a site that implements your "slightly nicer CSS and HTML" that will make such a huge improvement. Publish the traffic stats so that we can all see when you get it right.
- miloshadzic 13y agoI'm pretty sure that slightly nicer CSS and HTML would not slow down HN.
- vintagius 13y agoOn operamini HN scales great especially on the front page.
- rubyn00bie 13y agoI think it looks fine. Everytime someone wants to make a mobile experience better, I want to kill a kitten. More often than not it makes vastly worse. Why can't people just keep it to themselves. Steve Jobs and Co. gave me a real browser so I didn't have to use a sub-par web. Now everyone is forcing it on me anyway. Stop. Please stop. Half of the websites I use have been ruined by responsive, and or enhancing, the mobile experience (GitHub and StackOverflow are worthless with their mobile defaults, text cannot be read because it overflows and zoom is disabled, formatting looks like shit). Why, dear world, must people insist on fixing things that are not broken?
- publicfig 13y agoAre you against bad mobile implementations or just mobile implementations altogether? This seems like a weird position to take. It's not easy to read through comments and stories on most mobile browsers. It requires you to either squint to read the headlines or scroll horizontally just to read across the lines. That is a broken user experience.
- rubyn00bie 13y agoI've actually found pinching and zooming to be more than adequate... And even a bit of squinting I find acceptable because it lets me easily skim a page for content. When I have to scroll forever just to find the content I'm looking for its frustrating and a waste of my time. Or news websites that start hiding the actual content on mobile, so you're forced to "tap" the headline to even read the summary. Or in the case of github or stack overflow, the formatting is so illegible, I can't believe they released 'em. They've made it harder to read. Mobile is about fast access. Letting me get my information on the go... When mobile is a different experience it craps on that goal because I cannot access information as fast. I must now learn this new thing; which, is a the opposite of why I have a smartphone (fast information). For my use cases is vastly worse. The desktop versions of most sites have more features and allow for faster access of information. Maybe I have to zoom in, that's okay! It's a better experience in the end.
- jamesjguthrie 13y ago