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Ask HN: Why is HN not mobile friendly yet?

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Re: Ask HN: Why is HN not mobile friendly yet?

#51

Post by brudgers »

pdimitar wrote: post #46
dang wrote: post #31

Yes, it will happen. Yes, we're working on it. The reasons it's taking so long are: (1) the change required is not tiny; and (2) everyone working on it has many other things to do, most of which are more pressing. That doesn't make it a low priority (it's a high priority), but it means we have to do it as a background process.

As a fellow very busy programmer I can easily see where you're coming from, but surely for several years time a background task must be pushed to the highest prio tickets eventually? Even if you simply steal LWN.net's very basic comments CSS, it wouldn't take you more than a full working day, including testing on few iPhones and different-resolution Androids. A passionate community whose quality of life needs aren't…

Suppose, and anecdotally for me it's a very plausible supposition, that there are significant qualitative differences between users' behavior when interacting via mobile browsers versus desktop browsers. This would make improving HN more complex than simply changing CSS styles. User behavior matters more than browser behavior in terms of the value HN does or doesn't provide.

In pure speculation, it is possible that mobile/desktop browsers correlate with the pipeline into YC's primary business. Though the business is probably clearer.

Re: Ask HN: Why is HN not mobile friendly yet?

#52

Post by krapp »

brudgers wrote: post #51
pdimitar wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a fellow very busy programmer I can easily see where you're coming from, but surely for several years time a background task must be pushed to the highest prio tickets eventually? Even if you simply steal LWN.net's very basic comments CSS, it wouldn't take you more than a full working day, including testing on few iPhones and different-resolution Androids. A passionate community whose quality of life needs aren't…

Suppose, and anecdotally for me it's a very plausible supposition, that there are significant qualitative differences between users' behavior when interacting via mobile browsers versus desktop browsers. This would make improving HN more complex than simply changing CSS styles. User behavior matters more than browser behavior in terms of the value HN does or doesn't provide. In pure speculation, it is possible that m…

That would seem to be probably true, that the nature of the interface shapes the nature of the community in some way, but I don't understand how it follows that mobile browser use implies poor user behavior.

Re: Ask HN: Why is HN not mobile friendly yet?

#53

Post by brudgers »

krapp wrote: post #52
brudgers wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose, and anecdotally for me it's a very plausible supposition, that there are significant qualitative differences between users' behavior when interacting via mobile browsers versus desktop browsers. This would make improving HN more complex than simply changing CSS styles. User behavior matters more than browser behavior in terms of the value HN does or doesn't provide. In pure speculation, it is possible that m…

That would seem to be probably true, that the nature of the interface shapes the nature of the community in some way, but I don't understand how it follows that mobile browser use implies poor user behavior.

My anecdotal observation of sample size one is that I tend to write better using a laptop or desktop system than when using a mobile OS, and when using a mobile OS, pop up touch screen keyboards tend to produce worse writing than mechanical keyboards.

I suspect that YC could have measures of comment quality and record browser agents. It certainly has the mental muscle to correlate them if it has them.

Re: Ask HN: Why is HN not mobile friendly yet?

#54

Post by fishanz »

moepstar wrote: post #49
fishanz wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. As far as I'm concerned, HN IS (!!!) mobile friendly. I'm so sick of the garbage mobile formatting that is ubiquitous these days. Give me a clean desktop version any day. Pinch to zoom FTW. 2009 was way easier to browse on the iPhone than 2015, what happened? Granted, there is an occasional gem but they are the rare exception. Perhaps bump the frontsize up a bit, but I don't see how HN could really be mobile…

Have my upvote for your opinion. Problem is, that you're basically "forced" to produce a mobile site by Google, otherwise you'll be way down in the SERPs :( I never understood the point of mobile sites - i'm perfectly capable of pinching my screen, in case something is unreadable (which isn't too much, given retina screens and all that...)

Just expounding... Take for example epicurious.com: super useful reference I've used for over a DECADE. I had no problems using it on my mobile/tablet devices, ever.. Until the mobile rewrite earlier this year. Rendered almost USELESS! If there was only an 'old version' button...

Re: Ask HN: Why is HN not mobile friendly yet?

#55

Post by pdimitar »

brudgers wrote: post #51
pdimitar wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a fellow very busy programmer I can easily see where you're coming from, but surely for several years time a background task must be pushed to the highest prio tickets eventually? Even if you simply steal LWN.net's very basic comments CSS, it wouldn't take you more than a full working day, including testing on few iPhones and different-resolution Androids. A passionate community whose quality of life needs aren't…

Suppose, and anecdotally for me it's a very plausible supposition, that there are significant qualitative differences between users' behavior when interacting via mobile browsers versus desktop browsers. This would make improving HN more complex than simply changing CSS styles. User behavior matters more than browser behavior in terms of the value HN does or doesn't provide. In pure speculation, it is possible that m…

But me, and many others, aren't requesting full redesign so as we can interact with this site like in a native app. I don't request the perfect UX. I would simply like a mobile-friendly website with:

(1) Bigger font size; (2) Proper line wrapping; (3) Offset for nested comments. Something like 5%, no more than 10%; (4) Bigger buttons|links for the upvote / downvote / comment actions.

...and I think that's all.

As a programmer myself I know the terrible, almost like drug|alcohol addiction, need to make everything perfect on the first go, but at 35, with total of 23 years doing programming, of which 14 as a professional experience, I am perfectly aware that this is not possible.

Iterative changes, one by one.

People will complain even if you clean a pile of fresh shit which gets in their way every day. That's hardly an argument against cleaning it up anyway. Whoever wants to be stuck in 90s and craves poisonous USENET romantic dreams -- I sincerely wish they would finally move on.

(That's one of my possible explanations on why would people be unhappy with a mobile UI readability improvements)

In the end, I'll simply install one HN Android app and then cripple its permissions with AppOps for Lollipop and be done with it. Or move to another website / Twitter feed.

Re: Ask HN: Why is HN not mobile friendly yet?

#56

Post by epsylon »

adrianblp wrote: post #48
aorth wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also an Android app by this premii person, and it re-directs all links through its own domain. Very annoying and actually borderline malicious.

Speaking of Android, after looking through the available apps I decided to release my own as open source. It's lightweight and has a focus on usability, check it out :) https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.adrianblan....

I'm counting at least 12 HN apps on Google Play. What does your own has that the others don't?

Re: Ask HN: Why is HN not mobile friendly yet?

#58

Post by adrianblp »

epsylon wrote: post #56
adrianblp wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of Android, after looking through the available apps I decided to release my own as open source. It's lightweight and has a focus on usability, check it out :) https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.adrianblan....

I'm counting at least 12 HN apps on Google Play. What does your own has that the others don't?

Trust me I've tried them all, and I still felt that I needed to develop my own out of necessity. I'm studying interaction design, so something which is usable is really important to me.

I would argue that every app I used had minor issues which evolved into major issues over time. Poor visual design, visibility and readabilty, too cluttered or unintuitive, etc. I set out for the app to do one thing, and excel at it without issues.

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