Show HN: Collapse Comments on Hacker News

Post by krapp » Thu, Mar 03, 2016, 3:03 AM UTC

noarchy wrote: post #33

sanjeetsuhag wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its such a simple thing to ask for too! Hacker News interface is complete trash for such a popular website.

A counter might be that popularity can overcome a dated interface. Look at the Drudge Report website, after all - wildly popular, and it looks like something out of the 1990s. I, too, would like to see collapsible comments on HN, but I also want to keep the interface simple. It never needs to be flashy, just functional.

Post by mchahn » Thu, Mar 03, 2016, 4:10 AM UTC

mizzao wrote: post #16

waleedka wrote: post #9

This should be a standard feature in HN. The other pain point is the up/down arrows being so close to each other on mobile that I have to zoom in, vote, then zoom out.

Is monkey-patching other people's web apps really the right way to get this done? It's very brittle and it seems that the policy-driven (i.e. convince HN to do it) method is better than the vigilante programmer method.

Post by dang » Thu, Mar 03, 2016, 6:15 AM UTC

tzs wrote: post #53

waleedka wrote: post #9

This should be a standard feature in HN. The other pain point is the up/down arrows being so close to each other on mobile that I have to zoom in, vote, then zoom out.

I'm convinced that the designers of HN deliberately designed the interface to be slightly annoying, although I do not have any theories as to why. That is the only explanation I have come up with for several things that are annoying and would be trivial for them to fix. • The placement of the up/down arrows, as you noted. • On text submissions, such as "Ask HN" submissions, the submitter's text is greyed out similar…

Post by tzs » Thu, Mar 03, 2016, 9:30 AM UTC

lmitchell wrote: post #58

tzs wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could accomplish this by using some color that is readable, such as red or purple. That would give a huge visual indicator so that you'd know you are dealing with a dead comment. Remember, people who do not want to read any dead comments will have left "showdead" in its default state of "off", and so won't see these at all. The only people who see dead comments are those who explicitly said they want to see them…

Is that definitely the way it works? I don't think I've ever configured anything on HN and I see dead comments. I also think it's really nice - as grandparent said, it's a very clear indicator that I'm dealing with something I probably want to ignore.

Post by anon3_ » Thu, Mar 03, 2016, 4:09 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #65

tzs wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm convinced that the designers of HN deliberately designed the interface to be slightly annoying, although I do not have any theories as to why. That is the only explanation I have come up with for several things that are annoying and would be trivial for them to fix. • The placement of the up/down arrows, as you noted. • On text submissions, such as "Ask HN" submissions, the submitter's text is greyed out similar…

If you click on a comment's timestamp to go to its page, it shouldn't be greyed out there.