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Ask HN: What are the websites that you rely on but have horrible UI?

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Re: Ask HN: What are the websites that you rely on but have horrible UI?

#21

Post by Zev »

smiler wrote: post #15
swombat wrote: post #7

HN? :-) If Reddit is "Spartan but functional", HN is positively Hittite. "We'll impale you on an iron stake and let you die slowly outside the city gates if you don't like it" user friendliness. Oh well, at least it keeps the barbarians out.

What is horrible about it? It doesn't get in your way and allows you to post quickly. This is the only place I've engaged in online conversation for years and that's because it's just so quick and simple. Compared to forums and commenting on blogs & entering captcha's it's very usable!

Have you ever tried using HN on a mobile device?

I've been tempted to hack up yet another iOS app for HN, but A. I don't have the time to do it in what i would call the Right Way(tm) -- or a Hacked-Up Way(tm) either and B. it would really be better off as a separate style than a separate app.

Re: Ask HN: What are the websites that you rely on but have horrible UI?

#23

Post by cubicle67 »

swombat wrote: post #7

HN? :-) If Reddit is "Spartan but functional", HN is positively Hittite. "We'll impale you on an iron stake and let you die slowly outside the city gates if you don't like it" user friendliness. Oh well, at least it keeps the barbarians out.

you have no idea how glad I am that HN doesn't look like StackOverflow or Digg

Re: Ask HN: What are the websites that you rely on but have horrible UI?

#24

Post by jsankey »

niyazpk wrote: post #14

All the banking sites I have used have highly unusable UI. The same with my mobile and broadband service provider websites. Sometimes it is just not about the UI. I can live without the best looking websites, but if the functionality is equally broken as the UI, then it is really frustrating. One of my biggest pet peeves is the back button not working in many websites. Many systems just tell you to log in again and i…

Lucky you don't use my bank: it might just tip you over the edge :). Not only does the back button not work (most of the time), but they've also specifically added back-button detection so they can tell you why:

For security reasons you’re unable to use the Back, Forward and Refresh buttons in your browser.

Uh, ok...

Re: Ask HN: What are the websites that you rely on but have horrible UI?

#25

Post by billswift »

smiler wrote: post #15
swombat wrote: post #7

HN? :-) If Reddit is "Spartan but functional", HN is positively Hittite. "We'll impale you on an iron stake and let you die slowly outside the city gates if you don't like it" user friendliness. Oh well, at least it keeps the barbarians out.

What is horrible about it? It doesn't get in your way and allows you to post quickly. This is the only place I've engaged in online conversation for years and that's because it's just so quick and simple. Compared to forums and commenting on blogs & entering captcha's it's very usable!

I like most of the HN interface. The one part I really hate is that when you click the Reply button, most of the context you are replying to, excepting only the direct parent comment, disappears. This is really irritating, and HN is the ONLY site that I visit that does this.

Re: Ask HN: What are the websites that you rely on but have horrible UI?

#26

Post by swombat »

smiler wrote: post #15
swombat wrote: post #7

HN? :-) If Reddit is "Spartan but functional", HN is positively Hittite. "We'll impale you on an iron stake and let you die slowly outside the city gates if you don't like it" user friendliness. Oh well, at least it keeps the barbarians out.

What is horrible about it? It doesn't get in your way and allows you to post quickly. This is the only place I've engaged in online conversation for years and that's because it's just so quick and simple. Compared to forums and commenting on blogs & entering captcha's it's very usable!

How often have you mis-clicked on an down arrow instead of an up arrow (or vice versa)?

Have you ever asked someone who's not a regular to upvote something? That's obviously not something that should be done (but I guess we all sin sometimes... call it a wild unruly youth), but if you do, you'll find that most people don't even see the voting arrows, let alone figure out what they mean.

If advanced users still make fairly critical usage errors because of small, opposite buttons right next to each other, and newbies can't learn the fundamentals of the interface, i'd say that makes it fairly bad.

On the other hand, as I said, it keeps the barbarians out.

Re: Ask HN: What are the websites that you rely on but have horrible UI?

#27

Post by swombat »

cubicle67 wrote: post #23
swombat wrote: post #7

HN? :-) If Reddit is "Spartan but functional", HN is positively Hittite. "We'll impale you on an iron stake and let you die slowly outside the city gates if you don't like it" user friendliness. Oh well, at least it keeps the barbarians out.

you have no idea how glad I am that HN doesn't look like StackOverflow or Digg

Oh, I do. As I said, it keeps the barbarians out of the city gates.

Re: Ask HN: What are the websites that you rely on but have horrible UI?

#28

Post by edanm »

swombat wrote: post #7

HN? :-) If Reddit is "Spartan but functional", HN is positively Hittite. "We'll impale you on an iron stake and let you die slowly outside the city gates if you don't like it" user friendliness. Oh well, at least it keeps the barbarians out.

Absolutely agree: HN's UI is bad.

I'm not talking about ugly or beautiful, I'm talking about very specific usability problems. For example, it's very hard to tell when someone replies to you, which means I would just drop out of conversations if they didn't appear on my "threads" page. (Although there is a solution nowadays, notifo). HN also has problem with the voting, like being unable to change votes, etc.

That said, HN still rocks. Does the incredibly limited UI have anything to do with it? I don't know. But I wouldn't mess around with HN too much: why mess with something that works?

Re: Ask HN: What are the websites that you rely on but have horrible UI?

#29

Post by mahmud »

niyazpk wrote: post #14

All the banking sites I have used have highly unusable UI. The same with my mobile and broadband service provider websites. Sometimes it is just not about the UI. I can live without the best looking websites, but if the functionality is equally broken as the UI, then it is really frustrating. One of my biggest pet peeves is the back button not working in many websites. Many systems just tell you to log in again and i…

How often do you log into your carrier or ISP websites? I don't think I have ever visited their websites, much less be bothered by the UI.
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