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

Post by billswift » Tue, Oct 12, 2010, 5:54 PM UTC

loumf wrote: post #77

smiler wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would agree on that point. Yes, that is my one annoyance.

That might be on purpose. The HN commenting interface is meant to discourage back-and-forth arguments.

Post by silentbicycle » Tue, Oct 12, 2010, 6:33 PM UTC

alphaBetaGamma wrote: post #109

mahmud wrote: post #8

CiteSeer. I spend most of my non-work hours there and it's horribly broken. Case in point, I just went there now to tally the most visible aspects of its brokenness, turns out it's down, again. Yeah, CiteSeer is horribly broken. ArXiv is mostly for crackpot physics and has a tiny CS/EE index. What else? I refuse to pay ACM, Springer, or IEEE. Google Scholar just .. looks "search enginey" and doesn't have the summary…

??? "ArXiv is mostly for crackpot physics" ??? The entire string theory community publishes all their papers on hep-th before sending sending them to journals (which nobody reads as everything is on ArXiv). Of course, maybe you will argue that string theory is crackpot physics...

Post by AdamGibbins » Tue, Oct 12, 2010, 7:16 PM UTC

Zev wrote: post #21

smiler wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Post by natgordon » Tue, Oct 12, 2010, 9:00 PM UTC

Post by blntechie » Tue, Oct 12, 2010, 9:10 PM UTC

ajaypopat wrote: post #69

Pretty much any Indian website that I use including: www.icicibank.com/ www.bangaloreone.gov.in/ www.bookmyshow.com/ (Mainly the payment processing piece) www.irctc.co.in/ (I challenge anyone to find a website that has 4MM unique visitors/mo. and that has worse usability) timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ (Popovers/unders, floating ads. Annoys the crap out of me each time I use it. But I still use it. Go figure)