Tell HN: Thank you for being fast, almost ad-free and text-only

#1

Post by nojvek » Tue, Jan 24, 2023, 3:57 PM UTC

I’ve been visiting HN for more than a day. Almost daily.

While Reddit, Digg, FB, Twitter etc have jammed in more features and ads looking like posts, HN has remained high signal to noise ratio.

Thank you for that.

As I get older, my brain is unable to deal with ads and too much flashy imagery/videos.

HN is an oasis.

My only ask is to revisit CSS a bit and make it mobile friendly. I.e slightly larger fonts and hit areas for expand/collapse. It’s too easy to hit the wrong button on a phone.

Thank you for keeping HN clean.

Re: Tell HN: Thank you for being fast, almost ad-free and text-only

#2

Post by dumbaccount123 » Tue, Jan 24, 2023, 4:08 PM UTC

Reddits "new UI" is so bad, surprised they're still trying to save it.

Re: Tell HN: Thank you for being fast, almost ad-free and text-only

#3

Post by colesantiago » Tue, Jan 24, 2023, 4:10 PM UTC

Agreed, I wish more sites were like HN, fast, free and ad-free, text only and no bullshit algorithmic garbage shoved in my face.

All it needs is dark mode and it's perfect.

Re: Tell HN: Thank you for being fast, almost ad-free and text-only

#4

Post by spaniard89277 » Tue, Jan 24, 2023, 4:10 PM UTC

I completely agree on this. I have nothing of substance to add, just say thank you.

Re: Tell HN: Thank you for being fast, almost ad-free and text-only

#5

Post by iLoveOncall » Tue, Jan 24, 2023, 4:11 PM UTC

dumbaccount123 wrote: post #2

Reddits "new UI" is so bad, surprised they're still trying to save it.

Sunk cost fallacy undoubtedly.

Reddit is really unusable for me with the new UI.

Re: Tell HN: Thank you for being fast, almost ad-free and text-only

#6

Post by marginalia_nu » Tue, Jan 24, 2023, 4:11 PM UTC

dumbaccount123 wrote: post #2

Reddits "new UI" is so bad, surprised they're still trying to save it.

It's kinda embarrassing. It's been I don't know how many years, and pasting text in the comment field still breaks the new reddit UI.

I don't know how to explain it. Does everyone on the new reddit dev team use old.reddit.com so they don't notice this extremely obvious bug?

Re: Tell HN: Thank you for being fast, almost ad-free and text-only

#7

Post by cloudking » Tue, Jan 24, 2023, 4:11 PM UTC

dumbaccount123 wrote: post #2

Reddits "new UI" is so bad, surprised they're still trying to save it.

Try https://teddit.net

Re: Tell HN: Thank you for being fast, almost ad-free and text-only

#8

Post by cloudking » Tue, Jan 24, 2023, 4:12 PM UTC

colesantiago wrote: post #3

Agreed, I wish more sites were like HN, fast, free and ad-free, text only and no bullshit algorithmic garbage shoved in my face. All it needs is dark mode and it's perfect.

+1 dark mode on mobile would be great. They let you customize the color of the header when you get 500 points, it would be nice to allow custom CSS as a feature (without extensions).

Re: Tell HN: Thank you for being fast, almost ad-free and text-only

#9

Post by dewey » Tue, Jan 24, 2023, 4:12 PM UTC

I know what you are saying and I agree and am grateful for it's existance but keep in mind that HN is a marketing tool of a big VC fund.

It has money to pay a moderator and doesn't need to directly make money from it by putting ads or tracking scripts up like other sites.

Re: Tell HN: Thank you for being fast, almost ad-free and text-only

#10

Post by dredmorbius » Tue, Jan 24, 2023, 4:12 PM UTC

The text-only / ad-free nature probably explains a fair bit of my own ... enthusiastic ... readership of HN (recent comment on which: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34490839>).

As for CSS tweaks, I've applied some modest changes to the basic style which are linked in my profile:

Dred's HN CSS Madhackery: https://pastebin.com/gLXiqKyd>

Dred's HN CSS Madhackery -- Dark Mode: https://pastebin.com/6PF3dCXH>

Both can be applied using a CSS style management extension such as Stylus:

https://add0n.com/stylus.html>

(For Firefox, Chrome, & Opera.)