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HN: Please replace grayarrow.gif with Unicode character ▲

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Re: HN: Please replace grayarrow.gif with Unicode character ▲

#101

Post by mkl »

tunnuz wrote: post #70
daliusd wrote: post #3

Very good proposal. There are more unicode symbols to choice from: http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/geometric_shapes.html Down arrow/triangle: ▼ It is not only matter of resolution but I personally like bigger fonts and have zoomed in HN so triangles look bad: http://i.imgur.com/fpA7N.png

We could use the "pile of poo" ( http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1f4a9/index.htm ) character for downvote instead!

This seems like a bad idea, since at small font sizes it will be a similar shape to the up-triangle, especially in fonts which (mostly) fill it in.

Re: HN: Please replace grayarrow.gif with Unicode character ▲

#102

Post by pbhjpbhj »

LeafStorm wrote: post #89
Inversechi wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does one get down-vote?

I'm pretty sure you get downvoting powers at 500 karma. (At least, that's about when I got them. I have heard rumors that it fluctuates, and like all the mechanics of Hacker News, the precise rules are proprietary secret sauce.)

I have downvote in this thread but not always. I find the removal of edit, reply and voting privelege at seemingly arbitrary conditions to be very annoying.

Re: HN: Please replace grayarrow.gif with Unicode character ▲

#103

Post by obtu »

Inversechi wrote: post #87
tunnuz wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could use the "pile of poo" ( http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1f4a9/index.htm ) character for downvote instead!

How does one get down-vote?

500 karma according to this infrequently-updated FAQ: http://jacquesmattheij.com/The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ#karma

Re: HN: Please replace grayarrow.gif with Unicode character ▲

#104

Post by obtu »

mkl wrote: post #101
tunnuz wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could use the "pile of poo" ( http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1f4a9/index.htm ) character for downvote instead!

This seems like a bad idea, since at small font sizes it will be a similar shape to the up-triangle, especially in fonts which (mostly) fill it in.

♥ and 💩 have a nice symmetry.

Re: HN: Please replace grayarrow.gif with Unicode character ▲

#105

Post by pbhjpbhj »

rythie wrote: post #98

TBH, it's very optimistic to think that anything really will change in the HN code. People have suggested tons of improvements and nothing ever changes - perhaps it shows that even if we don't improve our products people still keep coming back anyway.

The product here is not the interface it's the social network - the people - and interactions that enables.

There is much to improve (page titles, semantic urls, recording of moderator edits, ...) but none of that is likely unless a sufficient quora of top contributors force the issue or decide to move (r/hackernews anyone!?). That in turn is unlikely because of the association with pg and ycombinator.

That's my take.

Re: HN: Please replace grayarrow.gif with Unicode character ▲

#107

Post by lucian1900 »

nslater wrote: post #68
lucian1900 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. The gif is requested once and cached, and then rendered once and cached. The CSS triangle would get rendered over and over again.

Rendered once and cached? The cached GIF is rendered each time as well. As far as I know, it's not possible to cache a rendering. There are still calculations to do each time you want to convert the cached data into an image. The question then becomes, which calculations take longer. The calculations needed to convert the CSS into a bitmap for the screen, or the calculations needed to convert the GIF data into a bitm…

Afaik, the browser will read GIF once and keep the bitmap in memory, then composite it into the right place when it needs it, which is a lot cheaper.

With SVG, the browser will render it once and keep a bitmap, then composite it.

With a CSS icon, there is no way for the browser to know that it's an icon at all. There is no clear delimitation between it and the rest of the page. The browser has no choice but to re-render it every single time.

Images or SVG are much better choices for icons than a bunch of CSS.

Re: HN: Please replace grayarrow.gif with Unicode character ▲

#108

Post by obtu »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #51
nextstep wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are they not logical opposites? Isn't an upvote exactly the opposite of a downvote?

Upvote = I like this. Downvote = This is noise/off-topic/abusive. Thats the way it should work, and is part of what makes HN different to say Reddit. In reality, its becoming increasingly common for people to downvote something simply because they disagree with it.

It's also a reddit rule, though hard to enforce.

Re: HN: Please replace grayarrow.gif with Unicode character ▲

#109

Post by jgeralnik »

jurre wrote: post #100
LeafStorm wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure you get downvoting powers at 500 karma. (At least, that's about when I got them. I have heard rumors that it fluctuates, and like all the mechanics of Hacker News, the precise rules are proprietary secret sauce.)

I think it might be 550 nowadays (I think I got it at that mark a couple of months ago)

Nope. I got it recently and can say for sure that it happened at exactly 500.
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