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Is there a justification as to why Hacker News is without responsive design?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Is there a justification as to why Hacker News is without responsive design?

#11

Post by sliverstorm »

andrewbaron wrote: post #5
sliverstorm wrote: post #3

I personally figure the answer is something along the lines of, responsive design takes effort to add, and nobody on the development team thought it was valuable enough to go to the trouble. I'm not a web developer, but to my memory responsive design isn't something that just comes by default.

I think you are right that it does take a lot of effort for to do it right, one needs to design a whole new compatible experience. On the other hand, this interface and dataset here is fairly raw already, so a lot of the form would follow naturally.

I'm not saying it would be hard. I'm just observing that the default state is not responsive design.

Re: Is there a justification as to why Hacker News is without responsive design?

#13

Post by notwhyships »

kevin wrote: post #7

I wrote a bit about it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7960105 Here's the appropriate excerpt: "When the new team took over development on HN, we decided that before we implement any new frontend features for the site we needed to update the markup HN uses to make it easier to implement such features in the future (just the markup, not the aesthetics). Creating a visually identical version of HN with CSS3/…

Were both HN and YC's internal software written in PG's Arc language? If so, will that continue to be the case? If not, what are you using on the back ends?

Re: Is there a justification as to why Hacker News is without responsive design?

#15

Post by robgibbons »

sliverstorm wrote: post #3

I personally figure the answer is something along the lines of, responsive design takes effort to add, and nobody on the development team thought it was valuable enough to go to the trouble. I'm not a web developer, but to my memory responsive design isn't something that just comes by default.

Responsive is really not difficult, to the point that it is easy. And I always advocate 'doing it by default' because it's actually more of a pain to refactor later. Basically you just have to understand floats, and using fluid design in contrast to fixed-width/absolute elements.

That said, I'm satisfied by the justification: HN lacks an API, so lots of people have built apps that scrape the frontend markup. It would break many apps overnight to just flip the switch.

Re: Is there a justification as to why Hacker News is without responsive design?

#16

Post by andrewbaron »

kevin wrote: post #7

I wrote a bit about it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7960105 Here's the appropriate excerpt: "When the new team took over development on HN, we decided that before we implement any new frontend features for the site we needed to update the markup HN uses to make it easier to implement such features in the future (just the markup, not the aesthetics). Creating a visually identical version of HN with CSS3/…

Thx!

Re: Is there a justification as to why Hacker News is without responsive design?

#17

Post by marssaxman »

krapp wrote: post #9
timrosenblatt wrote: post #6

Run a view source. The code isn't what most of us consider to be best practices (table layouts and font tags all over). It could be difficult to add. But the site still works, which says something about the difference between great code and a great product. Still -- I'm with you. I wish there were a better mobile experience.

I wouldn't call Hacker News a great product, as regards the UX and layout (which is probably the worst possible way to implement a nested list in HTML.) I would call it a great community and an acceptable product. It's basically a toy that got popular because it was attached to YCombinator, and remained popular because programmers have a higher tolerance for UX pain than mere mortals.

HN's ux is a sweet, painless relief compared to most of the web. It is unpretentious and functional. I would be disappointed if it were "improved".

Re: Is there a justification as to why Hacker News is without responsive design?

#18

Post by krapp »

marssaxman wrote: post #17
krapp wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't call Hacker News a great product, as regards the UX and layout (which is probably the worst possible way to implement a nested list in HTML.) I would call it a great community and an acceptable product. It's basically a toy that got popular because it was attached to YCombinator, and remained popular because programmers have a higher tolerance for UX pain than mere mortals.

HN's ux is a sweet, painless relief compared to most of the web. It is unpretentious and functional. I would be disappointed if it were "improved".

Not every possible 'improvement' needs to slide down the slippery slope of pretentious frippery, though.

Being able to use the site more easily in mobile is would be an actual improvement. I would also argue that collapsible comments would also serve the site without degrading it. Some typographic tweaks, such as increasing the line-height, would make large text boxes easier to read. And I doubt anyone who has lost a post due to a dead link would consider Hacker News entirely painless.

Re: Is there a justification as to why Hacker News is without responsive design?

#19

Post by lstamour »

kevin wrote: post #7

I wrote a bit about it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7960105 Here's the appropriate excerpt: "When the new team took over development on HN, we decided that before we implement any new frontend features for the site we needed to update the markup HN uses to make it easier to implement such features in the future (just the markup, not the aesthetics). Creating a visually identical version of HN with CSS3/…

While I see the appeal, every time I have to zoom in, a part of me wishes there was a nicer stylesheet for mobile, HTML-be-damned. I suppose tables really were anti-responsive: before them text naturally flowed, after them, text generally flowed again. Of course... Design could still mess things up ;-)
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