New Hacker News

I've been using the Hipster News chrome extension to make it look different and it's been quite good so far. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hipsternews/midncc... It looks similar to the DesignerNews website,

Don't forget the disappearing a the reply button does in chrome.

My initial impressions are:

1) it's harder to visually skim down the page looking for interesting links because the row spacing is too high. The background being white and the text black also doesn't help this. Softening either the font color or the background is a common trick to making things feel more comfortable.

2) clicking into the comments being way over the right is something of an anti-pattern, infact all the information placed to the right of the post title/link is far less useful than the link to the comments to the point where the user that posted it and when it was posted is entirely irrelevant to me yet logically due to the position has higher priority.

3) points should be on the left as the up arrow and points are implicitly linked in a functionality -> data relationship.

4) the margin between the left border and the index number and the other margins is jarringly inequal. I'm guessing it's double due to the way you've specified margins.

Similarly the margins that create the leading between the rows on the first (and bottom margin on the last) and subsequent rows has an unpleasant inequality.

5) the uneven baseline (the HN in the logotype and the K) in the header over-emphasises the height of the font used for the title and links in the header and gives the impression that it might not all quite line up when it does.

6) also in the heading the kerning is too tight for the size and color choices of the font which makes it feel more blurry and rough than needed/intended.

I'd like the following in HN: 1) Keep not requiring JS 2) White background; the low-contrast design of HN is one of the things I hate secondmost 3) Move upvote/downvote arrows, article title, submitter, flag, etc. apart, so someone using an iPhone/iPad never hits the wrong thing.

Ideally, also make actions like voting revocable, and show my current vote for confirmation (e.g. if I've upvoted something show me a highlighted upvote arrow which I can select again to remove; don't just disappear the arrow.

You also would ideally support the "special" HN functions -- e.g. when YC sends out questions to an applicant, it might not be seen if you never use the "real" hn site, so a reskin might be an issue.