I am not a css hacker but please HN change your css. smartphone experience suck • Hacker News Board

Re: I am not a css hacker but please HN change your css. smartphone experience suck

#71

Post by redthrowaway » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 2:03 PM UTC

icefox wrote: post #61

homosaur wrote: post #52

I'm resigned to the fact this website will never improve at all.

Not only will they not make the website better they are incentivised to not make it better. With the current look/feel/behavior be it good or bad they have grown because of it. Any change they make is likely to make the number of users go down. And as much as the users care about quality the owners metric is always number of users so why change it if it is "working". I am on the watch for a new social tech news site…

HN isn't really a commercial venture. It has some pretty significant benefits for YC, but pg's mostly opposed to trying to grow the site. In fact, he seems to more or less resent the growth that has happened due to the concomitant decline in overall quality.

Even if you were consider only the benefits YC gets from HN (exposure for YC companies, recruiting, and cachet), the benefits to the first from larger crowds are, I'd bet, offset by the slow dispersion of high-value members that has accompanied the drop in quality we've seen over the last couple years.

I'd be willing to bet that HN would probably serve YC's purposes better with 5,000 - 10,000 users than with 50,000 - 100,000.

Re: I am not a css hacker but please HN change your css. smartphone experience suck

#72

Post by cheeaun » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 2:12 PM UTC

hnha wrote: post #17

digitalengineer wrote: post #7

Use the Mobile Github page: http://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/

It's a blank white page in opera mobile whereas the normal hn style works pretty.

That's weird. I'll be looking into it.

Re: I am not a css hacker but please HN change your css. smartphone experience suck

#73

Post by raldi » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 2:12 PM UTC

icefox wrote: post #61

homosaur wrote: post #52

I'm resigned to the fact this website will never improve at all.

Not only will they not make the website better they are incentivised to not make it better. With the current look/feel/behavior be it good or bad they have grown because of it. Any change they make is likely to make the number of users go down. And as much as the users care about quality the owners metric is always number of users so why change it if it is "working". I am on the watch for a new social tech news site…

You really need to read up on correlation vs. causation.

Re: I am not a css hacker but please HN change your css. smartphone experience suck

#74

Post by paulsutter » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 2:17 PM UTC

I love using HN on my iPhone. It loads quickly even when the signal is weak and scrolls super nicely because of the simplicity. On mobile, I'm much more likely to read the comments before the articles because I know the comments will load super fast and the article will load super slow and be difficult to stretch into the screen.

EDIT: Go ahead and set up a site that implements your "slightly nicer CSS and HTML" that will make such a huge improvement. Publish the traffic stats so that we can all see when you get it right.

Re: I am not a css hacker but please HN change your css. smartphone experience suck

#75

Post by vintagius » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 2:17 PM UTC

On operamini HN scales great especially on the front page.

Re: I am not a css hacker but please HN change your css. smartphone experience suck

#76

Post by rubyn00bie » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 2:18 PM UTC

I think it looks fine. Everytime someone wants to make a mobile experience better, I want to kill a kitten.

More often than not it makes vastly worse. Why can't people just keep it to themselves.

Steve Jobs and Co. gave me a real browser so I didn't have to use a sub-par web. Now everyone is forcing it on me anyway. Stop. Please stop. Half of the websites I use have been ruined by responsive, and or enhancing, the mobile experience (GitHub and StackOverflow are worthless with their mobile defaults, text cannot be read because it overflows and zoom is disabled, formatting looks like shit).

Why, dear world, must people insist on fixing things that are not broken?

Re: I am not a css hacker but please HN change your css. smartphone experience suck

#77

Post by homosaur » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 2:20 PM UTC

redthrowaway wrote: post #71

icefox wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only will they not make the website better they are incentivised to not make it better. With the current look/feel/behavior be it good or bad they have grown because of it. Any change they make is likely to make the number of users go down. And as much as the users care about quality the owners metric is always number of users so why change it if it is "working". I am on the watch for a new social tech news site…

HN isn't really a commercial venture. It has some pretty significant benefits for YC, but pg's mostly opposed to trying to grow the site. In fact, he seems to more or less resent the growth that has happened due to the concomitant decline in overall quality. Even if you were consider only the benefits YC gets from HN (exposure for YC companies, recruiting, and cachet), the benefits to the first from larger crowds are…

I agree with you but I think doing things like eliminating table layout and having some sort of improved experience on mobile would not affect usership at all. You could keep the look and feel the same. There are profound technical issues with the site that affect everyone that could literally be addressed in an afternoon if anyone cared.

Re: I am not a css hacker but please HN change your css. smartphone experience suck

#78

Post by miloshadzic » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 2:24 PM UTC

paulsutter wrote: post #74

I love using HN on my iPhone. It loads quickly even when the signal is weak and scrolls super nicely because of the simplicity. On mobile, I'm much more likely to read the comments before the articles because I know the comments will load super fast and the article will load super slow and be difficult to stretch into the screen. EDIT: Go ahead and set up a site that implements your "slightly nicer CSS and HTML" that…

I'm pretty sure that slightly nicer CSS and HTML would not slow down HN.

Re: I am not a css hacker but please HN change your css. smartphone experience suck

#79

Post by publicfig » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 2:26 PM UTC

rubyn00bie wrote: post #76

I think it looks fine. Everytime someone wants to make a mobile experience better, I want to kill a kitten. More often than not it makes vastly worse. Why can't people just keep it to themselves. Steve Jobs and Co. gave me a real browser so I didn't have to use a sub-par web. Now everyone is forcing it on me anyway. Stop. Please stop. Half of the websites I use have been ruined by responsive, and or enhancing, the mo…

Are you against bad mobile implementations or just mobile implementations altogether? This seems like a weird position to take. It's not easy to read through comments and stories on most mobile browsers. It requires you to either squint to read the headlines or scroll horizontally just to read across the lines. That is a broken user experience.

Re: I am not a css hacker but please HN change your css. smartphone experience suck

#80

Post by at-fates-hands » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 2:28 PM UTC

300bps wrote: post #23

Wilya wrote: post #4

I much prefer the current HN smartphone experience to some stupid thing that displays one comment at a time in a huge font and is missing half the options. It does suck on non-smartphones phones, but nobody cares about that anyway.

My Windows Phone 8 (Lumia 928) shows HN perfectly.

Ha! Mine too.

Although I'm running on the Nokia 822. I actually just run the RSS through NextGen reader and the layout is super clean and has easy navigation for the comments.