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Hacker News Redesign

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Re: Hacker News Redesign

#81

Post by notatoad »

SeoxyS wrote: post #12

I'm sorry, but this is a perfect example of the difference between design and eye candy. Often, people wonder why I spend $50,000 a year going to design school, when I can learn how to make things that are just as shiny by reading psdtuts.com. The difference is that style is only skin-deep. It's superficial. It's an added bonus on top of design . Design, on the other hand, is the core of the product: how it functions…

I hate the assumption that higher information density is always a good thing. White space is important, for aesthetics, readability, and usability. HN in its current state is far too tightly spaced.

Re: Hacker News Redesign

#82

Post by possibilistic »

SeoxyS wrote: post #12

I'm sorry, but this is a perfect example of the difference between design and eye candy. Often, people wonder why I spend $50,000 a year going to design school, when I can learn how to make things that are just as shiny by reading psdtuts.com. The difference is that style is only skin-deep. It's superficial. It's an added bonus on top of design . Design, on the other hand, is the core of the product: how it functions…

I never realized HN supported HTTPS until you posted that screenshot. That's absolutely excellent to know! Inadvertent thanks!

Re: Hacker News Redesign

#83

Post by treyp »

waxjar wrote: post #47
padenot wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you mind sharing the extra stylesheet you mention ?

I believe this is the stylesheet: https://github.com/Primigenus/Cleaner-Hacker-News .

i've been trying out some of the hacker news style extensions, and this one suffers from the same problem as the others -- when you're reading comments, and the comments are centered without a background color for the content div, you can't figure out how deeply nested comments are. it makes it difficult to figure out which comments are top level and which are responses.

Re: Hacker News Redesign

#84

Post by jakejake »

I actually like this design, it's clean. The only thing I don't like is that each row is doesn't seem to be vertically aligned. The index number and number of votes are vertical-middle aligned. The article title seems to have too much padding at the top. Then the number of comments speech bubble seems to be bottom-aligned with the article author.

If it was all middle-aligned or top-aligned I think it would look pretty cool.

Re: Hacker News Redesign

#85

Post by dhx »

XLcommerce wrote: post #65

A few people have mentioned information density as being important. I've got the 'Stylish' chrome extension installed with a userstyle for hn which looks like this: table > tbody > tr:nth-child(3) > td{-webkit-column-count: 2; } 2 column layout is v.cool. Makes the front page as well as the comments section much more readable for me. example: http://imgur.com/a/oidEM#1

It is easier for a user to scroll down a long continuous list than to hop back and forth between two columns. This is particularly true for ordered lists (as is the case with HN).

The only thing I strongly dislike about HN's current design is that comment line lengths are far too long[1].

[1] http://baymard.com/blog/line-length-readability

Re: Hacker News Redesign

#86

Post by fleitz »

Like the design over all but one change I would make is to remove the post numbering eg. 1 through 20, and then integrate the upvote with the points button and likely do the points button in the style of the post number. eg. orange on white.

Re: Hacker News Redesign

#87

Post by pacomerh »

sandGorgon wrote: post #58

Why do all these redesigns have serial numbers ? what purpose do they serve ? Submissions to HN move up and down dynamically - remove the serial numbers and show (302 points..25 comments) which should be CLICKABLE. This will bring front and center the only two things that people judge in deciding to read a submission. Plus it will make it easier to click on a mobile device.

Indeed, he added the serial numbers because he was thinking in design elements not in functionality. It's very common practice of designers who don't do much UX.

Re: Hacker News Redesign

#88

Post by SeoxyS »

treyp wrote: post #83
waxjar wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe this is the stylesheet: https://github.com/Primigenus/Cleaner-Hacker-News .

i've been trying out some of the hacker news style extensions, and this one suffers from the same problem as the others -- when you're reading comments, and the comments are centered without a background color for the content div, you can't figure out how deeply nested comments are. it makes it difficult to figure out which comments are top level and which are responses.

I would actually love a line à-la reddit that shows the nesting level clearly but subtly.

Re: Hacker News Redesign

#89

Post by pacomerh »

dhugiaskmak wrote: post #39
SeoxyS wrote: post #12

I'm sorry, but this is a perfect example of the difference between design and eye candy. Often, people wonder why I spend $50,000 a year going to design school, when I can learn how to make things that are just as shiny by reading psdtuts.com. The difference is that style is only skin-deep. It's superficial. It's an added bonus on top of design . Design, on the other hand, is the core of the product: how it functions…

Check out this redesign Am I missing something? I don't see any noticeable difference between this and the current design. It's now harder to read I find it immensely more readable than the current design, which to me is a left-justified wall of dense, unnavigable text. The low-contrast colors of the secondary information make it hard to pick out information quickly and increase eye strain.

Schooled designers are very sensitive to fonts. While he sees a world of difference because of that font change, you might see almost the same design. Because they study them deeply. They see them from another perspective, more like the story behind them. I've worked with many designers from Art Center in Pasadena and this has happened to me many times, where I need to make a further effort to understand them, and viceversa.

Re: Hacker News Redesign

#90

Post by tedkimble »

SeoxyS wrote: post #12

I'm sorry, but this is a perfect example of the difference between design and eye candy. Often, people wonder why I spend $50,000 a year going to design school, when I can learn how to make things that are just as shiny by reading psdtuts.com. The difference is that style is only skin-deep. It's superficial. It's an added bonus on top of design . Design, on the other hand, is the core of the product: how it functions…

I wouldn't call it eye candy, exactly, but I do think that most HN design submissions are little more than illustration. But I also think that design is much more closely related to engineering than any primarily superficial discipline. (Such is my experience after an undergraduate in physics and a master's in architecture.)

Both engineering and design are instances of the same type of problem solving process. But because design is focused more on qualitative and subjective elements, its state space is much larger and, I believe, its design solutions (or attractors) more fuzzy. Because of this, design and engineering actualize themselves quite differently in real life, often requiring different skill-sets.

And I think that because the web and application design disciplines require more engineering-thinking -- architecture, for example, must also consider spatio-temporal qualities -- most design-thinking is delegated only to the most superficial facets of the process. What would really help understanding is for more designers to push into the engineering side of things, and more engineers into the design side of things.

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