This statement would be needed if anyone thought HN was an example of good design and usability, I don't think I've ever seen a comment here claim that, it seems everyone acknowledges that HN was built to work (as in, do the very minimum it can to exist) and nothing more. The lack of polish with HN is part of the charm really.
I like HN the way it is, only if I could vote on iPad (or worse, on iPhone) without having to zoom 600% in first. Those up/down arrows being so close to each other drives me crazy.
No, I have no knowledge of its existence. It looks good - I'll try it for a few days.
It might be good to submit it as a new link... I'm sure it's been posted before (though I'd never seen it), I'm sure there are many HNers who don't know about it and it might be useful for them (for iOS, there are a few nice applications; but on other platforms, I think there might be none and this web app could be a life-saver for many!)
Yes, I have it and it's very good and pretty. But I just can't possibly live without a chronological list of submissions (like http://hckrnews.com/) so right now that app just sits in my first home screen and I never use it!
>The lack of polish with HN is part of the charm really.
I do agree with that. However, there's a big difference between polish and usability.
The lack of polish may be charming, but usability flaws are anything but charming.
I don't think so, personally: the common redirection to pages which don't exist is bothering, and so is the overall slowness of the posting and (especially) edition.
Oh, and the completely fucked up comment formatting (or lack thereof) markup.
I don't think there's anything to debate there. It's just a matter of personal taste. I find the whole minimalist thing to be very "hacker-esque" (if that's the right way to say that).
I don't think something which does not actually work is hacker-esque. Minimalistic and half-baked are not the same thing, and hn is the latter more than the former.
I was commenting on the specifics things you mentioned (sans redirection to pages that don't exist). Slowness, lack of good formatting. That sort of thing.
I'm certainly not saying that half-baked is the same as minimalist, and I'm also not saying I wouldn't make some changes given the chance.
Ironically, the linked site is unusable on iPhone. The page width is twice the size of the screen AND it cannot be zoomed out. Lovely stuff, can't wait to read what the author has to say on usability of other's people work.
And I started seem to have the flame war! Here are my two cents if they make anyone feel better: First it is a recommendation from a user not lecture from a UI expert. Second as a developer I'm flattered that compared my crappy blog whose audience is me and probably one other person- its usability expectations with HN. Third your point well taken, I need to work on responsive CSS when I get to my machine later in the day. Thanks to your comments, I just fixed viewport scaling issues.
But my post is not about me. It is about an issue in HN which I thought others would be facing too.
Speaking of usability... your site doesn't scale on my iPhone, so I only see about 30% of the screen width and have to do a lot of scrolling to read anything.
Hmm, posting on a Saturday is not the best tactical time to get someone at HN to read this post... it'll have disappeared off the front-page long before Monday
In fairness, I would assume that pg and al. are clued in enough to know that HN's login and registration system is complete bollocks. They just don't care about it (presumably, they consider that there are more important things to work on than fixing this, which I'd say is probably true).
There's nothing communities like better than meta-discussion.
I've seen it myself - my post comparing HN traffic to my blog on technical vs fluffy posts actually got further longer than any of the posts it was comparing.
And that is relevant because ...? Sorry if I am not too hip for you, but readability on an iPhone screen is far from being the ultimate usability test, especially if the site is not a mobile site.
And I started seem to have the flame war! Here are my two cents if they make anyone feel better: First it is a recommendation from a user not lecture from a UI expert. Second as a developer i'm flattered that compared my crappy blog which mostly I read to boost my alter ego ;)- its usability expectations with HN. Third your point well taken, I need to work on responsive CSS when I get to my machine later in the day. In the meantime you can use Safari reader if you really want to read the article on iPhone. Sorry for the inconvenience to iPhone users. Thanks.
Note that the released source code is pretty different from the actual running site. In particular, all the rsvp code that caused the problem is not in the released source.
This statement would be needed if anyone thought HN was an example of good design and usability, I don't think I've ever seen a comment here claim that, it seems everyone acknowledges that HN was built to work (as in, do the very minimum it can to exist) and nothing more. The lack of polish with HN is part of the charm really.