Ask HN: New attempt at mobile markup – keep or bail?

497 points by dang ↗ HN
We just deployed a new attempt to make HN work better on mobile. Should we keep it? Feedback, please.

298 comments

[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 291 ms ] thread
Maybe just me, but it seems to have a lack of padding around the edges. Also the comment input isn't mobile optimized.
What do you mean by the comment input? Some pages are still rendering the old way; it may be that that's one of them.

If we're going to keep these changes we'll upgrade the remaining pages soon.

With mobile safari, activating the comment box zooms in slightly, such that it no longer fits in one page width.
I think it is an improvement and was actually coming to Ask HN to ask if anyone else was seeing this. I'm glad I saw your post first.
Sorry to beat you to the punch, but I learned my lesson the last time we tried something like this.
Yes. On Android it's comparable to how well the old markup worked with Windows Phone 7, which made me wonder why people were complaining.
This is a vast improvement in every way, IMHO. Maybe tweak it, but don't go back, please!
can we make the up/down vote buttons for comments bigger or at least in different places? It's impossible to hit correctly unless you zoom in.
This looks (and more importantly, works) much better than before.

For those not on mobile, here is what the new layout looks like on an iPhone 6s on iOS 9.0.1. ==> http://imgur.com/5LgB1xB.jpg

Here is what the comment page looks like ==> http://i.imgur.com/ugOASR5.png

This is the viewport bug when you try to enter a comment ==> http://i.imgur.com/i0Ekiod.png and http://i.imgur.com/T0NDIFc.png

Agreed, big fan here (iPhone 6, iOS 9.1)
Significant improvement. Please don't bail.
I didn't even have to put my device in landscape mode and pinch to read this post title. WTG.
Viewport "bug" is a "feature" in iOS—change the textarea's font-size to 16px to override the auto-zoom.
This works very well:

@media screen and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio:0) { select:focus, textarea:focus, input:focus { font-size: 16px; } }

It uses a css selector only available on iOS devices and enables a larger font to prevent zoom.

[Original concept] http://stackoverflow.com/a/16255670/209005

There are quite a few good code snippets and suggestions for improvements to the CSS here.

I only wish there was some collaborative environment we could use to request changes to the code be pulled in and utilized.

This is what I see in Chrome on iOS 9.0.2 / iPhone 6s: http://i.imgur.com/idgEFon.png

While I definitely support the larger format, I'd like to see the top bar laid out in a more mobile-friendly manner. Currently it feels like I've done Ctrl + Plus on the page a few too many times, rather than the site being properly optimised. Shrink the font by one notch and I'm reasonably happy. I realise that this is a work in progress though.

Great start though! My vote goes to 'Keep'.

But why does horizontal mode (my standard casual reading mode) look so blown out? ==> http://imgur.com/5Z6q6wI

(iOS 9, iPhone 5, Safari)

I use the same environment -- iPhone 5c, iOS 9 and Safari and have the exact same experience.

Personally, I'd like the old mobile display back!!

Edit - I noticed that the OP was logged out in the screenshot, so I tried it again. Here is an image of the screen when I am not logged in:

http://imgur.com/xuhywK6

Here is the image of the screen when I am logged in:

http://imgur.com/kHjbFWz

The only difference between the two cases is that I was too lazy to log out, so I just pulled up the page in private mode.

I wish I had an iPhone 6 as I'd like to try this case with the OP's environment.

(comment deleted)
Looks like they need to use -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%
If they can fix this, then I'm all for the new layout!
fwiw, as of right now wide view looks fine (full-width) in firefox on android.
I'm on Firefox Mobile right now on my tablet, a Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4. The full site looks perfectly good with the only exception that "click targets" are annoyingly small.

My suggestion is that each user should be able to set his desired text size / DPI resolution per device (tracked via cookies of course), so that I can have properly clickable comment links and upvote buttons and so on on my tablet, and keep everything as before from my laptop.

"This is the viewport bug when you try to enter a comment."

This viewport bug appears when I just open the comment page.

Keep - but dang et. al. can you make the comments link target touch area slightly bigger somehow? It's way to easy to launch the article link when you're trying to tap the comments link.
It's an improvement, but the up/down-vote buttons are still way too small to hit comfortably.
It's an improvement, keep pressing on.

One thing I'd do is find a way to minimize the detail line below the headline. It doesn't need to be as large - it tends to wrap into a second line (at least on my iOS 9.1 iPhone 5s).

The detail line also doesn't need to be as verbose, IMO...

e.g.:

    200 points by foobar 8 hours ago | flag | 192 comments
could be simplified to

    200 pts by foobar 8h ago | flag | 192c
Or something like this (c is a bit ambiguous for me)

    200 pt, foobar (8h) | flag | 192 cmts
If the clickable area is what counts, how about this?

    +200 by foobar | flag | comment (192 in 8h)
I definitely approve of this version, better visually too
Although I would recommend keeping the "192 comments" link at least as large as it currently is. That's probably the 2nd-most tapped-on link (after the link to the source itself), and it's fairly difficult to aim correctly on mobile. Making it even smaller will make it harder to tap.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law

Off-topic, but I really wouldn't be surprised if it was clicked more often than the link to the source.
I always go to comments before clicking on the article link. While I'm reading, post can go away from current HN page and it is hard to locate it again.

Ps. iPhone4 is not compatible with new layout at all.

Good point. So let's talk about that upvote arrow next... =)
Seconded. The up-vote arrow is also in need of larger scaling, so it's easier to click.
Very informative link. Thank you for sharing it. I didn't know HCI was such a huge field.
Keep it. The text flows nicely now -- that was my biggest problem with the previous mobile UI.
Keep. It at least now saves me a zoom pinch. :)
It's a good step! I have suggestions to clean it up:

1- You should add a margin on the left and right side so that the content doesn't bleed to the edge of the screen. (10px would keep it aligned with the input bar on iOS Safari).

2- The floating login link looks weird, I would just add it along the rest of the links below "Hacker News". To keep it tight, only show the Submit link if the user is logged in.

3- Add margin to the logo and make it bigger. Also, the entire orange bar could be made more spacious.

The main difference I notice is that I can no longer double-tap to zoom on the main page. I can learn to get used to pinch zooming, but it will be more difficult to use HN with one hand on my large phone.

I have to zoom because otherwise it's impossible to click the correct links.

Happy with the improvements! Can you increase the text size so you can click on the discussion links?
Much better here (android). Some things:

1. Possibly too much whitespace left/right of content.

2. Are the rank numbers necessary, or could they be moved to the meta-detail?

3. Bigger upvote and comment targets would be nice.

Moving rank to the meta-detail line (alongside the point-count) could work very well.
Keep. Add a bit of margins, slim down metadata and make links bigger / easier to hit. I like the improvement though.
iOS User - I'm not a fan, don't like the text stacking and I like the regular interface.
iPhone 6 Plus. Definitely keep.
Definitely a good start... Far easier to use already. Comments screen seems too wide... Scrolling left and right but yes... Great start.
It would be helpful to have '{n} comments' closer to the left under thr headline in a consistent location so one's left thumb can more easily reach that. Other than that this looks like an improvement.
Pretty bad on iPhone5/iOS9.1, lot of useless margin. But at least it's readable. Keep it.
Don't bail. But here are my suggestions.

Make the "post" page more mobile friendly. Currently I need to scroll a lot to read the content. When I mean post page, I mean the page that comes up when you click on a post.

May be add a very teeny little margin. Again I know HN is more towards KISS, so you can ignore me here.

Apart from that, the rest works great on iPhone6. Good job.

Not bad, please add mobile view to the login page as well :-)