HN Explorer

33 comments

[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 68.4 ms ] thread
ricefield
Sorry, but i'm not sure i find your "readable" hacker news more readable than the default layout. Might be because I don't mind reading small text, and can't bear scrolling. Also find the font and color choices iffy.

That being said, I think it has some of potential. Maybe do a little user testing and get a little more feedback and iterate on the design?

jarquesp
It's definitely an on-going thing. Over the past week I've gotten feedback and kept working on it, changing things here and there. I finally decided that it's at a good enough spot to post on Hacker News and get even more feedback.

It's been a 50/50 hit on whether or not to use a sans-serif or serif typeface. At least that's the biggest type of feedback I've gotten thus far.

But yes, I'd love feedback on this.

ricefield
I think I'm fairly ambivalent about whether a sans-serif or a serif is used, but I do think the font should be smaller.

Also, a less contrasting color scheme than red-grey

keyle
I agree, it's not really usable. That being said, if you would give settings, everyone could make their own style. That would be ace!
jarquesp
A settings menu is on my todo list. An easy way for you to customize the look and feel, fonts, colors etc.
jemka
I actually use hnsort.com for a related reason. Do you think you'll be adding any sorting options? Maybe even a feature like reddit to hide posts?

Thanks!

idle_processor
Aesthetic changes like this seem better suited to being Stylish[1] layouts or Greasemonkey[2] scripts, rather than full-blown extensions.

A quick userscripts.org search for Hacker News reinforces this: http://userscripts.org/search?cref=http%3A%2F%2Fuserscripts....

[1] http://userstyles.org/stylish/

[2] http://www.greasespot.net/

jarquesp
I ran into a few limitations when using Stylish (didn't try Greasemonkey).

This extension uses a JavaScript to re-align some elements, change classes etc. It's not only aesthetic changes, at least won't be in the next few updates.

lfx
It's nice. Text is easer to read.

But, could you add some color schemes, from witch I can choose? It would be great.

bkudria
I think this looks pretty good! Thanks!
tealtan
I'm happy with your design choices, actually. However, I do wish that clicking through to the comments was easier - giving the link a larger hit area, for example.
didip
hm, I was expecting Readability-like styling, but it's a good start. A couple of feedback:

    * make the upvote arrow HUGE.

    * make the comments link HUGE.

    * more contrast between color and background-color.
jarquesp
I've been thinking about changing the up arrow. Will play around with it.

Also, I just noticed that text within code is terrible.

Herald_MJ
I like it! If you could also make comment threads foldable, it would be fantastic.
akent
Seems like a solution in search of a problem to me.
jonmaim
If you can keep the one page no-scroll policy of the default layout that would be awesome!
johnm
Cool.

Yes, customizability would be key for me. There's not enough contrast now, I'd change the typefaces and font settings, and the line-height (and a bunch of the rest of the spacing as well).

jschuur
My biggest beef with HN (apart from the amount of cool articles on it) isn't the look and feel of the site, it's the inability to distinguish old from new content.

I know, I could probably just subscribe to the RSS feed and do this in a feed aggregator, but sometimes I want to just quickly look at the front page and see the new stories since my last visit, without also having to deal with the stuff from 2 day ago that is still unread in Google Reader e.g..

Are the any community HN tools out there to help me out here?

_frog
For me, visited links are greyed out whilst anything I haven't seen since last visit is black.

Are you emptying your cache and history on exit perchance?

Here's what I see for reference: http://cl.ly/57jx

jschuur
No, but that assumes I visit every link. I only end up clicking on 10-20% of them.

I suppose I could simply find a browser extension t visit all the links on the site, automatically, but that doesn't seem right if I'm not going to look at the articles.

greyman
I like to original comments page more. The font after applying the extension is not contrasty enough, and the gap between the lines is too big. It's definitely not more readable.

Generally, too much free space - I personally prefer tighter desing with less scrolling. But still good try, it would be great if you offered some customizations.

snarknet
Yeah, I'm using it right now. A thicker font would be wonderful.
mise
You're certainly addressing a problem. HN is the only site I leave zoomed-in in Firefox.
jasonkester
Ow. My squint muscles are just now recovering from having that thing up for a minute.

I think this has conclusively proven that light grey on light grey is not a good color scheme for "readability".