HN Explorer

Why is Hacker News still keep this hard-to-use UI and has such poor readability?

8 points by rydensun ↗ HN
Hacker News has been around for years, but its UI feels stuck in the past. It’s not user-friendly, and the readability is quite poor compared to modern platforms. Every time I use it, I suffer.

Why hasn’t this been improved? Is it a deliberate choice to keep things minimal, or is it simply not a priority?

26 comments

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dzdt
The UI is simple, clean, and keeps the focus on the site's discussion. It is really good at doing the things that make this site good.

I don't know what you are wishing was different. I've always appreciated and enjoyed the UI here. What about it makes you suffer?

cratermoon
I can tell you what makes me suffer

the low-contrast grey (#828282) on white

the 12pt text

the relatively cramped linespacing between the titleline and the subtext on the main page

The tiny 10px votearrow

[dead] db48x
[flagged]
nilslindemann
> The tiny 10px votearrow

Yeah, I constantly mis click that.

Just wrote myself a user style for URLs beginning with https://news.ycombinator.com/item (Not tested on other displays):

.votearrow { width: 14pt; height: 14pt; background-size: 10pt; background-repeat: no-repeat; margin-top: -1pt; }

.comhead, .default, .reply a, .subtext, .comment, p { font-size: 10pt !important; }

.title, .default, .default > div { padding-top: 0 !important; margin-top: 0 !important; vertical-align: top; }

.athing.comtr { display: block; margin-top: 10px !important; }

.reply u, .reply a { text-decoration: none !important; color: #828282; }

.reply a:hover { text-decoration: underline !important; }

JohnFen
> The tiny 10px votearrow

When I increase the text size, those arrows get bigger as well.

anonzzzies
It is fast and simple. Not sure what suffering you are feeling. There are many other clients and you can make one in less than an hour with sonnet. Also you can use a browser snippet to change the css if that's enough.
dr_feelbad
What’s the problem with the UI? The small default font size? If so, you can use your browser’s zoom function to adjust as needed. And it works fine on phones.
cadamsdotcom
Please don’t change HN. It’s fast, clean, simple.

“You can please some of the people, some of the time” - Steve Jobs

Hackbraten
My phone sometimes degrades to 2G for some reason. HN is one of the last few remaining websites that still work well on 2G.

Please don't take that small island away from us.

SG-
A dark mode would be nice. And I know there’s browser extensions that try their best but nothing really beats custom CSS.

Also slightly better mobile rendering would be good.

tluyben2
I tried to vibe code (I don't like the term and normally would never) this as someone here suggested, so here [0]. It did not 'quite' take less than an hour and it's not usable yet for writing (just reading); it does have working dark mode though.

I only helped out when it was completely stuck (twice), other than that I didn't read or check the code, just talked (voice) ideas to it when it was done while doing other (not vibe) coding while it was looping over it. I did, I guess stupidly, dictate the tech; I wanted to try Go + htmx; that probably didn't help; probably Python and/or React would've lead to better results.

[0] https://github.com/tluyben/go-hn

JohnFen
It's funny how much personal tastes can differ. I think that HN's UI is far better than most websites these days.
chistev
It's simple and clean. Not all sites need to be heavy on Javascript, lol
dormento
PROTIP: you can use your browser's zoom/accessibility/font-adjustment settings to solve most (if not all) of these problems.
barryrandall
But for modernity's sake, the site needs to add 100 MB of poorly-understood and maintained JavaScript dependencies that break the behavior you're describing so that it can be done entirely in JS.
rydensun
This indicates that the readability is truly poor.
chistev
What makes it not user-friendly?
etblg
I like it, it reminds me of the olden days when sites were basic and functional before everything got crammed full of design practices and analytics and ads and marketing and tons of things vying for your attention at once.

People have a username, they make a post, it's all text, it's fast, it's simple, it works. We still have the rest of the internet to have "good UI" and "readability".

f30e3dfed1c9
I'll agree generally with those who say it's OK as it is. I have to increase the size by quite a lot to make it readable for me but other than that, it's OK. It could be improved by someone with good typographical taste but those are not generally the people designing the (self-described) "modern" web style. So my guess is that changing it would most likely make it worse.
lee-rhapsody
Do you have more specific critiques? I think HN's UX is great.

I think you're just used to more bloated "pretty" sites.

photonios
HN is almost perfect as it is. I really hope it does not change.

I love that it barely has any styling. Just enough to make it work. The fact that it doesn't use any design patterns is actually one of the reasons I visit HN.

The only thing I would change is the font sizes on mobile. I find it hard to tap the `Comments` link or the upvote buttons. I sometimes end up fat fingering those. Maybe a little bigger or a bit more padding?

Blackstrat
I like it as is. It harkens back to the era when content mattered , e.g. Usenet and the like, unlike the “modern” era when the websites are flashy and unusable. I would suggest that if this presentation isn’t acceptable, that perhaps it isn’t the information that matters most to you.
rydensun
Every time I visit this site, I have to zoom out, and the low contrast is still killing my eyes. The reply UX is frustrating—I don’t want to disrupt the reading flow by being redirected to a separate reply page. Can’t I just reply directly under a comment without leaving the page? I’m not asking for anything fancy, but at least aim for something like Reddit’s style.