Ask HN: Why are the upvote arrows so small?

The .votearrow element on HN is 10x10px:

.votearrow { width: 10px; height: 10px; border: 0px; margin: 3px 2px 6px; background: url("triangle.svg"), linear-gradient(transparent, transparent) no-repeat; background-size: 10px; }

On mobile, I keep tapping the title instead of the arrow. I've been running this override via Stylus for a while:

.votearrow { width: 40px; height: 40px; margin: 0; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: center; background-size: 16px; cursor: pointer; }

3 comments of 6

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juped 2mo ago ↗

They're fairly large (larger than lowercase letters in the header text, comparable to uppercase). Glad you were able to fix it since you prefer them much larger.

krapp 2mo ago ↗

To be as unintrusive as possible, as per HN's general minimalist aesthetic.

Also HN was designed to be used on a PC, not mobile, around what looked good enough to pg in the early 2000s.

al_borland 2mo ago ↗

I just zoom in on mobile if I really want to vote on something.

I prefer that to the idea of a “mobile-first” site overhaul like much of the web has done. In nearly every case those efforts seem to make things worse.