I rewrote the HN markup to use XHTML + CSS + MicroFormats last year, but never got a chance to re-write the actual templating code in news.arc (<a href="http://www.arclanguage.org" rel="nofollow">http://www.arclanguage.org</a>).<p>If anyone's interested in finishing that last part, let me know and I'll be happy to send you the templates and stuff I made. I also added some rudimentary support for mobile-specific stylesheets and scripts.
I know a lot of folks here are actual programmers (unlike me, I mean) and can nitpick anything to death, but maybe folks have missed the part about HN being a little side project that exists to serve the goals of YC? It isn't a high priority for PG. YC is the real business. This is a free service and it serves some of YC's needs but there are no ads, it isn't monetized, etc. Unlike some of the websites folks here own, it seems to me HN does not provide enough value for pg to justify jumping through hoops backwards, blindfolded and on fire to make folks here happy with some cutting edge, WOW! coding.<p>(Personal note: Now I feel better about my sites being laid out in tables. :-P)
Here's pg's official answer (<a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1998708" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1998708</a>) :<p>why is the UI so completely neglected?<p>Because when I spend time on HN my top priority is features that will make the content better. I believe that matches the priorities of the users-- that users would rather use a site with good stories and comments and a primitive UI than one with a slick UI and worse stories and comments. And time is a zero-sum game. Spending more time on UI = spending less on quality.<p>The focus on content quality above all is the reason you find yourself saying later "If there were any other community like this..."<p>[...]
I said it once and got downvoted to hell. I'll say it again. By removing tables and moving all styles to a separate css file you can cut page size in half.<p>HN is in need of an urgent redesign.
I've all but given up giving a damn about web standards. No one _REALLY_ cares. Not the uses, not the developers, not the w3c with their open-to-interpretation "recommendations", and ESPECIALLY NOT browsers vendors who, for various reasons, aren't able to nail down a consistent interpretation of web standards.<p>The choices are to use a framework which does the shit-work for you, or resort to lowest-common denominator "whatever works" techniques like HTML tables.