I'm a web developer and UI/UX "adventurer". I understand the idea behind the HN's UI is simplicity and that's cool, but, sometimes too simple is too simple. I wake up every morning to HN and my eyes hurt. Let me just mention a few things I notice so you see what I mean:<p>1. Leverage Mobile: See HN in your mobile, can you read it to me please?<p>2. Padding: Look at the numbers to the left (numbers inside <td> tags, are you using a for loop? hehe), can you see they are 0 pixels from the side of the page, why? Are those numbers needed anyway? I find it difficult to read and click the article I want to read, the posts are too close!<p>3. With more padding and a bigger font everything should get much better to read and process, not just for mobile...<p>4. The colors seem old-fashion and not in a good way if you ask me but if that's the branding that's fine, just do it right. For instance, look at the top-menu, open up your browser's inspector and change the color to white, much better ah? The "active" can be something else.<p>5. I would underline the article links on hover, it makes it easy to see what you are clicking.<p>6. The gamification controls are weird. Example: 126 points by user 1 hour ago | 26 comments ... See how it looks like "user" gave 126 points to the article? What about: by user 1 hour ago | 126 points | 26 comments ?<p>7. Separation: Maybe enclose the articles in boxes of some kind or just throw a line between the articles, it is so close and compact...<p>8. Submission form: why not adding some optional WYSYWYG goodies? If the limit is 2000 characters why i have to hit submit to find that out?<p>9. Ah, TABLE seriously?<p>These are just some of my findings (2000 chars limit). I would recommend other kinds of ordering, ability to curate the listings somehow, etc, but for now let's focus in the UI/UX. I'm hereby offering my services as developer to make this happen, let me know!
The most important thing you can understand is that these concerns aren't the most important thing to worry about. Content is more important. Though, if you had to pick only one feature to work on next, mobile might be it. As for the rest:<p><i>2. they are 0 pixels from the side of the page, why? Are those numbers needed anyway?</i><p>Why not? Besides the numbers telling you which page you are on, they also show how a story progresses in time.<p><i>3. With more padding and a bigger font everything should get much better to read and process</i><p>Bigger does not equal better.<p><i>4. The colors seem old-fashion</i><p>The colors make the site readable. Readability is more important than fashion.<p><i>7. it is so close and compact.</i><p>That could be intentional. It focuses attention, for example.<p><i>8. If the limit is 2000 characters why i have to hit submit to find that out?</i><p>Not displaying unnecessary things reduces cognitive load. Anything that takes 2000 characters to express is something that could be reduced in length anyway.<p><i>9. Ah, TABLE seriously?</i><p>Tables are the lists of html. The ambiguity they introduce is not always an error.<p><a href="http://paulgraham.com/arc0.html" rel="nofollow">http://paulgraham.com/arc0.html</a>
I use <a href="http://hckrnews.com/" rel="nofollow">http://hckrnews.com/</a> to read hackernews on desktop. The app I used on my phone was not updated for IOS 7 and I have not found a good replacement. I also use <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hackernew/lgoghlndihpmbbgmbpjohilcphbfhddd" rel="nofollow">https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hackernew/lgoghlnd...</a> to read hackernews in Chrome.
I reject the premise of the question. For the most part, I find HN far more usable than most web sites<i>1</i>.<p>My operational definition of "usable"? It is easy and effortless to scan headlines<i></i>, to scan articles, and, when I find something of interest, to switch mentally from scan to read mode. And - and this is very important to me - it works well with the FF extension I use to mark all unvisited links as read, so that I don't notice them next time<i>1</i>.<p>Most other web sites are simply too busy, too loaded, trying to hard to impress to usefully support this scan, open-in-new-tab, then read mode of operation (I still do it elsewhere, but it requires more effort on all other sites than HN).<p>Is HN ugly? I honestly have no idea. Maybe it is, but it stays out of my way, so I don't care.<p><i>1</i> use hckrnews.com to find articles to read - by opening in new tabs - simply because it has more articles on one page than HN; really, that's it: If the main HN page was longer, I'd visit it once, just like I do with hckrnews.com, then alt-f2 to mark all as read - as it is, I have to scan-open-altF2-next-repeat, which is tedious. Not effortful, but not seamless, either.
Use extra linefeeds to get proper line spacing for lists. Or use some spaces before each line to format as code.<p>Your auestion has been asked and answered quite a lot before, so you might find some interesting answers if you search.
ooops, and what about the auto-formatting of the posts? look how all my newlines were removed :| I know, i guess i could have used some HTML tags there, but really?
It's ironic. We're all about disrupting and innovation except for our own sacred link sharing site. The answer you will get every time from these guys: Its good enough. Some perspective: Its 2014 and HN isn't mobile friendly #wtf