Hmmm, that is strange. I did test it in Firefox a while back, but I must have changed something in the meantime. I run Safari and Chrome personally, so I never noticed that. I'll see if I can fix that.
edit: It should be fixed now. Thanks for reporting the problem.
If you go to the about page[1], you'll find extensions for both chrome and safari. These extensions will highlight new comments, as well as make comment threads collapsible (a la reddit).
I really wish HN would adopt some of Reddit's features - ability to choose how comments are sorted for one, and the ability to collapse comment threads.
Overall, I dislike it. On the plus side there are more stories to scroll through and the hover effect is nice. But I don't think that makes up for the font. Plus, when you scroll down there's no way to tell which column is comments and which is points.
What OS/browser are you using? What is your issue with the font? edit: Others seemed to be saying the same thing. I switched to a sans family stack. Let me know if that is better.
As for the column thing -- this is something I use every day, so I designed it mostly for repeat usage. I didn't want to pin a header or add extraneous text to make that clear. Use it for a while, and it should become second nature that points is closest to the story description.
Sorry for the late reply - the font was more a matter of personal taste. I like the sans much better.
Of course if I used it often enough I'm sure I'd remember which was points and which was comments, but when you make a choice like that you should remember you are forcing the users to learn and remember that. There are going to be users that simply don't like being forced to do that extra mental effort.
I really like your site. I want to completely switch to your site. But..
1. Some stories are Missing: For example, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1787019 ("When Intel’s Hyper Threading goes bad") was posted on Oct 13, 2010. But it is missing your list.
2. How often do you update #Points & #Comments? I mean if I just post a comment or upvote any OLD story on news.combinator.com & then if I browse back to that day on your site. Its not showing the updated values. I guess you are storing the stories but not updating them. What is your criterion for updating the #Points & #Comments?
3. What is your criterion for "top" in top 10, 20, 50%? Its definitely not points.
PS: How are you getting the stories from news.ycombinator.com? Scraping or do they offer some JSON API?
Author here. Part of the reason I built this is so that I could skip a day or two, and still come back and see what was posted. Unfortunately, that means finding this thread 11 hours after it was posted. I'll respond to the comments.
I'm not sure who posted this this time, but when I first posted it, it never found much traction.
One of (IMHO) the problems with Hacker News is that there is no good way to store and locate meta information. So all the mashups, meetups, resources that have been inspired or built around and by the community live and die by being posted as stories. If someone isn't an obsessive reader of the site, it's pretty easy to miss these things. Resourcey is a good link, but you must also know it exists in order to find the other links.
Yep, it was created by me and my partner in all things startup (he lurks on HN, doesn't comment much). It was inspired by Hacker News, although we cover any sites people wish to add.
Please, visit and upvote the resources you like, and add any resources you can think of. There are already a few gems there, for HN and other sites.
This is where I actually think Digg is better than HN and Reddit. Their content and community may not be nearly as good, but at least they ATTEMPT to improve their UI and general functionality. Soon I have been on HN for a year, and I do not think I have noticed a single change to the site.
I know that interface is not everything and that once you get used to this simple one, you really get to like it, but I would just expect that a tech site, where 1/4 of the articles are about design, would try to push itself a bit more.
I would _never_ want Digg and HN to compete. They are two entirely different sites. I was merely comparing their design philosophies, not their general purposes.
And I apologize if my post is seen as a complaint. I was trying to be constructive.
Looks nice overall. But Caslon is a bit blurry and hard to read at less than 18px on Windows with Cleartype enabled. I'd either switch to Georgia or bump up the size.
It seems this is a common theme. I switched to a sans stack, that should be easier to read, if not so pretty.
An aside, but one thing I love that both Safari and Chrome now do (at least, maybe others do as well) is remember the font size instructions for a site. So, if you bump up the font size -- next time you visit it keeps it at the larger font size.
I figured that pg has kept HN feature and design limited so that the users can hack and chop it how they want it (eg. I have simple email thread alerts)
I knew that the shapes in the orange boxes on the left were probably letters and numbers, but I honestly could not tell which ones they were (especially just looking at the top one, which for me right now is "6am"). I ended up copying and pasting the text into my address bar to read it. I'd suggest a different font. (I'm on Win7/Chrome Beta).
I can understand why you thought they would be sortable. However, it's designed around being a chronological list. When I want to scan the higher rated stories, I use the filter links -- top 10, top 20, top 50%. Sorting by points or comments does make some sense, however, it is also a function of how long a story has been posted -- so I don't really think a javascript sort in place would be too useful.
As for the UI design -- I wanted a simple list of stories that I could scan, plus I wanted to be able to see the points and number of comments associated with that story. While I understand your point about highest importance, if I had placed the numbers on the right the ragged right nature of the text would make it hard to scan.
Great idea but the UI needs some work... Everything blends together. What I'd love is notifications when a comment receives a reply. Sign me up for that!
Can you comment on why you find it less scannable? In fact, I find the opposite -- just the information I need, with no noise, on a clean white background. But, of course I'm biased.
I did add alternating backgrounds -- I'm not sure I'll leave it like that, but do you find that better for scanning?
I don't think this is a good idea. As a somewhat loose comparison I wouldn't make a newyrktimes.com with an alternative layout either. There must be endless other ways of spending one's spare time, e.g. by making something you can charge for. I know this sounds harsh and I don't mean to rip on the author personally, but in general I think there are too many derivative-of-derivative services out there.
I think it is a great exercise to reimagine your favorite websites. Build junk. Because it is fun. Because it teaches you. Because no one expects it to be awesome so you can be free to play.
You have to sharpen the saw somehow and by taking an existing site you can focus entirely on the interface and not on requirements capturing or brand establishment since those have been provided for you.
It makes us designers stronger. One of the first things I tell people trying to better their design is just that… redo your favourite website. Learn the techniques they used, find out what they did what they did and then mess it up and make it better.
Thanks for the input. I'm working on my startup as well, so don't be too worried about how I'm spending my spare time.
In fact, in one way, I made this so I could spend more time on my startup. I found myself wasting too much time reading Hacker News. Either I was procrastinating and refreshing too often, where I found it hard to either identify what story was new that I hadn't seen, or which ones I'd already seen but did not interest me. Or, I was going back and reading simply so I wouldn't miss anything, since stories tend to trail off pretty quickly unless they get a lot of votes.
Well I like the original better I guess (nice to see a different design take though... I ain't hatin'). Guessing your alt. design would look cool in an ipad though.
