The redesign makes titles smaller and metadata larger, in effect making them the same size.
I think this is a bad change, because now there's little distinction between title and metadata.
It's probably not the prettiest but I like it.
The problem when it comes to listings is that information needs to be easily scannable. The information to be scanned usually has a certain hierarchy, so there has to be a separation that reflects this hierarchy. If you use your solution, you favour optimal separation while sacrificing scanability.
This is not exactly a straight-forward problem to solve because the hierarchy is different for everyone. But one thing we can all agree on is that the title is at the very top of it. So, having the title in a bigger font-size, maybe bold, but definitely more contrasted as the stuff around it goes without saying. So the current HN style is not that far off the mark, though I think it could do with less data and/or more whitespace, to counter the "gray haze syndrome".
A straightforward fix for this meta-data clutter would be to make it collapsable, you could then show it in a tooltip on hover for example. Or make it collapsable on a per story basis to cater for tablet/phone users.
The voting buttons are still too small.
I designed this last, late California night. So the design isn't finished; this is a first draft.
Obviously the posts themselves are an issue. I didn't put much attention to the posts. I'll do that. Some of the feedback I got on it were: 1. Larger vote buttons. 2. Less contrast (too hard on the eyes). 3. Too much white space, a little too small of text. 4. Focus on title, not author.
Some other feedback I got was on the orange color. I pulled this straight from HN's header bar. I guess because the bar is taller that the color is brighter. I need to think about if it's the color or the surrounding elements that make it feel this way.
Keep up the commenting and feedback. I'm not finished here yet. I really liked the HackerWeb design, but it's too narrow; it feels like a mobile app. I'll pull some inspiration from there, but I really want to bring the design back to a "hacker" feel. So stay tooned!
Only thing is now for some reason chrome isn't displaying urls at the bottom of the page when I hover over links?
That's weird, probably on your end as it works fine for me.
There's just enough space between articles and a ton of stuff fits on the screen at once. If it's not to your liking, there's a ton of alternative HN design services out there you can use.
Browser: Chromium, Extension: "HipsterNews" -> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hipsternews/midncc...
It's a copy of news.layervault.com, which copied news.yc in the first place. I'm sure there is some sort of joke in there somewhere.
I switched to Hacker News Enhancement Suite https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-enhanc...
I really like the way it fits in my narrow browser window! Many redesigns don't.
And I like the bigger upvote button.
It seems this is editable, I will check back later to add my perception of HN.