1) it's harder to visually skim down the page looking for interesting links because the row spacing is too high. The background being white and the text black also doesn't help this. Softening either the font color or the background is a common trick to making things feel more comfortable.
2) clicking into the comments being way over the right is something of an anti-pattern, infact all the information placed to the right of the post title/link is far less useful than the link to the comments to the point where the user that posted it and when it was posted is entirely irrelevant to me yet logically due to the position has higher priority.
3) points should be on the left as the up arrow and points are implicitly linked in a functionality -> data relationship.
4) the margin between the left border and the index number and the other margins is jarringly inequal. I'm guessing it's double due to the way you've specified margins.
Similarly the margins that create the leading between the rows on the first (and bottom margin on the last) and subsequent rows has an unpleasant inequality.
5) the uneven baseline (the HN in the logotype and the K) in the header over-emphasises the height of the font used for the title and links in the header and gives the impression that it might not all quite line up when it does.
6) also in the heading the kerning is too tight for the size and color choices of the font which makes it feel more blurry and rough than needed/intended.
Ideally, also make actions like voting revocable, and show my current vote for confirmation (e.g. if I've upvoted something show me a highlighted upvote arrow which I can select again to remove; don't just disappear the arrow.
You also would ideally support the "special" HN functions -- e.g. when YC sends out questions to an applicant, it might not be seen if you never use the "real" hn site, so a reskin might be an issue.
- Zero-indexing the post list is cute, but I don't think it helps with clarity.
- On a similar note, you've made the ranking a lot more visible, whereas before it was information I largely ignored. I'm not convinced it's actually important information
- I prefer chunky triangles to thin arrows to signify upvotes.
- By moving the secondary post information (points, author) to the side, it's become less clear that it's not part of the title. I'd increase the typographic contrast here.
- Number of comments is probably the 2nd thing I look at after the title, having it over on the right makes it harder to visually associate the comments count + link with its submission. Zebra-striping could help, but I'm not convinced having it on the right is a good choice.
- You've dropped the ability to flag posts, is this deliberate or an oversight?
Overall I like what you're trying to do here, but obviously any changes to the design are going to be a hard sell.
If the site is altered to make it easier to post and comment faster then I am guessing the quality of conversation would go down. Currently you are aware that the comment needs to be well written and not frivolous. Anything about the interface that makes it faster to read and comment will move the usage in the direction of frivolity.
I think HN should have an element of difficulty to its UX, because that keeps the user standard high.
* I made the background not white, which seemed to be hard on the eyes; I decided to keep the color scheme from orignal HN.
* Changed vote button icon; moved point count together with the button.
* Moved comments from the right to the left, closer to the link and vote button. Reason: it's too important of an element to have it be all on the very far right.
* Moved less important content (time and poster) to the far right.
* Internal stuff: I'm using localStorage APIs to cache the data I'm scrapping from a third party hackernews API source. This is because the source kept getting hiccups.
Here are my questions to the rest of those who are still interested in this endeavor:
Should I go with grey text on white, or black text on tanish grey (like it is now)?
Are the icons too distracting? Are they good, or would you suggest I do something else? Maybe I should ditch the orange background on these icons, and go with orange text when mousing over the buttons?
Some idea I have planned:
* Search field in header * Automatic next page loading with ---page n--- separators (if I can get this to work with the API I'm using) * Replace submit button with a visually persistent composer item.
Let me know what you think of these ideas too.
I plan on accepting feedback on this redesign. I already took some feedback from the last post. This time, I can update the project upon feedback, and keep a dialog about the design.
Hope you enjoy it! :)
The font could be bigger/wider; the white on orange on the "top-bar" (what do you call this?) looks weird.
Also, on a wide screen and with the browser window maximized, the number of comments information is very far apart from the title-author-time. I have to move by eyes from the left to the right part of the screen to see this information. I noticed that that distance is adjusted by the browser window width; I would recommend to set a cap on this distance.
Also having the comments link on the exact opposite side to the story link is annoying for me since I usually middle click the link and the comments link in succession
1/ You cannot visualize which link has been previously visited. Important for me!
2/ It's harder to read. Too much white spaces maybe.
A little off-topic, but I've just discovered Hacker News 2 [1] for Android, and I love pretty much everything about it (except its icon perhaps). I love its sidebar menu, that some of Google's apps use, too, and I hope it becomes a default way to do menus in Android. And I also prefer its "greyish" background, which I think is much better for the eyes than simply a white background. I strongly recommend everyone with Android tries it. It even has a "night mode":
[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.airlocksof...
