Gratuitous images by each story, slow enough to load that it benefits from a cutesy loading spinner, cookies for tailored marketing, email signup box after the 10th story, fat banner that uses the hamburger menu icon but doesn’t trust it to be communicative enough so also has “Menu” in text on the button...
I agree with your larger point but in a different way — Hacker News is not defined by UI, but community. I’m sure that there is a Hacker News for auto out there already, I’d guess it’s a myBB forum.
HN design and its spartan interface is an overwhelmingly and the primary reason for its success (of course content, people, moderation, etc as well). If it were a phpBB board, or a discourse forum, it just wouldn't be the same. People are addicted to this site for its usability and simplicity.
We've seen mass exodus from Digg and Reddit. The inflection point is always design, 2008 when they messed up the Digg UX with promoted posts, the whole website went down in a dumpster fire. Reddit has been the same but inflection point was carried out through a couple of years as they went to a new design. Still, old.reddit.com is popular. Reddit has too much influx of new users, high churn rate to keep it from burning down.
Design is the reason for IBM. It is why Apple exists, Nike, Stripe, etc. Sure, a company can be successful without good design, but the ones that are built with design as a cornerstone of its foundation, are easy to spot - HN is one of those IMO.
Part of HackerNews's community is because you can load the page on a potato. I remember someone mentioning that they frequent HN from the middle of the ocean.
That's an interesting thought though; does the UI of HN help to foster this community in any way? I would argue it absolutely does given the amount of people I see (myself included) that hate designs like the new Reddit, for example. I would then argue that the UI of HN does indeed play an important role in defining it.
Not true at all. A huge part of HN is - as others mentioned - that is‘s so lightweight and the UI is so clean.
There are a lot of people here that have slower bandwith than a pigeon, and they are very very happy that the HN staff tries to save every bit and byte.
Hi the 1000+ points is the load of users that came from HN yesterday - you click on article, it gets a point. At the moment simple as that. The lack of comments is that I had to disable them temporarily, cause few trolls came around and I had no mechanism in place to stop posting terrible things. Will be fixed and allowed again shortly.
I don't think it's snotty. The criticism is valid and straightforward.
Your comment, on the other hand, brings up the person's post history to make a personal attack. It doesn't address the point being made in any way. This is not the sort of behaviour that's expected on HN.
Not a big fan of the use of space compared to hn. On hn on mobile I can clearly see the headlines for 13 stories, on the automotive one, I get 6, meaning i have to scroll a whole page just to see as many stories as I can at a glance on hn. With one quick scroll, i can see an entire hn page, to get to the bottom of autonews I had to scroll 5 times and scroll past an annoying subscribe bar placed in the middle.
I don't really feel like it captures hn's ease of use and simplicity.
Thanks, I was actually exactly thinking the same when I was comparing autonews.io vs HN. But I would have to compromise the images if I wanted to make it more concise, and I've decided not to.
I don't think the images are a problem. Like the other commenter said i think it's the use of whitespace. The story feed seems quite narrow compared to hn. There's lots of deadspace to either side. I think you could increase the usage of space while not compromising on the images.
Please too, put the subscribe thing at the bottom of the page, not the middle. That just reminded me of a midpage banner add. It disrupted the reading flow very obviously.
I made this project to help myself stay up to date with automotive industry because I love cars and anything related to them. It gathers the latest automotive news from more than 20 auto portals. Allows users to submit articles, comment, and upvote. I got quite literally inspired by HN and was mindblown why such a thing does not exist for automotive industry.
Also users can subscribe to a newsletter that delivers top 10 articles of the week every Monday morning.
Thank you in advance for any feedback! And happy to reply to any questions.
The pressure to make money out of it will turn your forum into what could be another subreddit. To repeat HN you'd need to remove pictures (they invoke emotions and attract unsophisticated audience) and all the marketing fluff, hire a team of people who deal with autos on day to day basis (mechanics, salesmen, dealship owners, pro racers, stars like the ex Top Gear team) and advertise everywhere that here's the no bs forum about autos. Wait for 10 years and you'll get a critical mass of audience. You'd still have to pay expensive mods. On top of that you'll have to figure a non-ads business model to support the forum.
I've spent much of my career in the auto industry (Tier 1 supplier), and I couldn't agree more. I'm even a "car guy," but I could care less about exotic cars, which most of what appears on autonews.io.
I'm not sure I'd say it's "HN for ..." though. The automated(?) news aggregation and newsletter features seem pretty different from HN's Spartan style and entirely user-submitted content.
Hi, thx! The great aspect of HN, as you say and for me is also the community curation of relevant content. I've automated the inputs of the most popular automotive portals to get in some initial content. However the community - by clicking, sharing, commenting then decides which articles make it to the top. And of course they can submit their own articles - if it gets enough traction - I will consider switching of the popular.
Congratulations on shipping a thing! I have to say though, creating a place to submit links and invite or comment doesn’t mean it’s “a Hacker News for X” - what makes HN what it is is the community. Do you have any thoughts on how you could build a community around this project?
Hi and thanks a lot. I 100% agree with you on the community factor - that was the main motivation behind my project - however to get your hobby project up and running I needed to bring some content in first - therefore the automation. I've reached out to all my peers (i'm ex-automotive engineer) and they've started using it - some of them on daily basis. However once I've reached my network limits - I've started launching to relevant communities - PistonHeads, reddit/r/AutomotiveEngineering, product hunt and now HN. I am hoping to that there will be a cross-section of users that love cars and will stick and start posting content themselves.
If some of them are aggregated, while others are submitted, it is not clear to me to tell them apart, nor where an aggregated story came from. One just says "Submitted by Carol", but I cannot click on the name to learn anything more.
I also notice you hotlink all the images, you might want to contemplate re-hosting the images yourself, or abandon the images altogether.
Hi, thanks for the feedback. In the long term, you will be able to click and see the user behind the submission. However it's still in TODO column atm. But will def add it as this feedback is so valid. Good shout about splitting the automated/submitted content.
Lots of people here are saying the UI and images detract from the site. I think it is possible that people who are into cars are different than people who are into hackery, and that perhaps this criticism should be discarded.
Great website, you seemed to have worked hard on it.
Some feedback if you don't mind it.
1. How about moving the domain of the article posted beside the post title (like HN)? This maintains the flow of reading. I read the post title and then I can see the source of the article on it's right.
2. You seem to have a separate URL for each post ( EG: https://autonews.io/article/99522953-788c-446f-a706-cd26e2c3...) but I couldn't find any way of accessing an individual post's URL from the front page. Had to dig into the HTML. Maybe clicking on the timestamp copies the post link or takes you to the individual post's URL?
3. Dark mode toggle is very confusing (https://i.imgur.com/V0MrNlA.png). Don't switch the icon after each toggle. Put an icon (indicating dark or light mode) outside the toggle and then let users change based on that (https://i.imgur.com/1wyE6si.png) .
4. Don't automatically open links in a new tab. HN doesn't do that. Let users ctrl+click if they want to open it in new tab if they want to.
The password reset and login form leaks account info in the network response. You should return the same network response regardless of whether the user exists in the DB, instead of relying on the UI to communicate that.
Logging into your site sends back the full account profile object, including the password 'hash', which appears to just be a Base64 encoded string. Fortunately the Firebase API redacts that field so the decoded string is just 'REDACTED', but that's not a good thing to rely on, and I hope the password is actually encrypted behind the scenes..
Both of these are unfortunately common mistakes you see even on more well known sites.
Hi thanks for that. I'm using the Firebase Auth out of the box, basically just methods like - fb.login(), fb.logout(), was not even thinking that Firebase could be insecure tbh.
The initial posts seem mostly be either 1) reviews, 2) "wrapper articles" for auto manufacturers' press releases, or 3) articles about industry-relevant public policy. These are all appropriate for a HN-like community, but I was expecting to see a lot more highly technical articles too. Topics like engine designs, control systems, manufacturing processes, etc., written by engineers.
I guess a lot of the most current and interesting information about those topics stays locked within auto manufacturers.
> I was expecting to see a lot more highly technical articles too. Topics like engine designs, control systems, manufacturing processes, etc., written by engineers.
The youtube channel Engineering Explained is probably as close to that as you'll get. It's mostly about technology already available though, not much content on future tech still in the R&D phase. https://www.youtube.com/user/EngineeringExplained/videos
This might seem facetious, but the cookie warning really threw me off. It doesn't really matter, I canbjust click past it, but instantly in my head:
"This isn't HN for anything. Some marketing something or other I guess..."
I think, for a dedicated/techy crowd, little things like a cookie warning mean a lot. To me it screams crap. I can't think of a single website I use enjoy using regularly that included a cookie warning. I think Reddit added a cookie warning when their UI went to shit.
Hi, I honestly hate the cookie banner myself - that's why I made it as much invisible as possible. But I'm using Google's Firebase for user authentication and therefore it uses cookies. I also store your choice of theme dark/light into a cookie so it's there for you next time. I believe that's why I have to have the banner there. Or am I wrong?
I always thought that for purely functional cookies (like storing theme preferences) the banner is uncalled for. Is there a place I can read more about? I guess this varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction? This (cookie compliance) is a mess...
You probably shouldn't backend on a Google service if you value your users' privacy.
The theme cookie is easier to solve: Use CSS media preferences instead and use people's browser settings to choose it. That being said, cookie warnings may not be necessary if you aren't storing anything personally identifiable.
Per my understanding of GDPR you only need the cookie warning for cookies unrelated to your site's fundamental operation. Admittedly, I'm not a lawyer and I've not really liked too closely at it, but I don't think you need a warning just because you use a cookie.
Readit News
That’s...not a Hacker News for X.
We've seen mass exodus from Digg and Reddit. The inflection point is always design, 2008 when they messed up the Digg UX with promoted posts, the whole website went down in a dumpster fire. Reddit has been the same but inflection point was carried out through a couple of years as they went to a new design. Still, old.reddit.com is popular. Reddit has too much influx of new users, high churn rate to keep it from burning down.
Design is the reason for IBM. It is why Apple exists, Nike, Stripe, etc. Sure, a company can be successful without good design, but the ones that are built with design as a cornerstone of its foundation, are easy to spot - HN is one of those IMO.
There are a lot of people here that have slower bandwith than a pigeon, and they are very very happy that the HN staff tries to save every bit and byte.
Deleted Comment
The HN community is of course fundamental, but HN is very much defined by its UI.
Also, my browser already has a loading animation thank you very much. No need to load an animation to tell me that you're loading the page.
(edited)
Your comment, on the other hand, brings up the person's post history to make a personal attack. It doesn't address the point being made in any way. This is not the sort of behaviour that's expected on HN.
Dead Comment
I don't really feel like it captures hn's ease of use and simplicity.
But I like seeing it tailored a little more towards the target audience.
I wonder if part of the appeal of HN is it has no images?
Please too, put the subscribe thing at the bottom of the page, not the middle. That just reminded me of a midpage banner add. It disrupted the reading flow very obviously.
It's a terrible spot for it.
I made this project to help myself stay up to date with automotive industry because I love cars and anything related to them. It gathers the latest automotive news from more than 20 auto portals. Allows users to submit articles, comment, and upvote. I got quite literally inspired by HN and was mindblown why such a thing does not exist for automotive industry.
Also users can subscribe to a newsletter that delivers top 10 articles of the week every Monday morning.
Thank you in advance for any feedback! And happy to reply to any questions.
Peter
From a cursory glance it seems more like a "car enthusiast" news site rather than a place for industry discussion.
I'm not sure I'd say it's "HN for ..." though. The automated(?) news aggregation and newsletter features seem pretty different from HN's Spartan style and entirely user-submitted content.
I also notice you hotlink all the images, you might want to contemplate re-hosting the images yourself, or abandon the images altogether.
Some feedback if you don't mind it.
1. How about moving the domain of the article posted beside the post title (like HN)? This maintains the flow of reading. I read the post title and then I can see the source of the article on it's right.
2. You seem to have a separate URL for each post ( EG: https://autonews.io/article/99522953-788c-446f-a706-cd26e2c3...) but I couldn't find any way of accessing an individual post's URL from the front page. Had to dig into the HTML. Maybe clicking on the timestamp copies the post link or takes you to the individual post's URL?
3. Dark mode toggle is very confusing (https://i.imgur.com/V0MrNlA.png). Don't switch the icon after each toggle. Put an icon (indicating dark or light mode) outside the toggle and then let users change based on that (https://i.imgur.com/1wyE6si.png) .
4. Don't automatically open links in a new tab. HN doesn't do that. Let users ctrl+click if they want to open it in new tab if they want to.
The password reset and login form leaks account info in the network response. You should return the same network response regardless of whether the user exists in the DB, instead of relying on the UI to communicate that.
Logging into your site sends back the full account profile object, including the password 'hash', which appears to just be a Base64 encoded string. Fortunately the Firebase API redacts that field so the decoded string is just 'REDACTED', but that's not a good thing to rely on, and I hope the password is actually encrypted behind the scenes..
Both of these are unfortunately common mistakes you see even on more well known sites.
Goodluck with everything.
I guess a lot of the most current and interesting information about those topics stays locked within auto manufacturers.
The youtube channel Engineering Explained is probably as close to that as you'll get. It's mostly about technology already available though, not much content on future tech still in the R&D phase. https://www.youtube.com/user/EngineeringExplained/videos
"This isn't HN for anything. Some marketing something or other I guess..."
I think, for a dedicated/techy crowd, little things like a cookie warning mean a lot. To me it screams crap. I can't think of a single website I use enjoy using regularly that included a cookie warning. I think Reddit added a cookie warning when their UI went to shit.
The theme cookie is easier to solve: Use CSS media preferences instead and use people's browser settings to choose it. That being said, cookie warnings may not be necessary if you aren't storing anything personally identifiable.