While we're at it, why is the 'hide' button so close to the submission link, with no confirmation?
I often accidentally click hide, have to navigate to my profile, click 'hidden', click 'un-hide' then have to go back to the front page and find the post again.
It could simply be replaced with an 'sure? yes / no' right before hiding and this problem would disappear.
Same goes for 'flag'. In fact, sometimes I'm not even sure if I've hidden or flagged the link and I have to check both.
I agree, no confirm, but the current undo procedure for hide is definitely painful and it's really easy to accidentally click.
On the other hand, maybe it's a feature. Lately I've taken the approach that if I hid it accidentally, it probably wasn't worth reading anyway. I'm learning to let it go.
I frequently am unsure whether my fat finger tapped upvote or downvote on comments, and since they both disappear...well, I usually just tap "unvote" and do it again, but I'm still never really sure if I tapped the correct one since my finger is so much bigger than the buttons.
Perhaps proving https://xkcd.com/1172/, that would be pretty disruptive to the way I use the hide button, as it's a good way to leave your cursor in the same spot and "dismiss" posts that I don't plan on reading one by one. Adding a confirmation, and therein forcing me to continuously move the mouse there and back, would completely break that.
I agree with it shouldn't be so near to the link though (and with the broader topic that it seems HN prides itself somehow on having bad UX instead of just simplicity -- albeit perhaps because we couldn't all agree what to change and how!).
And the logout button right under my name so I accidentally push it on mobile 50% of the time. Still I don’t think it’ll ever change much which is kind of cool in a way
This was done by Paul Graham himself in this forum's early days.
At that time reddit was rising. PG didn't want to turn this forum one into another Reddit. To discourage posts with body he grayed out the body text. And then within the next few weeks he grayed out the texts gradually even more. Until it reached the point that you see now.
Encouragement was to post interesting links and blogs. But not turn this one into a general discussion forum.
That was may be in the late 2000s. As far as I can recall.
I'm reminded of the cognitive ease part of Thinking, Fast and Slow.
The theory is supposedly we pay more attention to what we are reading if it's a bit hard to read. Was there any such idea behind lowering the contrast for these?
It seems that HN has a lot of anti-user features for the sake of it. Perhaps the rationale for graying out self posts is to make them not stand out (so that the post from OP doesn't get any undue advantage over the comments), but it's just an accessibility nightmare. It's as if people with poor eyesight were not welcome here.
In some cases I agree, but in this case it might be that making the top text darker would contrast too grossly with the bright white background of the textbox below, making it painful. I actually think it's rather balanced.
It could also be observing the necessary humility of offering a submission to be judged and engaged with by the larger community. In this community "light slate gray", or thereabouts, is the "Hessian sack of humility".
That fact that my mid-20s eyes still require having HN at 110% zoom should be a clear sign that design is not a top priority for the site. It's fine, you can always do custom CSS, right /s
I do that too. Only needed to once I went from a (1080p) 27" monitor to a 24" one.
Not required, but the size at 110% looks better to me. Recently discovered that firefox saves this value if you do it outside of a private browsing window, prior to which I did it on each browser restart.
Every single part of HN’s inaccessibility is intentional, with a very strong and unshakable foundation beneath it. This is empirically proven by the fact that YCombinator hasn’t spent any effort on changing it for over a decade and a half. And it’s not for the lack of money or the lack of competence.
Of all the things one could complain about HN, like the tiny fonts and the tiny buttons next to each other and the disregard for making it easier for those who use screen readers, the color of a text submission would be the very last thing that would get fixed.
"Additionally, founders of YC companies see each other's usernames show up in orange, which — although not an explicit benefit — does allow fellow YC founders to immediately identify one another in discussions."
Maybe I'm the odd one out, but I really like this design for getting a massive amount of comments on screen at once with minimal distractions (no avatars, less ability to add memes), compared to most any other forum or social media. The grey text OP mentioned is a bit of an oddity, especially when I consider someone who has vision issues but not to the extent they need a screen reader. If other forums I frequent decided to swap to a more HN inspired design, I think I would overall feel better using it.
That said, I haven't tried using a screen reader on here so I can't speak to how well it works from that level of accessibility.
Agreed 100 percent. Luckily third party apps and websites exist, because the one that YCombinator has made is worthy of all the ridicule it gets. Reddit gets a lot of hate around here but at least it's readable on a device made in the last decade.
It's a shame because the community here is so great otherwise.
I would think HN is actually pretty good for screen readers or other assisted browsing. I say that having not tried it myself, but it even works reasonably well in text-only browsers. Certainly a much simpler front-end than most modern websites.
I just tried using Firefox Mobile's reader mode and it seems to work really well. All the comments get included, although oddly the usernames do not. But maybe that is not a bad thing ;)
Stories that are text, rather than links to articles or posts offsite, are disfavored. I think for awhile they had a ranking penalty, too? Like this one, they tend to be meta, and HN has a fairly low tolerance for meta on the front page.
I had the same question and made a browser extension that addresses many of the complaints in this thread (poorly-positioned elements, sizing, dark mode): https://github.com/dan-lovelace/hacker-news-pro. It lets you completely rebuild the layout however you'd like and has some pre-made themes that do a decent job without writing one from scratch.
It is intentional and meant to dissuade users from treating HN as a content publication platform. HN seeks to be an aggregator of quality links (on specific subjects) + topical discussions on the linked subjects. They don't want to degenerate into a Linked-In (or similar) type network which encourages users to create original posts on their platform.
Readit News
I often accidentally click hide, have to navigate to my profile, click 'hidden', click 'un-hide' then have to go back to the front page and find the post again.
It could simply be replaced with an 'sure? yes / no' right before hiding and this problem would disappear.
Same goes for 'flag'. In fact, sometimes I'm not even sure if I've hidden or flagged the link and I have to check both.
On the other hand, maybe it's a feature. Lately I've taken the approach that if I hid it accidentally, it probably wasn't worth reading anyway. I'm learning to let it go.
Deleted Comment
Deleted Comment
But I really wouldn't like it to become less dense. Or to have prompts.
I agree with it shouldn't be so near to the link though (and with the broader topic that it seems HN prides itself somehow on having bad UX instead of just simplicity -- albeit perhaps because we couldn't all agree what to change and how!).
Maybe something you could opt into though?
...oh do you mean the individual post's link in the timestamp? Right. But why are you clicking that? To copy link maybe?
At that time reddit was rising. PG didn't want to turn this forum one into another Reddit. To discourage posts with body he grayed out the body text. And then within the next few weeks he grayed out the texts gradually even more. Until it reached the point that you see now.
Encouragement was to post interesting links and blogs. But not turn this one into a general discussion forum.
That was may be in the late 2000s. As far as I can recall.
The theory is supposedly we pay more attention to what we are reading if it's a bit hard to read. Was there any such idea behind lowering the contrast for these?
But the opposite should be true, ask and show (and others) should just be plain text and not greyed out.
I use Refined Hacker News https://github.com/plibither8/refined-hacker-news which alleviates some pain points, but unfortunately it doesn't fix this issue.
It could also be observing the necessary humility of offering a submission to be judged and engaged with by the larger community. In this community "light slate gray", or thereabouts, is the "Hessian sack of humility".
Or even good eyesight.
It's DejaVu Sans on my screen. I haven't noticed it change, if it did.
Dead Comment
Of all the things one could complain about HN, like the tiny fonts and the tiny buttons next to each other and the disregard for making it easier for those who use screen readers, the color of a text submission would be the very last thing that would get fixed.
(This comment is partly sarcastic)
"Additionally, founders of YC companies see each other's usernames show up in orange, which — although not an explicit benefit — does allow fellow YC founders to immediately identify one another in discussions."
The real features are hidden from us plebes.
That said, I haven't tried using a screen reader on here so I can't speak to how well it works from that level of accessibility.
It's a shame because the community here is so great otherwise.
news.ycombinator.com##html:style(filter:invert(95%) hue-rotate(200deg); background: white)
into My Filters section, refreshed the page and it worked. It's so simple.