Is anyone interested in a better Hacker News?

The single biggest problem I have is finding an article again at a later time. Even if one remembers the item or list number at the time of viewing (which I don't unless I take special note) that number will change almost immediately, a day or two later the article can be buried many pages down or have disappeared altogether.

Then there's the problem of remembering the story's title so one can search for it. Say, several days later I want to revisit a story that I remember the substance of but I have forgotten its title then sometimes it's almost impossible for me to find it again (stories often have short or cryptic titles that have little bearing with their content).

There's also a similar problem with comments, if I want to revisit a comment I read several days earlier, it's often almost impossible to find—unless I've noted the handle of the poster.

Another annoyance are stories behind firewalls, the poster will have access but many of us will not. It would make sense for these stories to be flagged with a big red dot or such so we can bypass them.

I can only think of two things that I really would like HN to implement:

1. Dark mode

2. Two-factor authentication for better account security

Apart from that (and maybe a better API to help with third-party apps), HN is perfect. The minimal (should I say retro?) UI just adds to the charm of the site. Consider it repellent for those who aren't ready for the HN atmosphere.

The value of HN lies in its community, which you won't — most probably — be ever able to reproduce.

After almost fifteen years of skimming once a day or two through the comments on the topics that interest me most, I am still amazed by the wide of range of old-and-new school engineers of all trade who share their experience and opinions. This is invaluable and does not necessarily need any fancy UI.

I truly like HN as is. Simple and does what it should do.

I would be interested in trying the product if the content is as good or better than the content here. More features will not get me to switch, however.

I like the simple, minimalist UI that HN currently has. I cannot think of any features that it currently lacks. I'm already spending more time here than on /.

Getting nice UI is the easy problem, getting quality content / community will be your main problem.

How about instead creating a WebExtension for HackerNews (similar to RES for Reddit) which would add / change things you miss.

I think many here could take the same model (users, posts, comments etc) and make something more rich in the browser. But you cant just trivially have the user base that HN has by doing so.

Since people are mentioning their gripes: Mine is titles are black but once clicked they become the same grey color as the line below each post title, which is also a link for the commments, the point count etc. So if you click on a title, read, then press back it becomes hard to distinquish or find a previously clicked link esp when the order of post changes.

In short, visited title links should be a different color

UI/UX of HN is perfect besides not being able to block people. I'd still like to see a new site, just because old communities tend to have lots of crusty people.

Maybe an alternative might be an imageboard instead.

You can make a better UI, but you cant get a better u/dang like HN has :)

HN's UI is not the product.

I am trying to build an alternative hackernews frontend aswell. My main focus is to offer a personalized ranking based on the topics you are most interested in.

Currently I am exploring the data and try to identify named entities from the titles. You can have a look here: http://news.facts.dev/

The problem is, you won't build a better Hacker News.

Honestly, I personally feel that “better” is a lazy and un-imaginative term (in general, not against your thoughts) when one lacks a definite goal to achieve. Perhaps, “A better alternate User Experience for HackerNews.” Better, better, be better with an improvement/enhancement against the comparison value.

As for the “UI lacking”, I have added some minimal custom styling catering to my personal preference - some subtle smooth corners, paddings/spacings, author highlights, width constraint, etc. Even that, I’m tempted to nick it and get used to whatever it is.

Not the best nor optimized but here are the styles

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/tdkzn5zhm218lvggl91l5/browser...

This is partly sarcastic.

Why not join YC instead and push through on UI changes? HN fails badly on accessibility (small fonts, small buttons, very close to each other, etc). Or just wait for the people working on HN to get older so they encounter the real issues firsthand and decide to make some changes?

No, I come here in part for the content, but more specifically because I really enjoy the content centric approach the site has. Information is very easy to parse. Without examples, I imagine when you say 'better user exp.' you mean the same kind of enshitification that reddit has gone down.

If you compare old.reddit.com to www.reddit.com you'll see what I mean. Reddit used to look and behave a lot like HN, and that is what made it a prime source of information. Currently, it surives off it's userbase but it is no longer a good primary source of information because unit time vs unit information is quite poor now.

I would be interested with an ability to temporarily filter (show only from / hide from) shared links from a specified domain or see all posts of the same type (e.g. Ask HN, Tell HN). But without having to be a full blown search.

I don't think it's very difficult to write a different UI. There's even a terminal version available:

https://github.com/bensadeh/circumflex

The only downsides to HN are that it is addictive and you miss interesting articles and conversations that you'd wished you'd seen earlier due to time zone effects.

I think most folks here can write a bowser extension if they really wanted a different site. That said, be creative and it could be cool!

I can't think of anything I wish HN did differently. What do you have in mind that's "better UX"?

https://lobste.rs exists and is open https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters

Now you need to have a better UI than both places and get the interest of people who are not satisfied with all of HN, lobsters and Reddit. It's going to be a really hard thing to achieve.

Checkout https://hckrnews.com!

No. it's perfect as what is it already.

I'm sorry, but I think you've misunderstood what the product here really is !

Who cares about UI

Sure, if it let me delete my account.

I like the simplicity.

build it with llms

Nope. Try materialistic hn app from playmarket

Yea, no. HN is the pinnacle of UI as far as I am concerned. It is as simple as is necessary but not lacking in features. And the filtering/ranking of articles is top-notch. The only thing I miss, content wise, is political posts, because I enjoyed the discussions around here. I dislike that (almost) all politics-centric articles are effectively assigned to oblivion immediately.