Is there a justification as to why Hacker News is without responsive design?

11 pointsandrewbaron11y ago20 comments

Strangely, I've come to like the fact that the site does not resize by device and wondered if this was intentional.

20 comments

I wrote a bit about it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7960105

Here's the appropriate excerpt:

"When the new team took over development on HN, we decided that before we implement any new frontend features for the site we needed to update the markup HN uses to make it easier to implement such features in the future (just the markup, not the aesthetics).

Creating a visually identical version of HN with CSS3/HTML5 was easy (we also made it responsive to work on mobile devices)--implementing it was another matter. HN's presentation layer is heavily intertwined with the application/server logic, which meant it was going to be a bit tricky to separate the two. The reason it was tricky is because the entire code base up to a few months ago was optimized to be worked on by one person, pg. For example, we didn't even have docs on how to setup / run the arc code on local / development machines when we first got started.

Eventually we did get a version of HN working that's separated the presentation logic, but we realized that MANY of you out there have built apps that rely on scraping HN's outdated table markup. Because we decided that it would be bad to break all of your apps overnight, we've now started working on an API for HN to launch it in tandem with the new markup changes. We'd then give you all some time to update your projects.

Please try to keep in mind that new features for HN have to be done alongside a lot of other responsibilities. The software team that works on HN is also spending time moderating it and rewriting software that runs YC. Some members like Garry and myself divide our time between developing for HN and our duties as partners helping YC's startups.

This is a long-winded way of saying, please be patient. We are working on many shiny new things for you and can't wait to show you what we've been building behind the scenes."

lstamour11y ago

While I see the appeal, every time I have to zoom in, a part of me wishes there was a nicer stylesheet for mobile, HTML-be-damned. I suppose tables really were anti-responsive: before them text naturally flowed, after them, text generally flowed again. Of course... Design could still mess things up ;-)

notwhyships11y ago

Were both HN and YC's internal software written in PG's Arc language? If so, will that continue to be the case? If not, what are you using on the back ends?

andrewbaronOP11y ago

Thx!

timrosenblatt11y ago

Run a view source. The code isn't what most of us consider to be best practices (table layouts and font tags all over). It could be difficult to add. But the site still works, which says something about the difference between great code and a great product.

Still -- I'm with you. I wish there were a better mobile experience.

krapp11y ago

I wouldn't call Hacker News a great product, as regards the UX and layout (which is probably the worst possible way to implement a nested list in HTML.) I would call it a great community and an acceptable product. It's basically a toy that got popular because it was attached to YCombinator, and remained popular because programmers have a higher tolerance for UX pain than mere mortals.

marssaxman11y ago

HN's ux is a sweet, painless relief compared to most of the web. It is unpretentious and functional. I would be disappointed if it were "improved".

1 more reply

MrBra11y ago

Thanks for saying this! Then I would say, keep this style if it impacts on the quality of HN community.

sliverstorm11y ago

I personally figure the answer is something along the lines of, responsive design takes effort to add, and nobody on the development team thought it was valuable enough to go to the trouble.

I'm not a web developer, but to my memory responsive design isn't something that just comes by default.

robgibbons11y ago

Responsive is really not difficult, to the point that it is easy. And I always advocate 'doing it by default' because it's actually more of a pain to refactor later. Basically you just have to understand floats, and using fluid design in contrast to fixed-width/absolute elements.

That said, I'm satisfied by the justification: HN lacks an API, so lots of people have built apps that scrape the frontend markup. It would break many apps overnight to just flip the switch.

andrewbaronOP11y ago

I think you are right that it does take a lot of effort for to do it right, one needs to design a whole new compatible experience. On the other hand, this interface and dataset here is fairly raw already, so a lot of the form would follow naturally.

sliverstorm11y ago

I'm not saying it would be hard. I'm just observing that the default state is not responsive design.

lowlevel11y ago

Most of us would rather telnet in.

robocat11y ago

Workaround: I added the following bookmarklet and called it hh on Android (on iOS bookmark anything, then edit to insert link)

javascript:document.body.style.width='200px', void 0

To use, enter hh in address, and tap to run.

woogle11y ago

I often use elinks to browse HN, and the comment feed neither is well displayed..

pizza11y ago

HN's keepers aren't trendy

swalsh11y ago

To reinforce this idea. The database is a bunch of flat files.

kogir11y ago

The filesystem is the original NoSQL store. We're hip again!

robgibbons11y ago

Yeah man, databases are so mainstream.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

20 comments

kevin11y ago

I wrote a bit about it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7960105

Here's the appropriate excerpt:

This is a long-winded way of saying, please be patient. We are working on many shiny new things for you and can't wait to show you what we've been building behind the scenes."

lstamour11y ago

notwhyships11y ago

Were both HN and YC's internal software written in PG's Arc language? If so, will that continue to be the case? If not, what are you using on the back ends?

andrewbaronOP11y ago

Thx!

timrosenblatt11y ago

Still -- I'm with you. I wish there were a better mobile experience.

krapp11y ago

marssaxman11y ago

HN's ux is a sweet, painless relief compared to most of the web. It is unpretentious and functional. I would be disappointed if it were "improved".

1 more reply

MrBra11y ago

Thanks for saying this! Then I would say, keep this style if it impacts on the quality of HN community.

sliverstorm11y ago

I personally figure the answer is something along the lines of, responsive design takes effort to add, and nobody on the development team thought it was valuable enough to go to the trouble.

I'm not a web developer, but to my memory responsive design isn't something that just comes by default.

robgibbons11y ago

That said, I'm satisfied by the justification: HN lacks an API, so lots of people have built apps that scrape the frontend markup. It would break many apps overnight to just flip the switch.

andrewbaronOP11y ago

sliverstorm11y ago

I'm not saying it would be hard. I'm just observing that the default state is not responsive design.

lowlevel11y ago

Most of us would rather telnet in.

robocat11y ago

Workaround: I added the following bookmarklet and called it hh on Android (on iOS bookmark anything, then edit to insert link)

javascript:document.body.style.width='200px', void 0

To use, enter hh in address, and tap to run.

woogle11y ago

I often use elinks to browse HN, and the comment feed neither is well displayed..

pizza11y ago