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Is anyone interested in a better Hacker News?
I really like the content on this forum but I find the features and UI lacking. I was going to make another website dedicated to tech news and discussion but with a better user exp. Would anyone be interested in trying the product when I finish it?
- scoofy 2y agoI 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!
- auct 2y agoNope. Try materialistic hn app from playmarket
- vasili111 2y agoI truly like HN as is. Simple and does what it should do.
- joegahona 2y agoI 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.
- throwitaway222 2y agobuild it with llms
- goldname 2y agoWhat do you mean? i'm using llms to debug code and stuff
- squircle 2y agoI would certainly appreciate if @dang and @pg cared to clarify just how many bots are on this platform. Without the data, what's left but to assume we're wasting time communing with bots and interplanetary intelligences (save for those relationships we connect with in person. Empirical evidence is important.)
- tasuki 2y agoHow would they know? The whole twitter thing around the bots was just a theatre.
- qup 2y agoThe problem is, you won't build a better Hacker News.
- rfarley04 2y agoI can't think of anything I wish HN did differently. What do you have in mind that's "better UX"?
- goldname 2y agoI really like the quora interface. I think old quora used to have a good community like HN. So I'm designing the ui kind of like that
- rfarley04 2y agoI've never been a fan of Quora so I don't know it's UI very well. Can you be more specific?
- The_Colonel 2y agoA personal preference, but Quora is likely one of the worst UIs. I really dislike how it mixes answers to different questions into one page. You google something, see it's discussed on Quora, but maybe 1 out of 10 answers there are actually about your question.
- goldname 2y agoyeah that's the new quora. it's really bad now but used to be really good
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- TheAlchemist 2y agoI'm sorry, but I think you've misunderstood what the product here really is ! Who cares about UI
- squircle 2y agoMy fat fingers appreciate the practice. P.s., to OP, you can roll your own UI on top of HN without losing whatever this community is.
- LorenDB 2y agoI 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.
- type0 2y ago> 1. Dark mode Ublock Origin filters are great workaround https://rich.sh/2024/03/20/hn-theme https://rich.sh/2024/03/20/hn-theme just update a few lines: # Text news.ycombinator.com##.c00:style(color: #fafafa !important) # Inputs news.ycombinator.com##input[type="text"], input[type="url"], textarea :style(background-color: inherit; border: 1px solid #d4d4d4; color: #000000 !important)
- LorenDB 2y agoI'm already using Dark Reader. It'd just be nice to have an official dark theme.
- pella 2y agoI don't think it's very difficult to write a different UI. There's even a terminal version available: https://github.com/bensadeh/circumflex https://github.com/bensadeh/circumflex
- JohnDeHope 2y agoI use hckrnews.com mainly because it only shows things that made it to the top page. It's an easy way to filter. If they can do that, it seems anybody could do anything with the content.
- rozenmd 2y agoHN's UI is not the product.
- Grimblewald 2y agoFor me it is. The reason HN wins out over a curated set of subreddits for me is the fact that the UI is no bullshit. It is plain, simple, and does what is required to quickly and effectively communication information and not a thing more.
- muzani 2y agoUI/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.
- speleolinux 2y agoI 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 /.
- Always42 2y agoI like the simplicity.
- Fezzik 2y agoYea, 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.
- paulddraper 2y agoExcept for the "Sorry, we're not able to serve your requests this quickly." like 13 times a day.
- hilbert42 2y agoThe 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.
- teitoklien 2y ago> 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 There is a button below every post labelled ‘favourite’, once you’ve marked a post as favourite you can access the list of such bookmarked posts under your profile settings called favourited posts Here’s a link to your one : https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=hilbert42 https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=hilbert42 > Then there's the problem of remembering the story's title so one can search for it. > There's also a similar problem with comments. There’s tool at https://hn.algolia.com https://hn.algolia.com to help you search for posts via both title and comments > 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. You can quickly search for all comments on hn.algolia.com Its a YC 2014 batch company.
- hilbert42 2y ago"There is a button below every post labelled ‘favourite’, once you’ve marked..." Right, but that presupposes I want to remember or mark it at the time when I first read it which is usually not the case.
- Grimblewald 2y agoNo, 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.
- Crier1002 2y agoNo. it's perfect as what is it already.
- InMice 2y agoI 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
- viraptor 2y agohttps://lobste.rs https://lobste.rs exists and is open https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters 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.
- Brajeshwar 2y agoHonestly, 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-custom-styles.css?rlkey=b8wuoa476sn14g3ya4wn9l0sg&e=1&dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/tdkzn5zhm218lvggl91l5/browser...
- theGnuMe 2y agoThe 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.
- teitoklien 2y agoYou can make a better UI, but you cant get a better u/dang like HN has :)
- tasuki 2y agoYes, the secret sauce of hn is not the ui, it's dang.
- The_Colonel 2y agoGetting 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.
- bediger4000 2y agoSure, if it let me delete my account.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- signaru 2y agoI 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.
- stephanos2k 2y agoCheckout https://hckrnews.com https://hckrnews.com!
- apurandare 2y agoThis is my opinion is a great way to read HackerNews, more like a newspaper organised by dates which makes it easy to catch up on the news when you’re away on vacation or for a work trip. Dark mode is a feature request, but these days Dark Reader makes it possible on most browsers, HyperWeb for Safari on iOS can do it for iPhone users
- JohnDeHope 2y agoI use hckrnews.com. It's great!
- Leftium 2y agoI made a mashup: https://hw.leftium.com https://hw.leftium.com (https://hackerwebapp.com https://hackerwebapp.com + https://hckrnews.com https://hckrnews.com + several small custom features)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- AnonHP 2y agoThis 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?
- i-blis 2y agoThe 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.
- uwemaurer 2y agoI 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/ http://news.facts.dev/