[tapp]

> The card layout is generally big no-no in design community.

Interesting. Could you provide any links/citations for this?

I ask because it feels like practically every designer I talk with these days wants to force a card layout onto everything (even text-oriented sites) and I'd love to hear the other side.

[XJOKOLAT]

+1 for a damned list ...

I mean look at the front of hacker news.

Speed. Read.

[bhaumik]

HN isn't considered great design by majority of users outside this community.

[krapp]

It isn't necessarily considered great design inside either, judging by how popular Hacker News plugins and readers are.

But a pretty strong argument can be made that, for sites focused primarily on text and reading, simple layouts may sometimes sometimes be better than complex ones.

[TeMPOraL]

HN is kept this way on purpose. That the GenPop doesn't like it is a feature, not a bug.

As for designing sites focused on reading, I wholeheartedly agree with this: http://motherfuckingwebsite.com.

[phaemon]

Almost. I agree more with this: http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/

[leni536]

>A little less contrast

Other than this, I agree. Black on white is fine, and hell no, don't make the background slightly gray. If my display is too bright I turn the brightness down.

[2muchcoffeeman]

>"You're a fucking moron if you use default browser styles." >- Eleanor Roosevelt

Why are the default styles so bad?

[TeMPOraL]

This is great! Together, they form a perfect design philosophy!

[krapp]

> HN is kept this way on purpose. That the GenPop doesn't like it is a feature, not a bug.

The "GenPop" don't even know this site exists and, if they did, would be turned away by the content, not the layout.

That argument is made here often, that somehow liking the plainness of HN's layout is a shibboleth to detect quality users, but i've never really bought into it. Sites like Craigslist, Reddit and 4chan manage to do quite will with relatively simple looks and broader appeal.

[TeMPOraL]

I wasn't really trying to make an argument out of it; I think there's a direct quote from pg floating somewhere that this is one of the reasons HN's design is kept bare-bones. I may be misremembering though.

EDIT: I found one quote:

"So the most important thing a community site can do is attract the kind of people it wants. A site trying to be as big as possible wants to attract everyone. But a site aiming at a particular subset of users has to attract just those—and just as importantly, repel everyone else. I've made a conscious effort to do this on HN. The graphic design is as plain as possible, and the site rules discourage dramatic link titles. The goal is that the only thing to interest someone arriving at HN for the first time should be the ideas expressed there."

http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html

[dredmorbius]

The problems I've got with HN would with one exception be best addressed with less design.

It assumes fixed screen / viewport widths and font sizes. Foreground / background contrast is poor. The more code: collapsable subthreads.

Otherwise, it's a basic text-heavy design for a text-heavy site.

[astral303]

It gets the job done for the audience. It's very fast. There is no clutter.

Therefore it's almost great design. Up/down buttons too close together for reliable use on touch screens (because of the inability to correct a mistap) is what's keeping it one step short of greatness.

Design is experience. Graphic design is almost orthogonal.

[draw_down]

It's not great graphic design, true. But I'll take it over garbage like grandparent's screenshot any day.

[bhaumik]

Great UX but the UI isn't as appealing to everyone outside the HN community.