[JupiterMoon]

HN's design is fantastic - it is totally perfect for its function. Collapsible comments are a pig to use. HN looks and works great on mobile now (it didn't used to but they did a redesign in the last few months).

Downvoters do you care to explain why you disagree?

[SCdF]

I didn't down-vote you, but "collapsible comments are a pig to use" isn't really a statement I can get behind, nor a statement with any real value (what does "a pig to use" mean, practically?)

I use a (slightly modified) Chrome plugin to clean up HN's styling to make it more readable. Most importantly it adds collapsable comments, without which I would enjoy HN much less.

Collapsable comments makes it easy to tell what you have and haven't read, and to easily skip large threads which bore you without having to mentally watch the invisible vertical line and scroll until it comes back it.

[JupiterMoon]

Yeah "a pig to use" might come across as inflammatory and I guess that this expressing my personal preference (which is just as valid as yours but clearly neither are objectively correct).

Disclosure I use no script and am very happy that HN works without any javascript.

Practically I find collapsible comments highly annoying in every case I've seen them used. This is probably because they seem to either (1) require javascript, or (2) require page reloads, or (3) both.

In the case of HN, dang et al do a good job of detaching irrelevant comments.

I guess that collapsible comments should be one of those optional features that could be available with javascript but gracefully degrade to showing the full tree without.

[probably_wrong]

> HN looks and works great on mobile now (it didn't used to but they did a redesign in the last few months).

For the record, after the redesign the comments looks worse on Windows Phone. I know, no one gives a damn about WP, but a "proper" mobile redesign would work on every browser.

[Livven]

Shameless plug, check out my HN app for WP8.1 called Hacky News. It's very fast and has collapsible comments.

Link: https://www.microsoft.com/en-US/store/Apps/Hacky-News/9NBLGG...

[JupiterMoon]

Is that the fault of HN or Windows Phone?

[shawabawa3]

HN.

Makes me thinkg of that great rant my Linus about breaking userspace by "fixing" a "bug"

If you break something for a significant portion of your users, even if it's caused by someone/something else doing something dumb, it's still your fault

[JupiterMoon]

In the case of the web we have standards which describe correct behaviour. Is HN not following them?

[nacs]

> for a significant portion of your users

Windows Phone users are a significant portion of HN users?

[Illniyar]

I didn't use it directly on mobile for so long, I didn't even know they made it work on mobile.

Collapsible comments are still, I think, the minimum needed to make HN usable, in long threads it just becomes impossible to find or follow comments.