[Aardwolf]

Yet its pages load much faster than most websites, no cookie popups, no "subscribe to our newsletter" slide-ins, no phenomenon where the content loads but then a second later the page resets and re-loads the content again (probably with more ads or something), no images only getting loaded and popping in view while you scroll (rather than do it a bit predicatively beforehand so they'd pop in outside of your view to give a less slow impression), etc...

[sitharus]

I don’t understand how that’s at odds with having spec-valid HTML and CSS

[Aardwolf]

Because updating to become conformant might come with the risk of making it a "modern" overhaul :/

[jraph]

You don't need

> no cookie popups, no "subscribe to our newsletter" slide-ins, no phenomenon where the content loads but then a second later the page resets and re-loads the content again (probably with more ads or something)

to fix rendering layout using tables and cell width to render comment levels.

Just a few lines of CSS and Arc really. That would be a big overhaul only because HN is very small, but not that big in absolute.

[rwalle]

And I just want a reasonable font size. On desktop it is miserable -- I always need to zoom to 133% to match the font size I see on other websites. On mobile it is ok.

[perilunar]

I find it way too small on desktop, but it's not an issue because the browser remembers my zoom level.

But I also find it too small on my mobile, and increasing the font size doesn't improve things, just makes it necessary to scroll sideways to read the comments.

Overall the font size settings on HN are crap. I really wish @dang would listen to the frequent complaints and fix them.

[nick__m]

I use the addon stylus on Firefox and apply a custom css. HN is really easy to customize and it never change.

[plorkyeran]

Yeah, my stylus override for HN is:

.comment { font-size: 14pt; } .comhead { font-size: 12pt; }

I set this up many years ago and have not had to touch it since.

[gbalduzzi]

Those two things are not related at all though

[noobermin]

So, I'm fearful of that as most people here, but if any entity can manage a respectful update, it has to be someone Y Combinator can pay.

[nightpool]

Because HN's development prioritized "good for the user" over "good for browser developers". https://www.w3.org/TR/design-principles/#priority-of-constit... https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8890

Anyway, the "errors" that OP mentions are simply just deprecated attribute styling and like, one or two instances of center tags. Hardly breaking anybody's back to continue supporting those.

[nozzlegear]

Apparently not “good for the user”, given how many people here have commented about the increased font size or custom CSS extensions they need to use on HN to make it readable.

[_heimdall]

I don't know the HN codebase, but based on the HTML validation results I'd be surprised if it took more than a day or two to fix most or all of the issues.

Almost all of the warning and errors are related to using obsolete Element attributes and invalid <table> definitions. Those shouldn't need any larger rework to clean up.

I don't say this trying to imply that HN needs to fix these or are being lazy in not doing it. YC has priorities and provide HN for free. It's totally up to them whether fixes are worth it, I just wouldn't expect it to be a huge lift.

[Narretz]

All this has nothing to do with outputting standard conformant CSS+HTML.

[sharpshadow]

And no JS needed for most of the functionality.