[nilliams]

On point 1. I hope you appreciate your angle is pretty oldschool and would beg to strongly disagree. I have read a lot of HN commenters over the past few years commenting on similar designs/redesigns that seem to share your viewpoint and desire for 'information density' and not needing to scroll, but I do suspect your opinion is basically that of a nerdish minority that is going the way of the dinosaur.

Scrolling is cheap.

A fat top-bar is not a negative, because you can't read 20 article titles at once and scrolling costs you nothing. I'd love to see a study on this but I suspect the number of article headlines we can cope with in one 'scan'(?) and get something useful from is around 5-10 max? Twitter on my phone shows me about 5 tweets at a time. Does it feel like a bad user experience to me? Hell no.

>> 4. the bottom orange footer now is a heavy-weight element that draws my eyes from the articles. [...] overall i feel like the articles ought to be the most important element and this takes away from the articles.

Sorry that is nonsense, we humans are not that easily distracted and know to look for content in the 'content area' between the header and footer area particularly when they're so clearly differentianted (content = white bit, header/footer = orange bit). My eyes go straight for the articles on every website with a coloured header/footer ever.

I have other issues with this redesign but namely that it still feels significantly inferior to the Georgify Chrome extension [1] that has been around for years now and just by virtue of good typography and minimal design is still kicking everyone of these redesign's respective asses.

That said good job and great post, it's definitely a big step up from the original and I love your header :)

[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/georgify/ofjfdfale...

[srean]

> I do suspect your opinion is basically that of a nerdish minority

I am sorry, but it appears you might have some confusion about the demographics and the target demographics. The name, for instance, might give you a promising hint, provided you do little digging about the word 'hacker'. At times it means something that it does not appear to mean.

[nilliams]

Well of course, I didn't mean it quite that literally and am a bit sad to see I got downvoted but I guess I did make the point poorly (and mildy aggressively now I read it back).

I should probably just have linked to somewhere the argument has been made before [1].

I'm a nerd and I vastly prefer large type & generous amounts of whitespace over cramming lots of titles on one screen so it saddens me whenever I hear someone authoritatively state the 'information density' argument.

[1] http://uxmyths.com/post/654047943/myth-people-dont-scroll

[davmar]

you put an awful lot of words in my mouth. i didn't mention scrolling. re-read.

the top bar is too large vertically without enough value. readability improves a bit, but the sheer prominence takes away from the discoverability of the first article title.

i didn't mention type size or whitespace. i also like large type and generous amounts of whitespace.

i think you're just looking to argue for the sake of argument.

[nilliams]

Sorry, I'm not looking for an argument and I didn't mean to put words in your mouth. My original post was badly written and overly argumentative, I think I was in a bad mood and a couple of your points just set off my usual UX'y triggers, I apologise.

You're right that I made the leap from your dislike of the top nav/footer to a dislike of scrolling/desire for 'information density'. Those things are often associated but I was wrong to make that leap. Again, my bad.

I disagree with your points that the header and footer are distracting and detract from the articles, that's it and that's all my original post should have said.

[davmar]

no worries at all. we all get grumpy sometimes, myself definitely included. enjoy your weekend :)

[nilliams]

Cool, same to you!