Wednesday, November 19, 2008

UI Design for Social News Sites

LOOK UP! (need I say more??)

I'm a huge fan of HackerNews, I can't thank the community enough, I am slightly wiser for using the site, and have been introduced to an infinite number of subjects I need to learn more about. 

Like most, I don't upvote as many entries as I should, and I don't read enough of the comments, or get involved in the conversation enough. 

Why is that? Simple. 
When I click on an entry (I almost always open them in a new tab), I have to make an effort to go back to the entry and read the comments or upvote.

If you followed this link from HackerNews, look up, and you'll see (hopefully) that the HN entry is above. Click here if you didn't come from HN.

You can up vote, read the comments in context, etc. and because the HN header is so small already, it fits the page nicely and isn't too intrusive, unless you want to read the comments. 
Click the 'comments' link and the comments will show. 

Of course, with control of the HN domain, there could be a nice little ajax link to extend the view to show the comments, and therefore get rid of the scrolling in the upper frame. 

If you like this idea and think it would benefit the community, up vote it (hey, you might as well, the arrow is right above you), and maybe PG will implement it. 

If you don't like it, let me know why? I'm kinda curious. Clearly I think it's a pretty simple idea. 

Thanks, 
Pete

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