Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Agreed.

And another good example are the horrible 'mobile' styles for forum scripts and wikis.

Look at the SMF one for example. Or the similar one used on Proboards. On mobile devices, you literally can't tell simple stats like what topics have been recently posted in, which members are online or what the last post was in a section. In other words, all the basic things that make a community usable.

But hey, it looks clean, right?

Media Wiki is even worse. On mobile, you can't see any talk page links, any edit histories or any category lists/infoboxes for articles. So if you don't want to search everything or follow random links in articles, then you have no simple way to browse the site or keep up with what's going on in the community.

Taking away useful information and features like this doesn't make the site easier to use, it makes it more annoying. It makes it simpler for random 'guests' while making it more difficult for anyone who actually uses a site or service on a regular basis.




Ideally these extra features could be put at the bottom or tucked away under menus. But I think the assumption is that power users have a desktop.


> But I think the assumption is that power users have a desktop.

Which would also be an assumption that power users don't want to do things on the move using their smartphones. Sounds like a pretty bad assumption to me.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: