Don't get me started on how much space we waste on any UI these days. Apart from HN UI, pretty much every website and desktop app has wastage of space.
I suspect, we stopped using borders - thanks to minimalism, that we need to use copious amounts of negative space to separate them. So, now paddings and margins are liberally applied everywhere.
> Apart from HN UI, pretty much every website and desktop app has wastage of space.
By HN, do you mean Hacker News? Because it has whitespace on the sides (since the <table> element has width of 85%). It still looks fine if you change it to 90 or 95, so one could argue there's wasted space there too.
But I'm not that one. I recognize empty space has its place in design. And it's not a fad either. Pick up a book - any book - and you will notice plenty of negative space there. Borders are used sparingly, if at all.
Books have a purpose for negative space on either side of the text. It's to allow you to hold it without obscuring the text. It is also to allow spine to be tightly bound.
It's not just for the practical purpose. Jan Tschichold writes: "Two constants reign over the proportions of a well made book: the hand and the eye." Indeed, large margins give a feeling of quality, luxury, and openness. Compare older books with spacious margins to tight ones in modern books so as much text can be crammed to save on printing.
Another reason is that we design websites for mobile users primarily, which requires more spacing due to touch input. And it's easy to just leave it in there for the desktop as well. It's also often more visually pleasing at first glance, even though it's less functional.
I got to say that HN does not provide a nice mobile experience in my opinion. I've clicked the wrong link many times due to lack of white space. However I agree that a lot of sites add way too much spacing between everything.
Don't get me started on how much space we waste on any UI these days. Apart from HN UI, pretty much every website and desktop app has wastage of space.
I suspect, we stopped using borders - thanks to minimalism, that we need to use copious amounts of negative space to separate them. So, now paddings and margins are liberally applied everywhere.