Here are some objective issues with this page that I don't think is really up to taste (honestly these are so obvious that I assume you viewed the website on mobile which is fair, I never used the mobile version. Because I don't think anyone in good conscience would argue with the terribleness of the desktop version of the website). Note that I will not include many taste-based issues with the website (like the god-awful mouse cursor) because they could be attributed to taste. The following issues are objective issues though:
- Low performance. Because the website steals cursor rendering, moving the cursor feels bad and laggy. - The icon for the "menu" looks exactly like the mouse cursor. I don't think this constitutes good design.
- Also the icon for the menu doesn't look like the extremely established menu icon (even though it changes to that when you hover over it). Initially I th ought maybe it is a dark/light mode toggle.
- Speaking of the dark mode, the page flashbangs you halfway through scrolling the page for absolutely no reason.
- The link texts are borderline unreadable in the "light" section of the page when you hover over them.
> honestly these are so obvious that I assume you viewed the website on mobile
The page is terrible UX on mobile too. After the random switch from dark mode to light mode I tapped what looked like a dark mode button and got a full screen about page with no close or back button, so I pressed my phone's back button but ended up back on HN. It turns out to navigate back out of the unexpected about screen you have to press what looks like a forward button (I think they're trying to indicate that it goes away to the right, but the thing is full screen like a full page navigation so that doesn't make sense).
> the page flashbangs you
Did anyone understand what the purpose of that was?