alt Hacker NewsMaybe this will be an unpopular opinion, but I really dislike the lane layout, because it is not possible to efficiently take a glance at all elements in the list, one by one.
If you try to go left-to-right, you will quickly realize that at the end of each "line" it is really difficult to know where the next line starts. It is easy to accidentally start again on the same line (and inspect the same elements), or skip one accidentally. Then navigating through the elements one by one requires a considerable amount of cognitive effort, your eyes bounce up and down constantly, and you end up inspecting the same elements multiple times.
If you try to go top-to-bottom, lane by lane, you will then realize that the page also has infinite scroll and you will never go past the first lane.
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I think it's one of those things that looks good, but is annoying to use non-superficially.
Thankfully the feature is just in time for it to fall out of fashion! It really is an awful layout, UX wise. But at least it looks pretty at a glance!
It's not meant to be "efficient," it's meant to allow your eyes to look at the entire page at once to find what you're looking for. A newspaper or photo gallery comes to mind.
Feels very "right-brain". I'm a brain-hemisphere equality advocate. Good for sites like Pinterest. But also Home Assistant.
But if you don't need to systematically examine every element one-by-one, lane layouts are pretty good. Sites like Pintrest use lane layouts because their content isn't meant to by systematically examined, but rather absorbed at a glance. If your content is meant to be systematically examined, using a lane layout would be a bad UX choice. But just because lane layouts can be misused doesn't mean they're a bad layout.