[HN Gopher] Show HN: Hacker XP - Hacker News styled as a Windows...
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Show HN: Hacker XP - Hacker News styled as a Windows XP Outlook
email client
Hello HN, sharing my weekend project. I'm a fan of retro GUIs and
fan of HN, so I built an alternative HN front end that resembles a
Window XP desktop with an old Outlook email client. Archive and
github links if you get 500 errors:
https://web.archive.org/web/20220122190454/https://hackerxp....
https://github.com/assemblylanguage/hacker-xp
Author : assemblylang
Score : 88 points
Date : 2022-01-22 18:58 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (hackerxp.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (hackerxp.com)
| akoster wrote:
| I'm excited to try it but getting " 500 Internal Server Error."
| right now. Will check back later- looking forward to it!
| mulmen wrote:
| Missed opportunity to style the 500 page as a BSOD.
| assemblylang wrote:
| haha yeah that's a good idea, something to add in the future
| for sure
| otagekki wrote:
| I keep having 500 errors... Denial of service?
|
| As said elsewhere, server errors should look have a BSoD-like
| appearance ;)
| bitigchi wrote:
| Reminded me of how Safari for Windows actually had a native
| Windows UI.
| ZoomZoomZoom wrote:
| I just realized I'd be much more surprised and exited to see this
| as an actual desktop application made with something like
| Lazarus, than imitation of such a program with web tech. Strange
| times.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| I hope some picks up the challenge.
| badsectoracula wrote:
| You can get most of the functionality in the page (which isn't
| much) by setting up Thunderbird (which with the classic layout
| looks very similar to Outlook Express) as an RSS reader for
| Hacker News' RSS feed.
| joering2 wrote:
| Thanks, looks cool once I had a chance to load it.
|
| Out of curiosity - can I ask you what infrastructure this is
| running on? Is this some dedicated bare metal or a basic $5 VPS?
| I am curious as of what it actually takes to give your site a "HN
| hug of death" once you reach first page.
|
| Thanks.
| assemblylang wrote:
| Working on getting the website back up now, got the so called "HN
| hug of death" from the traffic
| assemblylang wrote:
| back up, but expect some 500 errors
| walrus01 wrote:
| the interface reminds me a little bit of progress quest
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_Quest
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Uh oh, do we need to be careful of posts going 'viral' again? :)
|
| The last time I used Outlook express on Win XP were the glory
| days of attachment and automatic preview worm emails. Back then
| we thought sending a bit of jscript or vbscript to an email
| client should of course be automatically executed and run when
| received or clicked to preview the contents. _shudder_
| barelysapient wrote:
| Disappointed the 500 error I got wasn't a blue screen of death.
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| This seems like it would be a good candidate for a static site
| responding to all the requests in an efficient manner.
|
| Then have a server process somewhere that generates scheduled
| updates of the site on a scheduled basis.
|
| I would think the site does not have to be real time,
| curiousfab wrote:
| Thanks for making this (despite the hiccups and error 500s). I
| _love_ the aesthetics of that era so much: Efficient usage of
| screen space, clear borders between different elements - brings
| back happy memories!
| badsectoracula wrote:
| FWIW this is basically how my Thunderbird (91) looks (with a
| different UI theme of course) and i don't think i've made any
| special customizations :-P. If anything Thunderbird uses less
| vertical space due to not having all the big icons.
|
| Fortunately Thunderbird (and Firefox) uses Gtk theming for the
| most part and i've used a Motif-y theme for Gtk3, so it picks
| up most things.
| assemblylang wrote:
| >I love the aesthetics of that era so much: Efficient usage of
| screen space, clear borders between different elements - brings
| back happy memories!
|
| the GUI design of this era was really something else, its hard
| to describe but the UIs felt so discoverable, the basic core
| features were presented up front and easy to use, intermediate
| features could be found in widgets surrounding the core UI, and
| a whole set of advanced features within the menus once you've
| mastered your surroundings. It's as if the UIs of the time were
| designed to create an efficient learning path, at the expense
| of some information overload when first using the application.
| francoismassot wrote:
| thank you for this hilarious moment, the internal server error
| was just too good
| lostgame wrote:
| This is adorable. A little broken on my iPhone 8, but that's to
| be expected; it's meant to emulate a desktop experience.
| Multicomp wrote:
| This is amazing. But I think I somewhat helped the HN hug of
| death hence getting intermittent 500s.
|
| For folks passing through, the image is of a virtual Windows XP
| desktop complete with Bliss background, taskbar, and Outlook
| Express showing emails, where each email is an HN link. I may
| just need to set this as my new HN bookmark!
| Retr0id wrote:
| I didn't know it was possible to make an HN post with both text,
| _and_ an URL. Is this a new feature?
| sm4rk0 wrote:
| I just tried filling both fields, but text ended up as a
| comment (and I can't delete a post):
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30040573
| dang wrote:
| Yes, as of a few days ago.
| Retr0id wrote:
| Does this apply to all types of post, or just Show HN?
| dang wrote:
| Currently just Show HN. We don't do it for other kinds of
| posts for reasons explained in the FAQ
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html):
|
| Q: _How do I make a link in a text submission?_
|
| A: _You can 't. This is to prevent people from submitting a
| link with their comments in a privileged position at the
| top of the page. If you want to submit a link with
| comments, just submit it, then add a regular comment._
|
| The difference with Show HNs is that when it's the project
| creator sharing their own work, it's ok for their link and
| text to be in a privileged position. Hopefully people won't
| start abusing that, but if they do, we can roll back the
| change.
| masswerk wrote:
| I love the attention to detail regarding a culture of
| fair discussion.
|
| Thank you!
| 4cao wrote:
| I think it's always been possible for "Show HN" (and not for
| "Ask HN").
| nik736 wrote:
| Why is the 500 error page not a blue screen.
| [deleted]
| solmag wrote:
| "500 internal error" and audible laughter sorry
| only4here wrote:
| currently getting an internal server error on your website, but I
| can't blame you for being on the front page!
| password4321 wrote:
| Nice re-skin. Suggestions vs. the 500's:
|
| * Show the rest of the page if the HN content isn't loadable.
|
| The server doesn't seem to have any problem delivering the static
| assets, which are the majority of the work. Server-side rendering
| is awesome, but there's got to be a way to not lose the whole
| layout on server error?
|
| * Load the HN content from somewhere else client-side rather than
| proxying through your server.
|
| I don't have experience to share the ideal source, but I do know
| HN has an official API. Implementing caching may be enough to
| allow the server to handle it.
|
| Congrats on your project getting so much traffic!
| assemblylang wrote:
| good points, yes I definitely should have implemented some
| caching logic, the 500s are due to rate limiting on the HN side
| I think. Wasn't expecting this much traffic! good lessons for
| next time and something to consider for future projects
| gred wrote:
| This plus full screen (F11)! _chef 's kiss_
| btdmaster wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220122190454/https://hackerxp....
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Ahhh.. looks like good old NNTP. Time to get
| https://www.forteinc.com/agent/ again?
| zozbot234 wrote:
| NNTP is a fairly clunky protocol by modern standards. It would
| be nice to get an Agent-style application for 'Fediverse'
| (ActivityStreams/ActivityPub based) endpoints.
| miles wrote:
| Had a brief, glorious glimpse amidst a host of "500 Internal
| Server Error"s: https://imgur.com/a/y3896NY
|
| EDIT: Did not know that links and text could be combined in a
| single submission, nor that the submission could be edited for so
| long (the archive.org and github.com links were recently added
| apparently).
| notRobot wrote:
| I love how it looks! Can't wait for the website to be up again
| so that I can experience it first-hand ;)
| ik8s wrote:
| Missed opportunity to have a blue screen as well!
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(page generated 2022-01-22 23:00 UTC)