[HN Gopher] Show HN: I made a modern web UI for Hacker News
___________________________________________________________________
Show HN: I made a modern web UI for Hacker News
Hey HN, I made this free browser extension that modernizes the
Hacker News design. I previously launched Modern for Wikipedia [1]
here back in December, and it seemed like the obvious next choice
to build one for HN too! So I've taken what I learned from building
that, and have spent all my spare time this year building Modern
for HN. I realize this won't be for everyone, but it was a fun
project to work on, and I'm really happy with the result so far.
Hope you like it too! Lots more planned for future updates, and
suggestions welcome :) [1]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29461735
Author : sjdz
Score : 212 points
Date : 2022-09-08 17:18 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.modernhn.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.modernhn.com)
| muhammadusman wrote:
| Out of all the HN extensions/websites I've used, this one has
| become my favorite. I really like the customizations available
| and also, it really does feel "modern" in that some things just
| feel easier to do with this tool.
| helf wrote:
| No thank you.
|
| HN is great because it /isn't/ ... that.
| flanbiscuit wrote:
| This looks very nice, great job!!
|
| I used to use HN-Special[1] (by the same dev who made that 2048
| game[2]) but I stopped a while ago and I don't miss it. I like HN
| as is (for now), but I do have it at 150% zoom using the native
| browser built in zoom, which works great for my needs.
|
| The one thing I really really want is the equivalent of the
| "[l+c]" button from Reddit Enhanced Suite. In one click you open
| both the comments and the submission (if it's just a text one) in
| new tabs.
|
| 1. https://gabrielecirulli.github.io/hn-special/
|
| 2. https://github.com/gabrielecirulli/2048
| dankwizard wrote:
| What an excellent look, great work putting this together!
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| Nice, but no thanks. HN's old boring design is an oasis on the
| modern web.
| dmix wrote:
| I've seen a hundred of these but this is quite nice, I'll give it
| a shot for a week. The configuration makes it much nicer, others
| have been too opinionated.
|
| One thing: it'd be nice to click the whole top header of the
| comments to collapse them, instead of clicking the far left
| toggle.
|
| Edit: also not seeing my comment score inline on the page header
| makes it difficult to know if I should check my comments for
| activity. this one might be a deal breaker.
| sjdz wrote:
| Thanks :) Will add the comment score. Clicking the header to
| collapse is a good idea, I'll get that working too.
| dmix wrote:
| highlighting the OP w/ a color was a nice touch btw
| dmix wrote:
| also the more I use this the more I like it, nice work :)
|
| (I'm an HN-junkie)
| uxcolumbo wrote:
| At first I thought 'Not another one'.
|
| But this is really well designed and great to have the style
| customization available.
|
| Are you a designer?
|
| The upvote, bookmark buttons etc probably need a tooltip - not
| everyone might know what those icon buttons do. In fact I'd add a
| tooltip to all icons buttons.
|
| Also, when the width is set to 100% - the menu that appears after
| clicking on the more button (3 dots) is cut off - as it appears
| to the right. You probably have to do some edge detection or
| always show it to the left.
|
| And nice one for trying to earn a buck.
| drewtato wrote:
| What does "Font smoothing" do?
| sjdz wrote:
| It applies -webkit-font-smoothing to anti-alias the fonts.
| GNOMES wrote:
| Personally the only problem I have with the current UI is that I
| have to hit the arrow at the bottom to expand for more comments.
| Kills my ability to CTRL/CMD F and find keywords.
| dang wrote:
| What do you mean by the arrow at the bottom? I don't recognize
| that.
| GNOMES wrote:
| Correction, I was referring to "X more comments..." like seen
| on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32755893
|
| I just want all comments to load on page load so I can search
| easily.
| dang wrote:
| Ah ok. Actually we've mostly turned pagination off lately
| because recent performance improvements (not the big ones -
| those are still coming!) made it possible. But I forgot to
| turn it off when I restarted the server today, and with the
| big QE thread burning hot at the moment, we should maybe
| wait a while.
|
| I agree that it's annoying and it will be a happy day when
| we can turn it off properly.
| em-bee wrote:
| oh, that's great news. pagination always got in the way
| when tracking new comments because when switching to the
| next page the order of the comments may have changed, and
| i see comments on the second page which i already read on
| the first, and i wonder which comments i am missing
| because they moved from the second to the first page by
| the time i switch pages.
| nemothekid wrote:
| I think this is a relatively new feature - HN used to show
| all comments, but the feature very frequently caused a lot
| of load on the servers which would cause HN to go down.
| brycewray wrote:
| Nice! Any way to set previously read items with different CSS, so
| -- as in the basic HN UI -- you can tell at a glance whether
| you've already been there? Don't see that option mentioned for
| either free or Pro.
| sjdz wrote:
| Good idea, thanks, I'll add that in the next version.
| exnz wrote:
| Used it the past hour, I really like it. Thanks for making this.
|
| Can you add the "past" section too? Also, it would be great if
| you add left margin indicator for comment threads, otherwise for
| long comment threads it is not clear how deep inside I am in the
| thread.
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| LOVE.
|
| Great job. Already using and enjoying this. Keep up the great
| work.
| sjdz wrote:
| Thanks, glad you like it :)
| agiacalone wrote:
| Looks neat! Going to give it a try...
| fred69 wrote:
| tough wrote:
| Get off this thread then? Nobody forcing you to use it...
|
| TF with your agressivity
| markeibes wrote:
| Centuries of advances in typography are surely not a bad idea
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Outside of the context of OP's work, I have been mentally
| conditioned to consider anything "Modern" to be absolutely
| shit.
|
| Nothing is more repulsive than a tag line on a product that
| says "New and improved modern look!"
| hjanssen wrote:
| This is such an overly negative reaction it is frankly mind
| boggling.
|
| The UI is optional. It is literally an extension you _can_
| install separately. Nobody is taking anything from you.
|
| There is a place to criticise bloated and Ad-ridden web pages.
| This extension is not it.
| cmer wrote:
| I _really_ dig it. Great job. It might not be for everyone, but
| to me it's a real breath of fresh air.
| dusted wrote:
| I really like that HN is not like that, but nice work anyway :)
| porter wrote:
| This is unexpectedly great.
| rswerve wrote:
| Love this; really nice work. It's so much more readable. Older
| eyes thank you. I would upvote it just for having a lighter-
| charcoal background available for dark mode.
|
| My one piece of feedback is this: the line height adjustment on
| the comment pages changes the distance between comments as well
| as the space between lines within comments, but I think those are
| better decoupled. I would like to see comments fairly close
| together while maintaining a readable line height for the
| comments themselves.
| genezeta wrote:
| Why not make this a user-style? [0]
|
| In particular I ask this because your approach -if generally
| applied- means installing an extension for each single site,
| which feels a bit too much.
|
| [0] https://userstyles.org/styles/browse/ycombinator
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| There're some extra features (e.g. bookmarks) that utilize
| scripting and data storing. So a userstyle wouldn't cut it. A
| user script though would. Also privacy-wise I think there isn't
| a way to limit an extension to a single site, something
| possible with a user script.
| Pathogen-David wrote:
| > Also privacy-wise I think there isn't a way to limit an
| extension to a single site
|
| On Chrome/Edge you can, not sure about Firefox.
|
| Additionally this extension only even asks for permission to
| access Hacker News and some backend stuff presumably used for
| the paid tier.
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| Yes, you're right on asking permissions. I didn't had a
| site-specific extension so couldn't see them. Unfortunately
| restricting any extension, if it doesn't restrict itself,
| is only possible on Chrome and its derivatives.
| barroomhero wrote:
| It's probably on me, but is there no change in color for visited
| links?
| ibdf wrote:
| I kinda like it. The font-size and container size are a nice
| touch. I like that I can keep the cream background. I think the
| nested comments are still a bit hard to read.
| crazygringo wrote:
| It's very nice-looking!
|
| One deal-breaker for me, sadly -- having the collapse/expand and
| upvote/downvote buttons on opposite sides (left, right) of the
| page is way too annoying.
|
| When I read comments, I'm constantly voting and collapsing. Using
| my trackpad to jump back and forth is just too much.
|
| Current HN isn't _great_ for that, but it 's usually only
| traversing about a quarter of the page's distance.
| isatty wrote:
| This is not a critique of the work, I understand that some folk
| prefer it and that its beautiful work.
|
| I _hate_ modern web UIs however. Give me plain old websites that
| are information dense, with none of the fluff. HN and
| old.reddit.com are my daily reads.
|
| I will be _very very_ sad when old.reddit goes away and I
| probably will have to go app only (Apollo) when that happens.
| tartoran wrote:
| Same here and in my opinion one of the reasons HN became what
| it is: they didn't fuss with the interface, kept it simple and
| light. When old.redit stops working I'll probably stop using it
| altogether.
| mrwnmonm wrote:
| I love it
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Congrats, it looks very nice! One critical feature that this cuts
| from native HN is the changing colour of links already visited.
| I'll often click an article, then navigate back, and use the
| changed link colour to reorient myself on the page.
| sjdz wrote:
| Thanks! Yeah I forgot that, will add a setting in the next
| update to change the color of visited links.
| proc0 wrote:
| Looks great, and I like the customize settings. I couldn't figure
| out how to comment though. Not sure if I missed it or it's not
| yet a feature.
| sjdz wrote:
| Glad you like it :) You should just be able to hover over a
| comment and click the reply icon?
| skunkworker wrote:
| I too am unable to do this, there isn't a comment box for top
| level comments.
|
| EDIT: I would expect a comment block to be before the
| "${count} Comments" tag.
| brundolf wrote:
| Nice!
|
| It's a neat idea to implement it as an extension. And I enjoy how
| it just overlays the normal site (loads separate pages as
| separate pages, etc)
|
| And finally a dark mode. Dear god.
|
| One bit of feedback: it took me a minute or two to figure out how
| to comment on an article (to write this very comment); I actually
| had to look back at the website to make sure commenting wasn't a
| "Pro" feature. I don't know if the reply-arrow really translates
| to comment threads, especially when you're not "replying" to
| another comment but to the main post. Some sort of comment-bubble
| icon might be clearer. At the very least I think those icons
| could use titles, and/or "modern" tooltips.
|
| Overall pretty cool! I think I'll try it out at least for a
| little bit
|
| Edit: A couple other things,
|
| - It's a bummer that karma and threads (now "Comments") are
| hidden behind an extra click. When I'm actively participating in
| a thread those are two of my most frequently-used parts of the UI
|
| - The thread UI is a little too minimalist I think; it's a little
| hard to visually parse where one comment ends and another starts,
| nesting levels, etc. Some tasteful borders or lines would go a
| long way here, though so would some slightly-more-contrasted
| colors
|
| - I don't see a way to see upvotes on your own comments like in
| the main UI. My dopamine receptors would like that feature back
| ;)
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| It looks great, but a little disappointed to see no mobile
| version. I'll use this the next time I'm on my computer.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Glider is a pretty great client on mobile IMO.
| CharlesW wrote:
| My favorite iOS client for Hacker News (so far) is HACK:
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hack-for-hacker-news-
| developer...
| diimdeep wrote:
| It is way less efficient to consume HN with this design, so I
| won't use it.
| xemdetia wrote:
| I agree, it's a lot harder to logically/visually move through
| comments. The grey-black-black-with-underlines is a lot easier
| to read then the bold-black/black/thin-hl. It's kind of why I
| hate the new reddit style too.
|
| I also don't like having to hover to see the icons for reply.
| Why are you hiding the parent/context buttons for navigation in
| a dot-dot-dot menu when you drill into a comment chain? Where's
| prev/next? Upvote/Downvote/hover UI covers stuff, and no alt
| tags anywhere to be seen.
|
| Also why does it need perms to firebase and extensionpay again?
|
| It just feels clunky even as a redesign.
| syastrov wrote:
| I think there's a trend to replace applications having
| information-dense designs with all actions at your fingertips
| with ones that add so much padding that you can only see a
| little bit of information at a time and in order to perform
| any action, you have to hover or click several times.
| em-bee wrote:
| yes, and i find it disturbing. either a feature is there,
| then it should be visible at all times, or it should be off
| completely. while i am reading my eyes are tracking the
| locations of those buttons/links so that i can quickly move
| the mouse to use them. if they are hidden that slows me
| down and gets in the way. it makes sense on small screen
| like mobile where it is better to use the space to show
| more content and have actions hidden behind a menu, but not
| on the desktop.
| D_Joni wrote:
| https://hackrnews-dj.netlify.app Have you tried to use
| this HN clone? It is a SPA, but it has very similar UI to
| the original site, and it has some extra features added
| (dark an modern UI, bookmarking with highliting new
| comments, searching through comments, navigating, root
| comment collapsing in any child comment, and a few
| other). It is also optimized for desktop and mobile
| reading, and very readable.
| daqnal wrote:
| I'd day there is a balance between form and function when it
| comes to websites, and I'd rather stare at a nice looking
| slightly less efficient webpage rather than an ugly but more
| efficient one.
| sjdz wrote:
| There's some overhead, but not much. It basically just parses
| the underlying HTML as soon as it's loaded, then redraws it
| with added features.
|
| Also no heavy frameworks used, just basic hand-coded JS +
| jquery + a few helper libraries (luxon for dates etc)
| topaz0 wrote:
| The post was about efficiency for the user, not for the
| computer.
| jtokoph wrote:
| Why is it way less efficient?
| em-bee wrote:
| because it hides important UI elements. in particular prev
| and next which i use frequently are completely missing. that
| alone forced me to turn off the extension after just a few
| minutes, because unfortunately it made pages very difficult
| to navigate.
| sjdz wrote:
| Good point, I'll add prev / next back in the next update.
| They've been moved to the "control pad" (pro feature) in
| the extension, but my intention is for the free version to
| support all current HN features.
| markeibes wrote:
| It's not of course
| skunkworker wrote:
| For right now I'm back to using the Hacker News enhancement
| suite, it builds on top of the compact ui.
| em-bee wrote:
| could you link to that please?
| jzelinskie wrote:
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-
| enhanc...
| tough wrote:
| Oh wow, it's like HN has entered the 21st century all of a sudden
|
| great design, Im keeping it enabled for testing
| FpUser wrote:
| It installs fine on Chrome but fails to install on Brave (network
| error download interrupted). Too bad as Brave is my main browser.
| I have no problem installing some other Chrome extensions on
| Brave.
| napier wrote:
| Modern HN. *only works on desktop computers.
|
| The screenshots look nice on mobile though. Good effort but I'm
| kind of attacked to HN how it is and I hope they never change it
| (and that they continue to make it east for people to riff on the
| original).
| theyomkarbirje wrote:
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| I immediately installed it, thank you. I really like the dark
| mode.
|
| However, I couldn't figure out how to comment initially and
| looked for the comment box, even at the bottom and couldn't find
| it. I finally realized it is the left facing arrow on the right
| just under the title. I think that UX could be improved to
| surface the comment feature.
|
| Also, one feature I really wanted that I don't see on the
| extension is the ability to "favorite" it without clicking into
| it. So, I'd love to see that added. I will consider paying for
| the pro version to support you, but am going to give it a week or
| so on the free version.
|
| Thanks
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| I think I'm really going to like the easy access to the history
| as well!
| tough wrote:
| also on mobile widths it breaks (on dsktop) when making window
| narrower
| sjdz wrote:
| Thanks for the heads up, will fix that in the next update.
| StacyC wrote:
| Using it now -- I like it!
| new_here wrote:
| This is great! Congrats and thanks for sharing your work! People
| have been asking for dark mode for years. This has it and so many
| other nice UI improvements too. Well done!
| movedx wrote:
| I really like this. Thank you. I'll use it and see how I go.
| joegahona wrote:
| I really like this!
|
| Just a subjective thing -- I would consider offering Verdana in a
| future release, for those (like me) who aren't yet ready to lose
| that flavor of HN. But all the other adjustments are very
| desirable to me so far.
|
| Regarding the name: The horse might be out of the barn, but
| calling this a "modern" HN sounds a bit too much like a value
| judgment to me, though I doubt you meant it that way (and I doubt
| anyone at HN really took offense). It also triggers all the
| curmudgeons who are hellbent against anything "modern" just
| because it's modern.
|
| Great job!
| sjdz wrote:
| Thanks :) Yes the plan is definitely to add more font
| selection, including Verdana for the classic look!
|
| I'd like to eventually add a full theme editor to change all
| aspects of the UI.
| Uehreka wrote:
| Oh THANK YOU. The extension I'd been using before has been having
| bugs recently and stopped showing "next page" buttons.
| pssdbt wrote:
| Curious why a browser extension and not a site like
| https://hckrnews.com/?
| sjdz wrote:
| Good question. There's a few key benefits:
|
| - It builds on the existing site, so the new design is always
| applied to HN urls. No need to visit a separate website.
|
| - Privacy - everything is stored locally in your browser,
| there's no 3rd party website to track your activity etc. Also
| with JSON backup you're in full control of your data.
|
| - Unlimited storage - local browser storage has limits, but
| extensions can request unlimited storage. This is useful for
| the history and bookmark features.
| staindk wrote:
| I'm late to this but just wanted to mention - I'm checking out
| the extension and like it quite a lot.
|
| Only feedback I have right now (that I haven't seen anyone else
| mention) is that I'm finding it hard to jump to the next "top-
| level" comment. If I'm half way down a comment thread and decide
| I just want to skip the rest of this thread, I'm used to just
| scrolling down a bit until I see the next top-level comment and
| I'll read from there. It's easy enough to do in non-skinned HN
| because the everything is left-aligned, but with the extension I
| haven't been able to intuit a left 'border' yet and am not sure
| if it'll ever come to me.
| tough wrote:
| One nit, it seems to hijack going back/forward in history using
| touchpad? Browser buttons work. idk
| latchkey wrote:
| I've been pretty happy with this one:
| https://github.com/plibither8/refined-hacker-news
| jamesgeck0 wrote:
| I'm not a huge fan of how it removes the built-in account-linked
| bookmarking functionality (favorites) and replaces it with a pro-
| only feature (locally stored bookmarks).
| CharlesW wrote:
| Regardless of whether it's a pro-only feature, my feedback is
| that I need this to use the existing HN favorites capability
| before I feel comfortable using it.
| sjdz wrote:
| Looks like that's a bug, sorry about that. Will be fixed in the
| next update.
|
| For reference, in the Pro version you can set the storage for
| your favorites to private (local browser storage) or public (HN
| profile). It's currently set to private storage for free users,
| but should be set to public (to save to your HN profile).
| andrewgioia wrote:
| Shameless plug for a small Userstyle I wrote:
| https://git.gioia.cloud/andrew/gists/src/branch/master/Users...
|
| It adds dark mode and some spacing/font size/readability
| improvements for wider screens.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| Just a little usability tip, if you name the css file with the
| extension .user.css, when viewed as raw from Github, Gitea, etc
| extensions like Stylus will offer to install it so users don't
| need to create the userstyle entry themselves.
| olivierduval wrote:
| Firefox ask for permission for "Access your data for
| extensionpay.com" ??????
|
| What for ?????????
|
| Seriously : I can't understand... and I surely WONT install this
| because I cant ANY REASON. Really disapointed :-(
| detaro wrote:
| Why would a extension that has a paid upgrade option
| potentially contact a provider of services to implement paid
| upgrades in browser extensions, mysterious indeed. A question
| requiring many, many question marks.
| jtokoph wrote:
| If you read the site, there is an option to pay for premium
| features. I would assume that extensionpay is a vendor that
| helps with facilitating those payments.
| sjdz wrote:
| The extension uses ExtensionPay [1] to accept payments via
| Stripe for the Pro upgrade. It's open source and created by HN
| user Glench [2].
|
| [1] https://github.com/glench/ExtPay
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=glench
| hkdobrev wrote:
| But Google Chrome has the following note in the extension
| details view after you install it:
|
| > This extension is not trusted by Enhanced Safe Browsing.
| Learn more[1]
|
| [1]: https://support.google.com/chrome_webstore/answer/266476
| 9?vi...
| a_wels_catfish wrote:
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| I kinda come here because it doesn't have this :)
|
| But this is the good thing about it, people can extend it as they
| wish.
| dheera wrote:
| I love it. I wonder if it's possible to do this by proxying
| requests to HN instead of a Chrome extension -- that way I
| don't have to bloat the browser's start-up time and don't have
| to "worry" about this extension spying on other websites, even
| though I realize it's unlikely, it's good principle to not have
| to give this permission.
| sjdz wrote:
| It's possible, but as I mentioned in another comment,
| building this as an extension has some added benefits [1].
|
| > that way I don't have to bloat the browser's start-up time
| and don't have to "worry" about this extension spying on
| other websites, even though I realize it's unlikely
|
| No need to worry about that, as it's limited by the
| permissions specified in the extension manifiest. So this
| extension can only access news.ycombinator.com and
| extensionpay.com to facilitate the Pro upgrade.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769145
| gremlinsinc wrote:
| I wish this were more of an SPA with an account system/db
| of it's own, I'd even pay for a subscription (small one).
| I'd basically like there to be a mobile app and desktop
| version that no matter where I read an article, it's marked
| read. I use materialize and hckrnews now, if both of these
| could keep track of the same bookmarks, visited links, and
| maybe allow note taking or creating groups of saved things,
| that'd be awesome. Also notifications and a messaging
| system like reddit has would be cool...in fact I just want
| a redditized HN experience lol.
| sjdz wrote:
| Cool ideas! It would definitely be possible to build in a
| cloud sync feature at some point to enable those
| features.
| addandsubtract wrote:
| I use hckrnews.com but it only changes the start page.
| wffurr wrote:
| There's [Hackerweb](https://hackerweb.app/) which uses the HN
| API and does some clever stuff delegating to a webview.
| xvinci wrote:
| Depends on what you mean by "proxying". Everything you do
| (serving a Single-Page Application or requesting HN by
| backend, processing it's HTML and sending the content to your
| own frontend) will take traffic away from
| news.ycombinator.com and to another domain - which comes with
| it's own set of dreadful scenarios.
|
| There used to be (and still are) things like
| https://mreidsma.github.io/bookmarklets/jquerify.html which
| allow to inject JavaScript on click (and thus would make it
| possible to transform that site), but I gave it a shot and HN
| is set up to disallow this: Refused to load
| the script 'https://code.jquery.com/jquery.min.js' because it
| violates the following Content Security Policy directive:
| "script-src 'self' 'unsafe-inline'
| https://www.google.com/recaptcha/
| https://www.gstatic.com/recaptcha/
| https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/". Note that 'script-src-elem'
| was not explicitly set, so 'script-src' is used as a
| fallback.
| Eduard wrote:
| Doesn't work with Chrome Android.
| overflyer wrote:
| Hey man, I installed the Firefox extension and I am loving it.
| However the Auto Dark Theme does not work and DarkReader does
| nothing at all on your layout.
|
| Having a dark version of this would be awesome :) Thanks for your
| hard work. I appreciate it! :)
| arafatamim wrote:
| It has a dark version already. Press the "aA" icon on the top
| right toolbar
| tobyjsullivan wrote:
| The following is not any sort of critique on the author's work.
| The design looks quite fresh, in fact. This is merely a
| tangential observation.
|
| Anyone else see the mock-up and think "this looks slow"?
|
| Logically, it's not a defensible inference in the slightest.
| There's nothing about this design that would necessitate
| performance tradeoffs. But that's the barely-conscious, emotional
| first impression I had.
|
| I wonder if there's something about "modern" design (or a
| specific subset thereof) that correlates with subpar performance.
| crazygringo wrote:
| No, funny -- for me it's precisely the opposite.
|
| The design is clean, modern, minimalist -- and I associate
| sites that look like that with loading in a blink.
|
| It's the sites where everything is crammed in and packed with
| ads that load slowly, like most news sites.
|
| Everything about this style of design says "fast" to me.
| qsort wrote:
| I had your exact same reaction.
|
| Related story: In my free time I am a coach for a competitive
| math team, I recently had to design an application to automate
| multiple choice problem submissions. Nothing stellar, your run-
| of-the-mill CRUD app. But it was under some interesting
| engineering constraints: users would have to log in from a
| variety of devices, phones, tablets, bad chromebooks, etc.,
| possibly on slow cellular connections.
|
| So naturally I went for a simple server-rendered design, with
| stock Bootstrap hosted on a CDN.
|
| The overwhemling reaction was "this is so fast". Now, being
| server-rendered with absolutely no XHR, the app spends most of
| the time _doing nothing_ , but it's interesting laymen think
| it's fast.
|
| I think we came to associate "modern" designs with piles of
| javascript, requests everywhere, popups, ads, and the like.
|
| Probably the _correlation_ is indeed there, even if it 's
| obviously not causation.
| phpthrowaway99 wrote:
| A few years ago I learned to code using YouTube how to videos
| and stackoverflow. I made a Saas for the industry I work in.
| I use php, bootstrap and jQuery. I even built it as a SPA
| technically.
|
| It is faster than basically any modern CRM in existence.
|
| 30+ companies use it daily. It runs in a namecheap shared
| hosting for $4 a month.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > Anyone else see the mock-up and think "this looks slow"?
|
| It just looks clumsy and distracting compared to plain HN,
| IMHO. It highlights elements like usernames, the total amount
| of comments(!) or the upvote/favorite actions, that users will
| only rarely interact with or even want to look for. Meanwhile
| other actions have to be hidden beneath a "..." widget, lest
| the page become too cluttered. The factory HN look does a much
| better job of bringing the comment text into focus and reflects
| the threading hierarchy without needing a lot of padding to
| space things out.
| bachmeier wrote:
| > Logically, it's not a defensible inference in the slightest.
|
| We have different views of "defensible". I imagine clicking
| something on that page and waiting for a response. I learned to
| make that association based on experience.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| Yep! My pattern-matching brain assessed as both slow load time
| (probably not infact true due to it being an installable
| browser extension?), and high input latency.
| dotcoma wrote:
| Why? If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
| guytv wrote:
| This is awesome, I'm using it as I type. very refreshing. The
| only thing that is missing, is that the front page does not show
| which articles i've already clicked (the link is not grayed), so
| I can't quickly scan the list.
|
| Thanks! great job!
| dindresto wrote:
| Would be great if there was an option to change the font color
| for more contrast :)
| jacooper wrote:
| Finally, I use HN exclusively through glider on android, because
| the Website is less than stellar tbh.
|
| I like the modern UI for Wikipedia too, it would be great if you
| can make it work on Wiktionary.org too!
|
| A note, the wikipedia extension doesn't work on non-engoish
| versions of Wikipedia, for example de or ar.Wikipedia.org
|
| Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be open source, a big nono with
| browser extensions
|
| It would be great if you can show the fav icon of the link beside
| the titles, it helps differentiate posts.
| franciscop wrote:
| Do you accept feature requests/think this might be a good idea?
|
| I've been thinking about creating this + adding
| https://github.com/mozilla/readability to grab the links that are
| text articles and present them in-page (and cleaned up, just the
| text+images+similar, removing all the sidebars, popups, etc)
| instead of having to go to a 3rd party website with all the
| popups and such.
|
| It'd have to be either a personal website or a browser extension
| like yours, since I wouldn't be able to host a given article for
| anyone to read (for copyright reasons), but I can have a modified
| browser that loads a 3rd party article different.
| kungfufrog wrote:
| Hi,
|
| I quite like this extension! One minor criticism though that
| prevents me from using it: links I've clicked through to from the
| front page don't change colour indicating where I've been in the
| past. This is infinitely useful on a heavy HN browsing day :)
| skunkworker wrote:
| It looks great, is there a way to reduce the margins on the left
| and the right? Right now the padding is taking up about 40% of
| the usable space. Where on the normal HN the padding is about 15%
| sjdz wrote:
| Yes, just click the "aA" icon to open the settings, and use the
| bottom slider to adjust the content width.
| skunkworker wrote:
| That worked thanks, I would recommend adding a tooltip to
| explain what that action is doing.
| sjdz wrote:
| Will do, thanks.
| xemdetia wrote:
| I really hate how there's no alt tags or anything like that
| to actually tell you what any of the sliders mean.
| sjdz wrote:
| Good point, I'll add tooltips to the next version.
| vincnetas wrote:
| Top right theres 'aA' setting button. Play with is.
| uo21tp5hoyg wrote:
| I really like the current simple design of HN, my only issue with
| it is how ridiculously zoomed out it is by default. I've been
| viewing HN at 150% zoom for as long as I can remember.
| mmcnl wrote:
| The current design is simple but lacking imo. Font size is
| small, not touch friendly. Also annoying that a single new line
| doesn't do anything, you need to have two. Doesn't make sense
| at all.
| ggorlen wrote:
| > Also annoying that a single new line doesn't do anything,
| you need to have two. Doesn't make sense at all.
|
| This is how markdown works, so it feels natural to me
| (although then the differences from markdown become
| apparent...)
| krossitalk wrote:
| Hah, I have particularly bad eyesight and HN and Terminal are
| both around 175% normal (12pt) zoom levels.
| sshine wrote:
| I only have an average bad eyesight, but I still prefer
| ridiculously zoomed text. My focus simply is always on very
| little code or text at a time, so I don't see the point of
| not utilising my screens fully.
| pbasista wrote:
| I am viewing the standard version of HN at 270% on a 4K screen.
| The main reason is not the font size but the layout.
|
| Only at that zoom level would the page span the entire width of
| the screen _and wrap the text around_.
| victornomad wrote:
| I view HN at 200% Getting old :/
| TakeBlaster16 wrote:
| I've always felt bad about 133% and this thread is putting
| things in perspective for me
| teejmya wrote:
| I use 200% and I'm in my 20s. Nothing wrong with reading
| comfortably!
| crispyalmond wrote:
| I normally use 160%, I love this site.
| Akronymus wrote:
| For me, I dislike that it is not in dark mode without some
| userscript
| DavideNL wrote:
| Same here.
|
| Firefox on iPhone/iOS can't zoom text (a long time open
| request.) Therefor it's impossible to this website with it.
| Kind of ridiculous.
|
| Is it really so hard to create a proper default layout? Text
| size seems so basic...
| theonething wrote:
| I apparently set HN to 150% so long ago and had gotten so used
| to it I didn't even realize that I had until reading this
| comment.
|
| Just tried 100% out of curiosity and you're right, it's
| ridiculous.
| capitainenemo wrote:
| Hm, dunno. Just tried out zoomed in to 150% and switched it
| back. I like having more text on the page without scrolling.
| Esp given how wordy people get get here, and as the nesting
| grows.
|
| But I guess to each their own. +1 for loving simplicity of
| current design though.
| [deleted]
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