I use HackerNew Chrome extension [0] but the web reigns supreme when it comes to reading HN but that's about as far as I go. I've always felt the 3rd party "clients" to just feels off, not to mention missing certain features they just can't provide (karma or sometimes voting). Even on mobile where I use HACK and Octal they sometimes fall short and I just go open the website in Safari since it's more powerful.
Here's another extension you may be interested in[0]. It allows total customization if you don't mind writing a bit of HTML, though it ships with some decent defaults. It's also not 1:1 feature complete with HN but it suits my needs just fine.
Maybe it’s intentional but things are far larger on a phone. It only shows 3 stories, where the “non-pretty” client shows 8. It’s also really weird that click on an article leads to the comments on HN rather than the actual article. Like, why would I be interested in the comments for something I haven’t read first?
I’m not sure I think it’s prettier, at least not on the front page on mobile. It looks a little like some sort of vision disability mode, which I guess is nice for some people, but big things aren’t necessarily pretty to me.
> It’s also really weird that click on an article leads to the comments on HN rather than the actual article. Like, why would I be interested in the comments for something I haven’t read first?
I've been using link aggregation sites in this way (comments->link) for many years now.
Depending on the platform I either open both the comments and link at the same time into tabs, or I open just the comments and then click the link.
I'm not typically reading the comments first (though I am skimming them, so paywall notices, cache links, etc. are typically found before even trying to load the link). Instead, the main benefit I've found to the workflow is being able to quickly and easily return to comments about that story. When the frontpage has a high rate of turnover it can be difficult or time consuming to go back and find the original submission/comments. Whereas if they are already open or within the browser history stack, things are much easier to track.
I often read just the HN comments, without ever looking at the article!
The comments often provide a great "preview:" a short summary and/or let me know if the article is worth reading.
Other times, I'm just more interested in the discussion related to the topic more than the article itself.
That's why https://hw.leftium.com dropped the links doesn't even link to the article; I always open the comments first, then (maybe) open the article in the background while I read the comments.
There are so many HN front ends. It feels like a new one gets created every 6 months. Yet for all of its subjective “ugliness”, I still find the original HN site to be largely excellent enough already.
Yeah usually I find these things make HN worse and not better. I’ve never found one that raises beyond net neutral
The one change I’d make is keeping track of what I’ve read or not in a thread. I understand that the lack of this feature is a conscious choice but I disagree. I use a browser plugin
In your profile, there's a "hidden" link to a list of the links you've hidden. You can unhide them.
(Note that afaics if you don't have any hidden links, the "hidden" link in your profile won't appear. The link will be among the various "comments", "submissions", etc links in your profile.)
Couldn’t you catch the popular ones by looking in your logs for correlated bumps in traffic anytime you’re on the front page?
If that’s not good enough, trawling through HN Algolia search is probably the best way, since they’re almost surely going to have been announced on HN.
My wish list for an alternate front end is one that automatically swaps the main article with archive.is and nitter.net links. These are often posted as comments so readers don't need to log in. HN used to have a web link, adding it back would be great.
I primarily use HN on my phone and have no issues with the density. In fact, I wish more mobile sites were like this.
I loathe the mobile experience on sites like CNBC where there’s low density and stock photos for each headline. It takes multiple scrolls to see all the headlines.
Font size for text and titles are ok, but links are too small, I developed tap anxiety as I frequently miss click things. But that’s not the worst part, navigating through huge threads of comments is. I would like to see all root comments first and then decide what thread is worth expanding, not being forced to collapse threads I’m not interested in.
I personally think it looks really good! I like the color scheme and the way each element looks together with the font. It also fits quite nicely with the original Hackernews “brand”.
I found it a bit unintuitive though that I couldn’t click on comments and also found the spacing between links a bit too large for my taste.
We don't need new design on the front end, we could use more small features on the existing site. For years, I've been collecting a list of stuff I'd like to see. Most of it can all be built with a browser extension. It is really too bad that `Refined Hacker News` was poorly coded, and now abandoned. Some day, I'd love to resurrect it.
The issue is that the way the author coded up the extension is really "wrong"... it is mostly just hacking at the DOM instead of building a data model and then applying that to the DOM.
Just in case if anyone is already using uBlock Origin and don't know, the css style can also be modified with a filter (I noticed the feature existence through HN comment some mounts ago. Procedural filters are also allowed).
I like the original HN so I use it just fot tinny details, but for other users necessities and only just in case if they find it useful or didn't know, it more or less would be (not complete),
57 comments
[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 128 ms ] thread[0] https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/hackernew/lgoghlndi...
[0] https://github.com/dan-lovelace/hacker-news-pro
But I don't particularly think it needs Arial fonts and more padding.
Hah, same! That way the information density is just perfect.
I’m not sure I think it’s prettier, at least not on the front page on mobile. It looks a little like some sort of vision disability mode, which I guess is nice for some people, but big things aren’t necessarily pretty to me.
I've been using link aggregation sites in this way (comments->link) for many years now.
Depending on the platform I either open both the comments and link at the same time into tabs, or I open just the comments and then click the link.
I'm not typically reading the comments first (though I am skimming them, so paywall notices, cache links, etc. are typically found before even trying to load the link). Instead, the main benefit I've found to the workflow is being able to quickly and easily return to comments about that story. When the frontpage has a high rate of turnover it can be difficult or time consuming to go back and find the original submission/comments. Whereas if they are already open or within the browser history stack, things are much easier to track.
The comments often provide a great "preview:" a short summary and/or let me know if the article is worth reading.
Other times, I'm just more interested in the discussion related to the topic more than the article itself.
That's why https://hw.leftium.com dropped the links doesn't even link to the article; I always open the comments first, then (maybe) open the article in the background while I read the comments.
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/stylish-custom-them...
But, since it's easy to rectify after the fact, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
The one change I’d make is keeping track of what I’ve read or not in a thread. I understand that the lack of this feature is a conscious choice but I disagree. I use a browser plugin
Also accidentally clicking on flag or hide for the story above the one you are trying to tap!
(Note that afaics if you don't have any hidden links, the "hidden" link in your profile won't appear. The link will be among the various "comments", "submissions", etc links in your profile.)
If that’s not good enough, trawling through HN Algolia search is probably the best way, since they’re almost surely going to have been announced on HN.
I have been browsing via https://hckrnews.com/ for years now.
(I find it nowhere near as interesting as the more curated default list.)
Bypass paywalls: https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clea...
Auto Nitter/Invidious/etc: https://libredirect.github.io/
PS: The comment link isn't clickable, which is usually the first thing I'm clicking when looking at the front page.
I loathe the mobile experience on sites like CNBC where there’s low density and stock photos for each headline. It takes multiple scrolls to see all the headlines.
I have a bookmarklet that toggles between hw.leftium.com and news.ycombinator.com
(If you click on a comment's timestamp, you can see the top level replies to that comment in the same way)
I found it a bit unintuitive though that I couldn’t click on comments and also found the spacing between links a bit too large for my taste.
I might be trippin but the buttons look bigger on my screen than they used to.
Luckily there isn't really a need for updates.
Left swipe - save to favourites, right swipe - next article.
This fork has the necessary fixes in it to keep it working, and has inline reply implemented: https://github.com/lookfirst/refined-hacker-news/tree/main
The issue is that the way the author coded up the extension is really "wrong"... it is mostly just hacking at the DOM instead of building a data model and then applying that to the DOM.
I guess everyone has a different idea as to "pretty"
I like the original HN so I use it just fot tinny details, but for other users necessities and only just in case if they find it useful or didn't know, it more or less would be (not complete),
links scale
or button scale or font scale (Related to uBO, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37584134 , https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Static-filter-syntax )I won't be using it because as many others have pointed out, it still need to be refined, but overral looks like quite a good job.