HN Explorer

Is anyone interested in a better Hacker News?

25 points by goldname ↗ HN
I really like the content on this forum but I find the features and UI lacking. I was going to make another website dedicated to tech news and discussion but with a better user exp. Would anyone be interested in trying the product when I finish it?

70 comments

[ 5.7 ms ] story [ 138 ms ] thread
throwitaway222
build it with llms
goldname
What do you mean? i'm using llms to debug code and stuff
squircle
I would certainly appreciate if @dang and @pg cared to clarify just how many bots are on this platform. Without the data, what's left but to assume we're wasting time communing with bots and interplanetary intelligences (save for those relationships we connect with in person. Empirical evidence is important.)
tasuki
How would they know?

The whole twitter thing around the bots was just a theatre.

qup
The problem is, you won't build a better Hacker News.
rfarley04
I can't think of anything I wish HN did differently. What do you have in mind that's "better UX"?
goldname
I really like the quora interface. I think old quora used to have a good community like HN. So I'm designing the ui kind of like that
rfarley04
I've never been a fan of Quora so I don't know it's UI very well. Can you be more specific?
The_Colonel
A personal preference, but Quora is likely one of the worst UIs. I really dislike how it mixes answers to different questions into one page. You google something, see it's discussed on Quora, but maybe 1 out of 10 answers there are actually about your question.
goldname
yeah that's the new quora. it's really bad now but used to be really good
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
joegahona
I would be interested in trying the product if the content is as good or better than the content here. More features will not get me to switch, however.
TheAlchemist
I'm sorry, but I think you've misunderstood what the product here really is !

Who cares about UI

squircle
My fat fingers appreciate the practice.

P.s., to OP, you can roll your own UI on top of HN without losing whatever this community is.

LorenDB
I can only think of two things that I really would like HN to implement:

1. Dark mode

2. Two-factor authentication for better account security

Apart from that (and maybe a better API to help with third-party apps), HN is perfect. The minimal (should I say retro?) UI just adds to the charm of the site. Consider it repellent for those who aren't ready for the HN atmosphere.

type0
> 1. Dark mode

Ublock Origin filters are great workaround

https://rich.sh/2024/03/20/hn-theme

just update a few lines:

# Text

news.ycombinator.com##.c00:style(color: #fafafa !important)

# Inputs

news.ycombinator.com##input[type="text"], input[type="url"], textarea :style(background-color: inherit; border: 1px solid #d4d4d4; color: #000000 !important)

LorenDB
I'm already using Dark Reader. It'd just be nice to have an official dark theme.
pella
I don't think it's very difficult to write a different UI. There's even a terminal version available:

https://github.com/bensadeh/circumflex

JohnDeHope
I use hckrnews.com mainly because it only shows things that made it to the top page. It's an easy way to filter. If they can do that, it seems anybody could do anything with the content.
rozenmd
HN's UI is not the product.
Grimblewald
For me it is. The reason HN wins out over a curated set of subreddits for me is the fact that the UI is no bullshit. It is plain, simple, and does what is required to quickly and effectively communication information and not a thing more.
muzani
UI/UX of HN is perfect besides not being able to block people. I'd still like to see a new site, just because old communities tend to have lots of crusty people.

Maybe an alternative might be an imageboard instead.

vasili111
I truly like HN as is. Simple and does what it should do.
speleolinux
I like the simple, minimalist UI that HN currently has. I cannot think of any features that it currently lacks. I'm already spending more time here than on /.
Fezzik
Yea, no. HN is the pinnacle of UI as far as I am concerned. It is as simple as is necessary but not lacking in features. And the filtering/ranking of articles is top-notch. The only thing I miss, content wise, is political posts, because I enjoyed the discussions around here. I dislike that (almost) all politics-centric articles are effectively assigned to oblivion immediately.
paulddraper
Except for the "Sorry, we're not able to serve your requests this quickly." like 13 times a day.
hilbert42
The single biggest problem I have is finding an article again at a later time. Even if one remembers the item or list number at the time of viewing (which I don't unless I take special note) that number will change almost immediately, a day or two later the article can be buried many pages down or have disappeared altogether.

Then there's the problem of remembering the story's title so one can search for it. Say, several days later I want to revisit a story that I remember the substance of but I have forgotten its title then sometimes it's almost impossible for me to find it again (stories often have short or cryptic titles that have little bearing with their content).

There's also a similar problem with comments, if I want to revisit a comment I read several days earlier, it's often almost impossible to find—unless I've noted the handle of the poster.

Another annoyance are stories behind firewalls, the poster will have access but many of us will not. It would make sense for these stories to be flagged with a big red dot or such so we can bypass them.

teitoklien
> I have is finding an article again at a later time. Even if one remembers the item or list number at the time of viewing (which I don't unless I take special note) that number will change almost immediately

There is a button below every post labelled ‘favourite’, once you’ve marked a post as favourite you can access the list of such bookmarked posts under your profile settings called favourited posts

Here’s a link to your one : https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=hilbert42

> Then there's the problem of remembering the story's title so one can search for it. > There's also a similar problem with comments.

There’s tool at https://hn.algolia.com to help you search for posts via both title and comments

> There's also a similar problem with comments, if I want to revisit a comment I read several days earlier, it's often almost impossible to find—unless I've noted the handle of the poster.

You can quickly search for all comments on hn.algolia.com

Its a YC 2014 batch company.

hu3
I find it amazing that we both wrote a comment about HN favorite and https://hn.algolia.com within 5 minutes. You're is more complete though.
hilbert42
"There is a button below every post labelled ‘favourite’, once you’ve marked..."

Right, but that presupposes I want to remember or mark it at the time when I first read it which is usually not the case.

hu3
Yeah I don't like disappearing articles. I've missed some very interesting articles only to stumble upon them by chance in https://hn.algolia.com

A quick tip though which helped me: you can favorite posts and comments. You need to open each to see the favorite link.

hilbert42
Yeah, as I said to teitoklien one has to do that at the time, trouble is I usually don't. :-)
hu3
Yes! It would be nice if the [favorite] link could be shown without opening.
wenc
I browse HN from https://hckrnews.com/

It's chronological.

ffsm8
The homepage only works for the current day however. It sadly doesn't just accrue the entries like it does in the 10-50% categories
wenc
Not sure what you mean. It spans multiple days, it’s invite scroll.
ffsm8
This is how it looks on my end. Regardless wherever it's ipadOS, MacOS, Android or Windows

https://snipboard.io/sYOVin.jpg

wenc
Weird. It’s infinite scroll on mine. iPad and Mac.
ffsm8
Are you sure you've set it to homepage? The other categories work for me too. The homepage one is the only one that only really worked for the last 24h
wenc
I default to the all filter.

Never used any of the other filters. Maybe that’s why.

All does everything I want.

soganess
JS blocking?

Edit: Nope. I get the same thing when I use the "homepage" tab/filter.

wvl
2 days late, but creator here -- this is as designed.

Every entry on hckrnews has hit the homepage, so 'all' is exactly that. The current homepage filter is simply a filter to show what is presently on the homepage of news.ycombinator.com.

But this is not the first time someone has been confused about the homepage filter, so I could probably explain that better somehow.

[deleted]
(comment deleted)
hilbert42
Hmm. Perhaps that's a solution, I'll give it a try. Thanks.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
auct
Nope. Try materialistic hn app from playmarket
Grimblewald
No, I come here in part for the content, but more specifically because I really enjoy the content centric approach the site has. Information is very easy to parse. Without examples, I imagine when you say 'better user exp.' you mean the same kind of enshitification that reddit has gone down.

If you compare old.reddit.com to www.reddit.com you'll see what I mean. Reddit used to look and behave a lot like HN, and that is what made it a prime source of information. Currently, it surives off it's userbase but it is no longer a good primary source of information because unit time vs unit information is quite poor now.

Crier1002
No. it's perfect as what is it already.
InMice
I think many here could take the same model (users, posts, comments etc) and make something more rich in the browser. But you cant just trivially have the user base that HN has by doing so.

Since people are mentioning their gripes: Mine is titles are black but once clicked they become the same grey color as the line below each post title, which is also a link for the commments, the point count etc. So if you click on a title, read, then press back it becomes hard to distinquish or find a previously clicked link esp when the order of post changes.

In short, visited title links should be a different color

Brajeshwar
Honestly, I personally feel that “better” is a lazy and un-imaginative term (in general, not against your thoughts) when one lacks a definite goal to achieve. Perhaps, “A better alternate User Experience for HackerNews.” Better, better, be better with an improvement/enhancement against the comparison value.

As for the “UI lacking”, I have added some minimal custom styling catering to my personal preference - some subtle smooth corners, paddings/spacings, author highlights, width constraint, etc. Even that, I’m tempted to nick it and get used to whatever it is.

Not the best nor optimized but here are the styles

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/tdkzn5zhm218lvggl91l5/browser...

theGnuMe
The only downsides to HN are that it is addictive and you miss interesting articles and conversations that you'd wished you'd seen earlier due to time zone effects.
teitoklien
You can make a better UI, but you cant get a better u/dang like HN has :)
tasuki
Yes, the secret sauce of hn is not the ui, it's dang.
The_Colonel
Getting nice UI is the easy problem, getting quality content / community will be your main problem.

How about instead creating a WebExtension for HackerNews (similar to RES for Reddit) which would add / change things you miss.

[deleted]
(comment deleted)