HN Explorer

Ask HN: HN on the iPhone?

21 points by nixy ↗ HN
I apologize if this topic has already been discussed, but I am curious to know how you iPhone users read HN from your phone.

I read HN many times a day using my iPhone, I follow links and I read comments. However, the design of the HN front page and comment threads is not really optimized for reading on a small device. I've experimented with browsing the RSS feed from HN, but it isn't really that much better. I get a bit better readability on the front page, but I can't find anything else than the top 30 posts. The comments are not included in the RSS, there is just a pointer to, well, this page.

So, I'm wondering if anyone has done any thought experiments on, or maybe even implemented, an iPhone-friendly wrapper for HN?

I'm thinking a site styled for the iPhone which takes HN data and presents it in a more readable format. Perhaps users could customize the CSS to make it fit their needs and their mobile devices (not just the iPhone). Sort of like a GreaseMonkey-on-a-server.

Has this been discussed or done? What would you guys want to improve when reading HN on your mobile devices?

25 comments

[ 27.7 ms ] story [ 511 ms ] thread
mrduncan
http://www.icombinator.net/

Disclaimer - I don't have an iPhone so I've never actually used it though.

nixy
Exactly what I had in mind -- thanks.
dejb
Looks like this would work well for lot's mobile devices. Thanks.
larrykubin
I use this every day. I find it very useful, but it sometimes crashes randomly and seems to have problems loading additional stories lately. Love the Instapaper feature for reading on iPod touch on the go.
ianbishop
iCombinator is great. However, there has a been a lot of downtime lately and you cannot comment or log-in.

An actual iPhone application would be great if pg would agree to let someone do it.

pclark
apparently 280 North are working on one...
ianbishop
I believe that has been in the works for.. quite awhile. A status update would be nice.
profquail
I re-wrote some HTML templates for news.arc about a week ago, so that it uses XHTML + CSS. I also put in an iphone-specific CSS and Javascript library so it seamlessly has iphone capabilities built into it.

I haven't gotten it switched over to arc yet though. I'm planning to sit down one night soon and re-write all of the HTML-generating code. If there is a Lisp/Scheme/Arc hacker that wants to work with me on it, we could probably work it all out in an evening or two. My email is in my profile if you're interested.

masklinn
There's an open-source Reddit client out there, if yc provided some kind of API (you don't want to do page scraping on the iphone) it would probably be pretty easy to adapt it.
mseebach
Slightly related, except not -- I use HN on an Android device, and while I don't particularly mind the layout, I can't seem to login. I can enter my username/password, but it doesn't go anywhere. If I use a wrong password, I get an error message.

Anyone know what's wrong?

sunkencity
maybe you have cookies off
jamesbritt
I have the same problem, and have never set cookies one way or another for any site. Other sites (e.g. Reddit) that require authentication seem to work fine.
DrJokepu
I can confirm that, I use clickpass + openid to log in and about once every fortnight it just refuses to log me in for a day from my phone (it says "bad openid" or something like that). The site is still usable though so it's just a minor annoyance.
warp
I regularly read HN on a Nokia e71 (using the default browser shipped by Nokia) and on a PSP. I only have two issues:

1) comments nested 5+ levels deep get a really narrow column for the text.

2) the 'mouse' cursor positioning on the e71 is just a little too coarse making impossible to click on some of the upvote arrows next to a comment.

Other than that I have no issues with reading HN on a small screen. On the e71 replying is also no problem, the textarea fits on the screen.

jeremyw
I posted some very simple amendments made to HN HTML that would make life much happier for iPhone users, as a quick (if temporary) remedy. But I think the train got lost after that discussion.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=470863

jamesbritt
I've been reading HN on my G1, and it's pretty much fine for reading, but I cannot get my sign-in to stick.

I can enter my name and password, and it kinda sorta acts as though I've been signed in, but it never shows my user name or allows me to post of vote. But it never tells me there was a problem signing in either.

Has anyone else seen this?

aerique
I use iCab Mobile as my default browser on the iPhone since it supports loading pages in background tabs and that has been sufficient for me.
jsz0
The default site works fine for me on the iPhone. The text is a bit small on comments but it's readable.
DrJokepu
On the G1 (Android) which is pretty much the same as the iPhone in this respect, my main annoyance is the combination of small vote icons and the inability to undo votes. I have accidentally downvotes comments on a number of occasions from my phone in the past (sorry for that to everyone involved)
geuis
I am currently working on a native iPhone reader for HN. The biggest pain point is the lack of data api's, so much of the work has been around building a service layer to provide interactions with all HN features. I will be supporting all HN features, so it's not just an rss reader. When I get it to a point for release, I'll post again on HN.
pclark
please do! and if you need a beta tester ... :)
alaskamiller
We're working on something cool with Hacker News, iPhones, and SearchYC.com that we're going to launch real soon.
alanthonyc
I put the phone in landscape mode and just read away. I haven't noticed any major usability issues, aside from when entering comments.