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Show HN: Browser Extension to Refine the HN Experience

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Re: Show HN: Browser Extension to Refine the HN Experience

#22

Post by npongratz »

tbirrell wrote: post #15

I like it so far, but J to navigate down and K to navigate up is not intuitive at all. It should be flipped to match our Left-to-Right-Top-to-Bottom understanding of layouts

J and K are intuitive for anyone familiar with vim's keybindings for up and down.

Re: Show HN: Browser Extension to Refine the HN Experience

#23

Post by atoav »

mont wrote: post #17
tbirrell wrote: post #15

I like it so far, but J to navigate down and K to navigate up is not intuitive at all. It should be flipped to match our Left-to-Right-Top-to-Bottom understanding of layouts

It's probably set up like that to mirror vim bindings, after all, "J" does look __sort of__ like a down arrow.

I always remember it as “jump” and “climb”. Climb doesn’t start with k, but fair enough.

Re: Show HN: Browser Extension to Refine the HN Experience

#24

Post by LinuxBender »

jumbopapa wrote: post #9
plibither8 wrote: post #2

Hello everyone, OP/developer here! If you are already using the extension, you can see the "[op]" beside my username too! ;) There are many extensions out there that add quite a few features to Hacker News, but they also always do one thing, which I have realised, is a slippery slope: changing the minimalistic design and style of Hacker News. I created this extension with one thing in mind: I am NOT going to mess aro…

I know you don't want to mess with interface, but have you considered a minimal dark theme? Think it might be nice.

For Firefox, there is DarkReader [1] A small sub-set of websites will be slowed down or break, but you can enable/disable per domain.

[1] - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/darkreader/?s...

Re: Show HN: Browser Extension to Refine the HN Experience

#25

Post by TeMPOraL »

plibither8 wrote: post #7
behnamoh wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately for whatever reason firebaseio.com (which gets called by your extension) is blocked in my country[0]. As a result, this extension doesn't work on my end. But bravo for this! I personally very much liked the highlighted unread comments and being able to reply without living the page. The hovering thing bothers a bit tho[1]. [0]: Then again, CloudFlare gives me an access denied upon opening hn.algolia.com…

This is rather strange. Which country are you in, may I ask? Also, doesn't this hamper with many other websites you might visit that depend on Firebase?

Maybe a stupid question, but why is the extension even talking to Firebase? Skimming the feature list, all of these look like something that should work without connecting anywhere else but HN itself.

Re: Show HN: Browser Extension to Refine the HN Experience

#26

Post by TeMPOraL »

plibither8 wrote: post #18
tbirrell wrote: post #15

I like it so far, but J to navigate down and K to navigate up is not intuitive at all. It should be flipped to match our Left-to-Right-Top-to-Bottom understanding of layouts

J and K are vim's keybindings for up and down, which I figured would fit well with the community and users. What are possible alternative mappings to make it more intuitive to non-developers?

> What are possible alternative mappings to make it more intuitive to non-developers?

Arrows.

But for the other camp - the Emacs people - n and p would be best :).

Re: Show HN: Browser Extension to Refine the HN Experience

#28

Post by plibither8 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #25
plibither8 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is rather strange. Which country are you in, may I ask? Also, doesn't this hamper with many other websites you might visit that depend on Firebase?

Maybe a stupid question, but why is the extension even talking to Firebase? Skimming the feature list, all of these look like something that should work without connecting anywhere else but HN itself.

The HN API is on Firebase, which is used to fetch details of users and items. It is used, as of now, in the following features:

  comments-ui-tweaks
  show-item-info-on-hover
  show-top-leaders-karma
  show-user-info-on-hover

Re: Show HN: Browser Extension to Refine the HN Experience

#29

Post by plibither8 »

hagreet wrote: post #27

Could somebody please explain the selection of required permissions to me? For example, why does it need: "Access browsing history", "Access browser tabs"?

To "hide read stories", the extension needs to check whether the link has been opened in the past, ie, if it is present in the history.

To open links in new tabs, but in the background, and to communicate between the popup and active instances of Hacker News, the extension requires the "tabs" permission.

All code is completely open-sourced on the GitHub repository, too!

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