HackRSS - browse HN posts visually • Hacker News Board

HackRSS - browse HN posts visually

#1

Post by bgraves » Wed, Jun 15, 2011, 2:21 PM UTC

HackRSS - browse HN posts visually
hackrss.com

Re: HackRSS - browse HN posts visually

#2

Post by instakill » Wed, Jun 15, 2011, 2:26 PM UTC

Quite cool, but the titles shouldn't be cut.

Re: HackRSS - browse HN posts visually

#3

Post by bgraves » Wed, Jun 15, 2011, 2:28 PM UTC

instakill wrote: post #2

Quite cool, but the titles shouldn't be cut.

I agree. This is more of a proof-of-concept / demo of the url2png api. If the post looks interesting to you, just hover over the image thumbnail to view the title.

Re: HackRSS - browse HN posts visually

#4

Post by scrrr » Wed, Jun 15, 2011, 2:37 PM UTC

Nicely done but I find the default view much easier to navigate. A JavaScript-switch between default and with pictures would be nice though.

Re: HackRSS - browse HN posts visually

#5

Post by petercooper » Wed, Jun 15, 2011, 2:40 PM UTC

I usually enjoy visual browsers like this, but here the previews are too small for it to click for me. Just to provide a counterexample, this one is pretty cool and along similar lines: http://news.peepcode.com/

Re: HackRSS - browse HN posts visually

#6

Post by xtacy » Wed, Jun 15, 2011, 2:45 PM UTC

Excellent! And I love the browsing and picture in picture recursion: HackRSS -> HackRSS :-)

Re: HackRSS - browse HN posts visually

#7

Post by mmahemoff » Wed, Jun 15, 2011, 2:49 PM UTC

This kind of UI would work well on other HN-like sites, e.g. links to pretty web designs, but the nature of HN links means the screenshots are almost all the same thing: an article, a possible image, some ads or links on the side.

Because of the extra space taken up by screenshots, the most important thing - link title - has to be truncated, and it's not showing vote/comment counts.

It's always good to experiment with UIs, but in this case, I think the experiment shows the UI is more suited to other kinds of links.

Re: HackRSS - browse HN posts visually

#8

Post by ducuboy » Wed, Jun 15, 2011, 2:58 PM UTC

Could not fork. The repository's default branch is empty.

Re: HackRSS - browse HN posts visually

#9

Post by kilian » Wed, Jun 15, 2011, 2:58 PM UTC

I think url2png is really cool, but I was a bit pissed when from one day to the next they went to a subscription model and added sign-up links to all screenshots. Their fair right, of course, but no fun if you just started using it.

Re: HackRSS - browse HN posts visually

#10

Post by bgraves » Wed, Jun 15, 2011, 2:58 PM UTC

scrrr wrote: post #4

Nicely done but I find the default view much easier to navigate. A JavaScript-switch between default and with pictures would be nice though.

perhaps a Google Instant Preview style extension where you hover over the default view link and a screenshot is displayed on the side? That would be a great browser extension!