I really like the current simple design of HN, my only issue with it is how ridiculously zoomed out it is by default. I've been viewing HN at 150% zoom for as long as I can remember.
120% here. I suddenly feel very young.
Show HN: I made a modern web UI for Hacker News
161–170 of 203 posts
Re: Show HN: I made a modern web UI for Hacker News
#162doesn't reflow text properly on zoom in firefox, had to disable
Re: Show HN: I made a modern web UI for Hacker News
#163Looks good! Biggest appeal for me is that it provides dark mode without needing to use a third party webapp or a CSS customization extension with broad permissions requirements. Some things I noticed: changes to the font size/width/line height don't seem to persist between the comments page and the front page. On top of this, the bars don't have clear numerical values so it's hard if you make any tweaks on them to ma…
Thanks for the suggestions, glad you like it.
The theme settings (font size/width/line height) apply to the current view. So you can setup the style separately for each of the 3 views: story pages + index pages (list or table view).
I'll add all this info to the help section shortly.
Will also add tooltips to the sliders (with current value) in the next update + a reset button :)
Re: Show HN: I made a modern web UI for Hacker News
#164Funny how every some years a young developer comes and does the same again and again. It's always fun to watch. It's even better that HN hasn't changed in all this time. I don't even ever go to HN, I just read it on my RSS feed.
Re: Show HN: I made a modern web UI for Hacker News
#165Nice! It's a neat idea to implement it as an extension. And I enjoy how it just overlays the normal site (loads separate pages as separate pages, etc) And finally a dark mode. Dear god. One bit of feedback: it took me a minute or two to figure out how to comment on an article (to write this very comment); I actually had to look back at the website to make sure commenting wasn't a "Pro" feature. I don't know if the re…
Thanks for the feedback, glad you like it!
- Will definitely add tooltips and have a think about how to make the reply process clearer.
- I'd like to make the top nav customizable at some point, so when I do I'll add options for the account sections (threads etc). Will add a setting to show karma next to the user icon too.
- Yeah a couple of others have requested that too. The next logical step is a theme editor, which would allow changing border colors etc. It's on the TODO :)
- Yes that should be there, will add it back in the next update.
Re: Show HN: I made a modern web UI for Hacker News
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's some overhead, but not much. It basically just parses the underlying HTML as soon as it's loaded, then redraws it with added features. Also no heavy frameworks used, just basic hand-coded JS + jquery + a few helper libraries (luxon for dates etc)
The post was about efficiency for the user, not for the computer.
Yeah I missed that, first thought was efficient performance!
Re: Show HN: I made a modern web UI for Hacker News
#167It is way less efficient to consume HN with this design, so I won't use it.
I agree, it's a lot harder to logically/visually move through comments. The grey-black-black-with-underlines is a lot easier to read then the bold-black/black/thin-hl. It's kind of why I hate the new reddit style too. I also don't like having to hover to see the icons for reply. Why are you hiding the parent/context buttons for navigation in a dot-dot-dot menu when you drill into a comment chain? Where's prev/next? U…
- Good point, I'll add a setting in the next update to always show icons.
- Parent / context are in the menu just to keep the design clean. But I understand that's not what everyone wants, so I will add a setting to show these with the other icons, instead of in the menu.
- Prev / next are moved to the "control pad" (pro feature), but my intention is for the free version to support all current HN features, so I will add those back in the next update.
- The permission to firebase is to access the HN API [1] to grab user profile info etc. The other is for the pro upgrade using ExtPay [2]
Re: Show HN: I made a modern web UI for Hacker News
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
The extension uses ExtensionPay [1] to accept payments via Stripe for the Pro upgrade. It's open source and created by HN user Glench [2]. [1] https://github.com/glench/ExtPay [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=glench
But Google Chrome has the following note in the extension details view after you install it: > This extension is not trusted by Enhanced Safe Browsing. Learn more[1] [1]: https://support.google.com/chrome_webstore/answer/2664769?vi...
Hmm, this seems to be because of Google's new policy for verifying extensions. The domain (modernhn.com) hasn't been used for an extension before, so it needs to be around for a few months with a good track record to be verified. Their page [1] says:
> For new developers, it will take at least a few months of respecting these conditions to qualify.
Modern for Wikipedia [2] already meets those standards, and has the relevant badges, so I guess it'll just take some time for those to be approved and for the "Enhanced Safe Browsing" warning to be removed.
[1] https://developer.chrome.com/docs/webstore/discovery/#publis...
[2] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/modern-for-wikiped...
Re: Show HN: I made a modern web UI for Hacker News
#169I immediately installed it, thank you. I really like the dark mode. However, I couldn't figure out how to comment initially and looked for the comment box, even at the bottom and couldn't find it. I finally realized it is the left facing arrow on the right just under the title. I think that UX could be improved to surface the comment feature. Also, one feature I really wanted that I don't see on the extension is the…
Thanks, glad you're enjoying it :) Good suggestions, I will try to make the commenting process clearer, and add a favorite icon to the lists too.
Re: Show HN: I made a modern web UI for Hacker News
#170Hi, I quite like this extension! One minor criticism though that prevents me from using it: links I've clicked through to from the front page don't change colour indicating where I've been in the past. This is infinitely useful on a heavy HN browsing day :)
Yeah forgot to add visited link color, it's coming in the next update :)