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The Single Piece of JavaScript on HN

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Re: The Single Piece of JavaScript on HN

#131

Post by JupiterMoon »

Illniyar wrote: post #126

I see a lot of comments here about how not having js on the page is a great thing and lets get back to the old days. Lets be frank here, HN's UI is not good. At the very least it needs collapsible comments and responsiveness to mobile. The fact that HN is a success is despite its bad UI, or maybe because of the many HN readers out there that fix all the broken stuff on the page. While js on sites have surely overgrow…

HN's design is fantastic - it is totally perfect for its function. Collapsible comments are a pig to use. HN looks and works great on mobile now (it didn't used to but they did a redesign in the last few months).

Downvoters do you care to explain why you disagree?

Re: The Single Piece of JavaScript on HN

#132

Post by fabulist »

Illniyar wrote: post #126

I see a lot of comments here about how not having js on the page is a great thing and lets get back to the old days. Lets be frank here, HN's UI is not good. At the very least it needs collapsible comments and responsiveness to mobile. The fact that HN is a success is despite its bad UI, or maybe because of the many HN readers out there that fix all the broken stuff on the page. While js on sites have surely overgrow…

HN's UI is clear, accessible, and uncluttered. If you want something different, they expose an API which everyone and their mother has written a client with, including native apps for mobile. The only JS on the site is in place to reduce the page reloads you were worried about.

What is the problem here?

Re: The Single Piece of JavaScript on HN

#133

Post by fabulist »

seanalltogether wrote: post #3

If we ever make it around to a second piece of javascript on here, can I request that it be a collapse comment function? I promise i won't ask for anything else.

Alternatively, I'd appreciate if comments had a link to their siblings and not just their parents. It wouldn't require any JavaScript, but would (for me) have the same utility.

Re: The Single Piece of JavaScript on HN

#134

Post by em500 »

daxfohl wrote: post #110
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the majority of cases that I've seen, these arguments are simply excuses to avoid doing real work. It's way more fun to decide whether your amazingly awesome Unicorn startup is going to use React or Angular, or Express vs. Rails, or whatever than it is to actually go through the hard work of building a customer base and making money.

Would love to see "Enterprise HN" with Node and React and Redux (with server-side rendering), and how it compares (whether horribly or awesomely).

Have you seen hn.algolia.com?

Re: The Single Piece of JavaScript on HN

#135

Post by rimantas »

nathancahill wrote: post #112
gordonzhu wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's most fascinating to me about this isn't the simplicity, it's that this code has lived for so long with almost no changes. It's a great counter-example to all the recent articles about JavaScript fatigue. It's good for us to see real examples of sites that aren't caught up in the framework of the week hype. At the end of the day we're trying to make stuff that works. ES5 vs ES6, React vs Angular vs. Ember vs. A…

Lol. For hiding a voting arrow after it's clicked. Yes, you're right. You don't need any of that stuff. But if you were to write an entire app in the style of those two functions, things would fall apart. That's not even a hypothetical, it's been proven over and over again that it doesn't work. How is everyone agreeing with you? Is there that much JS fatigue that we're looking at the equivalent of a horse-drawn carri…

JS fatiques starts where web pages (not web apps) start to depend on thousands of kilobytes of javascript. Now the default thinking is along the lines "I am starting a new project, I will use angular", instead of some analysis what kind of project this is, how much JS is needed and what is appropriate.

Re: The Single Piece of JavaScript on HN

#136

Post by chris_wot »

Illniyar wrote: post #126

I see a lot of comments here about how not having js on the page is a great thing and lets get back to the old days. Lets be frank here, HN's UI is not good. At the very least it needs collapsible comments and responsiveness to mobile. The fact that HN is a success is despite its bad UI, or maybe because of the many HN readers out there that fix all the broken stuff on the page. While js on sites have surely overgrow…

The only think I'd like for mobile is better up and down arrows. That's literally the only thing. Otherwise, don't change the UI in any way. To do otherwise would make this site so much less great!

Re: The Single Piece of JavaScript on HN

#137

Post by rohanprabhu »

gedrap wrote: post #130

Is it just me, or it sounds... cult-ish / overly dramatic? >> it wasn’t obvious to me that Hacker News had any JavaScript at all. I guess he never votes. >> I thought it would be weird and complicated, but it turned out to be quite the opposite. You’ll have to watch the video to see what I mean. Well, it sends a HTTP request and hides an element. How on earth can it be complicated? I mean, ok, you can use The Framewo…

Not just you. I don't see why this warrants a 12 minute video.

Re: The Single Piece of JavaScript on HN

#138

Post by mynewtb »

jmiserez wrote: post #127
Illniyar wrote: post #126

I see a lot of comments here about how not having js on the page is a great thing and lets get back to the old days. Lets be frank here, HN's UI is not good. At the very least it needs collapsible comments and responsiveness to mobile. The fact that HN is a success is despite its bad UI, or maybe because of the many HN readers out there that fix all the broken stuff on the page. While js on sites have surely overgrow…

>responsiveness to mobile. Please no. I like being able to zoom in or out, and too often "responsive" means no zoom and either huge or miniscule text.

Opera lets you override that!

Re: The Single Piece of JavaScript on HN

#139

Post by Confusion »

smadge wrote: post #81

A few weeks ago I turned off javascript in my browser out of principle and to see if progressive enhancement was still a thing web developers cared about (hint: it's not). I was pleased that HN worked fine, and the only annoying thing was that voting caused a page reload. It's nice to see this get the attention it deserves! Developers! You probably don't need javascript to achieve 90% of your goals. It will just slow…

But note what you assert yourself: reloading on every click is annoying. And not reloading, but also not providing feedback that you successfully clicked the button is also annoying.

The 10% of your goals that you do not achieve without Javascript are essential to changing 'the web' from being a clunky to being a nice experience. The web without the least bit of Javascript is like a world without fire: you'll survive, but it won't be nearly as comfortable. Fire inevitably led to nuclear bombs, but we should certainly not disavow fire because of that. We should just be against the nukes.

Re: The Single Piece of JavaScript on HN

#140

Post by SCdF »

JupiterMoon wrote: post #131
Illniyar wrote: post #126

I see a lot of comments here about how not having js on the page is a great thing and lets get back to the old days. Lets be frank here, HN's UI is not good. At the very least it needs collapsible comments and responsiveness to mobile. The fact that HN is a success is despite its bad UI, or maybe because of the many HN readers out there that fix all the broken stuff on the page. While js on sites have surely overgrow…

HN's design is fantastic - it is totally perfect for its function. Collapsible comments are a pig to use. HN looks and works great on mobile now (it didn't used to but they did a redesign in the last few months). Downvoters do you care to explain why you disagree?

I didn't down-vote you, but "collapsible comments are a pig to use" isn't really a statement I can get behind, nor a statement with any real value (what does "a pig to use" mean, practically?)

I use a (slightly modified) Chrome plugin to clean up HN's styling to make it more readable. Most importantly it adds collapsable comments, without which I would enjoy HN much less.

Collapsable comments makes it easy to tell what you have and haven't read, and to easily skip large threads which bore you without having to mentally watch the invisible vertical line and scroll until it comes back it.

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