Fixing HN comments with breadth-first navigation
1–8 of 8 posts
Re: Fixing HN comments with breadth-first navigation
#2I've been noodling on this for a few years now but have procrastinated on trying to build something similar. Surprised there aren't more platforms that use breadth-first navigation or provide it as an option.
Re: Fixing HN comments with breadth-first navigation
#3This is a great tool to avoid the constant de-railing of headline topics which is the biggest bane of HN. Too often serious news falls victim to misdirection ... which requires time spent poking endless hyphenated closures to work past. It'd be great to see this solution embedded at the end of each headline.
Re: Fixing HN comments with breadth-first navigation
#4The title for your submission should be a Show HN:
Interesting point about the problem of HN's depth-first comment structure. It feels like perhaps HN should collapse sub-comments by default to encourage more breadth. Perhaps collapse by default at the 2nd level.
Your approach to solving that is an interesting UX idea but even with the basic understanding the comments are sorted by their levels, it wasn't very obvious how to navigate the app. I kinda expected to be able to easily scroll across all level 1 comments (whether scrolling vertically or horizontally).
I was also surprised that the first comment was already pre-selected, and that level 2 comments were only for the selected comment. You could require new users to click on a comment first before expanding to show the level 2 comments, gives them an opportunity to learn the relationship between the two.
Re: Fixing HN comments with breadth-first navigation
#5[deleted]
Re: Fixing HN comments with breadth-first navigation
#6Just click on [-] in the comment header to move on to the next same-level comment.
Re: Fixing HN comments with breadth-first navigation
#7The title for your submission should be a Show HN: Interesting point about the problem of HN's depth-first comment structure. It feels like perhaps HN should collapse sub-comments by default to encourage more breadth. Perhaps collapse by default at the 2nd level. Your approach to solving that is an interesting UX idea but even with the basic understanding the comments are sorted by their levels, it wasn't very obviou…
Appreciate the feedback! Agreed that on HN, even collapsing at L2 would be a significant improvement.
I'll keep brainstorming with the UX for the next version. I appreciate your perspective on how all the data disclosed on first load might be disorienting with unclear relationships. I'll play with either some sort of animation cue, colored or bordered visual indicators, or a default null selection as you've suggested.
Re: Fixing HN comments with breadth-first navigation
#8Just click on [-] in the comment header to move on to the next same-level comment.
That is indeed the current workaround, but IMO still unwieldy and inefficient. I find that the hotkeys alone allow you to fly around the comments and scan them way faster.