
Show HN: HN Special – A visual theme and Chrome extension for Hacker News - terabytest
http://gabrielecirulli.github.io/hn-special/
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jwarren
Nice, but I find it a bit too hard to read. On my Stylebot style, I reduced
the orange to just a highlight colour. I find it pretty pleasurable to use.
Feel free to take anything from it that you want:
[http://stylebot.me/styles/2800](http://stylebot.me/styles/2800)

 _Some of the selectors in the CSS are very contrived. I found it was the only
way to select what I wanted in a document made of tables within tables with
barely any classes._

Also, I totally feel you on this! The underlying HTML for HN is absolutely
terrible.

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terabytest
Oh yeah, I see. I think I'm going to try and implement a low contrast theme,
with grey links and easier to read text. Thanks for the link, I'll have a look
at it!

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joyeuse6701
High contrast! Let me see the website not squint and guess!

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MichaelAza
Great work, though it's a shame it's a browser extension. You can't use it on
Firefox or mobile.

There's a site, tomodo.com, that allows you to modify webpages much like a
greasemonkey script or a browser extension and then publish it as a native
website. I'd suggest you'll look into that.

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hadem
Looks like there is a Hacker News mod already.

[http://hnews.tomodo.me](http://hnews.tomodo.me)

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fotcorn
I always use [http://hckrnews.com/](http://hckrnews.com/) and not the normal
frontpage. Many small gems without many upvotes get lost on
news.ycombinator.com.

~~~
reustle
Fantastic, thanks for posting. I understand the design aspects of these skin
extensions, but I don't want to scroll more than I already do to see the same
content.

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dysoco
Lately I've realized that most of new extensions and applications are
specifically designed for Chrome.

I stay loyal to Firefox, but it looks like it has fallen a bit behind.

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qwertzlcoatl
Same here. There are quite some extension I find attractive but can't use
because I remain celibate to Firefox.

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omgmog
It's nice, but thin fonts are very hard to read (screenshot:
[http://uk.omg.li/QPvZ](http://uk.omg.li/QPvZ))

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terabytest
Oh, damn that's a mess. What OS is that?

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omgmog
Chrome 28 on Mountain Lion [http://uk.omg.li/QP02](http://uk.omg.li/QP02)

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terabytest
That's very strange, I'm running the same setup as well. Have you installed
any system tweaks that change the way fonts are rendered?

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omgmog
Yes, but a font-weight of 100 is never a good or useful thing, it's terribly
unreadable

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terabytest
Many thanks to everyone for the feedback! I'll try implementing the ideas
you've given me (easier to read colors and other tweaks).

For those who've installed the extension, it should auto-update when new
features come up and you should be notified of the presence of new modules and
the low-contrast theme.

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Duelist
Good job on the extension. I did have a couple of suggestions:

1\. Have an alternate "dark" theme version for those of us who like dark
backgrounds as opposed to bright eye-popping colors.

2\. Similar to the "Open links in new tabs" option, would it be possible to
add a "Open comments in new tabs" option?

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Rulin
Here's a dark theme I created in Stylish. Code:
[http://pastebin.com/BhZTuwJV](http://pastebin.com/BhZTuwJV) Screenshot:
[http://i.imgur.com/cnrYGdR.png](http://i.imgur.com/cnrYGdR.png)

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qwertzlcoatl
Collapsible comments are my top priority for a hacker news extension. It looks
really neat though.

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k-mcgrady
I just installed it and really like it however when I scroll (quite slowly)
down the main page though the text and background blur together so that I
can't see anything. I'm not sure if it's because of the thin fonts of the font
colours (the headlines seems to blur the most) but it's quite annoying. I'd
normally scroll at that speed and be able to skim the headlines. It's
impossible to do with the blurring.

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orf
I've just installed it and I'm liking it. The links are a bit hard to read on
the home-page (they are a bit faded) but otherwise it looks good. Thanks!

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terabytest
I'm glad you like it!

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jjindev
I like it also. My Special Eyes have trouble with default HN. For me, like
orf, the faded colors are a bit of a strain.

Also, if I don't open a story in a new tab, but go out and back, I sometimes
have trouble finding the entry I just used (and its comments). A color for
"just visited" would be nice.

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daGrevis
I really like it. To be honest, I prefer it more than Georgify [1].

[1]
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/georgify/ofjfdfale...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/georgify/ofjfdfaleomlfanfehgblppafkijjhmi?hl=en)

The only problem I have with it is that after opening comment section, the
design pops-out and overwrites the original design.

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terabytest
How do you mean? Are comments hard to read?

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daGrevis
Technically speaking, old design for comments are loaded and then, using
JavaScript, it's replaced with the new design.

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mradmin
I'm just say that the colour contrast is atrocious. I've got pretty good eye
sight and the text on that screenshot looks blurry. Both the unvisited and
visited link states fail at AA colour contrast accessibility levels.

[edit] - It took me a while to find the install link. I thought it was a
heading. Why don't you use an underline for links?

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Rulin
I usually like my news sites to have a darker theme, so I quickly threw this
together in the Stylish Plugin, to work with your HN Special Extension
[http://pastebin.com/BhZTuwJV](http://pastebin.com/BhZTuwJV) . Just added the
style to work with URL's on the domain "ycombinator.com"

~~~
Rulin
here's a screenshot for those who just want an easy comparison
[http://i.imgur.com/cnrYGdR.png](http://i.imgur.com/cnrYGdR.png)

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aeon10
I really love the infinite scrolling. I think there should be a bit more
contrast. It is hard to read the light colored orange on white. Also the
visited (light light orange) is a pain. And maybe highlighting the points a
thread has would be a nice feature too. Maybe another darker color for that.

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sideproject
Infinite scrolling is good, until you want to use the search box!

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nisdec
Yep. I would suggest to add a position: fixed to the header. And place the
searchbox there of course.

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kyle_martin1
I like the overall design but the links are too light orange which make it
hard to read. Design's number one goal is to 'get out the way of the user'.
Change the link color to something with more contrast against the white
background. Then I'll really like it.

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chenster
I like it. It's about time someone do something about it or I was planning to
do something like that myself. It would be awesome one could customize the
color and fonts and stuffs like that.

The active hyperlink is too fade to read. Please change that.

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toyg
Did you test it on a MBPr ? The screenshot looks really blurry here. EDIT:
it's just the screenshot, the actual extension works fine. A bit more contrast
would be appreciated though. Maybe a different background color for links ?

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terabytest
Glad it's working fine for you!

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mindrag
Very cool! I just forked it, thinking of implementing collapsible comments.

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sideproject
Nice one.

BUT!, it's strange, maybe because I'm SOO used to HN (like I'm soo used to
Google), I had to change back. Is it just a case of "you'll get used to it"?

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terabytest
I think so. Maybe try it out for a day or so. If anything's wrong, please let
me know what you think!

Oh, by the way: even if you like the features but not the theme, you can
easily disable the theme only from the settings menu at the top (the gear icon
in the header)!

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heydonovan
Fantastic! I've only one suggestion. I'm using a Macbook Pro (Retina), and the
up-arrow icons are extremely blurry. Other than that, everything looks
amazing. :)

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arpit105
Thank God for the new interface. Despite the bright orange, I will never go
back to original Hacker News. Please implement it for HN India too :)

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Ashuu
Too much orange. Difficult to read fonts. If only it had some more soothing
colors, I would use it daily! Nice though!

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xauronx
It looks so crisp and nice, but the upvote arrows are soooooo bad. If you
could replace those it would be amazing.

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terabytest
Oh yeah, I'll try replacing those soon.

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jackmaney
Ow...that visual theme hurts my eyes.

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andrewb
Just installed it and think it's superb. I hope HN takes some influence from
your extension.

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HugoDias
Please, make it 100% width ! PLEASE!

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terabytest
Good idea!

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rhokstar
Excellent work!

HN is like Craigslist in a UI/UX sense, very conservative (or they don't care
at all).

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dysoco
Yet both work perfectly.

Other example is the Slackware website:
[http://www.slackware.com/](http://www.slackware.com/)

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rhokstar
Slackware will always be slackware! Its been awhile since I visited their site
(like early 2000's). It still looks the same!

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milhous
It's really nice, but not a regular Chrome user. Somebody loves the OS X
Mavericks theme!

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Jeremy1026
Am I the only one that can't read the visited links without some serious eye
strain?

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terabytest
Is the color too light?

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hieronymusN
It does need some more contrast. Also, while I do appreciate the elegance
overall (I'm a UI designer as well), the vertical space could be tightened up
a bit to get some more comments on a scree. Perhaps adding some options to the
extension to allow toggling between a "Tight" and "Airy" stylesheet?

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davidcollantes
This is lovely. Thank you!

Would it be possible to port this as a Safari extension? Thanks again.

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terabytest
Probably, yeah. I'm not sure how development for Safari works, but I could
give it a try soon.

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mrleinad
Please,please,please implement the Firefox version..

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AJay17
I love it!

