
Please add this 1 line, make HN mobile friendly - Hilyin
&lt;meta name=&quot;viewport&quot; content=&quot;width=device-width, initial-scale=1&quot;&gt;
======
kogir
I tried this for a few hours some time ago. It made the site less usable on
most Android and iPhone devices with normal smartphone screen sizes. Text in a
number of places ran together and comments shrunk to one character per line a
few replies down.

So it's not that simple. Real changes to make the site truly responsive are
larger and I can't promise they'll come soon.

~~~
Bahamut
It's already pretty bad, at least on Android - I have a hard time editing my
text when there is a typo somewhere due to the bottom of the text field
expanding and including the "reply" button, so I can't select the last line
with my fingers.

------
nrbafna
I saw a comment on HN sometime back and can't seem to find it now, but thought
it had some merit. The gist of it was that enabling posts from mobile might
lead to lower content quality as typing on phones is tougher and we tend to
focus on a quick reply rather than a thought out discussion.

I personally use [http://hn.premii.com](http://hn.premii.com) on mobile & it
has a good reading experience.

~~~
andybak
It's an orthogonal issue. I would like the official site to be vaguely
readable on mobile. Whether they then choose to discourage posting from mobile
is a different question.

(My personal view is that 'mobile' is very difficult to define. If I connect a
bluetooth keyboard to a Galaxy Note then why the hell should I be discouraged
from posting on the grounds I might post lower quality comments?)

~~~
repsilat
Even on my 7-inch tablet, mobile sites are mostly just a pain in the neck.
I'll almost always prefer to be served the desktop version served to me
(exceptions for sites that expect me to hover my mouse over their content.) In
my view mobile sites should mostly be "small display" sites, and they should
be served to desktop people with small browser windows, too.

Worst of all are sites that don't provide a "Full site" link, and don't
cooperate with my browser's "View desktop site" option. And don't get me
started on "Try our mobile app"...

------
russellbeattie
No, you cannot just add that to the top of a web page and have it magically
transform into a mobile-friendly page. It may look fine on your particular
device, but it will probably be completely hosed on everything else.

The viewport meta tag is essentially a switch which tells mobile browsers to
_not_ provide a default page width of 980px, auto zoomed out, but to instead
use the device's CSS pixel dimensions, with a zoom you define with initial-
scale. Note that this is not _physical_ pixel dimensions. A mobile device's
CSS pixels are the physical resolution divided by the device's
devicePixelRatio, which currently can range from 1 to 3.

Examples:

On an iPhone 5s, which has a physical resolution of 1136x640 and a
devicePixelRatio of 2, a viewport with "width=device-width" will create a page
that only has 320px in portrait and 553px in landscape in CSS pixels.

On a HTC One, which has a physical resolution of 1920x1080 (1080p) and a
devicePixelRatio of 3, the page will have only 360px in portrait and 640px in
landscape.

On tablets, CSS pixel portrait width can range from 600px on a Nexus 7 and
Kindle Fire HDX, to 768px on an iPad mini non-retina, to 800px on a Nexus 10
or Kindle Fire HDX 8.9".

Using a viewport meta tag _needs_ to be done in combination with CSS media
queries (or a very flexible design that doesn't use px for sizes) to ensure
that your web page design responds to the various screen sizes without
breaking.

Hope that helps clarify things a bit - trust me, it's a common
misunderstanding.

------
DanBC
I am not sure what this is meant to address. The worst thing for mobile users
is the teeny tiny voting buttons. I believe that votes are important and are
not used enough and part of the reason is fear of accidental downvote.

The other thing that could be fixed is when someone puts a very long unbroken
string in a comment without putting it in a code block. This makes the page
very wide, and creates an unpleasant experience.

~~~
emiljbs
I have 157 karma and I can't downvote anything. How exactly do you downvote on
HN? I've never seen anyone explain that (and I can't really see it in the
settings either).

~~~
samsolomon
I believe you have to have about 500 karma to downvote comments.

------
nailer
HN needs more than that - enabling it:

[http://imgur.com/9fetcE9](http://imgur.com/9fetcE9)

Throw the template and CSS, and some sample data on GitHub. HN'd have a
working version in 24 hours.

~~~
Udo
What's that emulation plugin you're using there?

~~~
jackmoore
Chrome's stock developer tools.

~~~
Udo
You're right, I never saw it's in there. Sometimes you use a piece of software
a lot and yet it's still possible overlook obvious features, I guess :)

~~~
akx
Especially since said software auto-updates and adds these features. :) I
think the emulation feature is very recent.

------
mcovey
I have no idea as to the status of userscripts on mobile devices but at least
on the desktop they are my go-to for personalizing my internet:

    
    
        ("news.ycombinator.com" === window.location.hostname) &&
        (function () {
            var meta = document.createElement("META");
            meta.name = "viewport";
            meta.content = "width=device-width, initial-scale=1";
    
            if (document.readyState === "complete") {
                document.head.appendChild(meta);
            } else {
                document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function () {
                    document.head.appendChild(meta);
                });
            }
        })();

------
germs12
Agreed. Seems like a easy win for everyone. Are there any downsides?

------
mobweb
I use [http://ihackernews.com/](http://ihackernews.com/) all the time on
mobile and it's working perfectly. Might want to give it a try!

~~~
gpmcadam
Oh, I may start using this on my desktop if only for the collapsing comments!

------
TheBiv
I think we are all looking at the amount of work that would need to go into
this, and not looking at the simple fact that maybe PG doesn't want to manage
a mobile site.

If you don't understand what I mean by "manage", then consider yourself lucky
as you have not worked in the digital agency world.

~~~
nailer
HN's relatively simple, eg it's already a single column layout. Relative
widths would do 90% of the job.

~~~
TheBiv
I would hazard a guess that it's not how simple the site is or the changes
would be, it's a matter of managing it.

------
nrbafna
On other note -

Is there an extension/app for HN that categorizes the posts into topics (based
on some text analysis) & enables the user to filter them out from the feed?
Feature akin to what lobste.rs provides.

This will basically enable me to filter out fluff stories that manage to rise
up.

------
jchrisa
I think I saw them experiment with something like this briefly.

------
robinhoodexe
[http://hckrnews.com](http://hckrnews.com) is rather mobile-friendly (and
looks georgeous as well).

~~~
dfc
Gorgeous is a little bit of an exaggeration. It looks nice, but I think it
fails to reach "gorgeous."

------
wololo_
Or you know, make the front-end layer open source s owe can send in PR

~~~
zeckalpha
It is. [http://arclanguage.org/install](http://arclanguage.org/install)

~~~
nailer
There's no revision control so you can't send a PR, and news.css isn't
included in the archive.

------
zbowling
why not just use an app?

~~~
huhtenberg
One of those crammed to the brim with "in-app analytics" and other goodness?
Certainly, I'll take two of those.

~~~
bennyg
Or use mine, zero analytics code at all, and stays out of your way when you're
reading/contributing to HN:

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/news-
yc/id592893508?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/news-yc/id592893508?mt=8)

Oh yeah, and it's entirely open sourced, including my libHN library for
interacting with HN in your own app you make:

[https://github.com/bennyguitar/News-YC---
iPhone](https://github.com/bennyguitar/News-YC---iPhone)

[https://github.com/bennyguitar/libHN](https://github.com/bennyguitar/libHN)

~~~
dblarons
Thanks for sharing. Just downloaded and am using it right now. Just the fact
that I can comment once again is a huge improvement over my last daily. I was
really beginning to miss my Android and its version of HN.

------
raldi
What will it do?

A pair of before-and-after screenshots would be helpful.

------
chaoskid
or just use [http://ihackernews.com](http://ihackernews.com)

------
Istof
or use RSS and format it however you like?

