
Show HN: Storystreamer – Snap/Instagram Stories UI Inspired News Reader - dgski
https://storystreamer.live/
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atakiel
Not a bad idea, and implementation is solid mvp.

Some thoughts:

1) Given that you have clear categories available, it might be worth it to
show the name of the category on the reel as well. Sometimes headlines are
very broad, and they might not clearly imply the category. I tried a few
categories, and in the end forgot which one I was currently watching. -> By
showing category indicator you would give additional context for the watcher,
on why a specific story is important. I get there's background color doing
more or less the same thing, but only if a picture is missing. Color is great
for seasoned users (additional pattern would be great for color blind people),
new users would probably need clearer information.

2) after the reel ends, you might want to show a final screen, before jumping
to the home screen. This way, people could still tap the prev button, if they
wanted to recheck some headlines that they missed.

~~~
dgski
Hey thanks for your feedback!

I ended up pushing an update with both your ideas.

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dgski
I've always been a big fan of the Snapchat/Instagram Story UI format but I
wasn't the biggest fan of the content on those applications. At the same time
I wanted a single place where I could get up to speed on various topics. I
ended up combining the ideas.

This works exactly as Snapchats 'Discover' Section. There is a collection of
'streams' of various topics (news, gaming, nature, etc.) You click a stream,
and you can tap or click to go forward or back. When done the stream viewer
closes and the stream link is greyed out until new items are available. It has
embedded video and picture support and feels like modern day 'channel
surfing'.

Would love feedback and any section ideas!

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atakiel
I think bloomberg's tictoc, in it's earlier incarnation, was doing something
very similar. It seems to be now renamed, redesigned and merged with some
other project.

Their version was heavily based on video. I might remember it wrong, but I
think video was also their core problem. I tried it once but didn't really get
it, as I hadn't used Snapchat nor Instagram.

Because Tictoc was a sort of old school, video first solution, they were
missing the crucial "would you like to know more" step. You could just consume
it, but not on your own terms, which kind of makes all the difference.

~~~
hckr_news
TikTok places far more emphasis on video and visual consumption and less of
reading or text.

~~~
atakiel
It's a different product, with a slight difference in spelling.

Tictoc used to be a visual news feed created by Bloomsberg, aimed for
millenials. It came out around the same time or just before Tiktok landed in
west.

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hckr_news
This is a pretty cool website. Reminds of Tiktok with the seemless
continuously loading videos, in this case being news articles or other
interesting videos. I really like the tv show/movie trailers subsection. Few
things to point out: (1) one thing I would do for the news articles is slow
down the timer. Perhaps 20-30 seconds. (2) Also image backgrounds and video
quality can look off sometimes. (3) The back and forth arrows blend into white
or noisy background images -- can the arrow colors change dynamically.

~~~
dgski
Good points!

I added a feature which lets you pause the auto skip by holding the progress
bar in the bottom right corner. Should give you more time to finish reading.

I also added some contrast to some up UI elements. I do want the prev and next
to fade into the picture though.

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dgellow
Wow, that goes way too fast! You could maybe pause if the user keep their
finger pressed, or increase the time between stories?

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rohan1024
or give us the option to set time

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donclark
This. Most UIs need more detailed controls for the user. Everyone is
different. One size or setting does not fit all.

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sidhantgandhi
Cool, but might work better with curated news. Many of the stories I tried are
just blank/bad images.

~~~
dgski
Hey, thanks for checking it out!

Unfortunately, not all items have a picture associated with them as that
depends whether the associated webpage has an open graph meta tag image.

Making sure items/their pictures looks nice is another thing, which I'll
definitely take a look at.

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lugermorph
this is cool, but stories go by too quickly. also needs some kind of swipe up
to read inline functionality.

~~~
dgski
Read inline is definitely on the radar.

For now, I added the option to hold the bottom-right time bar to pause the
advancement.

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nexuist
This is a great idea! Do you have any plans to add keyboard shortcut support
(a/d to go between stories, w/a/s/d to go between categories)?

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deejay2019
Is there a mobile app for this? Currently I am "add to home screen" as an
alternative. nice work:)

~~~
dgski
No mobile app for now, but I’ll consider it!

Add to home screen works pretty well!

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elk235
Congrats. I love this! Where do you get your content from and how often do you
refresh it? How do I request for different categories? I would love to add a
few more for politics and covid-19

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multimedial
Hi, I would love to see this being localized and configurable.

Would love to talk if you are interested. Europe here.

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nzeeshan
Did you use any template to get stories UI? I would love to hack something
similar for a subgenre!

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visarga
Annoyingly fast, had to close it.

~~~
dgski
You can now hold the bottom-right timing bar to pause advancing to the next
item.

