

Show HN: Hacked Hacker News - new comment highlighting and keyboard navigation - prophetjohn
https://github.com/j-clark/hacked_hacker_news

======
prophetjohn
I created this based on how difficult I found it to be to follow conversations
here, especially long ones. It's always been fairly easy to keep track of
replies to your own comments, but if you haven't commented in a thread or
subthread, you're basically stuck counting timestamps. Since I've gotten it
working it's made the browsing experience better. Please report any issues
here or on github.

~~~
laurent123456
Great extension, I'll definitely be using it. If I can suggest something, I
think it would be better to bold the unread comments (in the home page) only
if you've actually open the link or read the previous comments. Otherwise it
adds a lot of distraction on the page, and the bold links don't tell me
whether I cared or didn't care about the associated news.

~~~
ivan_ah
On that note I suggest that the UI should have the following three "states":

1/ New article, never read:

    
    
        22 comments

I know that they are all unread, don't need to tell me.

2/ Visited article

    
    
        25 comments (3 unread) 

This is nicer IMHO than having another | separator. The 3 unread could be bold
as it is now.

3/ Visited and all read:

    
    
        25 comments (0 unread) 

But this time 0 unread does not need to be bold.

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etcet
I like the way that comments become "read" as you move through them with the
shortcut keys.

But I prefer the simple orange line highlight that the hckrnews.com extension
and (shameless plug) the Hacker News Enhancement Suite [0] use. Your variable
width grey highlight becomes looks very chaotic.

[0] [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-
enhanc...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-
enhancement-s/bappiabcodbpphnojdiaddhnilfnjmpm)

~~~
prophetjohn
I agree that the style in your link is cleaner looking. I don't have a very
good sense for how to make things look nice. I might clean it up a bit because
my goal is to keep HN simplistic but just add the few features that I've been
itching for. I hadn't seen your before, though. It looks nice.

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zheng
Very cool, I've tried lots of other HN reader-type things, and this one is my
favorite. Very unobtrusive, but solves some major pain points.

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ivan_ah
Very cool! I wish I had that last week when I was scrambling to reply to
comments... (I used text search the page for "minute" and "minutes" but that
not very efficient...)

Bonus if you adapt the script to reddit -- the same problem of not knowing
which comments are new exists (except for top level comments which can be seen
if you sort by new).

~~~
hayksaakian
I would expect RES (Reddit enhancement suite) to support these features
already. (I don't personally use it, but others can probably vouch).

~~~
werid
reddit gold has that feature.

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tomkinstinch
I like this a lot. Just one small issue:

The default background color for new comments seems too dark for me--the
contrast is low enough that new comments are more difficult to read than
previously read ones. What about making the background for new comments
_lighter_ than the HN default?

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greengreens
Nice. The infinite scroll doesn't start until the second page though. Is this
deliberate?

~~~
greengreens
OK when I hit 'back' from this page then go 'more' it works.

~~~
prophetjohn
It's currently working for me. Maybe you were just too fast and hit it before
domready had fired? Let me know if you have any more issues with it.

~~~
greengreens
Seems to be working now thanks. Not sure how domready works, how do you tell?

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discountgenius
Is there any sort of directory for Hacker News skins/mods/hacks? I feel like
there is probably a more efficient way for me to view Hacker News, but I've
found no convenient way to compare the different options.

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joshschreuder
Nice! Without having tried this, does the infinite scroll get around the
'unknown link' error when you wait too long to hit the Next Page link?

~~~
prophetjohn
It doesn't. The best solution for that that I could think of was to re-GET the
current page and pull the new link out of it, but I'm nervous about doing that
since HN is so sensitive about HTTP requests being made in rapid
succession[1].

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4981907>

~~~
joshschreuder
Fair enough, still like the extension. That said, I can't seem to get infinite
scroll working on the home page / or /news, maybe because of HTTPS?

EDIT: Never mind, you click the More and it puts them on the current page. I
thought it was done automatically when you scroll down. Good stuff!

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crazydiamond
Works great on OSX ML. Anything similar for Firefox ?, I just prefer that to
Chrome (FF esp with Pentadactyl).

~~~
prophetjohn
If there ends up being enough interest, I'll support FF and Safari.

~~~
crazydiamond
I believe FF is heavily used in the HN community.

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tnorthcutt
I get an error message when trying to install: "Manifest file is invalid."

Chrome stable, Mac Mountain Lion.

~~~
prophetjohn
I've uninstalled and reinstalled a couple times on Mac and a Windows VM
without getting that message. I know Google checks the manifest file on upload
for validity, but I've seen reports[1] of seemingly random installation
failures. Have it happened more than once?

[1] <http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=103281>

~~~
tnorthcutt
Yes, more than once, but I tried again just now and it worked fine. Thanks!

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treskot
Will be very handy! Good job. I wonder why it isn't part of HN already. Would
love to use it on my Firefox.

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carbocation
The unread counts don't work for me on OS X Chrome 23.0.1271.101 .

~~~
prophetjohn
I've got the same setup as you. Are they wrong or just not showing? Console
errors?

~~~
carbocation
No console errors, just not showing. Let me know if there is anything I can
send to help debug.

Also, not sure if this is by design, but after I post an in-place reply, I
have to reload the page to see my post. However, upon editing a post, the page
reloads immediately. I didn't see any error in the console.

~~~
prophetjohn
I was conflicted about whether or not to update new comments inline or force a
page refresh. So the behavior with the comments is intentional. I may end up
changing it if it's confusing.

As for the other problem, I'm confused about why that's the only thing not
working. Are you running any other extensions that could be conflicting?

~~~
carbocation
Makes enough sense re: problem #1. Re: the unread counts not showing up, this
still occurs for me even when Hacked Hacker News is the only enabled
extension.

 _EDIT_ : I have no idea why, but as I was hammer-clicking on the Hacker News
main button, all of a sudden the unread counts started to appear. I wonder if
there was some cache issue or something such as that.

