

Show HN: The HackerNews Follow Discussion Button - jermaink
http://jermaink.github.com/hnfollowbutton/

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michael_fine
A cool thing you could do with this is adding a javascript function in the
file that automatically submits a story when this button is included. That
would really elevate it from a link with some styling to something that's
really useful.

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sbashyal
I am the author of the original HNlike button
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2934178>

I have since then modified the Like button (www.hnlike.com) such that it acts
as a submit button if the link has not been submitted yet. If it has already
been submitted, it simply links to the discussion page in Hacker News. See it
in action here: <http://hacksandthoughts.posterous.com/>

Nice work, jermaink!

~~~
jermaink
sbashyal, I really liked your work, which is comprising much more than my few
lines of css. Also, I think displaying the current HN score is way better than
the (indirect) external possibility to upvote items via linking. Last feature
caused big discussions as you know :)

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pooriaazimi
BTW, I don't like the word 'Follow'. Follow might've meant something else in
the long-forgotten past, but right now, it means 'subscribing to someone's
rants on a social network', which is _not_ what you mean at all. I think
'Discuss on HN' or 'Discussion' or something like that would be a much better
title.

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jermaink
Hello everyone, it´s not a big thing, just a little css designed button that
you might want to use or modify.

~~~
jcfrei
nicely done - I like the design!

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habith
It's broken in IE7, IE9 (not IE8) and Firefox 12. The logo's button element on
the left doesn't align with the one on the right.

Is there a specific reason you chose to add a button element in your links?
Why not style the a tags and display them inline-block?

~~~
jermaink
exactly this is what I´m working on right now. I´ll release it tomorrow. As
mentioned above, creating cross browser compatible buttons is really like
opening a can of worms sometimes, especially downwards compatible solutions.
Surely Firefox problems are a no-go.

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verelo
I like this idea, however at first i thought it was allowing me to get
notified of updates on a particular HN thread. I guess what i'm trying to say
is maybe there is a better word than follow.

In general, i really like it though! Well done.

~~~
jermaink
Totally Agree! Maybe this thread will lead to some new idea. "Watch
Discussion" could also be good, but anyway it shouldn´t be too long.

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pooriaazimi
BUG: It's not properly aligned in Safari 5.2 (beta), OS X Lion 10.7.3:

<http://d.pr/i/ZDZM>

<http://d.pr/i/Gj25>

Is perfect on Chrome though.

~~~
jermaink
thx for the feedback! I´m currently summing up the forks and your info to
create a better update until tomorrow. A 100% cross-browser compatibility is a
challenge and I have to admit that I used Chrome ;)

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Hovertruck
Something you may consider for your CSS: vendor prefixes are no longer
required for border-radius declarations.

Mostly true for box-shadow as well, except for the Android browser I think.

~~~
jermaink
Thanks hovertruck - will take that into account for the next update. I have to
say I´m not a trained/professional web developer, but I know which parts can
be fixed soon.

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dllthomas
grep '^[qwertasdfgzxcvb]\\{12,\\}$' /usr/share/dict/words

"stewardesses" seems to be tied with:

aftereffects desegregated desegregates reverberated reverberates

~~~
pooriaazimi
?!

Wrong thread, maybe?

~~~
jermaink
no, he refers to the did you know... part on the page :) Quite interesting
research approach. Maybe its time to contest the longest left hand written
sentence.

~~~
pooriaazimi
It's the second time tonight that I've failed to read something that's just
under my nose. Maybe I should go to sleep (it's 4:27 AM here)...

BTW, OS X's dictionary _(/usr/share/dict/web2 - Webster's Second
International, 234,936 words)_ is more complete than Linux's (and doesn't
contain plurals!) :)

aftercataract

devertebrated

gazetteerage

reasseverate

terracewards

tessaradecad

tesseradecade

~~~
dllthomas
Nice!

For the right hand, on Ubuntu:

grep '^[yuiophjklnm]\\{9,\\}$' /usr/share/dict/words

polyphony

Anything longer on OS X?

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jermaink
updated the git.

\- renamed from "Follow Discussion" to "View Discussion" \- improved code, thx
to @TazeTSchnitzel \- tested with Chrome 19.0.1084.52, Safari 5.1.3, Firefox
9.0.1

just discovered that <http://nreduce.com/> is using the button

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Killswitch
Good work, I like it and am forking it to add a little bit extra I may have
for it after practice tonight.

