
Show HN: New Hacker News web client - antouank
http://hack.ernews.info/
======
nnain
This looks good, the animation on hover doesn't add any value though.

My favourite HN client on phone is
[http://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/](http://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/).
It's lean, fast and looks like a native app on the phone. I've added a
shortcut to my mobile's home screen, using the 'Add to Home Screen' option in
Chrome, which gives me a nice quick launch icon.

The downside of both these clients is that you can't login or post using them.

~~~
weinzierl
What do you use for posting from mobile? I tried several apps, even a paid
one. They either didn't offer login and posting or offered it but it didn't
work.

~~~
nnain
The official news.ycombinator.com. I prefer to post from the computer anyway.
MiniHack mentioned in the other comment looks good, though it's only on iOS.

------
cheshire137
Doesn't beat [http://www.hckrnews.com/](http://www.hckrnews.com/) for me since
that lets me show just the top 50% of stories, top 20%, the front page, etc.

~~~
astkaasa
I also think that this is the best client.

------
antouank
Based on the Firebase HN API, I made a web client that updates stories and
scores in real-time.

No need to refresh your browser anymore to see new stories and comments.

Also, I used a responsive design to be able to read the stories on my mobile
phone.

For now, I only show the top stories, up to 100 of them ( that's how many the
API gives you anyway ).

If people find it useful, I might add other things. Hope OAuth becomes
available so I can add up-voting and comment adding.

~~~
shade23
I've been waiting for this for a while.Thank You!

~~~
titraxx
Same thing here. I was using [http://hckrnews.com/](http://hckrnews.com/) on
my tablet because of the non-responsiveness of Hacker News but
[http://hack.ernews.info/](http://hack.ernews.info/) seems better because it
includes comments and use the new API. Thank you !

------
FabianBeiner
I pretty much like it. But the “jumping” on :hover of an topic doesn’t feel
that good.

So instead of

    
    
      .list-item:hover {
        margin-bottom: 4px;
        margin-top: 4px;
      }
    

maybe use something like

    
    
      .list-item:hover {
        outline: 3px solid #ccc;
        z-index: 10;
      }
    

Just my two cents. ;)

------
anonfunction
Looks nice but I dislike the animations. Also maybe clicking anywhere in a div
should open up the comments?

~~~
rplnt
> maybe clicking anywhere in a div should open up the comments?

That's what I would expect when you are presented with a change - link gets
underlined, bottom slightly "opens"

edit: Actually, those visuals could also mean a link would open. Probably even
more than comments.

~~~
anonfunction
My line of thought was that since comments would open on the site it would
have an animation whereas outbound links would use the tried-and-true
underlining.

------
alexggordon
Looks good. My only comment is that I really wish it showed more posts. I have
some big monitors, with pretty high resolution, and I love being able to see
lots of content on them.

As far as dealing with my taste in UI I use Hacker News Enhancement Suite[0]
for computers and MiniHack for mobile[1](not affiliated). The primary reason I
switched to MiniHack was I really wanted the ability to log in and comment. I
spend a lot of time working on just an iPad (writing, etc.) and it's great to
be able to comment as myself without any of this fancy browser stuff.

[0] [https://github.com/etcet/HNES](https://github.com/etcet/HNES) [1]
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/minihack-for-hacker-
news/id6...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/minihack-for-hacker-
news/id631108846?mt=8)

~~~
thekingshorses
There is no API to login/comment.

I have web client [http://hn.premii.com/](http://hn.premii.com/) that uses new
APIs (No login).

iOS client [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hacker-news-
yc/id713733435](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hacker-news-yc/id713733435)
where you can login and upvote.

------
Gigablah
One of the worst things you can do as a designer is to move an element around
while the user is trying to target it with the cursor.

(This is also why I'm not terribly fond of the default animation of the OSX
Dock)

------
atoponce
Some comment section feedback:

The horizontal indentation on the comments might be a bit aggressive, and each
comment is taking up a great deal of vertical screen real estate. Further, the
clickable "more" makes reading long comment threads difficult without a great
deal of scrolling.

It seems to be optimized for mobile viewing, which is good. Dobbs knows how I
hate clicking tiny links with my fat fingers. But, when behind a desktop
client, the CSS could be adjusted such that it takes better advantage of my
screen resolution.

~~~
antouank
@atoponce I kept the same indentation because I wanted to have a familiar
design. That tree structure is not easy to display. Showing all of the
comments at once can be a disaster in slow connections. "Show more" button is
needed for now. I hope later I can give users the ability to customize how
many things to load. I've only been working on this project for 3-4 days now.
Front and back end.

I already have some thoughts on how to handle the comments section, I agree it
has to be very efficient cause the whole point of the client is to let you get
in and out of the comments section easily. Reading the headlines is the easy
part.

If anyone is a designer or has design suggestions, I'm happy to see them.

------
whizzkid
I have been seeing quite often that the webpages makes it to first place on
Hacker News are getting unresponsive, slow or even down just like this one.

Is there anybody knows about the load statistics when a story on Hacker News
gets on the first place?

What i mean is; how many requests are made to a web page, what is the req/seq
and etc?

I guess this would be useful for me and other people to get ready for possible
load on our site to be sure if we can handle this load.

~~~
pothibo
My blog has been in the top 5 a few times. When you reach the top 3 positions,
you can expect around 150-250 simultaneous users for a few hours.

Top 5 is more like 50-75.

Top 15 is around 25-50.

Those numbers aren't req/sec but simultaneous user. There's a difference
between the two but it still gives you a number to compare things to.

All you read about how the top 3 gets 75% of the traffic in Google is true to
about every places where there's ordering.

As for the load, it depends a lot, that website seems to poll HN's API quite a
lot so maybe that's how they get down (HN throttle the # of query).

I made it on the top 5 with a VPS on 128MB of RAM and didn't even feel it
(without caching). You need a LOT of traffic for a blog to be affected by the
load.

Obviously, when you do a lot of polling/database intensive stuff (games, etc.)
the bottlenecks are easier to reach.

------
ilzmastr
Nice! The live update is sick!

What would make me use this instead of news.ycombinator.com every day however
would be:

\- the ability to hide stories you've already read (some box to tick like a
todo list) or are not interested in. They take up so much space, so there is a
lot of wasted space after 5 mins on the site and reading/seeing I'm not
interested in the top stories. I don't want to click 'show more', I want new
headlines to replace old unwanted headlines

\- Color coding the actual divs to signify hotness and using size of divs to
signify importance/upvotes would be nice. The font is so thin in the orange
circles (and the spacing between them and the text) that I cannot read it in
my peripheral vision and have to glance back and forth between titles and
ranks

\- hover movement is disturbing enough for me to navigate with keyboard
instead of mouse

~~~
Fourkeys
> the ability to hide stories you've already read (some box to tick like a
> todo list) or are not interested in. They take up so much space, so there is
> a lot of wasted space after 5 mins on the site and reading/seeing I'm not
> interested in the top stories. I don't want to click 'show more', I want new
> headlines to replace old unwanted headlines

This is a feature I'd love in the current site as well

------
mproud
Not bad, but I still prefer the “HackerWeb” version when on mobile
([http://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/](http://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/)).

------
harisamin
Nice job! Not to pull anything away from it, but I just published my first Mac
app to the App Store, its a native HN client.
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mackernews-hacker-news-
clien...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mackernews-hacker-news-
client/id946730699?mt=12) Will do an official post once i have a landing page
up.

Nice job on your webclient. Loving the material design-eque buttons :)

------
selmnoo
Probably the best HN redesign I've seen yet to date.

Some light criticism:

1) decrease the padding between each story space, there's juuust a touch too
much white space

2) the big attraction to HN is indeed the comments, so accessing or invoking
the comments should be really easy. In your version, I have to click the
comment icon or the comment numeral count link... why not instead have the
entire space (excluding the story link) open up the comments?

------
cheeaun
Is this open-sourced on GitHub?

~~~
antouank
No. The HN API is public though.
[https://github.com/HackerNews/API](https://github.com/HackerNews/API)

~~~
atom-morgan
Is there any chance of it being open-sourced?

------
rgaidot
Try HNPaper [http://hnpaper.forge.partlab.io](http://hnpaper.forge.partlab.io)
(checkout the statistics:
[http://hnpaper.forge.partlab.io/statistics](http://hnpaper.forge.partlab.io/statistics))

------
yousry
I recently tested my web-pages against a 4k display. The impression was
horrible. One tiny column and useless word-wraps generated almost unreadable
text. I would really like to see themes that can handle horizontal resolutions
above 1900 pixels.

------
gtf21
Nice! I really like the animations actually. Now all it needs is upvoting and
commenting built in (but obviously HN would have to enable that part of the
API - which I assume is disabled).

Good job on separating the comments visually.

This is much more usable, not to mention responsive.

Well done!

------
briandear
And it's responsive!! Awesome. Reading HN on mobile has always been a pain.

~~~
unixpunx
Lol what? HN is the most simple website I visit nowadays, aside from plain
html and apache file listing. There really isn't any way to make it easier,
simpler and faster without sacrificing usability.

You mean doing a pinch gesture with your fingers to zoom is painful?

~~~
sehr
Do you seriously not mind having to zoom in on every single thread, and
constantly scrolling left to right to read a comment?

~~~
unixpunx
I browse so many non-mobile websites (such as forums) that I do it without
thinking about it, I actually had to pick up my phone just now to see how I
actually use HN. Wasn't a problem at all. I don't know if the experience is
more "painful" on other mobile browsers, but the experience is flawless on
Safari.

------
tirant
Nice, but I still prefer the more information-dense original client.

------
phazelift
Looking good, only the score numbers might be a little too thin, and the
margin on hover animation doesn't work for me. It distracts me from reading,
becoming a bit annoying.

------
filmgirlcw
I like this a lot -- I do wish it was possible to view a few more items at
once -- at least on higher-density displays -- but this looks great.

Nice job!

------
frade33
It's awesome, design and animations need little tweaks. But another issue is.
HN API Health? It's pretty bleak time to time.

------
guilhermetk
Looks very good

Suggestion: when expanding the comments, add an option to Show All comments
instead of just loading a few each time

------
gulbrandr
Good job! You could gzip your CSS and JS:

[http://hack.ernews.info/main.0.3.0-4-gf7fc609.css](http://hack.ernews.info/main.0.3.0-4-gf7fc609.css)

[http://hack.ernews.info/bundle.0.3.0-4-gf7fc609.js](http://hack.ernews.info/bundle.0.3.0-4-gf7fc609.js)

~~~
antouank
@gulbrandr They are already gzipped. I can see the original size of the assets
in the disk, the ones served are much smaller.

------
pottspotts
In the words of Steve Jobs: "That is really ugly, and you're fired". It has
that failed Web 3.0 look. More rounded corners, excessive margin, but less
content per page. One commenter pointed out its easier on mobile, but that can
be resolved with the existing style.

Please, think of the children.

~~~
marknutter
> but less content per page

This is why engineers are not designers. Left up to engineers, every pixel
would be crammed full of "content", all at 11px font.

~~~
dmd
This is exactly what I want, though.

~~~
ZenoArrow
Me too. I can't stand unnecessary whitespace, the current size of HN is
readable enough as it is on the desktop, the condensed content is a feature,
all HN really needs (IMO) is a better theme for mobile and collapsible comment
threads.

------
annoying_tech
Too big

------
sova
yo what happened to that recalibrated HN site with the awesome awesome (fill-
the-border-box-up-as-the-rating-increases) coolness and simplicity? anyone
know what i'm talking about?

------
antouank
thanks for the feedback. I'll try to improve the site based on that.

I tried to reply to your comments but I was getting the "you're submitting too
fast" message...

------
theunamedguy
It'd be nice if this had infinite scrolling.

------
GhotiFish
Comments should be able to collapse.

~~~
antouank
@GhotiFish They are now. :)

------
rafaqueque
Looks very good. Well done.

------
mvonthron
The world needs two things: a new Javascript framework and a new HN reader!

------
puppetmaster3
Can you post?

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
TLDR: no.

From [1] "If people find it useful, I might add other things. Hope OAuth
becomes available so I can add up-voting and comment adding."

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8809479](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8809479)

------
antouank
v0.4.0 is up.

------
q2
Please add an option/extension so that downvoters provide reasons for their
downvoting. It helps to understand the other view points or reasons for
disagreement rather than just downvoting, which appears rude/insensitive, and
may be for ideological/racial reasons(which we never know).

Upvoting without reason may be ok, in that case at least we know that upvoter
is in the same/similar logical region as we are. Downvotes may indicate
differences of opinion but do not indicate what/why are those differences. So
reasons for downvoting clarifies those reasons and other view points, which I
guess is the reason for "comments" in the first place.

------
stefantalpalaru
A separate page for an item's comments would work better for popular links.

