

Show HN: HackerNew for Chrome - tommoor
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lgoghlndihpmbbgmbpjohilcphbfhddd
I've been working on and off on a Chrome Extension for Hacker News, the extension focusses on improved usability rather than design. I can almost guarantee that after a day you won't want to go back to regular Hacker News. Give it a try, features include:<p>- Improved readability
- Quick inline replies from comments page
- Quick profiles with social network info when hovering over usernames
- Filtering of stories based on terms and phrases / domain or user
- Endless scrolling
- Collapsible comment threads
- Social sharing for Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Buffer<p>Forks, improvements and comments welcome: 
https://github.com/tommoor/HackerNew
======
tommoor
I've been working on and off on this for a little while, the extension
focusses on improved usability rather than design. I can almost guarantee that
after a day you won't want to go back to regular Hacker News. Give it a try,
features include:

\- Improved readability

\- Quick inline replies from comments page

\- Quick profiles with social network info when hovering over usernames

\- Filtering of stories based on terms and phrases / domain or user (try
filtering out negativity!)

\- Endless scrolling

\- Collapsible comment threads

\- Social sharing for Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Buffer

Forks, improvements and comments always welcome:
<https://github.com/tommoor/HackerNew>

~~~
dwhly
"I can almost guarantee that after a day you won't want to go back..."

Unfortunately I probably won't make it to a day or two. What you really strive
for as a designer is more like "I can guarantee that after 30 seconds you
won't be going back". I can tell you that I'm already uninstalling it. Don't
change the styling-- or at least leave the information density that we've got
w/ HN now.

------
vasco
I would use it if you didn't change the css, and didn't make share the
rightmost link. Also, that "block this guy" popup is really pervasive when
you're just roaming around with the mouse. Other than that, really nice work!

~~~
sushi
Same suggestion. I like the overall improvements but please don't force the
styling. Make it as an option that users can check to disable default styling
of HN.

~~~
tommoor
Definitely considering making this an option in the next version

------
bstar77
Please forgive my ignorance, but what's the point of having proprietary web
apps for Chrome that could already be achieved with existing HTML5 toolkits?

This just seems to be an effort to "app-ify" the web, that is, create a shitty
appstore google owns for websites. I hate this concept and don't understand
why people support fragmenting webpages like this. HackerNew may be fantastic,
but release it as a website that all browsers can display.

~~~
j_s
Your point is valid; I'd guess the developer's point in "having proprietary
web apps for Chrome" is that there is no cost to run the extension in other
people's browsers.

It is a lot more work to do this cross-browser, even with some of the newer
toolkits designed to help in this scenario:
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4913123/cross-browser-
ext...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4913123/cross-browser-extensions-
api)

------
driverdan
Neat. I started working on a bookmarklet to improve HN last year called Hacker
News Enhancement Suite:

<https://github.com/driverdan/Hacker-News-Enhancement-Suite>

I never got the code far enough to announce / release. The long term goal was
to also make plugins.

~~~
etcet
And I actually posted my extension also called 'Hacker News Enhancement Suite'
yesterday but no one saw/cared.

<https://github.com/etcet/HNES> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3933090>

I cannot say how angry/sad/confused this makes me :(

~~~
mappu
Following the thread: I posted my extension called "HNHance" two days ago but
no one saw/cared. It doesn't change the style, just adds hover parent links -
something i find immensely useful in long comment threads.

<http://userscripts.org/scripts/source/132359.user.js>
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3923150>

------
orky56
A few points:

1) There's a subtle difference between the white background of the extension
and the border of the browser. We're talking just enough to notice but not
enough to quickly see the contrast. I'd say make it completely the same or
exaggerate the contrast a bit more.

2) Any way to address the tiny buttons for up vote/down vote? They are so
small that I am always afraid that I'll hit the wrong one. Perhaps side by
side or more spacing between them.

3) Just for discussion sake, do you think when sharing it should be mentioned
that it's come from HN?

4) In-line comments are awesome! How about using a sidebar on the HN homepage
for something like preview or better yet, to display comments for the current
article with similar styling to preview in Google search results?

5) Endless scroll on the "Comments" page seems to be broken.

I don't know if I can ever go back to the standard HN....Great job!

------
cocoflunchy
It's great, except that I can now only see 12 links on the home page... And
infinite scrolling is good, but how do you now search ? All the bottom links
go further down when you scroll the page.

------
EvilTerran
Damn... I've been working on a userscript to do, well, pretty much what this
does; I'd completed thread folding, and was just getting stuck into AJAXy
"more" links and reply forms.

Oh well, time for a new hobby project.

[edit: Incidentally, do you find the tables-within-tables-within-tables
structure of HN, with some arbitrary variations between pages, as infuriating
as I do? Or am I doing something wrong?]

~~~
tommoor
That's all part of the fun ;-)

~~~
EvilTerran
I've been awfully tempted to have my userscript just completely rip the page
layout apart & re-assemble it properly as styled divs, actually. I might still
do that.

~~~
etcet
As someone who just wrote their own extension for HN, I think that's the right
way to go about things. Tables are such a pain in the ass and I there were
multiple times where I had to talk myself into 'staying the course' and just
getting it done rather than starting from scratch with a more sane approach.

I think if you could create a nice minimalist table-parser base it would be
useful for any future browser extensions.

~~~
EvilTerran
Actually, that's really a rather good idea. I'll be sure to Show HN when it's
done!

------
DonnyV
The features are nice but can you make it look more like the Georgify
extension.
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ofjfdfaleomlfanfeh...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ofjfdfaleomlfanfehgblppafkijjhmi)
I like how the content is centered with Georgify.

------
odddogmedia
I can really appreciate this extension and the fact you've open sourced it.
Thank you for that.

I think a successful modification to the HN feed would leave the same vertical
spacing, but somehow make links more easily browsable. Zebra striping perhaps?
Eliminating the number on the left or make it smaller?

I like the Share option. That's super helpful.

I'm not really liking the large links or their color.

The hidden filter that only shows on hover should be hinted at, at least, by
making it slightly visible.

I think you've abandoned the HN brand. I believe a successful modification to
the feed layout would be subtle enough that it wouldn't be immediately
noticeable but, rather, generally easier to read.

------
SeoxyS
One of the things I like most about Hacker News is that it's one of the few
sites left without social media sharing buttons, or as I like to call them,
junk. Anything that will add those buttons to sites that don't have them is
the antithesis of what I need.

~~~
gruseom
Fully agree. Worst of all are the truculent widget bars that refuse to scroll
with the rest of the page. Thankfully the Antisocial subscription for Adblock
takes care of them.

~~~
tommoor
I understand that the social buttons are not useful for all, this is why they
are hidden behind a click and dynamically loaded. You can completely ignore
that link and enjoy the rest of the new features :-)

------
getpost
Endless scrolling is uncool if you want to click any of the links at the
bottom of the page, Lists, RSS, Bookmarket. Maybe these links can be relocated
to the top of the page? I sometimes go to Lists | bestcomments to find the
creme de la creme.

------
bmuon
Wow! The infinite scrolling feature just made me a lot less productive at
work. I used to just look at the homepage...

Feature suggestion: could you add a different link to the discussion page?
Something more prominent and easier to click?

------
micahshell
Looks nice, but I perfer Georgify
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ofjfdfaleomlfanfeh...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ofjfdfaleomlfanfehgblppafkijjhmi)

~~~
tommoor
The styling is really only the tip of this extension :-)

------
irrationalfab
The only missing feature that prevents it to become the ultimate HN extension
is to show an icon in the address bar that links the a web page to the HN
thread (if available).

Keep up the great work!

~~~
rvid
I want this too! This comes close: <http://chetan51.github.com/panels/hacker/>

~~~
irrationalfab
Also:

[Hacker News'd!]
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/njdndkhkelkeepcnmo...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/njdndkhkelkeepcnmookckfhleebcokl)

[Hacker News Sidebar]
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hhedbplnihmkekhgma...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hhedbplnihmkekhgmaoikgfbkjjaocnl)

But are not perfect and it would be nice to have a single package.

------
ealfert
I tried to contribute to this thread but my IP seems to have been blocked
after submitting my comment. I included a list of 6 Chrome extensions and
their URL that in my opinion improve the usability and features of HN. I'm
afraid to submit it again since I don't want the current Squid proxy's IP
being blocked also and then I won't be able to read HN until I find a
different IP I can route through. Anyone know how long IP blocks last?

------
joering2
Never had a time to give my respect to HN by building my own bootstrap and
adding more features (I believe more options viewing HN, the better) but every
time something like this comes around HN I follow the thread.

This is what I learnt so far:

\- do not change fonts, colors styles.

\- do not try to add cool up to date, buttons, etc - most users just got used
to the way it is right now \- do not add anything between rank position and
title. no additional icons, etc. folks here got used to scanning HN certain
way and more white space makes it harder to read

How would my HN bootstrap look like?

\- wouldnt touch the outlook and add minimum additionals: after # of comment I
would add ajax-driven "follow" for the post and "follow for replies" - in
threads were there are hundreds of responses its hard to catch up with whats
new (who wrote new reply); I know you can lookup your profile to see comments
related to yours, but I find it kind of hard it this way and you have to leave
to post screen.

\- add highlighters to responses. karma is good and many times interesting
folks have high karma (duh!) - I would add highlighters (opt in/out) for high
karma users when they type response so when I scroll long thread and am
limited with reading time, I could at least see posts coming from high karma
users

\- social features: would add IRC, follow hacker (notify me when he posts new
stuff, or write a comments), but would never add all the fb/twitter crap. imho
hn being less popular is better. this community is awesome as it is

\- would do it never ending scrolling like you did, BUT also make it as
refreshless as possible - would load stuff through ajax, also monitor the
hottest subjects and preload theirs comments in hidden div so when you click
"comments" it would show up instantly and just added missing comments that
took place from the moment of last reload (all reloads would be silent ajax-
driven) - this would give you feeling that loading data is extremely damn
fast.

This is for a good start. One day I will get there as I want to learn Python
or Ruby :)

~~~
platz
agree on not changing fonts, colors, styles, buttons ...

~~~
joering2
Yeah. I think lots of people find HN design perfect the way it is and its hard
to move on. Its like another Craiglist, I guess.

Btw: my post gets lots of upvotes -- perhaps someone could design some of the
features I mentioned...

------
knite
Not bad! I was previously using a combination of the Georgify and Collapsible
comment extensions. Your extension is better in some ways and worse in others.

Suggestions: Collapse link shouldn't be on the far right, and collapsed
comments should only show 1-2 lines regardless of actual length. Link color
brightness could be taken down a few notches. Reply link shouldn't be
underlined.

~~~
adrianhoward
Ohhh. Thanks for the pointer to Collapsible comment. Trez useful.

------
christiangenco
Ooo, this is quite nice. I like all of the inline features you added (though
inline comments aren't currently working for me --- scratch that, they were
just really slow).

Nicely done! I predict, as with all HN re-themes, that someone will soon
comment about how article density is less than on standard HN, so I took the
liberty of adding it to your GitHub issues :)

~~~
tommoor
Haha, thankyou very much. Hopefully the endless scrolling takes away some of
the pain of more readable titles ;-)

------
Kishin
One thing I would add is either reducing title size on the front page, or
adding an adjustable title size on the front page (and remember that title
size). I wouldn't mess with the font size otherwise, it just throws everything
off.

Otherwise, this is terrific! Only bad part is endless scrolling may keep me on
HN even longer.

------
tzury
This is my HN for Chrome <http://imgur.com/dPcjC>

Given my default sans font is set to Droid Sans, all I needed to do was simply
zoom-in (Ctrl ++) twice and chrome keep it this way between log-ins and
recently between machines as well.

~~~
tommoor
The extension is mainly about additional functionality and ease of use over
styling, let me know if you give it a try!

------
driverdan
Can you add privacy details? It looks like this is using a 3rd party service
for social profile data.

~~~
tommoor
Hey,

The extension queries Google's social graph API to gather information about
users profiles - you can find details here:
<https://developers.google.com/social-graph/>

~~~
polshaw
That link goes to:

    
    
         'The Google Social Graph API is no longer available'
    

Anyway, i'm not keen on that. Infinite scroll and CSS should be options, too.

Personally, all i really want is collapsible comments, inline replies, and
hiding stories

Anyone know of a script/extension that does just that??

------
omgsean
I uninstalled it almost immediately after installing. Cool idea but you
shouldn't change the entire look and feel of the site. See Reddit Enhancement
Suite as a good example of how to write and present a site addon.

Great idea, it's just too intrusive.

------
orky56
I can't get access to the footer because of the endless scrolling. Basically
there's no way for me to access the Search box long enough to type something
in. Is it possible to move the footer items to the top or somewhere else?

------
cfontes
Please remove this CSS changes, they look terrible.

The features are nice thought.

------
keva161
Nice but it doesn't work if you visit <http://hackerne.ws/>

Only <http://news.ycombinator.com/>

~~~
tommoor
I didn't even know that URL existed - i'll add support in the next update :-)

~~~
keva161
I added support for you and submitted it to github :)

~~~
tommoor
Merged and pushed to Chrome webstore ;-)

Cheers!

------
JVIDEL
Like the UI layout, but as others are saying it's not easier on the eyes: try
to make the background more dark, not monokai-dark but not this retina-burning
white either...

------
yonasb
Finally, a way to easily share HN posts! Had to adjust the styling using
Stylebot, title fonts are way too big... Can you add an Instapaper button?
Would be really helpful

------
Fizzadar
Just installed it - loving the added spacing, increased font sizes/etc; it
makes far better use of the full screen.

I doubt I'll ever be uninstalling this :)

~~~
cocoflunchy
> it makes far better use of the full screen. Not for us poor laptop owners!
> It's actually the exact opposite :/

------
kelsokennedy
This is a great new tool! Thank you very much, HN _was_ one of the ugliest
sites I visit daily :)

I guess it's true though, Content IS King.

------
leemac
Fantastic work! I'm liking the different feel of the site. Infinite scrolling
is a big plus too. Curious to see what else you can do with this.

------
sneak
It would be nice if the collapse thread link collapsed the parent of the
thread, as well, the way reddit's collapse buttons work.

------
udp
Looks nice. I'd quite like to see a poll with the various alternative HN
themes to see what most people are using.

------
haar
The HackerNew extension makes searching from the search bar at the bottom of
the page extremely difficult.

------
crisnoble
Endless scrolling is very cool, until you try to click one of the links on the
bottom or use the search.

~~~
tommoor
I did consider moving search to the top - what do you think? What stopped me
was wanting to augment rather than completely change the current HN
experience.

~~~
crisnoble
I understand your goal of not completely changing the HN design. However, as
the extension works right now, it is literally impossible for me to click the
links on the bottom. I can see them for a microsecond if I scroll to the
bottom but they instantly get pushed down by a wave of new stories.

------
g0su
The pure white in the background hurts my eye. Isn't it a good practice to
make it a little grayish?

------
sgt
So I installed it, but it's not showing up in "Apps" in a new Chrome tab. What
am I doing wrong?

------
donniezazen
It looks good but I rarely visit hackers news' front web-page. I end up
getting RSS.

------
fitzpasd
Option to open all links in a new tab would be greatly appreciated

------
maxxpower
I only wish to have it default to follow links into a new tab.

~~~
tommoor
Good idea, I think the best practice across the web right now is to let the
user choose when they want a new tab. Just hit CTRL while you click to create
a new tab.

------
tantalor
Blue text on a white background is a cardinal sin in design.

------
josscrowcroft
Congrats Tom! Been looking forward to using this.

~~~
tommoor
why thankyou good sir.

------
ssn
Missing expand/collapse comment threads.

------
rg81
I really like it, nice job.

------
dropshopsa
Awesome!!!!

