

Show HN: News/YC - HN Reader for iOS - bennyg
http://subvertapps.com/HN/

======
_frog
Okay, a few thoughts on the design:

\- Hidden side menus are a great solution when you've got a lot of items to
display, otherwise use a tab bar. I know sliding deck menus are stylish and
all, but tab bars are always going to be faster to use if you have five or
less options.

\- I'm seeing a lot of sub-44pt controls here. Things like the 'go to
comments' bar and some of the sidebar buttons are hard to hit due to their
small size.

\- The navigation bar here is far too prominent for something that displays
such little information. You should really stick to a 44pt navigation bar with
a title that actually adds context to what's being displayed.

Otherwise it's a nice looking app, congratulations on launching it!

~~~
greendestiny
Came by to say some of the same. I like side menu, its on a button and are
options that need to up all the time. The comments 'mini nav bar'
functionality could all be on the actual nav bar. 44 + x is too much real
estate to constantly waste... you could have it disappear on scrolldown like
safari does.

~~~
bennyg
Gonna' implement the scroll-down on the next release. That's a great idea.

------
h4rrison
It's pretty good. A few user interface issues:

\- The "Go To Comments" and "Return To Stories" buttons aren't styled as
buttons, so it's not immediately obvious that they do anything.

\- The gray bar at the top underneath the orange should really be transparent
I think, it makes the top bar feel very thick and a bit clunky.

\- There should be some indication that an article is loading when the
UIWebView pops up. Users might not have Wifi, and it could be some time before
any part of the page is rendered.

\- I think the modal UIWebView should probably rise up past the top navigation
bar. When you're reading an article there really isn't much need for it to be
there, and every extra pixel is precious on a phone.

Nice app though overall.

~~~
bennyg
Thanks for the comments, maybe icons would work better to make it obvious what
they do. I'll play with that.

------
bennyg
Okay, so I originally made this app for myself cause I didn't like the UI on
other HN readers. In that vein, I probably didn't add some stuff that people
would like in a HN client, so I want your opinions on what to
include/remove/improve in v1.1 - don't hold back. I personally couldn't stand
the design on the other similar apps and I want people to enjoy reading HN on
their iPhones/iPods.

And yes, there's an iPad version in the works too!

\-----

And if anybody is wondering, review time was at 5 days for this one.

~~~
rimantas

      > Okay, so I originally made this app for myself cause
      > I didn't like the UI on other HN readers
    

I was thinking about creating HN reader myself for exactly the same reason.
Tried out about 10 different readers was not satisfied with either of them
(sorry, that includes this app too :( ). However there is an web app which
gets UI right: <http://hackerwebapp.com> — and that's what I am using. And if
I ever will do my own native HN reader it will basically have UI stolen from
HackerWeb :)

~~~
cheeaun
Seriously, I really hope that some iOS devs would steal the UI from it too :)

------
luckman212
Nice job, here are my suggestions:

1\. Top orange bar is way too thick, especially since it stays fixed and does
not "scroll away" after paging down. We don't all have iPhone5's.

2\. I agree with others who have suggested making it somewhat easier to hit
the "go to comments" and close story buttons.

3\. Sharing! Would like to be able to copy link to clipboard, post to
fb/twitter, send to instapaper/readability/pinboard/delicious and last but not
least, email.

Looking forward to v1.1 !

------
paulsutter
Nice, I like it a lot. I tend to read HN on my phone and this could be a real
improvement. A few questions:

\- How does voting work?

\- How do I login?

\- How do I get to page 2?

\- Returning to the article list may be clearer with a back arrow

\- I'd love to see landscape mode

~~~
bennyg
1\. Yep working on it right now (landscape mode)

2\. Unfortunately I haven't figured out how to get to Page(n) with the api I'm
using for this: <http://hndroidapi.appspot.com/> \- if anyone uses this for
their own and knows, hook a brother up! Edit: Also, this API doesn't allow for
logging in / upvoting. I'd love to have this in there though. Anybody know any
other APIs that allow this consistently?

3\. Duly noted.

Thanks for the feedback, I hope you like it. Hopefully in less than a week I
can have a solid v1.1 submitted to focus on everybody's issues/complaints.

------
ruswick
1\. The dark theme doesn't sit well with me. Particularly, the grey on dark
grey is grating.

2\. The buttons on the sidebar are atrocious.

3\. The header bar is much too thick.

4\. The font is inordinately small. This might be an idiosyncrasy of mine, but
I think a larger font would be preferable.

5\. This incorporates all of the intangibles that are significant but
difficult to articulate: the app doesn't feel like an app. Rather, it feels
like a webpage both aesthetically and functionally. I'm not sure how to
describe it, but the app doesn't _feel_ right.

~~~
bennyg
I appreciate your criticism, there will be a light theme option in 1.1

------
ipiszy
I like HackerNode more because:

1\. It contains more columns than only "FrontPage", such as "Jobs" and
"Comments"; 2\. The UI seems more concise. Although there are not indent
between comments, the text is much clearer.

However, neither of these apps can be used to add comments. So I can only come
back to my computer and add this comment on the web page.

~~~
danellis
Hacker Node is really awful to use, though. Half the stories go to 404s,
because it percent-encodes hashes and actually sends them to the server, and
trying to select a story involves poking around on the screen until you
finally hit the right (tiny) part of the title.

------
tagabek
Why I like this so far:

\- It's the closest Alien Blue:Reddit that I've seen for HN

\- Opening web pages within the app is much more comfortable than the standard
way of doing so, which is terrible in my opinion

Great work!

~~~
bennyg
I'd lie if I said I wasn't inspired by Alien Blue, it's by far my favorite and
most-used app on my iPhone. Thanks for the kind words!

~~~
tagabek
The only thing that threw me off was the loading of web pages. There does not
seem to be anything to let the user know that the web page is loading.
Granted, most of the users of this app (being HN regulars) would probably
assume that a page is loading, but if I didn't notice it the first time
around, then maybe others did not either. An activity indicator may help in
this situation. Also, the minus sign (left of "Go to Comments") makes me feel
that the view should minimize upon click, which would cause the horizontal
minus sign to rotate to become vertical. I can elaborate on any of these
thoughts if they don't make enough sense.

------
deanclatworthy
It looks good. I'll download it when I'm home later. This could all be solved
with about 50-100 lines inside a media query though... Come on HN!

------
bx_
In China, downloaded this and it does not populate content. Just endlessly
searches for it (spinning loading wheel).

~~~
bennyg
Hmm, try removing from working memory (don't delete the app!) and reopening to
see if that fixes it. May be having a hard time loading the site.

~~~
haldean
Since the API you're using is hosted on App Engine, it won't be accessible
from China. App Engine is blocked by the Great Firewall.

~~~
bennyg
Damn, thanks for the heads up.

~~~
bx_
lots of HN readers in China -- would be great to be able to use this! looks
nice and headed in the right direction.

------
msutherl
Very clean UI. Would love to see indication of what articles I've already
read.

~~~
bennyg
Great idea. Would adding a "hide read" feature be something anybody else is
interested in?

~~~
SoftwareMaven
YES! But I would strongly prefer to get the voting/commenting part working
first. I come to HN to participate in the discourse, not just read web pages.

One thing I would say is it would be nice to have a "Reader"/"Instapaper" mode
for articles. I haven't looked at iOS APIs in a while, so I don't know if
Apple is exposing that functionality or not (my guess is no); but maybe
Instapaper or one of the clones would be willing to do some kind of
partnership. I would pay for that upgrade on my iPhone.

Overall, I really like this and can easily see myself pulling it out in the
mgrocery line. Yeah, there are some minor nits, but I think others have
covered those well enough. And I love the dark coloring, too.

------
_frog
I'd say that name is just a little too similar to chpwn's HN client, news:yc.

------
cynix
Would be nice if it could support iOS 5.1.1.

~~~
jevinskie
iOS 6 adds a lot of goodies for devs. I find it hard to blame devs of apps
that move to 6.0. A jailbreak sure would be nice! =) Wait for 6.1 (remember
6.1 beta 4 expires soon!).

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orionblastar
There was a Hacker News reader for iOS and then it stopped loading news and
gave errors. So I found one called Hacker Node that worked better. Which one
of this, I don't see a link to the App Store just an image.

~~~
bennyg
Clickable link: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/news-
yc/id592893508?ls=1&...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/news-
yc/id592893508?ls=1&mt=8)

~~~
orionblastar
Good but there is no option to share the links like Hacker Node offers. I like
to email links to myself to look over later on so I can focus on them more.

