

Unofficial alternative UI of hackernews - rvivek
http://hckrnews.com/

======
cubicle67
You know, you could probably harvest quite a number of passwords by adding a
small 'login' link to the top right corner of the page

~~~
wvl
Sure, I could. Which is why I didn't.

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AgentConundrum
It looks a bit odd for me in Firefox. I'm assuming the comments/points totals
were supposed to line up...

<http://imgur.com/RLkXX?full>

~~~
aik
I'm getting the same thing in Chrome. This way anyway it seems harder to read
than the original.

~~~
MrJagil
Hmm, looks fine using the newest Chrome beta.

~~~
rvivek
It's fine to me in Chrome - Linux.

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bonaldi
Hoped this would be for the comments page -- would love one that didn't
reorder the comments as they are rated.

I find it desperately hard to find what's new when revisiting a comment
thread, unless I've posted in it and can go in via "threads".

~~~
wvl
If you go to the about page[1], you'll find extensions for both chrome and
safari. These extensions will highlight new comments, as well as make comment
threads collapsible (a la reddit).

<http://hckrnews.com/about.html>

~~~
bonaldi
These are great, but won't work on iPad, where I do most of my HNing. Server-
side solutions are much preferred.

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isleyaardvark
Overall, I dislike it. On the plus side there are more stories to scroll
through and the hover effect is nice. But I don't think that makes up for the
font. Plus, when you scroll down there's no way to tell which column is
comments and which is points.

~~~
wvl
What OS/browser are you using? What is your issue with the font? _edit_ :
Others seemed to be saying the same thing. I switched to a sans family stack.
Let me know if that is better.

As for the column thing -- this is something I use every day, so I designed it
mostly for repeat usage. I didn't want to pin a header or add extraneous text
to make that clear. Use it for a while, and it should become second nature
that points is closest to the story description.

~~~
isleyaardvark
Sorry for the late reply - the font was more a matter of personal taste. I
like the sans much better.

Of course if I used it often enough I'm sure I'd remember which was points and
which was comments, but when you make a choice like that you should remember
you are forcing the users to learn and remember that. There are going to be
users that simply don't like being forced to do that extra mental effort.

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chaosmachine
Sorting by date is a great idea, easier to keep up with than a list that
randomly reorders every few minutes because of changing point values.

~~~
wvl
Thanks! I'm glad someone appreciates it. Seems everyone else is very worried
about my spare time and how I wasted it... :)

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jessor
Awesome! You fixed the HN frontpage for me. This has exactly what I was
missing.

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KishoreKumar
I really like your site. I want to completely switch to your site. But..

1\. Some stories are Missing: For example,
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1787019> ("When Intel’s Hyper Threading
goes bad") was posted on Oct 13, 2010. But it is missing your list.

2\. How often do you update #Points & #Comments? I mean if I just post a
comment or upvote any OLD story on news.combinator.com & then if I browse back
to that day on your site. Its not showing the updated values. I guess you are
storing the stories but not updating them. What is your criterion for updating
the #Points & #Comments?

3\. What is your criterion for "top" in top 10, 20, 50%? Its definitely not
points.

PS: How are you getting the stories from news.ycombinator.com? Scraping or do
they offer some JSON API?

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tzury
I do not like this design at all. It is simply not personal taste, yet I must
applaud you for taking the time and energy to do that.

HN with new look is something I think of at least once a day during one of at
least 15 visits to the site.

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wvl
Author here. Part of the reason I built this is so that I could skip a day or
two, and still come back and see what was posted. Unfortunately, that means
finding this thread 11 hours after it was posted. I'll respond to the
comments.

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ecaradec
This isn't exactly news. There is a page that include several HN related
services here : <http://resourcey.com/site_details/2/news.ycombinator.com/>

~~~
david_p
I didn't know <http://resourcey.com> ! Nice project. Is this new ? Related to
YC ?

~~~
edanm
Yep, it was created by me and my partner in all things startup (he lurks on
HN, doesn't comment much). It was inspired by Hacker News, although we cover
any sites people wish to add.

Please, visit and upvote the resources you like, and add any resources you can
think of. There are already a few gems there, for HN and other sites.

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MrJagil
This is where I actually think Digg is better than HN and Reddit. Their
content and community may not be nearly as good, but at least they ATTEMPT to
improve their UI and general functionality. Soon I have been on HN for a year,
and I do not think I have noticed a single change to the site.

I know that interface is not everything and that once you get used to this
simple one, you really get to like it, but I would just expect that a tech
site, where 1/4 of the articles are about design, would try to push itself a
bit more.

~~~
endtime
I'd suggest you educate yourself on the origins and goals of HN before you
start complaining that it's not trying to compete with Digg.

~~~
MrJagil
I would _never_ want Digg and HN to compete. They are two entirely different
sites. I was merely comparing their design philosophies, not their general
purposes.

And I apologize if my post is seen as a complaint. I was trying to be
constructive.

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joshuacc
Looks nice overall. But Caslon is a bit blurry and hard to read at less than
18px on Windows with Cleartype enabled. I'd either switch to Georgia or bump
up the size.

~~~
wvl
It seems this is a common theme. I switched to a sans stack, that should be
easier to read, if not so pretty.

An aside, but one thing I love that both Safari and Chrome now do (at least,
maybe others do as well) is remember the font size instructions for a site.
So, if you bump up the font size -- next time you visit it keeps it at the
larger font size.

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tfh
Apparently there's another one on <http://hckrn.ws/> . What's with the HN
redesigns?

~~~
bl4k
I figured that pg has kept HN feature and design limited so that the users can
hack and chop it how they want it (eg. I have simple email thread alerts)

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tnorthcutt
I knew that the shapes in the orange boxes on the left were probably letters
and numbers, but I honestly could not tell which ones they were (especially
just looking at the top one, which for me right now is "6am"). I ended up
copying and pasting the text into my address bar to read it. I'd suggest a
different font. (I'm on Win7/Chrome Beta).

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Kilimanjaro
I like big fonts like in <http://www.hackerblogs.com>

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futuremint
The very first thing I tried to do was click on the words "comments" and
"points" to sort the entries by that column.

Placing those columns on the left-hand side gives them the highest importance.
Is that the intention of this UI?

~~~
wvl
I can understand why you thought they would be sortable. However, it's
designed around being a chronological list. When I want to scan the higher
rated stories, I use the filter links -- top 10, top 20, top 50%. Sorting by
points or comments does make some sense, however, it is also a function of how
long a story has been posted -- so I don't really think a javascript sort in
place would be too useful.

As for the UI design -- I wanted a simple list of stories that I could scan,
plus I wanted to be able to see the points and number of comments associated
with that story. While I understand your point about highest importance, if I
had placed the numbers on the right the ragged right nature of the text would
make it hard to scan.

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zachinglis
Well done on taking your time out to do this. Congrats on launching.

I find this one far less scannable. I see what you tried to do but it needs a
bit more refinement.

~~~
wvl
Can you comment on why you find it less scannable? In fact, I find the
opposite -- just the information I need, with no noise, on a clean white
background. But, of course I'm biased.

I did add alternating backgrounds -- I'm not sure I'll leave it like that, but
do you find that better for scanning?

------
bretthellman
Great idea but the UI needs some work... Everything blends together. What I'd
love is notifications when a comment receives a reply. Sign me up for that!

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jacobolus
I like it, but can we get a font with slightly less fiddly tiny details? They
don’t work so well on a low-resolution computer display.

~~~
spacecadet
Agreed. Decent flow, find a cleaner font, it wont take long ;)

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Kilimanjaro
A better exercise would be to redesign HN in HTML5. Instead of font tags and
tables it needs an urgent injection of CSS.

~~~
Kilimanjaro
After further examining the source I dare to say the size of the html sent
could be cut in half.

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sbt
I don't think this is a good idea. As a somewhat loose comparison I wouldn't
make a newyrktimes.com with an alternative layout either. There must be
endless other ways of spending one's spare time, e.g. by making something you
can charge for. I know this sounds harsh and I don't mean to rip on the author
personally, but in general I think there are too many derivative-of-derivative
services out there.

~~~
sunir
I think it is a great exercise to reimagine your favorite websites. Build
junk. Because it is fun. Because it teaches you. Because no one expects it to
be awesome so you can be free to play.

You have to sharpen the saw somehow and by taking an existing site you can
focus entirely on the interface and not on requirements capturing or brand
establishment since those have been provided for you.

~~~
zachinglis
Agreed.

It makes us designers stronger. One of the first things I tell people trying
to better their design is just that… redo your favourite website. Learn the
techniques they used, find out what they did what they did and then mess it up
and make it better.

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loveatlonglast
I like this. I wonder if there is a way to have a left nav like this and then
a right column for comments.

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gbrindisi
Please add alternate row colors! I find it difficult to read a list of links
on plain white background.

~~~
wvl
I gave this a try. I tend to find alternate row colors pretty jarring, so I
made it subtle. I might pull it though, so let me know what you think.

~~~
babeKnuth
i agree. plain white is much cleaner and simpler to read. alternate colors
just add noise.

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bryanlarsen
One other trick with this site that's not listed on the about page: click on
the title to refresh.

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bigfudge
In safari 5 the layout blows up (slightly) if you resize the text (it was too
small for me).

~~~
wvl
This was related to the Firefox rendering bug, and should be fixed now.

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plinan
Excellent! Instantly bookmarked!

~~~
gregorym
It doesn't look great on firefox but very clean with Chrome

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babeKnuth
i must be in the complete minority here, but that is one of the nicest designs
and layouts i've ever seen

looks great on chromium full screen

has the designer done any other work? any other samples?

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xsltuser2010
Could you implement sorting by points or by comments with jquery?

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jacabado
I tought about this yesterday! Thank you!!

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johnconroy
Well I like the original better I guess (nice to see a different design take
though... I ain't hatin'). Guessing your alt. design would look cool in an
ipad though.

