
Show HN: Flat Hacker News - sagargv
http://sagargv.blogspot.com/2014/06/flat-hacker-news.html
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Igglyboo
I have no idea why HN doesn't have collapsible comments like reddit. There's
literally no downside and extremely easy to implement, it would solve the same
problem this is trying to solve.

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kevin
We definitely want to add collapsible comments to HN. While it does seem
relatively easy to implement (if that was our only priority--we could do it
quickly), it is not true that there would be no downsides. We'd have to
rewrite it again in the near future is one I can think of and here's why:

When the new team took over development on HN, we decided that before we
implement any new frontend features for the site we needed to update the
markup HN uses to make it easier to implement such features in the future
(just the markup, not the aesthetics).

Creating a visually identical version of HN with CSS3/HTML5 was easy (we also
made it responsive to work on mobile devices)--implementing it was another
matter. HN's presentation layer is heavily intertwined with the
application/server logic, which meant it was going to be a bit tricky to
separate the two. The reason it was tricky is because the entire code base up
to a few months ago was optimized to be worked on by one person, pg. For
example, we didn't even have docs on how to setup / run the arc code on local
/ development machines when we first got started.

Eventually we did get a version of HN working that's separated the
presentation logic, but we realized that MANY of you out there have built apps
that rely on scraping HN's outdated table markup. Because we decided that it
would be bad to break all of your apps overnight, we've now started working on
an API for HN to launch it in tandem with the new markup changes. We'd then
give you all some time to update your projects.

Please try to keep in mind that new features for HN have to be done alongside
a lot of other responsibilities. The software team that works on HN is also
spending time moderating it and rewriting software that runs YC. Some members
like Garry and myself divide our time between developing for HN and our duties
as partners helping YC's startups.

This is a long-winded way of saying, please be patient. We are working on many
shiny new things for you and can't wait to show you what we've been building
behind the scenes. Until then, we're delighted to see implementations by HN
users like sagargv. Hopefully, we'll be able to reduce the reasons for you to
spend time on projects like these soon. :)

~~~
logotype
Wishlist: please, please keep it simple. Don't include a MB of JS or CSS, for
example I'm on a slow connection (China) and it would be inefficient if you
for whatever reason include a lot of crap just to be able to see basic
content. I'm sure you have this in mind but just writing it down anyway :)

~~~
kevin
Yup. I totally agree.

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huhtenberg
A couple of comments - (1) "more" should really be turning into "less" on
click to allow reversing the expansion (2) it shouldn't mess with the font-
size. Otherwise, it's a nice balance between the simplicity and the
usefulness.

~~~
sagargv
I've now implemented both these changes. The bookmarklet in the blog post
([http://sagargv.blogspot.in/2014/06/flat-hacker-
news.html](http://sagargv.blogspot.in/2014/06/flat-hacker-news.html)) reflects
this.

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Kiro
Another one of these. Must be the most common Show HN.

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iancarroll
Hacker News already has limits surrounding reply levels...

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huhtenberg
No, it doesn't. It hides the "reply" link for deeply nested comments, but you
can still always reply by clicking on "link" to view just the comment itself.

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eru
It might seem that way, but that's not true. There's a genuine timer. If you
click on the `link' view, you probably just took long enough to run out the
timer.

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eru
I stand corrected. Perhaps they changed the behaviour?

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TeMPOraL
As far as I can tell it was always that way.

