Hacker News Reader

I hate that when we scroll through a codebase files, it changes the file we are hovering, I'd rather having to click to see the file

View on HN

Yes, this particular UX is poor. It's not intuitive that clicking the filename has different behavior from clicking elsewhere in the file's row. Expanding the row inline needs a leading widget.

This particular issue is solved in GitHub proper, and derives from the Windows 95 tree view widget [1], which I seem to remember from Windows 3.x but can't find a screenshot.

The hover behavior is just not an intuitive or accessible default. I can't imagine someone being able to use this if they have a hard time clicking without moving the mouse. It also wastes resources fetching file/directory contents while the user is moving the cursor to a predetermined file they presumably wish to open.

[1]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/winauto/syst...

thank you both for the feedback, i'm revisiting it now and i do see what the both of you are illustrating.

i think i will get rid of the change on hover, it is a distraction and perhaps was just my ambition to show people how fast we load.

edit: fixed

If you click the file row (not the filename as that will navigate to file page), then hovering over other files won't change the preview.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com