Show HN: Hacker News iOS client using the new official API | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Hacker News iOS client using the new official API

hnclient.weebly.com

82 pointsbonzoq44 comments

A few thoughts:

When on the comments page, I'd expect tapping the title to take me to the article, but it doesn't.

The child comment touch target is all the way to the far right, which is at the edge of the touch region on the new larger phones. Feels a bit awkward. Maybe make the entire comment the touch target for that?

Not a fan of the big black back arrow. I know it goes away, but as you scroll, it is right where you want to start reading, and feels a bit distracting. Maybe just tone it down a bit?

There's a little bit of stuttering as you scroll, which is surprising for a text list. I'm guessing it's a bug rather than actual performance issues.

Thanks for your feedback.

I thought tapping the title and going to the article in the comments page could be counter-productive if one slightly missed the back arrow. I need to give it a thought again.

It's a good idea to make the entire comment tappable instead of just the small button. I haven't tested the app on a physical iPhone 6 yet.

I'm not sure about the arrow. It still takes up less space than the navigation bar and immediately goes away.

Main and comments views are basically a table view with UITextViews displaying attributed strings. I did my best to convert HTML to attributed string in no time, so I'm surprised by the stuttering as you scroll. It doesn't occur on my iPhone 5s. I need to investigate that.

Yeah, they were just random thoughts, I'm not sure they are all good ideas. The stuttering only seems to happen on long comment pages, when I give it a push and let it scroll. It seems to just hiccup every 100 ms or so.

Speaking of these things, what became of the plan to launch a revamped HN with mobile-friendly markup?

"Our goal is to switch to a new rendering engine (still powered by Arc) in three weeks (Oct 28)" from the API announcement at http://blog.ycombinator.com/hacker-news-api.

I think they might be getting there? I noticed that the comment's section on mobile fits the width my mobile devices screen now and it is generally much more readable. I recall having to doing a lot annoying zooming in just to read comments. Before.

Granted I only access HN on mobile a few times a month, so I could just be making all of this up.

Actually, I have had an iOS app using the client out for about 3 weeks. It was meant to be a tutorial on how to use Couchbase Lite to consume APIs. However, it's going through a complete rewrite to make it full featured. I use it to consume Hacker News. I have a version that allows me to sort and hide stories I've already read that is waiting for approval.

Github: https://github.com/wrkstrm/HelveticaNeue

App Store: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/helvetica-neue-native-open/i...

If anyone else is looking for a better iOS client (native or not), I'm using HackerWeb (http://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb). It's pretty nice, and ironically feels more native than the native apps I've tried. Here's a bookmarklet to open the current HN page in HackerWeb:

    javascript:var%20a=/%5B0-9%5D+/.exec(location.href);var%20n=a%5Ba.length-1%5D;location.href='http://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/%23/item/'+n

Seconded - it's great on tablets.

The large font and design is nice but i prefer HakkaNews for being able to comment and change feeds from Top to New etc. Add the swipe right sidebar with those features and youve got a winner!

Once those feature become available in the API, I'll definitely add them. Thanks!

Loving it so far! Great job.

One small request, though. It'd be awesome to collapse comment threads. Any chance of that happening?

Edit: Nevermind. You have the comments setup so you only see the top level and have to tap to see the child comments. Don't think I've seen that before but I dig it.

Thanks for you feedback! I'm glad you like the app.

I thought comments presented this way would be easier to read, because if child comments are indented than it's basically a waste of screen-space on a mobile device.

I like this new client! Good work. It's refreshing to see an HN client with a 2014 era UI. I also love that it's Open Source.

Couple of items of feedback for you.

#1 Please make the top off-white colour bar go away; it's jarring on an otherwise all-white background. The most tasteful looking iOS 7 / 8 era apps I enjoy are the ones that make the iOS info bar blend with the rest of the screen real estate.

#2 Once inside an article, the black back circle isn't very pretty, or easy to hit. This needs some work since it just looks a little overlaid and unpleasant. I don't have any meaningful suggestions, but I'd suggest this needs some rethinking.

All in all, I love it! Thank you.

Hi, thanks for your feedback.

#1 Do you mean the status bar? I could easily remove it, but don't you like to know what time it is? Removing the status bar could be an option in settings in the next release. #2 I will give this suggestion a thought. Now you can go back to the previous view by swiping right. So theoretically the back arrow could be hidden too.

Heh - yes - the status bar. I don't mind it being there, in fact it should be. But on my iPhone 5 it renders in some shade of eggshell when the rest of the interface is white. In my humble opinion, it should be the same colour as the rest of the UI.

A few weeks ago I updated my Hacker News iOS client to use the new API:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hacker-news-zero/id764890985...

Any Android client using the new API?

None that I am aware of.

Why not release this well-done client to all android users?

If this client proves popular I might write one for Android too.

Awesome! Thank you in advance :-)

Well, the first reason is because it would take a complete rewrite. :)

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.dwak.holoha...

Shameless plug :D

This is using cheeaun's wrapper, which was just recently switched to the new api.

Additionally, I'm writing my own wrapper as well, and will be migrating to it eventually.

I didn't want to use closed source code in the application which is why I didn't include the Firebase SDK, and which is why I need to use a wrapper around the api.

Installed. Nice done! :-)

This will be updated soon - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.premii.hn

Its ready, but update will remove upvoting. So trying to figure out how to keep upvoting with the new API.

Any reason the iconic orange was omitted? It just feels odd to read Hacker News without it.

Initially there was an orange navigation bar in this app, but I got rid of it completely for the sake of more screen-space.

I haven't been able to comment on a HN submission from a mobile device in god knows how long. I've tried so many apps. not having an orange look just feels odd, but more to the point I constantly find either the apps are great for consumption but not commenting, or the other way aroubd. This app seems to be no exception. The news:yc app was my favourite client until commenting broke. Haven't had a response from the developer since. I'm now using Hakka News but "no orange" is very strange.

Made my own (iphone/ipad) implementation(swift/open source) of firebase too: http://portablerobot.wordpress.com/2014/11/16/hackyto-availa...

I did wanted to support the live update, but I rather let the user decide when to spend their data.

Nice work!

Thanks for this. Learning Swift right now, and I'm going to dissect your code :)

Maybe it's better on an iPhone 6, but there's a lot more scrolling than most other iOS news apps. It's pretty and all, but I'll take a bit of ugly to be able to see more than three headlines at once.

That's a good point. I might include setting headlines' font size in the next update. Thanks!

>That's a good point. I might include setting headlines' font size in the next update. Thanks!

Is there any plan to support iPad also ?

Yep, I plan to roll out an update that will include iPad support in a few weeks. Definetely before Christmas.

I don't see a way to make comments.

Is that feature included?

also, how long did it take to make

i might try it as a learning project

Its really nice! Any way to view SHOW or ASK posts?

Well, the API doesn't support viewing those posts yet.

Thanks for sharing and making this open source!

No problem. Am hoping for at least one pull request!

iOS 8 only! :( Wish I could try it! Screens look great!

No Swift? Wah

Currently Swift is a questionable choice. It adds around 5 MB size to the application archive, XCode support is buggy and standard library lacks many things it should have. I built custom keyboard with Swift and I won't use it for my next projects in the near future, until it'll become more stable. But probably in year or two it'll become much better.

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