Hacker News Reader

Comment by brudgers | Hacker News Reader

I know that there's a market for Hacker News reader apps and I wish you every success with your launch.

Yet, I can't see why I wouldn't continue to use a general purpose web browser [Firefox on Android, IE on Windows Phone]. There's no additional permissions. Forward and Back and favorites and scrolling and all the bits and pieces of HN just work the same way as on my laptop or desktop. Can someone please enlighten me?

View on HN

Side note: I use http://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/ multiple times a day and love it.

But as to the bigger issue here:

The maintainer of Hacker News website appears to be obstinate when provided suggestions, help and development time: [links] The current status is the developer has applied a viewport to a table-based layout and saw that it failed. This table-based layout has been in place since 2007, and I don't believe there have been any efforts by the owners to update it.

I, and many others from the community, have volunteered code and time to upgrade the website but these contributions have been rejected by kogir.

[links] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7330107 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7985687 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9480325

https://github.com/HackerNews/HN used to be open for reporting issues, but it has been deleted.

Does anyone know why this is? It seems to be almost the opposite of the whole HN community approach.

The dev is pulling a Gruber. (Ref: refusing to update or handoff Markdown to volunteers)

I am more interested in the why? There must be a reason other than ego.

Some of them add collapsable threads; some of them sort out the vote buttons; some of them have different design which some people want; some of them have bigger fonts that flows the screen.

All of this can be achieved with plugins or client side CSS, but that's trickier on mobile.

Also, scratching an itch.

Is there one for emacs?

https://github.com/clarete/hackernews.el

For many sites, I agree with you, but HN is so notoriously bad on mobile that a healthy market has grown for alternative readers, whether apps or other web-based front-ends.

I almost always use an app over the browser on mobile. Generally, apps are faster, have better mobile UIs, integrate with the OS, and are easier to reach.

EDIT: Oh, and I don't mind notifications unless they're abused.

For me, Firefox on Android totally screws up font sizes? As in, there is a ~300% variation in font size between individual comments, for whatever reason? (I suspect it has something to do with the use of tables for formatting)

For purely reading, Dolphin Browser is ok.

Touch-friendly buttons. Have you tried to vote on a mobile web browser? It's horrendous.

Actually I find it difficult to vote even here on my laptop - the buttons are too small, not friendly at all.

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