Refined Hacker News

[dpifke]

Feature request: functionality to auto-hide articles from a user-configurable domain kill-list, for those of us who don't want to see articles from e.g. Politico or Buzzfeed. Bonus points if it could also filter stories with user-configurable keywords in the title.

I've suggested this in the past to dang for the main HN UI, but they have limited resources for this sort of thing and there's a fear that if filtering is too easy, it'll split the community here.

[drcongo]

Techcrunch would be out of business within a week.

[jaytaylor]

This is a neat idea!

I recommend submitting a GH issue.

Previously, when I filed a bug the maintainer had committed a fix within literally a few minutes. Of course, one can't count on such things, but it's at least a strong indicator of project-developer care and interest level.

[unraveller]

Here's the userscript I use for blocking clickbait sites on HN.

https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/433199-filter-hackernews-b...

[CyberDildonics]

Or atlasobscura, or two words titles that have no context.

[alcover]

I would greatly enjoy a comment-reply alert. Having to check my profile again and again to manually detect replies is not super efficient. Often I discover replies too late to engage an already gone replier.

[sloppycee]

I get an email notification using this service: https://www.hnreplies.com/

[yololol]

Instead of requesting this or that, I would just like to say that this is great work presented in a very nice way. The effort put there is impressive :)

[plibither8]

Developer of the extension here, thank you!

[jaytaylor]

Discussions on similar submissions:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23804469 Refined Hacker News (July 11, 2020 — 93 points, 40 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20173974 Show HN: Browser Extension to Refine the HN Experience (June 13, 2019 — 259 points, 122 comments)

(FD: Admittedly I got this from the Refined Hacker News add-on, which shows this info at the bottom of each post)

[plibither8]

Hi all, developer of Refined Hacker News here! Happy to see that it has been posted about again, thanks @jaytaylor! As stated in my previous Show HN for this extension, my philosophy behind the extension (as mentioned in the my comment) is:

> There are many extensions out there that add quite a few features to Hacker News, but they also always do one thing, which I have realised, is a slippery slope: changing the minimalistic design and style of Hacker News.

> I created this extension with one thing in mind: I am NOT going to mess around with the overall design or style of Hacker News. It's sacrosanct.

Thanks, I'm up for discussion! :D

[washedup]

These are some great additions. Thanks!

[billfor]

I need a filter to only show technical info from HN, like it was ten years ago :-)

[trangus_1985]

I don't think HN was ever about just "technical" stuff. There is Lobsters for that kind of thing.

Out of curiosity, I brought up HN from 10 years ago on archive.org. I counted - 10 of the top 20 links were things that I wouldn't consider to be "technical".

[ketanmaheshwari]

I'd love to have dark mode feature.

[kitsunesoba]

This userstyle[1] installed with Stylus on Clonimums+Firefox and Cascadea on Safari has served me well.

[1]: https://userstyles.org/styles/113994/hacker-news-dark

[plibither8]

Hi, developer of the extension here! There is a "dark mode" preset available in the Custom CSS settings of the extension. Open the extension popup from the toolbar (list of extensions) and you'll know what I'm talking about :).

[martinp]

https://github.com/darkreader/darkreader is great for this. Adds dark mode to any site.

[EmilStenstrom]

Hacker news needs a redesign, the UI is horrible by basic accessibility standards: Very small click targets, horrible mobile experience, too small font size.

[zylent]

HN is an example of what used to be good about the internet. The page loads quickly without pulling in 100Mb of frontend dev navel-gazing. In my experience simple sites like this are much easier to modify locally for accessibility, via screen readers, or local style sheets to modify things like the small click targets.

I think many in the HN crowd see it as a rejection of the modern bloat and straight up garbage code that many popular sites (particularly news aggregators, looking @ you reddit) tend to become.

[justanotherhn]

One of the reasons why HN has stayed relatively under the radar for the majority of people is in part because of its perceived "bad design". I, for one, love the fact that it's not attracting a wider audience. You have reddit for that.

[deeblering4]

HN looks similar to how reddit did before the UI redesign, and reddit made many things significantly worse when redesigning.

UI redesigns as a concept are in my opinion horrible.

The approach linked to here is much better. Making incremental changes to the existing and well known UI. No need for a full redesign all at once.

[jamespullar]

Browsers support adjusting font size if that's an issue for you. They also tend to remember your font size of choice per site.

I have no issue using Hacker News on mobile either. There are apps available if you prefer something mobile-centric.

[xboxnolifes]

Man, the replies to this somehow conflating improving accessibility and UX with adding 200ms of input delay and MBs of javascript really show a lack of understanding of the topic.

[forgotmypw17]

I am on the mild end of the accessibility spectrum -- I am, for the most part, keyboard-only.

HN's design is one of the best I've found on the Web, and one of the few places I still feel comfortable at.

[avery42]

By default it's small, but all you need to do is zoom in and it's perfect. For example, on my 1440p monitor I'm at 213% zoom and it's working great for me.

[adamrezich]

I don't think it needs a redesign, but some of the smaller, less obtrusive tweaks in this extension for example, would be more than welcome. I used to use other HN apps and newsfeed-reskin websites but I have definitely come to appreciate the utter simplicity of HN's design.

[tailspin2019]

With respect, I don't think it needs a redesign.

It could do with a few minor CSS tweaks to address some of those points you've listed (which I do agree with to a degree).

But we are a long way from horrible by accessibility standards - I mean, it's literally text only for a start!

[chrischattin]

Disagree. HN has one of the most usable designs on the internet. The last thing we need is more unnecessary JS bloat.

[gumby]

It's a nice simple site. For example you can trivially tell your browser to adjust the font size because there isn't a lot of "modern" junk messing with the font handling.

[nicoburns]

It's actually excellent by accessibility standards. The small click targets and text can be easily solved by using your browsers built in zoom functionality.

[Zababa]

It doesn't "need" a redisign, precisely because this kind of website can easily be extanded by things like this extension.