I wanted to see daily and weekly top 10 stories and also ask/show hn stories. So I wrote a HTML5 webapp that works on all browsers including ios/android.
I really like this. It's super easy to use and the dark theme looks great. My only comment would be that the header text (e.g. comments, setting etc.) can be hard to read on the default (HN orange) color scheme. Nice.
I liked how you chose to represent the hierarchy of comments.
I also liked the fact that you are showing the articles within your web app rather than redirecting, but it got me worried about how reliable that may be.
wow your reader is beautiful! it's also pretty awesome in the browser (chrome 26) when the content renders to the right of the articles-list. (wrote a similiar client for startup-news once with readability-integration and can confirm that it's reliable for most articles...similiar to when you use Pocket for example)
UPDATE: the only thing that does not work on Chrome-mobile (mobile-Safari also) for iOS is the back-button of your app (comments-button works though)...
Why did you choose not to use HNKit from chpwn's news:yc? https://github.com/Xuzz/HNKit The way you do it right now seems like it would be terribly slow.
The API calls made by this app are slightly tricky. For the front-page posts, a call is made to http://hnsearch.com/bigrss and then the resulting xml is parsed to grab the unique IDs from each post. Those are then sent as a request to the actual API to get the posts. The comments, unfortunately, return as basically a totally unordered set. I create a linked list out of those, and then I turn it into a flat array based on the nested nature of the comments - so UITableView will render correctly.
HNKit isn't in ARC, and does a myriad of things that I think are unnecessary and can be maintained cleaner (there's absolutely no documentation!!!). Those methods are actually very quick (imperceptibly fast) right now - but I'm not a computer scientist by any means, so I believe they can be made even faster by someone that knows a better data structure to use. Each comment comes back out of order with a parent ID and a comment ID. A comment that is a reply to Comment 1 will have the parent ID matching Comment 1's comment ID (hence my linked list structure right now). There's got to be a better way, and that's also why I open sourced the whole thing.
HNKit is also doing XML parsing over everything, and string comparisons can be fairly slow as well. That, in conjunction with not being ARC ready and a total lack of documentation made me choose something else entirely.
I get the best HN mobile experience on Android either with the stock browser or Chrome Mobile since both have an automatic text reflow (or so called automatic word wrap). This feature is one of the most I miss on my iPhone which let a lot of classic websites top every native app on mobile devices. Reading HN and commenting is as fast as on a desktop. I tried several HN apps on iOS (I have both an iOS and Android device in parallel operation) and none of them got close to HN on Android's mobile browsers in terms of convenience and usability.
My favorite Android app is Hacker News 2 - it has the best tablet support (my only Android is a Nexus 7) of any that I've used, and it lets me log in, vote, comment, view my profile, view threads, etc.
EDIT: This is the one whose creator commented below ("Have you tried out mine?"). Kudos.
I use https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.manuelmaly... because it's the cleanest looking HN app I could find. It currently doesn't let you comment or vote on comments. It's open source though so those problems are theoretically solvable.
I built my own reader after trying out several others out there [1].
The one thing that I really liked on Google Reader was that it aggregated all stories onto one page. So that's what I built. It may or may not be useful to you guys - would love some feedback either ways.
I'm a regular user of the app - it's a bit buggy but it's definitely the best looking and most usable HN reader out there. If I spot bugs in daily use should I open issues on github?
I just recently changed the API to hnsearch's version (the only officially sanctioned one by HN) so hopefully a lot of the bugs will be smoothed out. I hope the new update doesn't crash and actually loads stories for you from now on out.
Does this send our HN credentials anywhere other than directly to the ycombinator site? I see a bunch of https and some http URLs in the code and could probably verify one way or another with an hour or two of work, but what can you tell me short of that?
It only sends the credentials once when you login, and that's only to HN's https login page. It then only includes HN's regular cookie in the http headers on requests that go to an https page inside HN after you've logged in.
Very nice, thanks. One thing that is odd/slightly annoying is the way the comments initially scroll up. The issue is that the comments list scrolls at a different speed to the speed at which I'm dragging it due to the simultaneous scrolling up of the title bar. I think initially just the title bar should slide out of the way, and when it's gone, scrolling should continue on the comments list. Ultimately my finger should at the same position in then comments list as when it started the drag. i.e. Very much like how a category slides out of the way in a regular UITableView.
Actually this affects the main news items list also.
In addition, when I'm part way down the list I can't tell whether the grey "x Points ... y seconds ago by zzz" separator bar applies to the item above or below it. Maybe adjusting the shading of the bar and border would make it more obvious to which it belonged.
Is there a list of HN-related projects and tools somewhere? There is a great number of weekend projects that enhance or complement the HN reading experince.. E.g. I enjoy the "collapse this subtree" bookmarklet. There are also some projects that "summarize" HN news over some period for those of us who dont have time to be here every day. There are also some projects that aim for "dont miss anything from front page", some "parsers" for code processing etc.
Would be great to have a list of such projects in one place.
This is awesome. As a self taught developer, I love looking at other people's code to compare and contrast my own coding styles and learn to improve my side projects code structure. Thanks!
Thank you, but I'm not trained in CS at all haha - so take everything with a grain of salt. I've got an Art degree, and taught myself everything. So there's bound to be a lot of things that can be done a hell of a lot better.
Actually it does already :) - just double click the header bar in a comment (where the username is) and it will collapse that comment and all nested ones under it.
I'm still sympathetic to the title-change complaints, and I think HN is leaving a source of creativity on the table to the community's detriment. But the guidelines are theirs to setup and enforce.
I'll take these suggestions into account - I've also only been coding for about a year and a half, and graduated with an Art degree. I'm the ESL equivalent of programming.
[+] [-] thekingshorses|13 years ago|reply
http://premii.com/hn/
There are still few bugs that i need to fix.
[+] [-] benaiah|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Pezmc|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aram|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] forrestpitz|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arithma|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philfrasty|13 years ago|reply
UPDATE: the only thing that does not work on Chrome-mobile (mobile-Safari also) for iOS is the back-button of your app (comments-button works though)...
[+] [-] taternuts|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moystard|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bennyg|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] capsicum|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] killahpriest|13 years ago|reply
The API calls made by this app are slightly tricky. For the front-page posts, a call is made to http://hnsearch.com/bigrss and then the resulting xml is parsed to grab the unique IDs from each post. Those are then sent as a request to the actual API to get the posts. The comments, unfortunately, return as basically a totally unordered set. I create a linked list out of those, and then I turn it into a flat array based on the nested nature of the comments - so UITableView will render correctly.
[+] [-] bennyg|13 years ago|reply
HNKit is also doing XML parsing over everything, and string comparisons can be fairly slow as well. That, in conjunction with not being ARC ready and a total lack of documentation made me choose something else entirely.
[+] [-] krohling|13 years ago|reply
Includes a Kickfolio embed so you can actually run the app in-browser. Enjoy!
[+] [-] algorithmmonkey|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bennyg|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] apunic|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] airlocksoftware|13 years ago|reply
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.airlocksof...
[+] [-] benaiah|13 years ago|reply
EDIT: This is the one whose creator commented below ("Have you tried out mine?"). Kudos.
[+] [-] SCdF|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] epicjunction|13 years ago|reply
The one thing that I really liked on Google Reader was that it aggregated all stories onto one page. So that's what I built. It may or may not be useful to you guys - would love some feedback either ways.
[1] http://hn.dinopost.com
[+] [-] ngoldbaum|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bennyg|13 years ago|reply
I just recently changed the API to hnsearch's version (the only officially sanctioned one by HN) so hopefully a lot of the bugs will be smoothed out. I hope the new update doesn't crash and actually loads stories for you from now on out.
[+] [-] akst|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] natch|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bennyg|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peterhajas|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] duncans|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] duncans|13 years ago|reply
In addition, when I'm part way down the list I can't tell whether the grey "x Points ... y seconds ago by zzz" separator bar applies to the item above or below it. Maybe adjusting the shading of the bar and border would make it more obvious to which it belonged.
[+] [-] urza|13 years ago|reply
Would be great to have a list of such projects in one place.
[+] [-] codingjedi|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bennyg|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jbrooksuk|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] muzzamike|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tapanthaker|13 years ago|reply
https://github.com/tapanthaker/News-YC---iPhone
[+] [-] alexhjones|13 years ago|reply
Edit: Just installed it and it's very nice, but a great feature to add would be... collapsible comments :-) Please?
[+] [-] bennyg|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nikolakirev|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bennyg|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gearoidoc|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jrnkntl|13 years ago|reply
"The app can be found on the iOS App Store here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/news-yc/id592893508?ls=1&... "
[+] [-] kbar13|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bennyg|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cmstoken|13 years ago|reply
For people reading this later, previous title: "Show HN: the sleekest iOS HN Reader is now open sourced! Let's make it the best."
[+] [-] akkartik|13 years ago|reply
I'm still sympathetic to the title-change complaints, and I think HN is leaving a source of creativity on the table to the community's detriment. But the guidelines are theirs to setup and enforce.
[+] [-] fyaqub|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ux-app|13 years ago|reply
It's snarky comments like these that prevent people from confidently sharing their code.
Got a helpful comment to make? Great! How about sharing it minus the veiled insults next time?
OP doesn't owe you clean code. Don't like the code? Don't use it.
[+] [-] bennyg|13 years ago|reply