Show HN: The Top Fives – now with Dark Mode | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: The Top Fives – now with Dark Mode

thetopfives.net

106 pointssonaal47 comments

I like the dark mode, but for me the contrast between the text and background is far too low. Coupled with the relatively small font size, this really compromises legibility.

Noted. Will look into - thanks for the feedback

I second this. The light mode could also use a minor improvement in contrast. Otherwise awesome idea!

\m/ will look into the contrast - overall

Third-ed. Contrast way too low. Why not use #000000 for the background color? Everything just looks washed out as it stands and almost has the effect of making everything look disabled.

How about something closer to this? http://i.imgur.com/qQr0xId.png

On it :) Contrast has got max feedback - thanks for helping out

You should never use absolute black. It's a common phrase you'll hear your first day of Color Theory class http://ianstormtaylor.com/design-tip-never-use-black/

As much as this advice is correct for painting, it's incorrect for design. What's wrong with black text? Nothing. Ironically, the site you link as a very thin font with very reduced contrast, so it's barely legible on my screen. The site is less legible than dark topfive and giving advice on design...

Form follows function. Barely legible text is very bad design.

> is correct for painting, it's incorrect for design

I disagree. It's a fundamental concept of Color Theory, which is a fundamental concept of design.

> What's wrong with black text?

Nothing. But you shouldn't be using absolute black. I tend favor #24242A.

I think it's unfair to call the site I linked to barely legible. The font is perhaps a touch too thin, but it's still very legible. Of course this is all subjective.

In short: eye strain can happen at both extremes of the spectrum. As such, #111 is more friendly than #000.

The same background color is fine with a color like #ADAA9E—brighter version of the current color.

Section 508 sets the (US) government's standards for accessibility on web sites as well as applications. Contrast is specifically called out in two sections of the quick start guide:

1. 1194.21 (g) Applications shall not override user selected contrast and color selections and other individual display attributes.

2. 1194.21 (j) When a product permits a user to adjust color and contrast settings, a variety of color selections capable of producing a range of contrast levels shall be provided.

See: http://www.section508.gov/content/learn/standards/quick-refe...

http://popurls.com/ ?

A french one too: http://multiboards.net/

also http://hackurls.com

See also: http://alltop.com since ~2008(ish)

http://skimfeed.com/ !

Can you make this so it can take any RSS feed/twitter feed and show the top N in each tile?

ok will add that to the todo list :)

Can you generate an RSS feed for top X per Y time period? Would be cool if I could import that into feedly.

RSS and custom sources is something we need to work on - will see what best we can do here. Thanks for the feedback :)

The checkboxes for me (latest version of Chrome on Mac) are a bit dodgy and sometimes won't check/uncheck. Also, there's nothing more infuriating than getting the checkboxes how I want them, pressing submit and then it wiping out my changes and shaking an error message at me.

It took me a while to realise I had to select 6 starred sources, why do you wipe out my choices just to tell me I forgot to pick 6? Very annoying. If you refresh the page too it throws a server error.

Good product, definitely needs polish.

You are right, should not wipe out the selection - but still emphasise that max 6 can be favourited so that they can come above the fold/scroll. Will look into it. Thanks for the feedback.

For me it was minimum 6, not max 6.

Great idea! I can see myself using this. One note: The Chrome extension would be much more useful if it was configurable to allow more use-cases. I installed the Chrome extension, and it appears to replace the "new tab" page, with no alternatives. Having it appear every single time I open a new tab would be productivity crushing, so I removed it again.

Thanks for the feedback. On the productivity part We are looking into 'task mode' with a simple todo-list. More on that soon :)

This looks pretty good, thanks for sharing!

The three-column desktop views cut off way too many titles, meaning if I want the full headline I have to hover over each one for a second or two. At first I didn't even notice, but if you have to do it for every other link it gets tiring.

If it had an option for non-columnar view, I might very well use this every day (and still might on mobile).

Thanks for the feedback Jason. Will look into view modes.

Yeah, way too low contrast. I use redshift at night, and this isn't readable for me.

Possible to add a screenshot of how it looks with redshift? Working on the contrast part.

This is cool. I think the benefit of condensing these sources into 1 is either that you have to check them less often, or you only get the best posts. If its the second, a top 5 of the day would be more useful. If its the first, its perfect!

If the first, feedly or any RSS reader works and supports more sites.

Thanks for the feedback :) It's the first one - condensing the best news for that hour, from sources which have a lot of posts

Very cool site!

Some quick feedback: changing pages (eg: navigating from 'new' to 'inspiration', 'sources', etc...) while in night mode switches the user back to day mode, which can be quite jarring.

If you go to 'Manage sources' and set the default theme to dark - it will work for both 'News' and 'Inspiration'. But yeah dark mode everywhere (even in manage sources) is something we need to work on.

A little bit more contrast between background and text and it's perfect.

on it :) thanks for the feedback

- select multiple sources (set 6 as favorite) - view inspirations (more to be added soon) - Left / rights arrows - toggle between news and inspirations - toggle between light & dark mode :)

Can you please remember the 'dark mode' setting?

A cookie or localStorage flag would be really easy to do.

You can go to 'Manage sources' and set it. It will remember next time you open a tab

Any chance of changing links to not open new tabs? This makes use of the site difficult on mobile by constantly needing to close windows.

Aah got it. Will look into it. Also if you are on iOS check out the native app?

What is the web stack behind it? It's really nice.

Are you using J2EE?

it would be cool to figure out the karma exchange rate between sites and make one single list, easier said than done of course

Great start. Need more sources to choose from.

Glad to hear :) We will be adding more sources soon. Any sources that you would recommend?

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