Hacker News Reader

Comment by cheeaun | Hacker News Reader

Hi! Creator of HackerWeb here, just wondering what kind of additional functionality that you're expecting?

Hey! Sorry if that comment came out a bit harsh; I definitely didn't mean it to. As evidenced by the fact that I continue to use the web app over any of the native options, I'm obviously a pretty happy user.

So, random thoughts/feedback:

- I wish I could login, comment, maybe even receive comment notifications? Although the last would clearly be an improvement on HN itself.

- I wish I had some preferences available to me, e.g. always open links externally vs. inside the app itself. (I can long-press on a link and select "open in Chrome" of course.)

- Flipkart has some pretty slick animations. The primary thing that jars me about HackerWeb is how abrupt everything is compared to native apps.

Obviously nothing huge; just stuff I didn't know was even possible. Anyway, let me at least grab this opportunity to thank you for your work!

> I wish I could login, comment, maybe even receive comment notifications?

AFAIK authenticated user actions (logging in/commenting/profile management/etc) are simply not exposed through the official HN API. I don't think there's much third party developers can do about that, unfortunately.

But yes, web apps have come a long way. Apple treating web apps as second-class citizens will probably still pose a huge barrier to widespread adoption for quite some time though.

Hah, I don't see your comment as harsh at all :)

So as for your feedback:

1. I myself also wish that I could login, comment, etc. Unfortunately the official API doesn't allow it yet. Other HN apps implement those by scraping HN, save your username/password somewhere but I didn't choose this route because it might be a maintenance nightmare for me :(

2. Regarding the 'open new tab/window' preference for links, I've been thinking about this for a long time. Will experiment soon :)

3. Animations. I'll need time to implement those :P

Glad to know that you like my app! Cheers.

I have tried multiple Hacker news native application, and I didn't like any of them. I, however, love your Hackerweb web app. Its clean, simple and fast. And it feels like a native app.

Thanks! Glad to know that you like the app :)

Only one for me: get the previous icon back! I've really tried to like the new one but I still miss your previous icon.

Joke aside, HackerWeb is an awesome example of a webapp done right. It's the only web app on my home screen, and my favorite Hacker news reader on mobile, beating any native app I've tried. Awesome job! Do you have any feedback about issues your encounter for the development? I'm thinking about iOS updates, responsive design with iPad etc... ?

Thanks! If you're interested in the issues I encountered for dev, I recently blogged some of them in my article here: http://cheeaun.com/blog/2016/03/building-hackerweb-ios/ (Also note that I've released an iOS counterpart of the web app).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com