Refined Hacker News | Hacker News Reader

Refined Hacker News

github.com

93 pointsmemexy40 comments

Hi all, developer of Refined Hacker News here! Happy to see that it has been posted about again. I had initially posted it last year as a Show HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20173974 and my philosphy 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

Pretty cool! I currently use Hacker News Enhancement Suite, made some tweaks via the Tampermonkey extension, and made a little "unread comments" and "tag user" feature. Looks like your extension might be able to replace some of that /and/ provide some cool new stuff!

I really liked the idea, but the layout jumping during initial page load (used the Firefox version) was really annoying me so much, I had to deactivate it again.

Hi, thanks for using the extension. The "jumping" of the layout is probably due to the insertion of the options bar on the top. You can change this setting to position it on the bottom instead in the extension's popup window (it has a a lot more settings which you can tweak around to customise your experience).

This issue is also addressed here: https://github.com/plibither8/refined-hacker-news/issues/25

Wow, thanks. There's the level of support I wish to have from some commercial software providers :D

If I had one wish for a feature of this extension to be made available on HN then it would be:

"Easily favorite items and comments"

I really like the favourites feature and use it a lot but the original UI makes it really hard.

I agree I would use the feature far more.

Wait, I actually had no idea that there was a favorite option.

It's my. . .favorite.

What would make it better? Making the links work the same way as vote and flag?

I'm a bit disappointed in that feature. The intention was for users to browse others' favorites to find interesting things to read, but I've not seen any indication that it worked out that way.

I mostly use it to save things to come back to (bookmark). It would be better if I could favorite from the main thread, rather than going to the individual comment's page to favorite.

That I think is part of it, another is it's not really obvious whether it means 'save it for me' or 'show others I like this (and also save it)'. The latter overlaps with upvoting but then you're in a different kind of bind because you can't show individual votes publicly since you don't show votes. It ends up in a kind of conceptual twilight zone, even if the UI was clearer. A private 'like' and a public 'like' might just be a bit too much.

I agree: it should be a great addition, but it hasn't really been used to advantage. I think the main thing is that it needs some publicity: many people have never even noticed it. I've tried to use it for comments, but it's hard to be diligent if no use of it is ever made.

Another easy thing to do would be to add "Most Favorited" to the "Lists" page. Maybe it would be possible to show the number of favorites that a post or comment, with a reverse link to who has favorited it? Maybe add a notification to the creator of a comment that is favorited?

Possibly instead of just having a link on people's profile page, you could have a rolling list of the their most recent favorites? Or maybe for "person" discovery, you could automatically show who else has else favorited something after you do?

It seems like a good feature to start publicly experimenting with. Announce something, try it out for a week, then post a thread asking people what they think and how it can be improved.

I think adding "Most Favorited" would create a popularity contest and people would start looking for ways to game the system. I don't think favorites should have metrics associated with them because as soon as metrics are introduced people will try to optimize them.

Now that I know comments can be favorited I plan to bookmark comments that include useful reference information on topics I find interesting. Adding counters for how many times the comment was favorited wouldn't really help me with that use case because I doubt anyone else cares about collecting useful references so my favorites would never make it to the "most favorited" list. I personally don't care if I make it to the list or not but I'm certain some people would care and they would go around and start playing a popularity contest instead of looking for ways to favorite information that would be useful to them.

The [op] tags are really helpful.

> "What would make it better?"

I'd like if it could be made possible to favorite directly in the thread, very much like the Refined Hacker News extension from the OP does. They have an animated screenshot that shows it very well[1].

Currently you first have to go to the comment (or story) itself (by clicking on the "xx minutes ago" or "xx hours ago" link) then click on "favorite" and finally go back to the thread to continue reading. For comments this adds friction and throws one out of context reading the thread. It is not too bad for stories - adding a story to favorites without having read some comments might not be something to be encouraged anyway.

> "Making the links work the same way as vote and flag?"

For me vote and flag work differently but flag and favorite work the same way. I can vote from a thread but cannot flag and favorite from a thread. I believe making favorite work like vote, in the sense that it can be done from the thread, would be a good thing with little downsides.

A minor improvement would be to not have "flag" and "favorite" links next to each other. On mobile it sometimes happens to me that I accidentally flag when I want to favorite. Given that flagging can be easily undone, this is not a big problem. In my opinion having something harmless like "parent" next to favorite would be better still.

> "The intention was for users to browse others' favorites to find interesting things to read [..]"

I do that and I find it valuable but I have to admit that it is not without problems. When I go through favorite lists I don't know why someone found an item interesting enough to add it. In reality there can be a whole bouquet of reasons, just as an example: For me as an English as a second language speaker, I sometimes add an item just because I find the phrasing interesting or I found a new to me and interesting use of a word. A reader of my list will probably not be aware of that and might draw the wrong conclusions about why I added the item to the list.

[1] https://raw.githubusercontent.com/plibither8/refined-hacker-...

The gifs in the readme showing the functionality you want to highlight is a nice touch. I wish more projects did that.

This looks really slick and I'd love to use it. Does it require any browser-specific APIs? If not, I'd definitely try to compile it into a userscript so I can use it with qutebrowser.

I've always wondered whether HN's "off-putting", "serious" interface (it is when you first see it) is an important factor in it not devolving into reddit.

Yep, as someone who came from Reddit, the culture here has definitely changed me for the better

People have been accusing this place of devolving into Reddit so often for so long the mods specifically call it out in the guidelines as a semi-noob delusion and tell people to knock it off, which they never do.

The interface is merely simplistic, it's neither serious nor very off-putting. No more than, say, Craigslist anyway. For that matter, 4chan's interface is far more offputting, and its culture is far worse than Reddit.

Like, do people here really believe HN would instantly descend into chaos and madness if the layout used proper typography, modern HTML or (god forbid) AJAX?

Its not just simplistic, its unusable.

It's more inviting then, so I think it would draw more randoms. Now it's basically home to people who know the value already and choose to join because that's what matters to them.

That's at least why I come here. I hope that's a motivator until the lights go out one day. Without a doubt the most consistently intelligent conversations happen here.

"Randoms" wouldn't hang out on a site called "Hacker News" to begin with, much even know that it exists. A more "inviting" layout wouldn't change that.

Part of what has kept 4chan relatively unreddit (aside from less aggressive moderation) is knowing that you need something like 4chanx to make it usable.

I've heard the same said about Reddit back when people were starting to migrate away from Digg.

The auto-refresh feature is cool. I find myself hitting F5 a lot.

...

On the other hand, I really appreciate how minimalist this website is - both in how it's designed and how it's moderated. It's a nice retreat from the rest of the internet that's often overbuilt and thoughtlessly controlled.

Very nice.

I would like to be able to collapse entire thread by clicking on its line, even when I scrolled. For that lines should be visible for entire thread duration, not only original comment (like new reddit).

I would also like to see autorefresh on topic itself.

Also, the linked area of the line is too thin - I can barely click on it.

Feature request: color coding of usernames by reader-defined groups. User could specify group name/color via a CSS style with a common prefix. The extension would need to maintain a local database of usernames in each group. Enables visual highlighting of user comments and stories based on previous experience.

If there's an extension, maybe we could have a collaborative tagging system so we can see what other people have labelled the author as?

Potentially, although that gets into social networks, feedback loops, status dynamics, information warfare, reputation systems, voting rings, sock puppets and other fun topics :)

Step 1 would be private lists.

I have a related web extension idea that might be relevant: https://github.com/captn3m0/ideas/#-communities-browser-exte...

I think that this looks cool. I would be perfectly fine with most of these being integrated into default HN, on the condition that it would gracefully degrade back to the current form if you have JS disabled.

I love this extension for it's ability to highly new comments you haven't seen before. Only downside is it does not work for comments after the first page.

Add in the facelift changes from 'Hacker News Enhancement Suite' and I'd be all about it. I wonder what happens if I use both...

Actually it works fine. Not sure what the spinning icon on the main page is all about.

edit: you can turn that off. I think I've found my new HN setup :D

It does some weird things to the popup for user profile info, but I don't think that'll be an issue.

I really like the ability to reply without losing context.

I think the basis interface of Hacker News prevents some people from participating in discussions on this website. That is a double edged sword.

Respect for linking directly to the visual demo.

This looks great, like the start of a "Reddit Enhancement Suite" for hacker news. It would be great if it also worked with hckrnews.com as I find that to be my main interface for browsing the day's discussions.

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