Show HN: We made an addictive way to browse pictures on reddit | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: We made an addictive way to browse pictures on reddit

mongout.com

401 pointsbwm138 comments

I'm surprised you aren't getting more love on this one. I've already added the site to my bookmarks bar. I love reddit primarily for the images.

Usually my browsing of reddit is done like this.

1. Click homepage.

2. Determine which links are images.

3. Click image link

4. Chuckle, or shrug

5. Two finger swipe back on my trackpad on lion

6. Scroll

7. Repeat 2 - 6

Now its

1. Go to Mongout 2. Click right 3. Repeat 2 ... again and again

I'm also a big fan of the progress bar. If there was no bar I'd feel ungrounded in the infinite space of reddit. Additionally, because its so addicting to look at reddit images, I can say to myself "I'll look at enough images that fills one progress bar"

Its super simple, and really well executed. Big time props!

Get Reddit Enhancement Suite => View All Images.

I also think it's good when they're presented in isolation, a-la Instagram (which might be the cause of its popularity, I think this post phrases it right: http://thescenicroute0.wordpress.com/2011/12/10/passion-make...)

I think the progress bar is the most brilliant part of this whole thing. I don't read reddit, not because I don't think I would find it interesting but simply because I know it would suck so much time that I stay away. I did the same as the above poster and found the progress bar a really great and satisfying way to limit my time on the site (interesting that most sites have been pursuing the opposite goal in recent years).

I'm one of those that thinks 'gamification' is generally a bad philosophy, but to the extent that this partitioning into discrete consumption units could be called that I think it really works and adds a lot of value to the experience. My only problem with the site is that there's no clear indication anywhere that reddit is where the content is being pulled from, and it took me a bit to figure out how to get to the original page — maybe clicking the image could bring up the reddit panel from the bottom as well, but with some content-swapping to insert the full-size image into the reddit page above the comments?

I can't imagine using this over reddpics. Their tiled interface allows me to browse posts faster than the normal reddit interface. This in contrast feels slower than either, since you can only see a single image at a time.

Or panoptikos.com even...

Or scrolldit.com

Or see a movie, up to 30 images per second!

In many cases a quick glance is not enough to tell what's a picture about, do you select by overall color, or what?

I personally use http://pics.fefoo.com/, and I see two points of improvement for Mongout:

* Title is below the picture, so now you see the image, check the title and have to look up again: reverse this title/image order.

* I' missing a reddit upvote/downvote embed, now I can't rate the pictures.

You should preload the next image, so when I hit [right] key, it just shows up without delay.

right/left was pretty snappy for me, but I found myself wishing it would preload the reddit page each time. I found myself hitting [up] for every single image (because I needed the explanation that often..)

That would unnecessarily eat up a ton of bandwidth, I think people using this will usually go through most photos without pulling up the thread.

See http://imgist.com -- we definitely made the snappy-ness a priority.

I like it. Imgur actually has left / right arrow support as well. (Example: http://imgur.com/gallery/ExxXR then hit →) I find it works well for a few chuckles if I happen to be eating at my desk in search of some web bubblegum.

http://imgur.com/r/<subreddit>; shows all the linked imgur pictures in that particular subreddit and links back to the posts. Like reddit you can chain subreddits eg http://imgur.com/r/pics+funny

It's probably worth noting that in other parts of the English speaking world, the word "mong" is derogatory and offensive.

I'm not sure if "MongOut" is a derivative of MongoDB, but if you're aiming at a maintream global audience you might want to consider the sensitivities.

Thanks, we've got similar feedback previously, but decided to stick with the name as it was memorable. I do realize that this is something that could put people off though.

psh, who cares MongoDB has the full-blown Mongo in there and they're doing fine.

Makes me cringe everytime I read it tho'.

"Mongo" != "Mong"

'MongoOut' would be fine

'MongOut' is not.

at least in Germany Mongo is short for Mongoloid (Down syndrome) and is a insult.

I love the name!

I have popslide.com that I will probably never get around to using. Might be useful here? Make the images slide in a little and add some popping element or branding component.

Thanks for not changing it. There are way more important things to worry about.

Mongout only pawn in game of life ...

In UK slang, to "mong out" is to relax on a sofa in a state of immobility, generally after overenthusiastic herbal indulgence.

It may be related to the insult against those with downs syndrome, but people aren't thinking about that when they say it. They're thinking about lying on their bed with a laptop having just woken up at lunchtime, browsing through funny pictures using only the arrow keys.

"Mong out with your bong out"?

I just use a bookmarklet I wrote (https://gist.github.com/1572878), which enables me to go to any reddit page, and then click the bookmarklet to see all the images inline.

Bookmarked

Very enjoyable.

Feature Requests:

1. Preload next image? My connection sucks so pre-loading would be extremely valuable.

2. I would also love to see the top comment for each photo. Though, I suppose that may make it less addicting and cause traffic to bleed back to Reddit.

Great work ^_^

Preloading please! Time spent watching a little arrow twirl stops it being worth using for me.

We just added preloading for the next image, sometimes you hit one which takes a while - it's faster than before though!

Right, I'll just round up my suggestions and those I agreed with from other comments:

- In portuguese, and I imagine a lot of other languages, "mongo" is a pretty nasty word. Think "retard", only worse.

- Have this linked with your reddit account so you can up/down vote. Also, then you could, by default, show pics from the user's default subreddits. You should allow an user to add/remove subreddits to get pics from, independently from the user's default subreddits.

- Gamify this. Think up some sort of achievements (opting out has to be an option, of course). First step: you have that bar filling up, what about having a counter nearby, which increments everytime the bar fills?

- You should do some preloading up to a max of USER_CONFIGURABLE_NUMBER images, have a sane default like 1 or 2.

That's it for now.

Edit:

- I just got a imgur "this image is no longer available" thingy. I think you can scratch those from showing up entirely.

- You could add some sort of sharing feature. A permalink would be a nice step in that direction. I just found an image I'd like to share with a friend and I noticed mongout wasn't gonna be a part of that process.

> - In portuguese, and I imagine a lot of other languages, "mongo" is a pretty nasty word. Think "retard", only worse.

Were they going for "mongo" when they called it "mongout"?

No, I don't think so. I've heard the phrase "to mong out" before. But still, the word is in the URL. Just like how Expert's exchange didn't mean to create a reference to gender reassignment with expertsexchange.com.

penisland.com therapistfinder.com whorepresents.com :)

I'm fairly sure not, but it was one of the first things that I thought about when reading the URL.

The portuguese/brazillian web users are suckers for this sort of quick-fix, instant-gratification entertainment [1]. I, personally, would take no chances with the apps name. It wouldn't be the first time the portuguese language had a play on significant naming decisions [2] :)

[1] http://www.appappeal.com/maps/9gag/

[2] https://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2012/01/19/1025...

Pretty un-pc in english as well.

Historically mong is an abbreviation of mongoloid, as in mongoloidism. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_syndrome)

Thanks for your feedback.

- We didn't realise that mongo had such a negative connotation Portuguese - in british english it doesn't. We'll probably stick with it for the time being but change it if we offend people.

- Yes, we really want to add in a way to select different subreddits. Not too sure about letting people sign in though but definitely a good idea.

- We might go for non-obtrusive game mechanics, so the progress bar + points + leaderboard + tweet progress. It just didn't make it into this release.

- Preloading images is a good idea that we didn't think about.

Yeah, make them non-obtrusive. I'd like to see a div popup every now and then saying:

Achievement unlocked:

I should be working

Browse for one hour straight.

Although that adds some complexity to the codebase, of course.

Yes, subreddits are a must. Without rage comics or advice animals it's of little use to me!

Mongo most definitely has negative connotations in British English, though not as much as Mong afaik

I wouldn't worry about offending people. These guys seem to be doing alright: http://www.mongodb.org/

I never heard this before, but it just clicked why the brute from Blazing Saddles was named/called "Mongo".

I'm Portuguese too, and "mongo" is not even a word, let alone a nasty one. "Mongolóide" is a nasty insult, but is not usually reduced to "mongo".

It is a very offensive shortened form of "mongolóide" where I hail from.

I've been using Flipboard[1] on the iPad to read pic heavy subreddits that I don't necessarily want to see everything from but like to browse from time to time.

Yahoo pipes[2] turns the subreddit's top stories .json representation into an RSS feed, and then Twitterfeed[3] posts that RSS feed to a custom twitter account which I can then follow on Flipboard.

I got this setup from http://miguelrios.org/reddit-in-flipboard/ and a handy trick is to combine subreddits. So for example I have the 'SFW Porn Network' reddits all combined using the + e.g., /r/earthporn+cityporn+... etc.

[1]: http://flipboard.com/

[2]: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/

[3]: http://twitterfeed.com/

Don't know if this will help at all, but you can append .rss/.json/ to any reddit URL. e.g:

http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/.rss http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/.json

just curious why you wouldnt just use the rss feed directly?

Awesome work! -- I've also built something that is, awkwardly, nearly exactly the same. Check out http://imgist.com

Some of the challenges I ran into, and surmounted, include preloaded images, URLs that allow you to link directly to the image, getting facebook sharing to register the image you are currently viewing when you want to share the image, zooming and unzooming large images, and saving favorites in user accounts.

Another challenge was elegantly showing the UI elements without in any way distracting from the image -- I think by fading them out after a couple seconds of mouse inactivty, we accomplished that pretty well. Left/right keys are obviously the best way to do things, but we also wanted "point and click" users to get it right away as well, so we allowed for that in the UI. I think mongout's way of doing it is pretty elegant though, with the picture of the arrow keys.

Things I still intend to iron out are the ability to mix and match arbitrary subreddits and non-reddit sources, and an integration with facebook accounts.

This has been my main side project for the past year, and I'd love to chat about any and all aspects of it :)

Reminds me of the iPad app Prism: http://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/prism-the-image-browser/id488...

Well done. Kept me engaged to the last picture. A couple of observations though:

The left-right keys still advance to the previous / next picture in the background, when the comments are in the foreground. Suggest that a left or right hides the comments as well as moving forward or back.

I second the comment made elsewhere on pre-loading the next picture to save your users waiting for the load-time.

How do I navigate the comments with the keyboard? I use the cursor keys to scroll down, and it doesn't work, as up / down is mapped to show / hide comments.

> Suggest that a left or right hides the comments as well as moving forward or back.

Agree, this behavior was very unintuitive.

This is basically why I hate the internet.

I like the idea - but it doesn't feel "addictive" yet.

Feature request: filter out photos of cats.

I'd like the complement "nothing but cats" photo stream.

http://imgist.com/aww/

A cat dial.. 1 - 10!

Here's a lower-fi version

http://107.20.224.248:8000/#pics;funny;humor;comics;reddit.c...

hack the URL to control subreddits

source here https://github.com/mwhooker/procrastinatr

Any plans to support setting subreddits on the hifi version?

Nice site, btw.

Thanks. We actually had subreddit support in an earlier version but decided to take it out for the sake of simplicity. It's definitely a feature that we'd like to add back in though.

the link doesn't work for me

whoops. sorry about that. back up now.

Very nicely made. My only criticism is the purple progress bar- what's the point of it? I thought I was going to run out of images when it filled up, but it just kept going. Is that filling an indication that it's going to yesterday's posts? It feels unneeded, it's distracting.

I guess that's the only kind of feedback on the page telling the user how many images are remaining, albeit wrong.

http://instamovi.com

The point of it is to get you to keep clicking next.

Shouldn't interest do that?

Why have one motivation when you can have two!

I love the idea of this, but one of the problems with building products like this is that it's basically other people's content (or other people's other people's content...) and is probably hard to scale a business around properly.

We've got some pretty granular analytics on the site. It'll be interesting to measure how much people are engaging with it. We'll probably write a blog post sometime over the next few days regarding this if anyone is interested.

I made something similar last week (http://image-roulette.com/), but it just uses imgur itself, instead of the reddit-curated images.

I think your approach was better.

You mean other than just using reddit?

Well, all the "christians suck, athiest rule!" posts do give it a more hostile tone. I'm not aware of any other subreddits with what amounts to hate-speech being allowed on the front page.

Yes, we, the rest of the world understand that the 'religious issue' in the US has become tied in with the 'political issue'. But (again speaking on behalf of the rest of the world) we just wish the US would grow the @@@@ up and get the @@@@ over it.

I was trying to make a joke about the addictiveness of reddit, but I agree, several of the subreddits are just complete bigoted shit. I've taken to just unsubscribing from them rather than getting angry everytime a post comes up.

Put on bigger controls for embedded devices that have no keyboard.

We'll be adding in swipe left/right controls for touch devices.

Down arrow isn't working for me. What is it supposed to do?

Up shows comments on reddit. Down then hides those comments. Until you press up, down doesn't do anything.

Btw: appropriate user name.

The only thing I really want is better urls. If I see an image/thread I want to share I would love to just be able to simply copy the url.

You must be against the advancement of the human race. Don't we all spend enough time on Reddit already?

Just kidding, this is excellent. Great job!

1. Make ESC close zoomed images.

2. Let me get the URL of the reddit page somehow.

3. Add tooltips for the arrows - what does the down arrow do?

If you only want to see the images I made a bookmarklet [1] that inlines them, & does imgur images smartly too. It's good for f7u12, at least.

[1] http://fuseki.net/home/linked-images-bookmarklet.html

Wow, the image came up when I first loaded that page was absolutely NSFW. Yikes. Be careful.

Hmm, we should probably filter out NSFW links. Sorry about that one.

We've added a NSFW filter (based on whether a reddit post title has the word NSFW in it). Should cut down a lot of those.

Seriously, I enjoy visiting HN and loading all the articles and comments in a new tab that appeal to me then slowly going through them but since first landing on this beauty I've been clicking through images for the last hour!

This site's really slick! Do you think you could add an auto-play feature so it'll be a slideshow? I've got two monitors hooked up and it'd be a good screen filler to have that just running on one screen.

reddit/imgur might not like that.

Neat! Intuitive, no explanation needed except for the diagram of the arrow keys below. Suggestion: Add a timer to show people how much time they waste (of course, not everybody wants to see that).

Would be cool if you added pushState or /#/ history. You can for example use history.js: https://github.com/balupton/history.js

I made something similar, but as a desktop app. It does all web pages, not just images.

https://github.com/FigBug/Allochthon/wiki

Thanks. There went 40min.

Slick site! It would be good if going back through the navigation history took you through the images you had viewed. Currently it just goes in and out of thread view.

I love the interface. It would be great if you could add the ability to login, upvote/downvote (near the comments icon). Realtime reddit content would be great.

I like this a lot. It's very difficult to hit the arrow buttons on an iPhone, though. An alternative navigation method or larger hit areas would be helpful.

Thanks for the feedback!

We've pushed up a new version:

- preloads the next image, slightly faster than before.

- smarter ordering, the newest and best content is pushed in hourly.

- finally, a tweet button to spread the love.

I am in love with it. Never browsed Reddit with so much enthusiasm as I am doing it now. Like it so much, I created an account; I never cared for one before.

Thank you!

Delicious. An easy up/down vote way would be great.

Might defeat the purpose but you should add top comments as well. Part of the fun of browsing is the added contextual humor :)

I've been using http://pics.fefoo.com for a long time for the same purpose.

I was going to mention pics.fefoo.com too, but you beat me to it. :)

I just wasted 3 hours on this (in a good way).

Tech issue, can't scroll comments on the iPad.

Noted! :)

Confirmed. Came to log the same report.

I was happy to see the onscreen arrows since many experimental UIs seem to be relying on the keyboard exclusively. I figured those keys meant some thought went into iOS support.

Regardless, I'm still having fun just clicking thru the pics. Thanks.

Addictive is an understatement. You should all be killed before you murder and further productivity!

Seriously, nice job, very cool.

What about imgur's ad revenue? If you're circumventing that, then you're shooting your very platform in the foot.

Great job guys. Add in the support for subreddits and you've got yourself an instantly addictive product!

Why thank you sir.

My internet connection maybe slow, but there was a lot of load time between pictures.

But did use it for like 10 minutes.

http://pics.fefoo.com/

I had made something similar a while back.

wow. this is amazing, I always wanted some like this. Is there any way we can choose subreddit?

So did I: http://imgonly.info

Y u post it here instead of reddit? jackiechan.jpg (its nice btw :)

Isn't the addictive way to browse pictures on reddit, reddit?

Thank you, I just lost an hour of my life. Addictive, check.

Good work. It's pretty clean.

Consider mapping a key to share links too

Great site! What's the stack this is built on?

Thanks! Ruby & CoffeeScript / Rails 3 & Backbone.js. Hosted on Heroku.

Awesome man, well done its so captivating!!

you might as well use this: http://imgur.com/gallery

Now all it needs is some good content

I love not having to use my mouse.

I would put the title on top.

I think you need a favicon =)

Make this for 9gag! Please.

so basically, you are just relinking imgur images? really?

you should show the top couple comments

I do not like these kind of services because they take away ad revenue from the sites providing and generating that content.

"Mongout" seems to do this for reddit and imgur, both sites where I willfully disable my ad-blocker.

And if the author didn't talk with imgur's owner then it's very likely his domain will get banned (+bonus points for not linking to imgur). I know a site which can't hotlink imgur images and I'd imagine there's plenty of them.

I really like this idea and the simplicity of it! Great work, and can't wait to see what future iterations bring!

Sorry, clicking next, and waiting 5 seconds before seeing the next image is not what I'm after.

Weird. You only posted two minutes ago, but our experiences seem to have been much different as it loaded the next images instantly for me. The only delay was for comment pages, but that's to be expected.

Something needs to happen when you fill the bar, otherwise, why is it changing?

Definitely. We'll probably add a counter next to it to show the number of sets you've viewed (as suggested by franciscoapinto)

More than that. Make it feel like I'm accomplishing something.

Outstanding job, the interface is as simple as it could be.

It is addictive but the little arrows are a pain on the iPhone.

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