Better ways to read Hacker News | Hacker News Reader

Better ways to read Hacker News

hackerbits.com

47 pointssdht031 comments

I think the current interface it is perfect for to read, the comments trees are expanded so we just scroll, without distracting colors, nor stilted formatting, nor graphical noise, that allows to read from top to bottom without_visual_interferences; basically the content is the format so the eyes decide were to go. Also is very fast to load by the browsers (minimal css, anecdotal js, no frameworks).

As others, I am happy with the current layout. I only modified news.ycombinator.com##.spacer:style(height: 10px !important;) for a bit more separation between the news' titles list (probably due something in my browser).

I do not care - most of these will be gone when authors realize it takes more time to keep it up and no one cares. HN works for me basically 11 years now so no thanks.

This boring old Web 2.0 site does the trick for me

I'm pretty happy with the current layout, at least since the change to a responsive width. I tended to miss the "more" link, so I increased its size with ublock origin.

  news.ycombinator.com##.morelink:style(font-size: 3em !important)

I resorted to a UserScript to fix the worst of the site's UI problems.

https://github.com/mgladdish/website-customisations/tree/mai...

I'm particularly pleased with the changes to how comments are rendered, especially downvotes and quotes. It makes such a difference to not have the UI be actively hostile to read.

I've tweaked the site with some CSS stylesheets managed using Stylus.

Links in my profile here.

While at it, I use a userscript to improve the vanilla HN expernce - it allows to upvote comments and submissions mouse hover while holding left shift. Very handy, I use similar scripts for other sites that have upvoting too.

https://gist.github.com/Klaster1/d4d75d9e890e9db9509fd075cbc...

Oh, that's quite nice, thank you. Definitely an improvement and an excellent basis for further tweaking to get it Just Right.

I have recently released an alternative myself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36760714 (http://dstill.ai/hackernews). Would be curious to hear why people seek alternative ways to browse HackerNews :)

A criticism I have, of the stock HN site, is that once an article is read, it is difficult to find new additions made in the comments. I may also miss articles as they are ranked.

It may be that I'm lazy or haven't fallen in how things should be consumed here.

Give me a chronological list of submissions where I can highlight the ones I'd like to keep an eye on. I can then come back and have the new comments highlighted.

I've only tried a couple of those and the original web interface is better than those for me. From the descriptions of the others, I doubt that they would be better, either. Not saying those things are bad or misguided, just that HN's web interface meets my needs well as-is.

Interestingly, I almost never read HN on “desktop”. I mostly read it using the excellent Hack app on iOS.

Same here

I just use this site, plus a custom stylesheet. It took me around 2 hours to write it (and occasional updates) but it works for me. Almost every important thing on the page has a descriptive class name, so it's not too hard.

A benefit is that you can actually reply from here.

What do you use to load the stylesheet?

I sometimes load my own custom styles for minor changes to just a few websites. Every browser have the option to load Stylesheets. For instance, in Safari, go to "Settings > Advanced" and look for the "Stylesheet" and select your custom .css file.

Stylus is a browser extension for Firefox, Safari, Chrome, etc.

Don't confuse that with Stylish, which is malware.

Yeah, I use Stylus. My stylesheet is here: https://gist.github.com/PerpetualCreativity/68ea74ad2fb761d1...

I'm just rewriting the needed parts with FoxReplace. Works.

On desktop I'll stick to the original page, it's so simple and good.

But it isn't that good on mobile. On mobile I use Harmonic for Hackernews it is the best one I've used. I tried many others but Harmonic is the only one I'm still using. The only reason that made me want to use another App, was that it wasn't open source, but it got open sourced some time ago.

https://github.com/SimonHalvdansson/Harmonic-HN

i've been using Glider which is also open source. prior to that, i was using Materialistic. both available (along with a few others) on F-Droid.

Tooting my own horn, but https://dev.thnr.net/ is how I’ve enjoyed HN for the past year. Thumbnails plus surfacing details about links such as author and channel.

About page: https://dev.thnr.net/about/

The feature I’ve found lacking is the ability to copy and paste all the comments on a story into my personal knowledge system and retain the threading and formatting. (I do this every once in a while for threads that have many high quality comments or links that I’d like to save.) I’ve never figured out a way to maintain the threading/indenting.

Can you not just save the html? I tried downloading source then dragging into Apple Notes and it preserved the threading when opened in a browser (using file:///). Local hn hyperlinks failed to resolve but external links are fine. Looks harsh without CSS though.

Firefox has a great feature for taking screenshots and snippets of a webpage. In the settings go to More Tools > Customize Toolbar and drag the Screenshot tool to your toolbar. It's a built-in feature that I use daily.

I've been using the "Hacker News: Mark All Read" Firefox extension since 2015.

It simply hides, or change the color when I read the post, without having to click on "read" by myself. Thanks a lot to the author and people whio adapted it to Firefox <3

I created a reader[0] that was received positively[1].

[0]: https://hzn.jero.zone/

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36335469

I just use the plain old website with a greasemonkey script to filter out posts from certain users and sources along with other posts and comments containing key words that tend to provoke uninteresting discussion.

I use Edge's split layout now, along with boring ol' HN and a Tampermonkey script that opens every link in a new window. This gives me a split screen view with every new link going to the right split.

I use Arc Browser with a boost for HN that makes it a bit more enjoyable.

I just use Hacki for mobile.

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