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Comment by devjab | Hacker News Reader

Maybe it’s intentional but things are far larger on a phone. It only shows 3 stories, where the “non-pretty” client shows 8. It’s also really weird that click on an article leads to the comments on HN rather than the actual article. Like, why would I be interested in the comments for something I haven’t read first?

I’m not sure I think it’s prettier, at least not on the front page on mobile. It looks a little like some sort of vision disability mode, which I guess is nice for some people, but big things aren’t necessarily pretty to me.

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I often read just the HN comments, without ever looking at the article!

The comments often provide a great "preview:" a short summary and/or let me know if the article is worth reading.

Other times, I'm just more interested in the discussion related to the topic more than the article itself.

That's why https://hw.leftium.com dropped the links doesn't even link to the article; I always open the comments first, then (maybe) open the article in the background while I read the comments.

> It’s also really weird that click on an article leads to the comments on HN rather than the actual article. Like, why would I be interested in the comments for something I haven’t read first?

I've been using link aggregation sites in this way (comments->link) for many years now.

Depending on the platform I either open both the comments and link at the same time into tabs, or I open just the comments and then click the link.

I'm not typically reading the comments first (though I am skimming them, so paywall notices, cache links, etc. are typically found before even trying to load the link). Instead, the main benefit I've found to the workflow is being able to quickly and easily return to comments about that story. When the frontpage has a high rate of turnover it can be difficult or time consuming to go back and find the original submission/comments. Whereas if they are already open or within the browser history stack, things are much easier to track.

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