Show HN: Ypander - Hackernews like it should be [for Chrome] | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Ypander - Hackernews like it should be [for Chrome]

ypander.com

34 pointsges41 comments

I still prefer HN enhancement suite : https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bappiabcodbpphnojd...

which shows read vs unread comments, displaying in another color unread comments, fixing the design and menus, making comments threads collapsable, etc.

Didn't know about this - the comment collapsing alone is worth it. Thank you to whomever made this!

If you just want the comment collapsing enhancement, there are a couple of Chrome extensions that do this, and if you want it in Firefox, there are a couple different bookmarklet implementations that will do it.

To make things clear, Ypander doesn't alter the HN visual design in any way. It just provides a faster way to use it.

And the other side of that coin, if you just want the articles without comments and fluff, http://skimfeed.com.

If you want a less intrusive way to comment inline, check out my Chrome extension that I made a few days ago:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jlobffbeljmbmdplah...

It lets you reply to a comment without leaving the comments page. Does not interfere with your home page.

#shamelessplug

This is nice, but destroys the ability to open a load of tabs at once by middle clicking the comment links. So it actually slows my usage of the site down as I can't wait for stuff to load in the background.

Well it doesn't prevent me from middle clicking... and I can click on one and middle-click the others, so I've the best of both worlds.

Really? Thats odd, I cannot at all. Using Chrome 21 on OSX.

Tried it, junked it. It breaks the linkness of the "comments" links such that I can't Ctrl-click them to open the comment thread in a new window. I guess someone might like seeing a many-page-long comment list appear in the middle of the top-level article list, but I certainly don't. Beyond that it's nice. I do like the in-page "reply" popups.

Just pushed an update to solve it.

According to the source[1] it looks like a chrome plugin that enables inline-commenting "web2.0" style here on Hackernews

Screenshot from source: https://raw.github.com/Gwendall/ypander/master/screenshot.pn...

[1] https://github.com/Gwendall/ypander

Can you add a "cancel" button next to the "reply" button to close the box? If I decide not to comment the box just stays there and is annoying.

Or even just clicking outside of the box if you enter nothing. Great plugin otherwise.

Thanks for all the feedback! I just pushed an update taking into account some of your remarks:

* Preserved the default behavior of the "x comments" link: it now inserts an "Expand comments" link next to the default comments link, so that you can use HN the traditional way with Ypander installed.

* Speed increased

* Support of news.ycombinator.org

* Support of https

Hacker News is already the way it is suppose to be.

I like that this reply is pandering.

Yeah my two favorite features:

1. Slow loading. 2. Expired links.

It is sending a simple get request to the comments links, so it should load roughly as fast as reloading the full page. As per expired links, it takes the links that are on your page. Can you be more specific about that?

Sorry I wasn't clear enough in my criticism. It's of the original site not this improved version.

What I meant is the expiration of the "next" page link at the bottom of the main list. If someone could fix that to either send me to the write page in a paged set or simply send me back to the new links page with the fresh content I'd be indebted for life.

The other criticism of hacker news is how slowly it loads sometimes. I love the content don't get me wrong. And it's free so I feel like a jerk complaining. But it's painfully slow sometimes. I'd never have a site so slow. It would be unacceptable to me.

Check out "HN Toolbar" something I just released today that is a sort of alternative:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4567387

Pity this only supports news.ycombinator.com - I use news.combinator.net (don't ask me why, its not logical), always messes up these extensions for me.

It can be modified pretty easily to work on news.ycombinator.*... I'm sure ges will update it.

For some reason google doesn't allow * for wildcards in the TLD match patterns. I just added support for news.ycombinator.net though.

Using it right now, and I have to say this has drastically increased how much more I enjoy using the site.

Can you please make it work on news.ycombinator.org as well? I'm weird.

It does now.

I wish the author did better job at explaining what it does.

Agreed. Maybe the author can do a quick 1-minute video demo highlighting it in action. I need to be more enticed before installing anything, even a plug-in.

awesome, saves me the time of loading pages

Doesn't seem to work if using https.

SUPER SLOW.

Sorry, had to remove it as it made loading way too slow.

The site is down for me :(

That IS how the author suggests the site be, so we spend less time on here. ;)

Runs ok here. Here is the link to the chrome store in case of: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/knkmodnockkaaebcbb...

Hell yes.

Slightly unrelated rant:

Perhaps the title can use the disclaimer [Chrome Only].

Am I the only one that thinks Chrome took IE's place in the new "Best Works in IE" flashback from the early 2000s?

I use Opera and while it's disappointing that support is lacking I do understand that it's a fringe platform at this point.

But is it too much to request submitters of articles like this one to specify which narrow set of browsers they support? I feel like a fool after clicking through and expecting to see the cool effect or whatever and it does not work in my browser most times without even an error message. If you link to a web page without specifying the browsers it supports, it should work in most modern browsers, just Chrome doesn't cut it. At the very least the web page should have the decency show a JS alert saying the web site does/may not support your browser. Who am I kidding, maybe I should just switch to Chrome because web devs are too cool to do that.

At the risk of sounding contrarian, this isn't a web page -- it's a Chrome plugin. By its very nature, there's only one browser it's supposed to work for.

I generally agree with the sentiment, that people should be writing cross-browser code, but this is more akin to complaining that your iPhone app doesn't work on my Android.

Agreed! Done.

It's an extension not a website. It used to be that you could only do something like this for Firefox. Now you can do it for both Chrome and Firefox, but Chrome seems to be more popular with HN developers.

Don't Chrome plugins work with Opera with minimal modifications? I was under the impression that the APIs were standardized or largely compatible.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com