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Comment by brudgers | Hacker News Reader

The idea of using an iPhone app to browse a particular website reminds me of AOL keywords like "www.cbs.com".

Every time I see an "Ask HN: what app do you use for HN?" I wonder why people don't just use the browser. What is the allure?

View on HN

Well for HN, the website has poor design (tiny font, flowing text) in the first place which makes it very hard to read on native iOS.

Hacker News is usable on mobile Safari, but it's not as good as it could be. Try using Alien Blue to browse reddit on an iPhone (and especially an iPad). It is a superior experience to using the plain web site (even m.reddit.com). I very much wish there was an equivalent for Hacker News.

I use ihackernews.com, works pretty well.

Hacker Node works pretty well, but doesn't support voting, commenting or submitting.

Protip: add a .compact at the end of your reddit URL. I've stopped using reddit apps since I discovered that

I don't know how to make a bookmark on the "desktop" of my phone, and I'd rather use an app than look it up.

Which is ironic because Web bookmarks/caches are one class of apps that are explicitly banned from the Apple app store, because the web bookmark feature exists. That's why my game, cross platform on ios, android, and web, is not published on App Store. So iOS users can't play my game on an airplane.

Where does it say that web apps are banned from the app store? Apple (unfortunately) does seem to allow apps that are just WebView wrappers. Of course, they aren't very popular though.

Also, if you set up local caching properly, your game should be fully available in offline mode as well, if the user saves your site to their home screen.

If you're using iOS, just tap the Share button in Safari and tap "Add to Home Screen"

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