Show HN: My first Android app - Hacker News reader | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: My first Android app - Hacker News reader

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40 pointsmikeevans45 comments

Good start, though the feature I've found essential in this type of application is being able to share an article via a long press on the main page. I send dozens of articles to Pocket every day that way.

>I send dozens of articles to Pocket every day that way.

Exactly.

A HN app with a "share to pocket" (configurable for other share targets of course) one-tap link on articles would be my new main app over night.

Good suggestion. Right now you have to go to the comment/article and there will be a share button. I can add something like that to the main page though.

Two problems with rotation:

1) The article list scrolling position is reset.

2) On my Nexus 7, going from landscape to portrait while viewing comments closes the comments.

Rotation issues are usually to do with the activity being recreated (i.e. onCreate is called again) as the screen size has changed. There is a config to disable this however: http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/resources/runtime-...

It's usually better to implement onSaveInstanceState and onRestoreInstanceState.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3542333/how-to-prevent-cu...

If you mean configChanges, I would strongly recommend against it because it is a bad practice and it probably wouldn't work in this case anyway (no activity recreation = no multi-panel layout on a 7-inch landscape screen).

Ah, sorry I haven't done Android dev in a while; would a better way be yock's onSaveInstanceState/onRestoreInstanceState then?

Yes, something like that in combination with carrying over the existing list data with an retained fragment.

3) Opening the comments of an article in portrait mode and then going landscape on the Nexus 7 crashes the app completely (presumably due to the multi-panel mode in sw600dp+ screens?)

Why does it need permission to read my identify? Sorry, uninstalled.

I've been wondering about this. What exactly does the "READ PHONE STATUS AND IDENTITY" permission entail, and why do developers need it?

What exactly am I giving them access to when I allow it?

Apparently read your IMEI and other identifying information, which then can be sent anywhere without further permission (assuming it has network access as this app has)

Do you mean Read phone state or Access network state? Those are for the Ads and Analytics.

It requires two permissions:

-Phone calls Read phone status and identity

-Network communication Full network access

I can understand the latter, in particular if in android you can't specify exactly what hosts you need to access but the former I can't understand, or better, I can't stand. I do not want to give every app my identity, not for ads, not for money.

You shouldn't need phone state to identify a device - see http://android-developers.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/identifying...

The app looks excellent; the best design for an Android HN app I have seen to date. Unlike others, I haven't experienced any crashing issues.

I only have one small piece of input: A night-mode (white on black) for the main menu and comments would be an excellent addition.

+1 to the "night mode", which is very relevant to users with AMOLED screens.

Quick impressions:

Smoother scrolling of comments than in most of the Hacker News readers for Android that I've tried. I actually wonder why scrolling is so bad in most of the Android applications? Is it because of the misuse of the ListView or what?

Could perhaps show some indication when changing between front page, ask, etc. Currently selecting another view does nothing until the results are loaded and then the page changes instantly underneath.

Crashed after a few minutes of use when pressing the key for registration (I submitted the crash report).

Seems like a good start, the ads are quite irritating though :).

I'm not sure why scrolling tends to be bad in some applications. Perhaps they aren't recycling views properly or something.

I'm working on adding that indicator, as well as logging in/replying.

I wasn't sure if I should even use ads, but I could take them out. And thanks for the crash report!

Very nice ! The app crash when i want to login or "remove the ads" (android 4.2.1 / Galaxy Nexus GSM)

I am currently using this one : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.glebpopov.... but yours is good enough to consider a switch :)

Nice app! If you are going to keep the ads (I'd rather pay something like $1), please show them on the frontpage compared to when I'm reading the article. Also it would be nice if it would not reload the frontpage every time I come back from reading an article.

You can remove the ads with an in-app purchase (although it looks like that part is crashing for some people) because I didn't want to have a Free/Pro app. Thanks for the feedback though!

Awesome, works really nicely on my Nexus 4. I'll definitely be using it from now on. The comment view looks a lot like my 'Reddit Now' app so that's probably why I like it so much! The transition between comments and the article is a nice touch too. 5* from me.

Is the source code available on github by chance? I've recently started delving into android and would love to study/contribute to this app if possible.

Regardless, really an excellent job overall with it.

No, at least not yet. Thanks though, it's good to finally get something out there!

Looks very nice; way better than most of the other HN apps I've tried (and I've probably tried all of them by now).

Unless something stops working, you'll have a purchase from me pretty soon! Good job!

There is a box in the page which says: "This app is not compatible with your Samsung GT-S5830C." I wonder why it isn't. I didn't know there were version specific Android apps.

It's not specifically targeting your device, it's Android 4.0+ only right now. Android 2.X support is coming soon.

Great App!! However, I still like my iOS application Hacker Pulse... BTW, this is really the best hacker news application I have ever used on my XT535.

This looks awesome, but I'm sad that it requires android 4.x. I blame the phone manufacturer/carrier for never updating my phone (still stuck on 2.3)

Part of the next release should be backporting it for 2.X, I just wanted to get something out and gather feedback. I didn't forget you!

Great app!

Managed to make it crash though sent a report through to help you debug it.

Good work though, well done :)

Great app! An indicator when refreshing would be nice, but overall this is definitely the best HN reader out there.

Thanks! A loading indicator is definitely on my to-do list.

If I pay to remove adds from my phone, will they be removed from my tablet and all future installs?

Yep. The purchase is tied to your Google account.

Awesome thanks

I like the app, but shouldn't the default view of an article be the article, not the comments?

That's awesome, Mike. Well done!

Great App! How much time did you spend on writing the app?

Thanks! I spent a few weeks on it. It's my goal in 2013 to actually finish projects that I start :)

Good App. Are you planning to make the app open source ?

Great work.

Sadly I am still on 2.2 :(

seems nice, too bad I don't have 4.0+ to check it.

One question : How web scraping is done ?

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