Hacker News has native mobile view | Hacker News Reader

Hacker News has native mobile view

news.ycombinator.com

66 points8ig844 comments

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The size of the comment box needs to be reduced. Right now, it's stretching out the comments pages.

Native: https://www.dropbox.com/s/tni84vod5giq9ky/Screenshot_2013-08...

Eliminated the 85% max width and reduced the comments box to 40 cols, and set padding: 0 on <body>:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/047b5zkheguk8lz/2013-08-21%2016.27...

Just remove the hardcoded 85% width and 60 cols and toss this into the CSS:

    form textarea         { width: 500px; }
    body > center > table { width: 85%;   }

    @media(max-device-width: 1024px) {
      form textarea         { width: 80%;  }
      body                  { padding: 0;  }
      body > center > table { width: 100%; }
    }

Why not `table { width: 100%;}` in the 2nd media query?

There are many tables in the site, and the content is going to provide that sizing anyhow.

Seems pretty terrible. It has big huge white bars on the sides squishing the content to be nearly unreadable. I can't even manage to hit the arrows instead of the links as well.

Two words: Table markup?

Agreed. Wasting margin space on an already tiny screen is ridiculous.

PG should just buy the design from this guy (or hire him): http://hn.premii.com/

Previously discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6178534

Works even better when you pin that to the home screen as a faux app.

... unless it's iOS 6 and you try to use the 'open in a new window' links (javascript window.open with a target of _blank) for the articles.

When pinned as a Web Clip, the site opens up fullscreen and addressbar-less and without tabs / as a single window. The attempts to 'open in a new window' just replace the HN mobile view altogether with the article and then strand you there without gestures or controls to move Back.

How do you return to the HN UI after clicking a story when there isn't any browser chrome / back button? That is the only downside that I have seen from adding it to the home screen.

I simply hit the home button, then restart the Web Clip.

This is a joke right? I just curled and diffed / and /?native_mobile and the result was empty.

The query param in the submission is probably just to get around the duplicate submission rule, I think it uses user agent to determine which page to serve

>I think it uses user agent to determine which page to serve

If it does then it's broken. Typing the full url manually into my address bar resulted in the first time I've ever seen that version of the site, on Android or iOS.

look like a joke to me

Is there a way of choosing the regular view for a mobile device? Windows Phone rendered the old home page very well, but now each story takes up a lot more space and it's no longer possible to take in a large number of stories without a lot of scrolling.

Completely agree on this! I went scrolling for a 'Desktop view' link at the top/bottom, or somewhere in my settings that would flip it back, but I'm unable to find it.

I actually relied on the desktop view on my iOS device when any of the other third-party HN mobile views weren't quite getting me what I needed.

Loss of this view (without having to rely on a third-party App Store app that allows overriding the UserAgent) is rather saddening.

Yea, I'm a big fan of pinch and zoom and the new format on WP8 is worse.

I've seen several offers of mobile-optimized CSS for this site over the past while, yet this feels like a half-done job. On my iPhone 5 the margins are all off, the vote icons are still impossibly small, and the header is a mess. It looks like this isn't much more than an added viewport meta tag.

It is still an improvement, but it could be much better. I know the YC crew are busy folks, but you could throw a few bucks to the poster with the best mobile CSS and I'm sure people would be up for the challenge.

All I did is add the following:

  <meta name="viewport" content="width = device-width">

I think it looks worse on my iPhone 5 and HTC One, and will probably back out the change. At least now I've proven it's not that simple.

FWIW, I see no difference on my Moto Photon... and it looks pretty much exactly the same (for better or worse) as it does in Chrome on Windows 7.

I suspect the number of stories that get flagged is about to decline dramatically.

I just noticed it when checking on my iphone. That's all I know. Couldn't wait to share the news.

Same here, I thought I accidentally found some new safari zoom (i am constantly confused on all the iOS gestures)

Not that excited about it. Doesn't look great on iOS6: http://imgur.com/vM3LQJ1

Both of those look identical on my phone. And they both look identical on my PC. The only difference I see is that both versions on my phone are missing the [flag] option.

Flag is available when you are logged in. Like you said, there appears to be no difference whatsoever between the two versions.

doh! I should have remembered that. So they are totally the same on PC and phone for me.

It's better than it was, but for viewing HN on my Android phone I use this app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.airlocksof...

Does the job well for the home page ! But comments are still as hard to read through.

Same here. The home page works great now, but comment pages are as difficult to read on phone as ever.

iPad looks a little more zoomed in, but not too aggressively so.

I think this is a major misunderstanding.

I've seen this pop up a few times over the last few weeks. I just thought Safari was bugging out because I'd refresh and it'd be gone again. Hope it sticks around.

I think its OK but needs some more design work - why not make a competition? surely theres enough people here to waste a few hours putting together a nice design

Why the margins on an iphone 5?

I just wanted to say "Thanks!" for the mobile view. I have found HN to be difficult to read on my ipod touch, and I'm glad you're working on fixing it up. I have nothing to say about the million-and-one suggestions about how it might be EVEN BETTER than what you've chosen to try for now, but I'm glad it's getting some attention.

Here's another HN mobile web app: http://hn.meteor.com/

Wow. Thanks for the link. I love this mobile version.

Works great for me so far.

This is pretty cool, but how did you find this?

This may come as a bit of a shock, but it doesn't seem to be working in IE.

Was it just disabled?

Header needs work, but otherwise I love it.

What's "native" about this mobile view?

And oh dear, does this look terrible on an iPhone 4 screen.

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