Show HN: Hacker News reader for Android | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Hacker News reader for Android

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45 pointseduardn45 comments

Some time ago I started to build a simple and clean Hacker News reader for Android because I find the current solutions kind of messy. I've used https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.premii.hn for a while, because it was really clean, but the sharing functionality didn't work as I expected so I started looking for alternatives but ended up building my own.

It still misses some things (like collapsible comments) but I'm working on them. Let me know what you think and what would you like to see in a hacker news reader application.

Random feedback:

- No other way to switch to comments other than triple dot menu?

- yes, collapsable comments!

- comments waste a lot of space with whitespace. I like the time formatting on them though

- Maybe add an (optional?) domain hint like on HN?

Thanks!

1. At the time, sharing seemed like a more important action than comments, but I guess I was wrong. Will switch sharing with comments in a future update :)

3. I will work on the comments design in the next update, I too am not pleased with the current solution.

4. Do you think that would be helpful? Is there a reason you want a domain hint?

I like domain hints so I know the site isn't behind a paywall etc. Also some sites will catch my interest more such as krebsonsecurity.com

Domain isn't that important for me. But HN and most (?) clients have it, so it immediately felt odd to not see it.

I'm missing opening links in an external browser.

IMHO only HN's comments are broken on mobile so a better view for comments is the only thing I want from a HN app.

I know that there's a market for Hacker News reader apps and I wish you every success with your launch.

Yet, I can't see why I wouldn't continue to use a general purpose web browser [Firefox on Android, IE on Windows Phone]. There's no additional permissions. Forward and Back and favorites and scrolling and all the bits and pieces of HN just work the same way as on my laptop or desktop. Can someone please enlighten me?

I almost always use an app over the browser on mobile. Generally, apps are faster, have better mobile UIs, integrate with the OS, and are easier to reach.

EDIT: Oh, and I don't mind notifications unless they're abused.

For many sites, I agree with you, but HN is so notoriously bad on mobile that a healthy market has grown for alternative readers, whether apps or other web-based front-ends.

Side note: I use http://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/ multiple times a day and love it.

But as to the bigger issue here:

The maintainer of Hacker News website appears to be obstinate when provided suggestions, help and development time: [links] The current status is the developer has applied a viewport to a table-based layout and saw that it failed. This table-based layout has been in place since 2007, and I don't believe there have been any efforts by the owners to update it.

I, and many others from the community, have volunteered code and time to upgrade the website but these contributions have been rejected by kogir.

[links] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7330107 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7985687 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9480325

https://github.com/HackerNews/HN used to be open for reporting issues, but it has been deleted.

Does anyone know why this is? It seems to be almost the opposite of the whole HN community approach.

The dev is pulling a Gruber. (Ref: refusing to update or handoff Markdown to volunteers)

I am more interested in the why? There must be a reason other than ego.

Some of them add collapsable threads; some of them sort out the vote buttons; some of them have different design which some people want; some of them have bigger fonts that flows the screen.

All of this can be achieved with plugins or client side CSS, but that's trickier on mobile.

Also, scratching an itch.

Is there one for emacs?

https://github.com/clarete/hackernews.el

Touch-friendly buttons. Have you tried to vote on a mobile web browser? It's horrendous.

Actually I find it difficult to vote even here on my laptop - the buttons are too small, not friendly at all.

For me, Firefox on Android totally screws up font sizes? As in, there is a ~300% variation in font size between individual comments, for whatever reason? (I suspect it has something to do with the use of tables for formatting)

For purely reading, Dolphin Browser is ok.

I can see 10 posts at once on my 4" phone on the HN home page, only 6 in the app. This is a cons for the app. The number of lines of comments is about the same, but a little more in the browser.

As a browser I suggest Opera because it reflows text after the double tap for zooming in (Android, no idea if it's available for iOS and/or it has the same feature there). It's a really nice feature on most sites, much more on HN. Given how good HN is on Opera (I mean it) I don't think I'll use the app, still it looks good. The image previews are a nice idea.

Where is the open in an external browser feature? Why don't developers do this, it's so frustrating and I end up having to email my self the link and the open it up.

The app I use has this feature. It's a little bit hidden (you have to long-press on a story) but it's there.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.manuelmaly...

On that note, what does the OP app offer that this app doesn't, apart from an up-to-date design? It seems to have far less functionality (you can't even log in to upvote stories/comments).

I've been using HN reader apps[0] daily for a long time now, so I thought I'd pitch in. I wouldn't use an app if the HN comments experience on mobile wasn't pure agony.

— Consequently the comments are the central requirement, they need to work well and should be conveniently reachable.

— Being able to share the HN story (ie. using the Android share function) is important to me; I sometimes prefer just the URL and sometimes appreciate title+URL combination, having the choice would be nice.

— The ability to share an individual comment (by URL) would be huge.

— Mobile connections are fickle, when the connection fails because I'm in a subway, I'd like a big "retry" button or something to that end.

— I'm happy with my browser and I need a convenient way to open the article in it. I don't care if there's an article reader built-in just as long as I can completely ignore it.

— Early on I tried logging in with some reader apps, back then it did not work and I haven't tried in a while; I write comments so rarely on mobile that I'm happy to fall back to the browser to do it.

— Open sourcing a HN reader app seems like an obvious choice.

[0] This one, currently, it's adequate: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rickylaish...

I've been using your HN reader for a couple of months. I've tried about a dozen different readers and yours is probably the best one out there. Thanks for a great app!

If you're looking for input, look to the store comments. The number one comment is also my biggest complaint -- I want an option to open links in my external browser not your (limited) integrated browser. At minimum, improve CSS handling in the integrated browser .. support at least bold and italic text. Photo captions, quotes, etc. end up indistinguishable from article content because everything is rendered in the same style.

A smaller, though annoying issue is that waking the app from the background restarts it. Say I'm reading an article, get a call or otherwise background the app with that article still open. If I try to come back to it more than a few seconds later, the app restarts and I'm back to the article list.

And a minor bug, I've selected the blue theme. When the app starts, it shows the UI in orange (default) for a moment then switches to blue.

BTW, in your intro here you say the app is missing collapsible comments, but they are in the app and even in your screenshots on the store. This is a great feature and one I use regularly.

If you add the external browser option and fix the wake-from-background issue, I'd happily pay a buck or two for the app (or a pro version).

I am pretty sure you did not read the intro carefully :)

The app posted there is not mine, it's one that I've used but wasn't good for me anymore so I decided to build my own.

Sorry for the off topic as I think I will comment on the OS rather than the app. I don't own any Android device, so maybe it seems all natural once you use one but the UX is so strange.

I can grasp the meaning of some icons, a cross for closing, an arrow to go back or forward, but the ones sitting on the lower taskbar ??? What the hell could be the meaning of a triangle, a circle and a square ?

Those UX elements are actually part of the OS and appear in every app. The triangle is "back", the circle is "home" (essentially the same thing as the circle button on iOS), and the square button opens the list of recent apps.

Thanks for the explanation.

May I ask a few questions : - what the "Back" triangle is for when there is a back arrow on the top left of the app, doest it perform the same action ? - As the "circle" is home, I guess there is no way to hide this taskbar as you could not go back to home screen, right ?

There is a difference between them, actually. The one at the top is "up" and the one at the bottom is "back".

For example if you have a list of items and you click on one, then on that item you have related items and you click on one, the up button will take you to list where as the back button will take you to the previous item.

And you're right, you can not hide the taskbar.

You can find more information here: http://developer.android.com/design/patterns/navigation.html

I got it now.

I followed the link you provided and it seems the previous android version had different taskbar icons, which I found a bit easier to understand.

Still, Android and iOS do not help much with discoverability in my opinion, and the newest the version, the worst it is. What's next, heptagon for sending email and decagon for contacts ? I feel so old :(

Nice work. My suggestion would be to add a screenshot of the comments.

I spend most of my time on HN reading comments so I'd like to be able to preview how your app handles them before I install the app. I'd like to be able to see at a glance whether you support expanding and collapsing nested comments, how you display the nesting, etc.

There is a screenshot with comments (last picture), but thanks for the feedback :)

You're right. It was so long I assumed it wasn't a comment but I see the comment header now.

The way threading works in any app that displays comments has a huge affect on how much I'm going to enjoy using it. So I personally would prefer to see a comment screenshot that shows how threading works in the app. The current screenshot only shows a single comment.

Long press on an article should bring up options such as 'mark read to here' and 'mark read to bottom' and probably some sort of starring feature, similar to RSS readers. I other to do a first pass to triage the entries and then deep dive when I have more time.

Looks good, but would be great if it was possible to have a share button for the comments pages too.

Are you going to open source this? Would be keen to help out if so.

I'm a big fan of "One", however it's "reader" for some of the supported news sources is atrocious (ala Reddit).

Side question: is there a responsive version of the HN homepage? I thought I saw it posted here a couple of months ago.

Was it this?

http://hckrnews.com/

I love it! Awesome work dude :)

Nice touch that the stories in your screenshot are from the last few days.

Took almost a minute for me to load.

nice work. now if you could just also clone google reader :p

*yet another

Indeed - f-droid (f-droid.org - open-source builds for Android) has a couple from what I can tell. I use this one: https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=hn&fdid=com....

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