Hacker News reader for iPhone (new native app) | Hacker News Reader

Hacker News reader for iPhone (new native app)

michaelgrinich.com

111 pointsgrinich39 comments

I don't know about this; it doesn't appear to support authentication, or allow me to upvote/downvote (I get that it probably can't). My only gripe with using HN in Mobile Safari is that sometimes when I go to upvote/downvote I press the wrong one (my thumb lacks precision). This doesn't solve that problem for me, so I can't really see myself spending $2 for increased padding.

Login, voting, and commenting was planned from the start and is coming within the next couple weeks. (ie: after my exams) Most of it is already built-out and just needs some polish.

Here's what it looks like now: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/4595/hn-vote.png

That's what I'm waiting for before buying a hacker news app.

Suggestion: For UI consistency, I would put the upvote for stories on the left of the title, in the same spot it is for comment upvotes. It might just be a personal taste thing, but I could see myself downvoting something on accident, by pressing the button where the submission upvote usually goes. I like that the up/downvote buttons are on opposite sides of the comment. It should keep fat fingers from miss-voting.

Looks great, I'll give it a look then! Smart move getting the early release and feedback.

Any chance you could implement a "Mail HN Link" similar to what Tweetie 2 does for "Mail Tweet"? That would make it really easy to forward HN links to a number of friends.

If you haven't seen that feature of Tweetie 2, it's awesome. It embeds the tweet itself, along with any relevant links, in an html email. Oh, and most importantly, sending the email doesn't require you to quit the app.

I suppose you'd be embedding the story title, description, a link to the HN thread, and of course, the link to the original story.

Thanks, great job. I often load up the icombinator.net site when lying around the house, but it crashes frequently. One thing I do like about that site is the instapaper link that quickly lets me save a bunch of articles for later. It'd be a nice addition to your app.

Are there other HN readers I should be aware of? Anything that makes it easy to browse comment threads on a small screen without a lot of zooming and panning is great.

Support for Instapaper is something I'm hearing a lot. It's definitely on the list, and something I'd like myself.

Nice job. What are using to parse the source HTML?

I like how you got the initial version out there. No commenting, etc. but the start of a decent HN client. Comments are now easy to read (though I would round the borders just a little for a less sharp look)

On my scope creep list, I would like a landscape orientation with lock (might be private API though there is a news reader called News Feed Elite that does it). And a way to bookmark/"watch" certain comments.

I would doubt that's a private API if the Kindle app is utilizing it(a little lock icon appears in the bottom right corner.)

http://www.kevintom.com/ycnews

Please add a feature to Read it Later via Instapaper, very key for me (just bought the app).

Really really really want instapaper.

Glad you're excited. :) It's on the way.

Definitely. That's one of my favorite features of http://www.icombinator.net/.

You'll pardon me if I'm noticing the coincidence between the current down status of icombinator and this submission, I wonder if it's the same developer behind both?

Nope. Unrelated.

Sorry for the slightly off topic, but I can't watch the video for this app due to the following. Its probably an issue with Vimeo but I figured I'd just post it here.

My flash debug player through this off for the video player, seems that vimeo is missing a crossdomain.xml on their assets server? Or I have a finicky flash player.

  SecurityError: Error #2123: Security sandbox violation: Loader.content: http://bitcast.vimeo.com/vimeo/swf/moogaloop_np.swf?clip%5Fid=8131906&server=vimeo%2Ecom&show%5Ftitle=0&show%5Fbyline=0&show%5Fportrait=1&color=00adef&fullscreen=1&autoplay=1&embed%5Flocation=http%253A%252F%252Fmichaelgrinich%2Ecom%252Fhackernews%252F&moogaloop%5Ftype=moogaloop cannot access http://assets.vimeo.com/portraits/defaults/d.75.jpg. No policy files granted access.
	at flash.display::Loader/get content()
	at com.as3.moogaloop4::ClipInfo/onPortraitComplete()
	at flash.events::EventDispatcher/dispatchEventFunction()
	at flash.events::EventDispatcher/dispatchEvent()
	at com.as3.classes.loader::MassLoader/onComplete()
	at com.as3.classes.loader::MassLoader/onFileComplete()
	at flash.events::EventDispatcher/dispatchEventFunction()
	at flash.events::EventDispatcher/dispatchEvent()
	at com.as3.classes.loader.items::ImageItem/onComplete()

Hmm. I'll check it out. What's your browser/os?

Could you do something like Readability on the article text? One of the most painful things about reading HN on the iPhone is waiting for the stuff around the article to load. Even having an option to only load images on demand would be a good start.

http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/

One way to achieve almost the same effect is through Google's mobile reformatting thingy:

http://www.google.com/gwt/x?u=news.ycombinator.com

Fast, simple and ugly as hell...

That's wonderful, thanks!

Is there anything Google doesn't do?

Whoa, my eyes are bleeding, but surfing just got 10x faster.

You sir, win my money.

I'm willing to invest $2 to see where this could go.

Awesome work. Well worth £1.19.

I pretty ignorant when it comes to mobile apps, so please excuse me for asking, why is developing another interface for web-site X such a common phenomena? It seems redundant and unnecessary to create this extra interface and call it an application when a browser would do just fine.

I don't have a smartphone, so this is a guess. I think that people on mobile devices might find some aspects of the normal interface of a site hard to use on their device, such as accidentally pressing upvote when you meant downvote because they are so close. If there is a mobile version of the site on the web, this can be solved, but usually, the makers of the site don't want to bother making another version. Therefore, it's up to the users of the site to write an app that essentially translates the normal site into the app writer's idea of a mobile version. I suppose this could also be implemented as a website that acts as a proxy for the original site and changes the page before serving it, instead of an app.

I use the one that is already in the app store, and has been for weeks. Made by someone in the YC community.

Otherwise, looks nice.

grinich is actually a pretty well-regarded member of the HN community:

http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=grinich

Thanks for this. I really need to have auth/voting though. Will upgrade be free for that ? (as if so, I should buy it to support it).

Yes, it will be a free upgrade.

Another HN reader? The market seems a bit overcrowded for how many people there are browsing the site.

Also the website in safari works pretty well :/

Until you try to open a comment thread and catch the next article down, or heaven help you try to poke the up/down arrows.

Still, most of that could be handled with just a little white space between articles on the front page.

I'm pretty used to browsing websites on the iphone. Zoom works fine for little buttons. It's pretty usable IMHO

Well you have to admit that the readership does really like making things... Coding HN readers just combines 2 of their favorite things :-p

Paid ? Seriously.

Great, another glorified RSS reader for $2

Behold the power of an open market (assuming Apple is okay with it) where you-too can create an app with basic functionality and charge money for it. I have no issue with these types of apps as I know many people who will pay for simple, effective apps.

Is this the App that spammed me on Twitter because I mentioned Hacker News? No thanks!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com