14 ms·

Tell HN: Thank you for being fast, almost ad-free and text-only

• fredwashere88 4y ago
  Dang
• readonthegoapp 4y ago
  I start to look for a workaround for mobile HN on Android every couple months and then give up after a bit Any suggested foxes don't seem to work Like accessibility settings Zooming in is lame and painful headline cut off etc Most of the alternatives also do not work as I want but the best I saw this time around was this one https://whnex.com/ https://whnex.com/ Author said he open to be pinged so I might ask for different font or better contrast or something I use chrome dark mode who knows what other flags I set
  • readonthegoapp 4y ago
    Aaaand just like that, seems HN mobile original is fixed ie my fonts appear to be the larger size I now desire. Thanks!
    • readonthegoapp 4y ago
      And gone again.. Strange must be on my side
• dumbaccount123 4y ago
  Reddits "new UI" is so bad, surprised they're still trying to save it.
  • iLoveOncall 4y ago
    Sunk cost fallacy undoubtedly. Reddit is really unusable for me with the new UI.
  • marginalia_nu 4y ago
    It's kinda embarrassing. It's been I don't know how many years, and pasting text in the comment field still breaks the new reddit UI. I don't know how to explain it. Does everyone on the new reddit dev team use old.reddit.com so they don't notice this extremely obvious bug?
    • CoolGuySteve 4y ago
      Yeah, I find so many bugs in reddit that it's surprising to me that a more streamlined replacement hasn't arisen. But I get shouted down if I say my experience with Elon's buggy Twitter 2.0 is about on par with how my reddit experience has been for years and yet reddit is still massively popular. Shrug. I guess it's hard to believe that sometimes market conditions can overcome bad engineering and then you add all the politics around Twitter's layoffs and people get raw.
      • capableweb 4y ago
        > But I get shouted down if I say my experience with Elon's buggy Twitter 2.0 What visible changes have been done since Elon took over Twitter + are buggy changes? I hardly notice anything different to be honest. There is a view counter and more people have the blue checkmark, otherwise things mostly seems to be the same. The ads panel (for publishing ads) is as broken as it has always been, so seems it has neither improved nor declined.
        • marginalia_nu 4y ago
          I've had a few instances of data inconsistencies. Like a tweet says it has three likes, but you check which who's liked it it's only one person. Still very far from the same league as new reddit's jank.
• colesantiago 4y ago
  Agreed, I wish more sites were like HN, fast, free and ad-free, text only and no bullshit algorithmic garbage shoved in my face. All it needs is dark mode and it's perfect.
  • cloudking 4y ago
    +1 dark mode on mobile would be great. They let you customize the color of the header when you get 500 points, it would be nice to allow custom CSS as a feature (without extensions).
  • danuker 4y ago
    https://www.userchrome.org/how-create-userchrome-css.html https://www.userchrome.org/how-create-userchrome-css.html https://userstyles.org/styles/113994/hacker-news-dark https://userstyles.org/styles/113994/hacker-news-dark While you're at it, also add this one: https://github.com/community/community/discussions/8098#discussioncomment-2275499 https://github.com/community/community/discussions/8098#disc...
  • jack_riminton 4y ago
    Try this https://jgthms.com/hacker-news-dark-mode/ https://jgthms.com/hacker-news-dark-mode/
  • dredmorbius 4y ago
    My dark-mode tweak: <https://pastebin.com/6PF3dCXH https://pastebin.com/6PF3dCXH>
  • nayuki 4y ago
    HN's front page is algorithmically determined, but not personalized to each user.
  • NKosmatos 4y ago
    Hey, anyone knows where do I pay the 8$/month for the dark mode and some slight style/CSS alterations? :-)
• spaniard89277 4y ago
  I completely agree on this. I have nothing of substance to add, just say thank you.
• dewey 4y ago
  I know what you are saying and I agree and am grateful for it's existance but keep in mind that HN is a marketing tool of a big VC fund. It has money to pay a moderator and doesn't need to directly make money from it by putting ads or tracking scripts up like other sites.
  • mbil 4y ago
    Yes, and there are often YC company job postings on the front page, which are technically ads.
    • Alex3917 4y ago
      And there's a favicon so it's not text-only. /s
      • dang 4y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34460478 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34460478
  • dredmorbius 4y ago
    Appropriately motivated and principled patronage ... is a fairly good media model. Far superior to naked advertising. On par with public or membership sponsorship.
    • mopsi 4y ago
      People often say that the internet would die without intrusive ad tracking. HN is a pretty good example of the opposite, and there are many others. An electronics store I frequent hosts old-school electronics forum, a nearby youth hobby center hosts news and forums for scale model building, and so forth.
      • Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
        The smaller your audience, the less likely you are to get trolls and just the general population of morons.
• dredmorbius 4y ago
  The text-only / ad-free nature probably explains a fair bit of my own ... enthusiastic ... readership of HN (recent comment on which: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34490839 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34490839>). As for CSS tweaks, I've applied some modest changes to the basic style which are linked in my profile: Dred's HN CSS Madhackery: <https://pastebin.com/gLXiqKyd https://pastebin.com/gLXiqKyd> Dred's HN CSS Madhackery -- Dark Mode: <https://pastebin.com/6PF3dCXH https://pastebin.com/6PF3dCXH> Both can be applied using a CSS style management extension such as Stylus: <https://add0n.com/stylus.html https://add0n.com/stylus.html> (For Firefox, Chrome, & Opera.)
  • gigama 4y ago
    Thanks for these helpful links and tweaks. Customization and code sharing -- both in keeping with true hacker ethos. Got a good chuckle from the Stylus plugin privacy policy: "Unlike other similar extensions, we don't find you to be all that interesting. Your questionable browsing history should remain between you and the NSA. Stylus collects nothing. Period."
• asim 4y ago
  Bring back text only services! Everything should be accessible in some simple text UI that's simple and clean. I don't think that's possible by stripping back websites, maybe layers on RSS feeds, APIs with a new UX, etc, etc.
  • ploum 4y ago
    You may be interested by Gemini…
    • tapoxi 4y ago
      How does Gemini compare to Gopher? Slightly related, HN is available via gopher://hngopher.com
      • ploum 4y ago
        Main differences are: - Gemini is conceptually simpler (no difference between map and text, straightforward URLs) - Gemini is easy to write (unlike gopher maps) - Gemini has mandatory tls (which may or may not be an advantage) But Gemini was created from within the Gopher community and there are very strong links between Gemini/Gopher users. Most Gemini browsers are also Gopher browsers. (My own turned into a web browser and RSS reader. I only need to add mail reading to have a complete office suite, see https://sr.ht/~lioploum/offpunk/ https://sr.ht/~lioploum/offpunk/ )
  • rchaud 4y ago
    lite.cnn.io has been a revelation
    • apnew 4y ago
      TIL! Thank you.
• kibwen 4y ago
  As others will be quick to point out, HN does have ads in the form of job postings for YCombinator startups that are delivered inline with the links on the front page. That said, it's relatively unobtrusive. And of course, the existence of HN is a large part of the marketing for YCombinator itself. Personally, I'll commend dang for doing a high-effort job at moderation, and tolerating all the dunking on Paul Graham that we do.
  • Rooster61 4y ago
    Ads that I won't see unless I actually have interest in them? That's not very web 5.0...
  • amelius 4y ago
    But ... these job postings are difficult to discern from other posts. At least Google puts "Ad" in front of ads ...
    • guntherhermann 4y ago
      A giveaway is that you can't comment on them :)
      • capableweb 4y ago
        Nor do they have points, you can't upvote or flag them. They do stick out a bit and are easy to ignore.
        • bambax 4y ago
          You can hide them though.
    • dredmorbius 4y ago
      There are several userscripts to block those. <https://github.com/brownie-in-motion/hn-adblock https://github.com/brownie-in-motion/hn-adblock>, discussed: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31597486 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31597486> Another: <https://gist.github.com/pxeger/4aed4baaa87028a2ecc6441a84a1fbc2 https://gist.github.com/pxeger/4aed4baaa87028a2ecc6441a84a1f...> (I've used neither.) I've briefly looked into managing these through CSS alone. Not obviously that I can tell, though the text of job listings should match the pattern: <company> (YC <class> ) Is Hiring <position> I think CSS can act based on content, but need to look at selectors for that. SO suggests not: <https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1520429/is-there-a-css-selector-for-elements-containing-certain-text https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1520429/is-there-a-css-s...> HN doesn't assign a distinctive class to these posts, though the "votelinks" class is missing, which can be used to highlight the listings. E.g.: /* HN startup job ads */ .athing td:nth-of-type(2):not(.votelinks) { background: #fcc; } .athing td:nth-of-type(2):not(.votelinks):before { content: "Ad"; position: relative; left: 0.4em; color: #000; } (Other properties might be set.) I'd need to futz with this some more to see if the entire entry could be dropped, though I'd prefer to simply have them stand out, I think...
• ipaddr 4y ago
  Ad free? This is all part of one big ad. Ads are not evil though.. tracking might be.
• powera 4y ago
  Well, actually, it's not "ad-free". There are fairly regular job ads for YCombinator companies on the home page.
  • dredmorbius 4y ago
    But: 1. Not within articles or threads. Contrast, say, the Washington Post which is currently inserting ... four ... ad placements per story ... and that's just within the text of a story itself. That excludes other interstitial nags ("see also" which are often very thinly-related if at all items), sign-ups, pop-ups, etc. (I'd recalled this being higher, four is still a few too many, but less than I'd thought.) And it's not just the ads themselves, but the motivations created around them for clickbait, sensationalism, etc., etc. Contextually-appropriate service-oriented (e.g., jobs) notices ... seem a highly reasonable option. Note too that HN also runs a free "who's hiring" and "who wants to be hired" thread monthly.
    • rchaud 4y ago
      There is plenty of sensationalism in the comments, when the topics are similar to those that newspapers would discuss. Take for example the recent spate of techco layoffs. I think you'll find the discussion is not nearly as polite and detached as those on regular nerd stuff would be (Rust, React, Static Site Generators etc).
      • dredmorbius 4y ago
        True. Though I make liberal use of the "collapse" toggle, and try to prioritise original content over comments (not entirely successfully, I'll admit).
  • dang 4y ago
    Ok, I've squeezed an 'almost' in the title above. I suppose that's not strictly accurate either but I don't want to spoil the OP's sentiment too much.
• pcurve 4y ago
  I visit HN a few dozen times a day. For it, it's like the stumbledupon with ability to comment. Best of both worlds.
• alpenbazi 4y ago
  very true, i fully commit to that statement
• schemescape 4y ago
  Mobile friendly CSS is long overdue :)
  • blackbear_ 4y ago
    What do you mean? I mostly browse from mobile and I found no issues. You know what is actually long overdue? Lynx-friendly [1] layouts! ;) [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx_(web_browser) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx_(web_browser)
  • dredmorbius 4y ago
    What would that entail? Note that HN's page structure (table-based design) makes some things in pure CSS ... challenging.
    • dpkirchner 4y ago
      Slightly larger buttons would be welcome, at least as an option. That's all I'd change.
      • dredmorbius 4y ago
        Quick mock. Roughly doubles arrow size, and spaces them vertically: <https://pastebin.com/qEeLNK9b https://pastebin.com/qEeLNK9b>
• Oras 4y ago
  Totally agree. But I noticed I only accept this format from HN. I've seen some services tried to do the same or follow the same style and I wasn't as engaged with them. I suppose for HN because that's how it started, and I am confident about the quality of links/articles/comments. That's how I picture the value.
• eric4smith 4y ago
  Sometimes capitalism works!
  • SpeedilyDamage 4y ago
    This site is wholly subsidized by YC and could not stand on its own, so I'm not sure it's a straightforward example of capitalism working...
    • smbullet 4y ago
      How is this not a straightforward example of capitalism? This site is privately owned, therefore it is free to flow in the capital market.
      • SpeedilyDamage 4y ago
        It's not a straightforward example of capitalism because it doesn't earn enough through its service to support itself, and must be propped up by an otherwise external entity. The concept of "private ownership" is not definitionally identical to the concept of "capitalism", I hope you realize...
        • smbullet 4y ago
          Private ownership and the protection of those property rights are exactly what capitalism is. As long as there is no coercive entity dictating what YC can and cannot do with it's capital then HN absolutely is a product of capitalism. Capitalism doesn't mean "earn[ing] enough through its service to support itself". Why do you think that people are not free to finance sites that promote other branches of their business under capitalism?
          • SpeedilyDamage 4y ago
            People are free to finance whatever they want, I don't care, it's just not a "straightforward" example of capitalism when they do. Spend money to make a thing -> sell that thing for more than it cost to make it. That's not happening here.
• amelius 4y ago
  It is kind of ironic that so many professionals come to HN for a breath of fresh air, after which they continue building the UX they were escaping from in the first place.
  • abraxas 4y ago
    Most visitors to HN are unlikely to have a significant voice in defining the UX of things they build for a living.
    • amelius 4y ago
      I thought this was a place for startup founders.
      • zamadatix 4y ago
        Sure, and a lot of other folks too.
      • radlad 4y ago
        Startup founders are certainly a minority of HN visitors.
        • halfjoking 4y ago
          Let's do a poll: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34507665 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34507665 I'm curious how many people are starting or want to start a business here. I always assumed the percentage was pretty high.
      • satvikpendem 4y ago
        The culture has shifted over the last 15 years or so. Initially it was indeed for YC and YC adjacent founders, but it evolved into a general tech news and tech workers forum. I'm not sure of any other good startup-specific forum that hasn't descended into spamming links rather than cultivating good discussion.
    • 4y ago
• Jerrrry 4y ago
  My only (primary, continuous, and ignored) complaint is that OP's text post's contrast matches the contrast of less-useful comments, making every Self-HN post seem subconsciously and automatically downvoted. It was "tradition,"? No, it's archaic and ironic for a site with so many A11y/accessibility advocates.
  • kzrdude 4y ago
    I agree. The comment section teaches the user to be suspicous of grayed-out comments, but then if we post a text post it's also grayed-out.
  • thefifthsetpin 4y ago
    I am just now realizing that greyed out text posts weren't downvoted.
    • yonz 4y ago
      I believed the same thing for a while
  • coldpie 4y ago
    I emailed them once asking to change that and kind of got a shrug in response. Maybe more emails will convince them?
    • Jerrrry 4y ago
      Another user mentioned the reply basically cited tradition. @dang, can we ever get a reply to this? either an excuse or an 0xFF in a .css stylesheet, please?
    • valtism 4y ago
      I also emailed them. Was asked for a minimal change to make it better and I suggested changing adding a class to the <td> to color: #333. This was in August 2021 but it hasn't been changed.
  • LLyaudet 4y ago
• flanbiscuit 4y ago
  IMO, Reddit is still usable but only via https://old.reddit.com https://old.reddit.com. I still use Reddit daily, but I can't stand the horrific new design. I also highly curate my subscribed subreddits and use multireddits to combine subject matters. On Android I use Reddit Sync[1] (which has an ad-free pro version I paid a one-time $5 fee for). I worry about the day they discontinue old.reddit.com, or decide to cripple third-party apps in order to steer people toward their official apps. I wouldn't put it past them to do something like this. All it takes is a new CEO, or their investors, wanting to see more profit. They'll probably lose users but I bet the amount of people who use Reddit like I do is decreasing over time (speculation, maybe I'm wrong) so it might not be a significant amount. 1. https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Red+Apps+LTD&hl=en_US&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Red+Apps+LTD...
  • Semaphor 4y ago
    All I can say is that when I post copies of code or recipes, but with the markdown fixed for old, I usually get quite a lot of upvotes. So depending on the sub it might be significant (of course, I’m also not in any huge subs).
    • flanbiscuit 4y ago
      I really hope it's significant! Keep old.reddit.com alive! Was wondering if they provide stats for this anywhere and apparently they do on a per-subreddit level that only mods can see: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/m2615l/what_percentage_of_redditors_still_use_the_old/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/m2615l/what... Look at the unique pageview charts, it seems like old.reddit.com is just a bit higher than new reddit but not by much. This user[1] posted a graph[2] from a much larger subreddit. They didn't mention which but they moderate quite a few subreddits but I think this one if from /r/Minecraft. 1. https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/m2615l/what_percentage_of_redditors_still_use_the_old/gqi1p3u/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/m2615l/what... 2. https://i.imgur.com/dUYWZNd.png https://i.imgur.com/dUYWZNd.png
  • bambax 4y ago
• kzrdude 4y ago
  Thank you HN for showing (essentially) the same list of stories on the front page for everyone. A shared display of common topics is a good foundation for a good forum.
  • amelius 4y ago
    How do you know this is true?
    • kzrdude 4y ago
      I'm guessing from what I see in incognito mode and logged-in. One reason I have a caveat in there, is that there is a button called hide, so you don't have to see particular stories.
      • amelius 4y ago
        I was referring to the last sentence. How do you know this is a good foundation for a good forum?
        • kzrdude 4y ago
          I don't know, it's an opinion.
          • aliqot 4y ago
            how dare you
    • dang 4y ago
      We don't know that it's true, but what kzrdude described is definitely part of the mental model (or, if you like, the DNA) of the site. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=silo%20by%3Adang&dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=silo%20by%3Adang&dateRange=all...
      • 4y ago
• nonrandomstring 4y ago
  HN looks just perfect using w3m text browser, no js, no css. The clean HTML makes it feel like something running from a local server. Plus there's no "cloudflare" type nonsense blocking my Tor overlay. Excellent straightforward web.
  • frosted-flakes 4y ago
    Clean HTML? It's nested spaghetti tables, which makes it super hard to write user styles for.
    • dang 4y ago
      > hard to write user styles for Yes and that's probably the one thing that would get us to rework the HTML. That or if we could significantly reduce its size. Otherwise I see that HTML table goop as an advantage—the consequence of a clever design by pg years ago, which pays off every time I get to work on the code - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Apg%20%22object%20code%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu.... I was going to add "and also a curmudgeonly throne to sit on" but maybe I'd better not.
• CoolGuySteve 4y ago
  I feel like there's a systemic issue in modern software that HN is immune to. After an initial success, companies will hire tons of project managers and engineers to build new features and continue their growth. The result is a corporate paperclip optimizer. The problem is that these features won't get used and nobody gets promoted if they're not pushed to the front of UI so you end up with cluttered interfaces loaded with popups and other misfeatures. Reddit's new interface is a good example of this, but gmail has the same problem. Shit, even QuickTime/Real Player used to fight over Windows file extensions and taskbar icons in the 90s and it was horrible. Because Y Combinator's business model is different, HN more or less stays the same. It's kind of like open source Unix utilities in that way, nobody's pushing modal ads into the ls command.
  • wildrhythms 4y ago
    Well said, and I see this happening all around me at <big corp>. Every project manager "needs" their feature front and center in the UI, and "needs" to educate the user on the fact that it exists! So you end up with annoying new feature bubbles pointing to the thing. And when it comes to measuring engagement, dismissing the feature bubble counts as a win!
  • one-another-dev 4y ago
    I'll be a counterpoint to Reddit argument. I started out using the new reddit and I find it more usable than old.reddit site. Also old.reddit has very wide text lengths which makes reading a chore compared to new one where the character limit per line is conservative.
• mostlysimilar 4y ago
  Hot take: I think the lack of mobile support is a feature, not a bug. Mobile interfaces are responsible for much of the noise of mainstream social media, they encourage short form content creation because the interface is too simplistic and typing on a tiny touchscreen keyboard is unpleasant and error-prone. By making the only viable interface a desktop interface you put up an additional barrier to that type of noise.
  • ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
    I’m reading this on a phone, right now, and it’s perfectly usable.
    • tppiotrowski 4y ago
      I think parent meant that mobile phone creation should be discouraged. Mobile phone consumption is no issue.
      • ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
        Fair 'nuff, but creating any kind of text content is a big fat pain, on most mobile devices. I'm not sure how much site design can help. This site is about as good as you'll get, there.
    • raverbashing 4y ago
      Yeah, it's very usable on mobile It uses very little data, making it also useful to test those "is my connection bad or is it the website that's down?" cases
    • asdff 4y ago
      OK now try and upvote this comment without missing the arrow. If you do, you have a lot more dexerity than I do at least. Its usable but certain elements are a little too small where it makes me misclick.
      • ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
• aliqot 4y ago
  I wouldn't call it ad-free, but it is free from overt ads.
• frankjr 4y ago
  I do find it hilarious that almost every day you read about a new shiny CSS / JS framework here on HN, all the while HN itself is using tables for layout. Hell, some pages don't have design at all (login page)! Maybe worse really is better.
• iammjm 4y ago
  i love you guys
• janitor61 4y ago
  This might date me but I'd love to see a resurgence of the Gopher protocol - maybe a touch more modernized, but still just plain text files with hyperlinks. Some sort of public-commons version of the overcommercialized web where advertising is very difficult but information is dense and discoverable.
  • efreak 4y ago
    Gemini?
    • everybodyknows 4y ago
      https://gemini.circumlunar.space/ https://gemini.circumlunar.space/ rather than the like-named crypto site. I found no way to sample current discussions i.e. read-only, from a web browser -- software installation seems required.
      • efreak 4y ago
        That's the one, yes. There's two web proxies listed on that page for browsing Gemini with a web browser.
• ptx 4y ago
  Hitting the wrong button on a phone is less of a problem that it might appear at first. An up-vote results in an "unvote" link being shown and a down-vote results in an "undown" link instead, so you can confirm that you hit the right button and undo the vote if it was wrong.
• jayant_kaushik 4y ago
  Meanwhile, you can use third party mobile apps for HN that work perfect. Just type “hacker news” on the App Store (iOS) and you’ll see a bunch of apps. Try and see which one fits your usage style. I personally use the app called “HACK for hacker news” and it fulfils all I could ask for. I mostly browse and write on HN using this app. Not promoting this app, just helping fellow users.
• rpgbr 4y ago
  I use a simple custom CSS to: 1) increase font size; 2) limit line length, and; 3) change OP's font color: .comment, .toptext { max-width: 72ch; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; color: rgb(27, 27, 27) } In Safari, using Userscripts extension: https://github.com/quoid/userscripts#userscripts-safari https://github.com/quoid/userscripts#userscripts-safari
• 2devnull 4y ago
  “only ask is to revisit CSS a bit and make it mobile friendly. I.e slightly larger fonts” record scratch No! I’ve been visiting daily on the smallest of phones for well over a decade. Please, please, please don’t change anything. It’s great as is. If it’s not broke, don’t fix!
  • frosted-flakes 4y ago
    The font size is fine, but the buttons are tiny.
• voisin 4y ago
  I concur. Though I would love if the mobile experience made it a bit easier to click the vote buttons!
• prenoob 4y ago
  Everything OP said plus kudos for keeping RSS alive !
• brhsagain 4y ago
  I use HN to test my internet. If other sites don't load, I don't know if it's because they're just down, taking forever to load 20 MB of crap, etc. If HN doesn't load, my internet is broken.
• fronterablog 4y ago
  Totally agree. I feel the same when I open a good book and read without distraction for hours. It's like mental detox after social media full of short-form videos. We'll see a wave where what's timeless and simple make a return — like text-only content.
• scarface74 4y ago
  > While Reddit… ads looking like posts, HN has remained high signal to noise ratio. I have no sympathy for people complaining about ads on Reddit when they give you an alternative - you can pay a subscription to have them removed.
• inasio 4y ago
  HN is my `ping google.com`, first thing I check whenever I connect to a new wifi connection (or when I hear my partner complaining that the internet is down).
• Terretta 4y ago
  > My only ask is to revisit CSS a bit and make it mobile friendly. I.e slightly larger fonts and hit areas for expand/collapse. It’s too easy to hit the wrong button on a phone. There is a weird thing with the vote arrows on iPad in particular, if you tap the upvote arrow, the downvote arrow disappears first, then later the upvote arrow disappears. Always second guessing which arrow I've hit. Can only tell by looking at the text to unvote vs. undown.
  • kayge 4y ago
    If any newer folks are wondering “… what downvote arrow?” it only appears once your Karma is above a certain level (501+, I think?)
    • dalmo3 4y ago
      >=501. Coincidentally that's the exact number I'm on now, and just like GP said due to my fat thumb I'm always guessing whether I've up- or downvoted a comment.
• apeace 4y ago
  > My only ask is to revisit CSS a bit and make it mobile friendly. I.e slightly larger fonts and hit areas for expand/collapse. It’s too easy to hit the wrong button on a phone. Does anyone know why this hasn't been done? I find things are very small to click even on desktop. Seems there is a lot of low-hanging fruit that could be cleaned up. I don't like using plugins or custom stylesheets because I fear something breaking one day and giving me a headache (HN withdrawal). I also don't like using alternate HN viewers for fear that they will track me.
  • rebolek 4y ago
    I have HN on 150% in Firefox on desktop (FF remembers individual scaling, not sure about other browsers) and on mobile I scale with two fingers. It's of course not a perfect solution but works.
• type0 4y ago
  It isn't ad-free, rather it has old school direct ads; what other popular web pages still run ads directly?
• entropicgravity 4y ago
  It's interesting to note that the bare bones sites of Craig's List, Reddit and HN have some of the lowest costs and longest staying power. All content supplied by users and curated with care. (hello dang)
• dcchambers 4y ago
  General shout-out to all the services that provide an optional text-only/minimalist interface, e.g. https://text.npr.org/ https://text.npr.org/
• joshxyz 4y ago
  I know right, of course the last part is all about our fat fingers misclicking things haha.
• cleverKnight 4y ago
  would highly recommend https://hckrnews.com/ https://hckrnews.com/ to make your experience even better.
  • petodo 4y ago
    I used hckrnews but they are displaying either very few articles or too many, I find serializer.io better alternative where I switched from hckrnews + it remembers/synchronize what you read already through unique URL
• real_jiakai 4y ago
  At present, I use "modern for hacknews" chrome plugin. via: https://www.modernhn.com/ https://www.modernhn.com/ It redesigns the web interface of hacknews. In my andriod app, I will use Glider app to read hacknews posts. via: https://github.com/Mosc/Glider https://github.com/Mosc/Glider. In most cases, I would choose to use pc's browser to read hacknews. Maybe you can try my recommendations above to improve your reading experience.
  • spicysugar 4y ago
    I use glider daily and i wish it was the defacto/official app for HN Really appreciate Glider.
• rajnathani 4y ago
  +1. On a side note: The pure text-based interaction with ChatGPT is one big point for me to prefer it over Google for quite a few searches (this is besides that ChatGPT gives one direct answers).
• webinvest 4y ago
  Hey OP, there are bookmarketlets that you can save as bookmarks in your mobile phone browser to increase or decrease zoom size on any webpage or website. I don’t use them because I’m not at the age of using glasses or reading glasses for anything but they may be useful to you.
  • webinvest 4y ago
    Save this bookmarketlet as “[+] increase font size”. javascript:var%20p=document.getElementsByTagName('*');for(i=0;i%3Cp.length;i++)%7Bif(p%5Bi%5D.style.fontSize)%7Bvar%20s=parseInt(p%5Bi%5D.style.fontSize.replace(%22px%22,%22%22));%7Delse%7Bvar%20s=12;%7Ds+=2;p%5Bi%5D.style.fontSize=s+%22px%22%7D
  • webinvest 4y ago
    Save this bookmarketlet as “[-] decrease font size”: javascript:var%20p=document.getElementsByTagName('*');for(i=0;i%3Cp.length;i++)%7Bif(p%5Bi%5D.style.fontSize)%7Bvar%20s=parseInt(p%5Bi%5D.style.fontSize.replace(%22px%22,%22%22));%7Delse%7Bvar%20s=12;%7Ds-=2;p%5Bi%5D.style.fontSize=s+%22px%22%7D
• roguesherlock 4y ago
  I've been working on my own frontend for hacker news for a bit cause I wanted it look a certain way (basically larger fonts, easy on the eyes). You can check it out here to find any inspiration, https://hn.aaakash.xyz https://hn.aaakash.xyz
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]