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Show HN: WikiScroll (TikTok-Style Wikipedia)

optimalplusone 2y ago
I was originally inspired to make this by a tweet (https://x.com/tylerangert/status/1886560290864533983 https://x.com/tylerangert/status/1886560290864533983). Since then a few others have made variations of this app, including here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42936723 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42936723 My version has a new feature which I was curious to see would lead to more interesting browsing: category scroll. Swipe left (mobile) or click the right arrow (desktop) to scroll related articles to the current one. I also aimed to see if AI-assisted coding would make it easier to write a functional app without the use of frameworks, so this is a pure javascript static site. If people like this format, I'm hoping to implement some account/recommendation features to load articles based on what your browsing habits suggest you find interesting Github link: https://github.com/Sami1309/TikiWiki https://github.com/Sami1309/TikiWiki
peterburkimsher 2y ago
It’s beautiful! Could you make an offline version as an app? Check out Wiki2Touch for offline Wikipedia ideas, or pingtype (shameless plug) - just work out an open-source way to make it possible to reduce your server fees.
- optimalplusone 2y ago
  That's a good idea! An offline would be as easy as just making a parallel mediawiki API that serves from a local server. I will check out implementations. Server fees aren't an issue with this deployment as it's just a small static app, though if this were to be big it would be a load on the mediawiki API, so if there's more interest than this as a hobbyist side project I should serve some of my own and cache (as I'm loading a lot of images in parallel) I looked up your pingtype project, it looks like it's for translating English <=> Chinese. Would that be for translating articles? For that I imagine I should add the feature for viewing Wikipedia in different languages.
  - peterburkimsher 2y ago
    Yes, pingtype was original English <=> Chinese (traditional, simplified, Hakka, and Taiwanese). The iOS app has a Wikipedia server built-in, for the articles. The github page https://pingtype.github.io https://pingtype.github.io has only some smaller data cached, accessible through the top header row. Or you can copy-paste any text in. Pingtype now supports over 28 languages, through direct links e.g. https://pingtype.github.io/greek.html https://pingtype.github.io/greek.html Github are very generous with their free hosting!
davinciind 2y ago
do you have something to show?

I was originally inspired to make this by a tweet (https://x.com/tylerangert/status/1886560290864533983 https://x.com/tylerangert/status/1886560290864533983). Since then a few others have made variations of this app, including here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42936723 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42936723 My version has a new feature which I was curious to see would lead to more interesting browsing: category scroll. Swipe left (mobile) or click the right arrow (desktop) to scroll related articles to the current one. I also aimed to see if AI-assisted coding would make it easier to write a functional app without the use of frameworks, so this is a pure javascript static site. If people like this format, I'm hoping to implement some account/recommendation features to load articles based on what your browsing habits suggest you find interesting Github link: https://github.com/Sami1309/TikiWiki https://github.com/Sami1309/TikiWiki

peterburkimsher 2y ago

It’s beautiful! Could you make an offline version as an app? Check out Wiki2Touch for offline Wikipedia ideas, or pingtype (shameless plug) - just work out an open-source way to make it possible to reduce your server fees.

optimalplusone 2y ago
That's a good idea! An offline would be as easy as just making a parallel mediawiki API that serves from a local server. I will check out implementations. Server fees aren't an issue with this deployment as it's just a small static app, though if this were to be big it would be a load on the mediawiki API, so if there's more interest than this as a hobbyist side project I should serve some of my own and cache (as I'm loading a lot of images in parallel) I looked up your pingtype project, it looks like it's for translating English <=> Chinese. Would that be for translating articles? For that I imagine I should add the feature for viewing Wikipedia in different languages.
- peterburkimsher 2y ago
  Yes, pingtype was original English <=> Chinese (traditional, simplified, Hakka, and Taiwanese). The iOS app has a Wikipedia server built-in, for the articles. The github page https://pingtype.github.io https://pingtype.github.io has only some smaller data cached, accessible through the top header row. Or you can copy-paste any text in. Pingtype now supports over 28 languages, through direct links e.g. https://pingtype.github.io/greek.html https://pingtype.github.io/greek.html Github are very generous with their free hosting!

davinciind 2y ago

do you have something to show?