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I'm working on a Hacker News front page with the idea of UI density as a foundational concept. https://hcker.news https://hcker.news I haven't did a Show HN y

I'm working on a Hacker News front page with the idea of UI density as a foundational concept. https://hcker.news https://hcker.news I haven't did a Show HN yet but I'd love to get some feedback on it first. It's got a lot of configurable views and can be made extremely dense (dense mode on + columns: auto). The aesthetic itself was made to deviate as little from the HN frontpage as possible. It's got a lot of filtering knick knacks like being able to view by top comments/points, view hn as a timeline of top stories by comments or stories or view hn by top n over day/week/month/year/custom.

dang 1y ago
How do you decide which stories to include in the list for a given day, and how to rank them?
- postalcoder 1y ago
  In timeline mode, it's just a pure top 10/20/50/100 stories by points (or comments, if chosen) for each day (in your time zone). The stories are presented in chronological order in which they were submitted (top is newest). The timeline view can get wonky when it's like 12AM-2AM when there are relatively few stories in "today". Misc: 1) it doesn't filter out flagged stories 2) second-chance pooled items, should they rise in ranks, will be shown on the day the item was originally submitted, not the day it got popular. I may do to a "rising" type of view but I'm curious about what others want to see first.
- divbzero 1y ago
  Thanks for keeping the HN API open for these alternative UIs.
  - dang 1y ago
    I think more of this is probably in HN's future, if it's to thrive long-term.
divbzero 1y ago
The official HN front page is already pretty good on UI density, so it’s promising that you’re using that as a starting point. Is there any chance https://hcker.news https://hcker.news is related to https://hckrnews.com https://hckrnews.com? The dense layout feels similar.
- postalcoder 1y ago
  I haven't set up my about page yet but I was going to attribute much my design to their page. I've taken a ton of inspiration from hckernews.com because it's the front page I always frequented prior to making this. My primary issue with it was that I wanted more sorting capabilities (aggregate mode), and wanted to be able to see the highest engagement threads (by comments).
  - tbeseda 1y ago
    Very cool. I have something similar that's more of a running timeline than a view of the front page. I need to work on the controls so you can better specify thresholds. https://hnr.app https://hnr.app (hckrnews.com credit in footer because I also found it helpful)
    - postalcoder 1y ago
      this quite nice as it reminds me of a good ol rss reader. regarding controls, one of the dumb reasons i wanted to remake hckernews is i don’t like the two taps to change the view.. im happy with the brutalist settings panel up top.
dredmorbius 1y ago
One of my biggest gripes against HN's front page is that there's so little context to go on --- just an <= 80 character headline, often not especially informative. My own news-page rewrite includes several paragraphs of lede context, which is probably a bit on the overkill side. But a hundred characters or so should help. I'm also wrestling with the sort-order aspect. Current cut is time-ordered within sections (another thing I wish HN had), but I'm going to be extending the article count in the next iteration. That said, your design is clean and light, I like it.
- postalcoder 1y ago
  Thanks! Great to hear it. > My own news-page rewrite includes several paragraphs of lede context, which is probably a bit on the overkill side. But a hundred characters or so should help. Stay tuned, I've been thinking about the right way to do something like this too. > I'm also wrestling with the sort-order aspect. Current cut is time-ordered within sections (another thing I wish HN had), but I'm going to be extending the article count in the next iteration. Hope you don't mind if I email you later for new feature feedback. > That said, your design is clean and light, I like it. Thank you.
  - dredmorbius 1y ago
    A key problem with extracting article context is that there are so many distinct sources. That said, power laws and Zipf functions apply, and a large fraction of HN front-page articles come from a relatively small set of domains. There's further aggregation possible when underlying publishing engines can be identified, e.g., Wordpress, CMSes used by a large number of news organisations, Medium, Substack, Github, Gitlab, Fediverse servers, and a number of static site generators (Hugo, Jekyll, Pelican, Gatsby, etc.). I suspect you're aware of most of this. I have a set of front-page sites from an earlier scraping project: (For the life of me I cannot remember what the 3rd column represents, though it may be a miscalculated cumulative percentage. The "category" field was manually supplied by me, every site with > 17 appearances has one, as well as several below that threshold which could be identified by other means, e.g., regexes on blogging engines, GitHub pages, etc.) Rank Count ??? Site :::: Category ------------------------------------------------------------- 1 7294 5.175 n/a :::: n/a 2 3803 7.873 nytimes.com :::: general news 3 3495 10.352 techcrunch.com :::: tech news 4 1580 11.473 arstechnica.com :::: tech news 5 1344 12.426 bloomberg.com :::: business news 6 1288 13.340 wired.com :::: tech news 7 1171 14.171 wsj.com :::: business news 8 1099 14.951 youtube.com :::: video 9 1026 15.678 wikipedia.org :::: general info (wiki) 10 921 16.332 bbc.com :::: general news 11 911 16.978 bbc.co.uk :::: general news 12 893 17.612 theguardian.com :::: general news 13 866 18.226 washingtonpost.com :::: general news 14 846 18.826 reuters.com :::: general news 15 829 19.414 economist.com :::: business news 16 781 19.968 theatlantic.com :::: general interest 17 631 20.416 arxiv.org :::: academic / science 18 628 20.862 npr.org :::: general news 19 622 21.303 nature.com :::: academic / science 20 614 21.738 newyorker.com :::: general interest 21 505 22.097 eff.org :::: law 22 475 22.434 stanford.edu :::: academic / science 23 471 22.768 ieee.org :::: technology 24 456 23.091 reddit.com :::: general discussion 25 448 23.409 amazon.com :::: corporate comm. 26 445 23.725 microsoft.com :::: technology 27 416 24.020 theverge.com :::: tech news 28 410 24.311 venturebeat.com :::: business news 29 408 24.600 quantamagazine.org :::: academic / science 30 407 24.889 cnn.com :::: general news 17,782 sites in total, if I'm reading my past notes correctly. More on that project in an HN search: <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adredmorbius%20front%20page%20analysis&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...> (Individual comments/posts seem presently unreachable due to an HN site bug.)
LargoLasskhyfv 1y ago
On first look this looks slightly more usable that hckrnews.com, which I'm currently using(mostly). It would be perfect(for me) if it had some more (light)themes, with yellow-brownish background, like 'manila paper', or something like that. Will continue trying it out. Anyways, thumbs up so far...
- postalcoder 1y ago
  Added a manilla theme, let me know what you think of it!
  - LargoLasskhyfv 1y ago
    Yes. Acceptable. Though it's looking slightly orange/apricot/peachy. But that's in line with HN, so be it ;> Thank You! Edit: After a few minutes I'm thinking its better than both hckrnews.com, because that has too bright BG, and less disturbing than HN, because no jump between grey borders and that pale yellow they use. MUCH LESS annoyance/eyestrain.
    - postalcoder 1y ago
      Awesome. I'll try use the manila theme and tone it down if the peachiness bothers me too. Also, I'll also have to fix the fact that I've been misspelling "manila". Feel free to email me (in the about page) if there are any other features you'd like to see.
saratogacx 1y ago
Please add an option to kill the gutter space. You want density and get rid of a substantial part of the viewing space with empty space on the sides.
- postalcoder 1y ago
  thanks for the feedback. you can now kill the gutters!
steine65 1y ago
That's great! An API for the filters would be nice so i could bookmark it.
- postalcoder 1y ago
  Thanks! By API, do you mean you'd like to have bookmarkable filters so you can always return to a particular view?
ristomatti 1y ago
Late to comment but this is awesome! I've been a long time user if hckrnews.com. What I'd like to see is it's option to open the links in HackerWeb. It makes reading the discussions much easier on mobile/tablet in my opinion. Another feature request would be font size adjustment. Two columns look great on a tablet but the font size is slightly too small. Keep up the great work!
- postalcoder 1y ago
  Just saw this comment, added both a hackerweb and a font size adjustment setting! Look in the finicky settings.
sethlivingston 1y ago
Kudos for building this and for responding to feedback so quickly. I'm a user.
- postalcoder 1y ago
  Thanks!
fsflover 1y ago
Empty page without JS? Doesn't look like a website for hackers to me.

dang 1y ago

How do you decide which stories to include in the list for a given day, and how to rank them?

postalcoder 1y ago
In timeline mode, it's just a pure top 10/20/50/100 stories by points (or comments, if chosen) for each day (in your time zone). The stories are presented in chronological order in which they were submitted (top is newest). The timeline view can get wonky when it's like 12AM-2AM when there are relatively few stories in "today". Misc: 1) it doesn't filter out flagged stories 2) second-chance pooled items, should they rise in ranks, will be shown on the day the item was originally submitted, not the day it got popular. I may do to a "rising" type of view but I'm curious about what others want to see first.
divbzero 1y ago
Thanks for keeping the HN API open for these alternative UIs.
- dang 1y ago
  I think more of this is probably in HN's future, if it's to thrive long-term.

divbzero 1y ago

The official HN front page is already pretty good on UI density, so it’s promising that you’re using that as a starting point. Is there any chance https://hcker.news https://hcker.news is related to https://hckrnews.com https://hckrnews.com? The dense layout feels similar.

postalcoder 1y ago
I haven't set up my about page yet but I was going to attribute much my design to their page. I've taken a ton of inspiration from hckernews.com because it's the front page I always frequented prior to making this. My primary issue with it was that I wanted more sorting capabilities (aggregate mode), and wanted to be able to see the highest engagement threads (by comments).
- tbeseda 1y ago
  Very cool. I have something similar that's more of a running timeline than a view of the front page. I need to work on the controls so you can better specify thresholds. https://hnr.app https://hnr.app (hckrnews.com credit in footer because I also found it helpful)
  - postalcoder 1y ago
    this quite nice as it reminds me of a good ol rss reader. regarding controls, one of the dumb reasons i wanted to remake hckernews is i don’t like the two taps to change the view.. im happy with the brutalist settings panel up top.

dredmorbius 1y ago

One of my biggest gripes against HN's front page is that there's so little context to go on --- just an <= 80 character headline, often not especially informative. My own news-page rewrite includes several paragraphs of lede context, which is probably a bit on the overkill side. But a hundred characters or so should help. I'm also wrestling with the sort-order aspect. Current cut is time-ordered within sections (another thing I wish HN had), but I'm going to be extending the article count in the next iteration. That said, your design is clean and light, I like it.

postalcoder 1y ago
Thanks! Great to hear it. > My own news-page rewrite includes several paragraphs of lede context, which is probably a bit on the overkill side. But a hundred characters or so should help. Stay tuned, I've been thinking about the right way to do something like this too. > I'm also wrestling with the sort-order aspect. Current cut is time-ordered within sections (another thing I wish HN had), but I'm going to be extending the article count in the next iteration. Hope you don't mind if I email you later for new feature feedback. > That said, your design is clean and light, I like it. Thank you.
- dredmorbius 1y ago
  A key problem with extracting article context is that there are so many distinct sources. That said, power laws and Zipf functions apply, and a large fraction of HN front-page articles come from a relatively small set of domains. There's further aggregation possible when underlying publishing engines can be identified, e.g., Wordpress, CMSes used by a large number of news organisations, Medium, Substack, Github, Gitlab, Fediverse servers, and a number of static site generators (Hugo, Jekyll, Pelican, Gatsby, etc.). I suspect you're aware of most of this. I have a set of front-page sites from an earlier scraping project: (For the life of me I cannot remember what the 3rd column represents, though it may be a miscalculated cumulative percentage. The "category" field was manually supplied by me, every site with > 17 appearances has one, as well as several below that threshold which could be identified by other means, e.g., regexes on blogging engines, GitHub pages, etc.) Rank Count ??? Site :::: Category ------------------------------------------------------------- 1 7294 5.175 n/a :::: n/a 2 3803 7.873 nytimes.com :::: general news 3 3495 10.352 techcrunch.com :::: tech news 4 1580 11.473 arstechnica.com :::: tech news 5 1344 12.426 bloomberg.com :::: business news 6 1288 13.340 wired.com :::: tech news 7 1171 14.171 wsj.com :::: business news 8 1099 14.951 youtube.com :::: video 9 1026 15.678 wikipedia.org :::: general info (wiki) 10 921 16.332 bbc.com :::: general news 11 911 16.978 bbc.co.uk :::: general news 12 893 17.612 theguardian.com :::: general news 13 866 18.226 washingtonpost.com :::: general news 14 846 18.826 reuters.com :::: general news 15 829 19.414 economist.com :::: business news 16 781 19.968 theatlantic.com :::: general interest 17 631 20.416 arxiv.org :::: academic / science 18 628 20.862 npr.org :::: general news 19 622 21.303 nature.com :::: academic / science 20 614 21.738 newyorker.com :::: general interest 21 505 22.097 eff.org :::: law 22 475 22.434 stanford.edu :::: academic / science 23 471 22.768 ieee.org :::: technology 24 456 23.091 reddit.com :::: general discussion 25 448 23.409 amazon.com :::: corporate comm. 26 445 23.725 microsoft.com :::: technology 27 416 24.020 theverge.com :::: tech news 28 410 24.311 venturebeat.com :::: business news 29 408 24.600 quantamagazine.org :::: academic / science 30 407 24.889 cnn.com :::: general news 17,782 sites in total, if I'm reading my past notes correctly. More on that project in an HN search: <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adredmorbius%20front%20page%20analysis&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...> (Individual comments/posts seem presently unreachable due to an HN site bug.)

LargoLasskhyfv 1y ago

On first look this looks slightly more usable that hckrnews.com, which I'm currently using(mostly). It would be perfect(for me) if it had some more (light)themes, with yellow-brownish background, like 'manila paper', or something like that. Will continue trying it out. Anyways, thumbs up so far...

postalcoder 1y ago
Added a manilla theme, let me know what you think of it!
- LargoLasskhyfv 1y ago
  Yes. Acceptable. Though it's looking slightly orange/apricot/peachy. But that's in line with HN, so be it ;> Thank You! Edit: After a few minutes I'm thinking its better than both hckrnews.com, because that has too bright BG, and less disturbing than HN, because no jump between grey borders and that pale yellow they use. MUCH LESS annoyance/eyestrain.
  - postalcoder 1y ago
    Awesome. I'll try use the manila theme and tone it down if the peachiness bothers me too. Also, I'll also have to fix the fact that I've been misspelling "manila". Feel free to email me (in the about page) if there are any other features you'd like to see.

saratogacx 1y ago

Please add an option to kill the gutter space. You want density and get rid of a substantial part of the viewing space with empty space on the sides.

postalcoder 1y ago
thanks for the feedback. you can now kill the gutters!

steine65 1y ago

That's great! An API for the filters would be nice so i could bookmark it.

postalcoder 1y ago
Thanks! By API, do you mean you'd like to have bookmarkable filters so you can always return to a particular view?

ristomatti 1y ago

Late to comment but this is awesome! I've been a long time user if hckrnews.com. What I'd like to see is it's option to open the links in HackerWeb. It makes reading the discussions much easier on mobile/tablet in my opinion. Another feature request would be font size adjustment. Two columns look great on a tablet but the font size is slightly too small. Keep up the great work!

postalcoder 1y ago
Just saw this comment, added both a hackerweb and a font size adjustment setting! Look in the finicky settings.

sethlivingston 1y ago

Kudos for building this and for responding to feedback so quickly. I'm a user.

postalcoder 1y ago
Thanks!

fsflover 1y ago

Empty page without JS? Doesn't look like a website for hackers to me.