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Read your Hacker News in Tile Style
- rikacomet 14y agoI hope it is not buggy, but nice one!
- revisionzero 14y agoDev Here: It should be bug free! Always looking for ways to improve though. Any feedback is greatly appreciated.
- jordan_clark 14y agoLooks nice. Any plans for other platforms?
- revisionzero 14y agoDefinitely, iOS and Android are next on the chopping block. As well as a variation for WP8.
- LaserChicken 14y agoI really like the app so far! Great work! I did find a couple bugs though: 1) You probably shouldn't use the same bar to split the article and comments that Windows uses to resize pinned applications. This makes it look resizable when it's not. 2) Sometimes my mouse's scroll wheel stops scrolling. I think this has something to do with the ad reloading. I don't know if you have any control over that, but I found it annoying. I think the ad is stealing focus. 3) The ad on the main page stays on top of the Settings flyout (Win+I -> Settings) 4) Right-clicking on the article side (the web control) causes the appbar to fly in and then immediately disappear. The article also flickers. This does not repro when right-clicking on the comment side. Most of these are ad related, so maybe that's my cue to buy it... Otherwise, great app! I like it.
- revisionzero 14y agoThanks for the feedback LaserChicken! We have a few of these resolved in an update we are wrapping up today. However, #1 is a good catch, will be sure to fix that. #2 is resolved in the next update, and #3 we will look into. While I have not personally experienced #4, I will test this right now following your notes and add it to the list! Really appreciate the detailed reports of the bugs.
- chappi42 14y agoUS $ 1.49 to access Hacker News content through an app?! This should be open source and free.
- andrewcooke 14y agocool; please post here when you're done.
- chappi42 14y agobrowser is fine, thanks; yeah, cool, take other people's content and monetize...
- negrit 14y agoYeah cool, can you work for me for FREE ? But nice troll.
- chappi42 14y agoWhy should Quixby be allowed to scalp the content for FREE?
- negrit 14y agoNice try friday troll !
- chappi42 14y agoDon't know why you wrote this (two times). Probably too oldfashioned I am, but at least you seem to be ok (http://portfotolio.net/t0t0_ http://portfotolio.net/t0t0_). Bonne soirée!
- tommy_ 14y agoYou are not paying for the content, you are paying for an alternate way to consume the content.
- kefs 14y agoWhy does the 'App Website' link take me to a prelaunch/landing page for something completely different?
- revisionzero 14y agoOur company is 'Quixby', so the app website link is to that site as it's our main project currently. We don't have any dedicated app website is all, or we would link to that.
- SilasX 14y agoI thought paid advertisements on this site didn't allow a comment section? Besides, I thought the whole point of the crappy site design was so that it would scare of people who either need eye can't or can't configure a browser to make it look different.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- johnmurch 14y agoNot specifically http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html but do agree - don't think it needs a upvote.
- negrit 14y agoThis is someone who likes hackernews who made an app, to bring it on windows 8 with a nice UX and he is asking for $1.49 which is not much at all... What's wrong with that ? Come on, give the guy a break and enjoy his good work. EDIT: I don't know why I was thinking about windows mobile, my bad.
- jacalata 14y agoI agree with your point, but it's for windows 8 desktop/RT, not windows phone.
- Tiopy 14y agoPaid advertisement? I don't believe this falls into that category. Seems like a fan of this Windows 8 app posted this.
- negrit 14y agoi'd love to app a Chrome app like this one.
- revisionzero 14y agoThat's not a bad idea, will definitely look into that soon!
- rednukleus 14y agoLooks great from the screenshot, I'll have to try this out later. The description doesn't state whether you can comment, post or vote from the app - I take it that's not possible?
- revisionzero 14y agoCurrently you cannot comment, post or vote from the app. It's possible, albeit more complicated. The problem is one of security, so we are taking a bit more time to ensure we do the commenting, posting and voting correctly. This is something we will have in soon though!
- biot 14y agoHere's a suggestion: make the app free for anonymous use. When you get the login, voting, etc. working correctly have an in-app purchase to enable the logged-in features. This way you can build a larger initial base of users and later on upsell them to functionality worth paying for.
- rednukleus 14y agoGreat, good luck with it!
- jeremyarussell 14y agoI second biot's idea. I'll buy it right now though since I want to see it go further and you need money for that. Might I suggest for the time being adding in a right click and "open in browser" that leads to the comment page for the article? That ways it's at least a quick one step to get where you need to be in order to comment and upvote.
- revisionzero 14y agoGreat idea! We are rolling out an update today, but will be sure to wrap in all of these suggestions in a follow-up update soon!
- sageikosa 14y agoWill it work with Windows 9?
- revisionzero 14y agoWell we tested it on Windows ME, so Windows 9 should be a cakewalk.
- rckrd 14y agoJust from a UX perspective, I wonder what seems like a more natural ordering: [ 1 2 ] [ 3 4 ] Is more natural to read than: [ 1 3 ] [ 2 4 ] I would think that since we read from left to right and then down, that the standard matrix ordering row, then column, might be more preferable. Yet, horizontal scroll plays a larger role in metro, so this might not be a bad idea. I'd love to hear from someone who knows anything about UX in regards to this sort of thing.
- jacalata 14y agoHowever you can see that this app, in fairly typical Metro style, scrolls across to the right. I can't think of any nice ordering horizontally that allows for that without constraining you to individual screens, like [1 2 5 6 ] [3 4 7 8]
- tsunamifury 14y agoThis is, in my opinion, the single largest problem with tile matrices that have unrestricted length and width. Its very hard to tailor the reading experience to be anything better than mediocre -- and at times on short, wide screens, its downright awful. Windows 8 makes a mess of things by scrolling sideways in landscape mode, then up and down in portrait mode. Readability is sacrificed at the alter of adaptable design. The tiles lead the eyes no where -- because content can really go in any direction (up down left right? why not down through 3D or even up or spinning maybe too? They are all done in Windows 8) The other thing tiles do poorly is constrain the variances on line lengths by boxing them in. When you scan headlines, you naturally grip the page using the various headline lengths. Boxing them in and cutting them off makes every headline appear the same length and kills their distinguishability (and implied reading direction). Ultimately, I believe its most comfortable read across the most narrow dimension of a screen -- depending on orientation -- then scroll the opposite of the reading direction. That being said, users will also tend towards their native reading direction (Japanese users will read down, English, readers across from left to right, Arabic from the right to left) Discloser: Im a UX and UI designer who has worked on Windows 8, iOS, Android, and about 10 other operation systems. I have also designed mixed language or language-free interfaces to varying success.
- dkarl 14y ago
- dhruvmittal 14y agoI feel like the Tile Layout isn't the most useful thing for a site like Hacker News- perhaps if we had more images, I'd see it, but the Tile Layout turns our column of text into a wall of text. Does anybody know if it handles opening links or comments?
- thingsilearned 14y agoTile style seems to really de-emphasize the titles of the articles in favor of their score. Emphasizing the score, especially with the ranking algorithm being so time based is fairly confusing. It seems like the number should be in order, but they of course aren't. A fix may be as simple as changing the two greys, having the darker grey behind the article title, and the lighter one behind the number. Also, increasing the contrast in the title text would be great.
- revisionzero 14y agoGood suggestions, will experiment a bit and see what we can do to improve it!
- roc 14y ago> "A fix may be as simple as changing the two greys" You're drawn to 1. the contrast between the colors and 2. the visually-emphasized smaller box pulled 'on top' of the larger box of text. Wwapping the greys would do nothing for the net contrast. If anything it'd exacerbate the effect by making the block of text darker and less noticeable. Lessening the difference between the two greys would cause them to blend more and take out some of the 'pop'. But I think 2. is the bigger problem. You'd want to put the 'score' inside the larger box to de-emphasize that element.
- jonchris 14y agopretty cool product and I would love to try it out. would suggest you to add more categories on top. to make your life easier, I can contribute to it by providing RSS feed from http://www.hnbuzz.com/ http://www.hnbuzz.com/. let me know if that sounds good to you. good luck!