4 ms·

This is the first website I've ever added to my home screen on iOS, and I was completely unaware that by doing so, I could view the site as if it was a full scr

This is the first website I've ever added to my home screen on iOS, and I was completely unaware that by doing so, I could view the site as if it was a full screen app, not having to deal with the safari interface. I was completely unaware of that, and can now really see the utility in adding web apps to the home screen Also, this is great. Really a solid interface. EDIT: I would honestly like to see this scale on desktop, just because it's a pretty great interface for Hacker News. EDIT 2: Nevermind, realized that it worked by acting as a sidebar on wider monitors. That makes sense.

juretriglav 13y ago
It works fine as a desktop app actually. The sidebar is just one part of the app, and if you click on a post, you get the full article / comments on the right side. Looks like no framework was used to build this (except for Zepto, I guess). Total size for JS is 55kb, for comparison Angular 1.0.7 minified is 78kb. CSS adds another 30kb, including the ico font that's base64 encoded in style.css. 115kb for the whole page on a fresh load, on subsequent loads it's only something like 4-5kb. Very nice!
- thekingshorses 13y ago
  Sorry I forgot to mention, I also use Fastclick(https://github.com/ftlabs/fastclick https://github.com/ftlabs/fastclick) for iOS. JS is uglified. Libraries takes 55% of file size, and rest is my code.
  - cpprototypes 13y ago
    The UI performance for your web app is impressive. Did you use any other libraries besides fastclick? Or was it a lot of manual work and research to make the UI perform well?
    - c2prods 13y ago
      +1. I don't know what are your plans with this app, but I would love to learn more about how you did that. Do you plan to open-source it?
      - adrianlee 13y ago
        +1
    - juretriglav 13y ago
      +1. I would love a more detailed "How I built the HN single page app" post.
- publicfig 13y ago
  Yep, I figured that out! Now that I know I like the sidebar better than full width.
zio99 13y ago
I worked on a similar app [1] and it runs as a standalone web app on the iOS homescreen as well. A couple of things that I love about it: 1. I've done away with a lot of the features the OP has - such as comments (unless it's Ask HN), time of post and link. This has made it more lightweight and faster to load on slow mobile networks in my area. 2. Also, it's only updated twice a day since I actually built this for myself to stop spending so much time on HN. 3. And since I found myself only reading the front page on my commute to work, it aggregates all the front page articles into one nice page instead of opening one article up at a time. Not to take away from the OP, but would love any feedback on the whole "less is more" approach. [1] http://hn.dinopost.com/ http://hn.dinopost.com/
- tedmiston 13y ago
  This is cool. Finding myself spending too much time on HN, I'm looking to write something similar myself with the purpose of making a weekly digest of only the top stories. Looks like a few [1][2] have already made the efforts to write filtering based on karma score. Edit: The OP's app is very close to what I want, but instead of limiting to top 10, use a point threshold directly. 1: https://github.com/fractastical/Hacker-News-Filter https://github.com/fractastical/Hacker-News-Filter 2: http://hnapp.com http://hnapp.com
  - zio99 13y ago
    Thanks for the feedback. I'll probably open source it at some point. Right now, the components are somewhat tightly coupled.
- kevin_p 13y ago
  I prefer the way this one preloads the story contents; I take the subway to work so I have a while without internet access. It would be nice to have comment links at least though, so there's the option to read them if it seems interesting. And the 'open all' button doesn't work for me, assuming that's what the '^' in the top right corner is supposed to do.
  - 13y ago
HCIdivision17 13y ago
Following your recommendation, I did the same, and I really enjoy it. The interface addresses many (all?) of my typical annoyances with the otherwise great news:yc app. * it swaps between comments and articles quickly * nice, unobtrusive indenting for threads * holy cow folding comments! * pleasant styling I haven't figured out how to comment, but I'more of a lurker, so that's fine (it'll keep me from making a fool of myself too much). And there's that initial loading time with a blank, white background that is almost certainly the iPhone's fault. Swapping over to it now that this is written!
- publicfig 13y ago
  Actually, I could be wrong, but I think the load time is coming from the fact that the developer had to move the application over to S3 in order to deal with the heavy load with this being on the front page, and with S3 not supporting gzip, it's causing a bit of a delay. Once it's loaded, however, the app is very fast in switching between pages and comments.
  - HCIdivision17 13y ago
    I apologize, I actually only meant the initial startup. The speed of everything once it starts is fantastic! I see this delay on forecast.io as well. It could very well simply be a latency issue.
baddox 13y ago
Have you seen http://hackerwebapp.com/ http://hackerwebapp.com/? It's very similar and equally slick, but styled specifically to match native iOS apps.
alxndr 13y ago
I hadn't known that either, nice find!

juretriglav 13y ago

It works fine as a desktop app actually. The sidebar is just one part of the app, and if you click on a post, you get the full article / comments on the right side. Looks like no framework was used to build this (except for Zepto, I guess). Total size for JS is 55kb, for comparison Angular 1.0.7 minified is 78kb. CSS adds another 30kb, including the ico font that's base64 encoded in style.css. 115kb for the whole page on a fresh load, on subsequent loads it's only something like 4-5kb. Very nice!

thekingshorses 13y ago
Sorry I forgot to mention, I also use Fastclick(https://github.com/ftlabs/fastclick https://github.com/ftlabs/fastclick) for iOS. JS is uglified. Libraries takes 55% of file size, and rest is my code.
- cpprototypes 13y ago
  The UI performance for your web app is impressive. Did you use any other libraries besides fastclick? Or was it a lot of manual work and research to make the UI perform well?
  - c2prods 13y ago
    +1. I don't know what are your plans with this app, but I would love to learn more about how you did that. Do you plan to open-source it?
    - adrianlee 13y ago
      +1
  - juretriglav 13y ago
    +1. I would love a more detailed "How I built the HN single page app" post.
publicfig 13y ago
Yep, I figured that out! Now that I know I like the sidebar better than full width.

zio99 13y ago

I worked on a similar app [1] and it runs as a standalone web app on the iOS homescreen as well. A couple of things that I love about it: 1. I've done away with a lot of the features the OP has - such as comments (unless it's Ask HN), time of post and link. This has made it more lightweight and faster to load on slow mobile networks in my area. 2. Also, it's only updated twice a day since I actually built this for myself to stop spending so much time on HN. 3. And since I found myself only reading the front page on my commute to work, it aggregates all the front page articles into one nice page instead of opening one article up at a time. Not to take away from the OP, but would love any feedback on the whole "less is more" approach. [1] http://hn.dinopost.com/ http://hn.dinopost.com/

tedmiston 13y ago
This is cool. Finding myself spending too much time on HN, I'm looking to write something similar myself with the purpose of making a weekly digest of only the top stories. Looks like a few [1][2] have already made the efforts to write filtering based on karma score. Edit: The OP's app is very close to what I want, but instead of limiting to top 10, use a point threshold directly. 1: https://github.com/fractastical/Hacker-News-Filter https://github.com/fractastical/Hacker-News-Filter 2: http://hnapp.com http://hnapp.com
- zio99 13y ago
  Thanks for the feedback. I'll probably open source it at some point. Right now, the components are somewhat tightly coupled.
kevin_p 13y ago
I prefer the way this one preloads the story contents; I take the subway to work so I have a while without internet access. It would be nice to have comment links at least though, so there's the option to read them if it seems interesting. And the 'open all' button doesn't work for me, assuming that's what the '^' in the top right corner is supposed to do.
- 13y ago

HCIdivision17 13y ago

Following your recommendation, I did the same, and I really enjoy it. The interface addresses many (all?) of my typical annoyances with the otherwise great news:yc app. * it swaps between comments and articles quickly * nice, unobtrusive indenting for threads * holy cow folding comments! * pleasant styling I haven't figured out how to comment, but I'more of a lurker, so that's fine (it'll keep me from making a fool of myself too much). And there's that initial loading time with a blank, white background that is almost certainly the iPhone's fault. Swapping over to it now that this is written!

publicfig 13y ago
Actually, I could be wrong, but I think the load time is coming from the fact that the developer had to move the application over to S3 in order to deal with the heavy load with this being on the front page, and with S3 not supporting gzip, it's causing a bit of a delay. Once it's loaded, however, the app is very fast in switching between pages and comments.
- HCIdivision17 13y ago
  I apologize, I actually only meant the initial startup. The speed of everything once it starts is fantastic! I see this delay on forecast.io as well. It could very well simply be a latency issue.

baddox 13y ago

Have you seen http://hackerwebapp.com/ http://hackerwebapp.com/? It's very similar and equally slick, but styled specifically to match native iOS apps.

alxndr 13y ago

I hadn't known that either, nice find!